Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The iPhone 12 lineup is growing—not with a brand new device, but a fresh shade. Apple announced at its Spring Loaded event today that the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 and 5.4-inch iPhone 12 Mini will now come in an extremely pretty purple hue. The new shade doesn’t command a premium. The purple iPhone 12 will cost…
Apple’s long-rumored Bluetooth trackers, AirTags, are now officially here. Finally. AirTags are little round tiles that look similar to backgammon pieces, but larger. You attach them to your keys, wallet, anything you’re afraid of losing. (Apple has its own accessories for that, too!) In the event you do lose something with an AirTag stuck to…
Microsoft is reportedly reworking its entire Store app in Windows 10, including policy changes for developers and making the UI easier to navigate. Windows Central reports the changes are a sweeping rejuvenation of the Microsoft Store, changes that will hopefully encourage Windows 10 users to use the app more often and encourage more developers to…
Now that we’ve had time to recover from last fall’s never-ending stream of Apple events, it’s time to get ready for… another Apple event! Today’s Spring Loaded event kicks off at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT, and as always you can catch the livestream at its event page. If you’re looking for other ways to…
Miniaturizing a digital camera is relatively easy because all you’re creating is digital files that sit on a tiny memory card. Miniaturizing an instant film camera? That’s a monumental task by comparison, given you have to shrink all the moving parts that expose and spit out physical prints, as well as the film itself. But…
Atop the rubble of small independent retailers razed by 26 years of pillaging by Amazon, Amazon plans to open a hair salon. Welcome Amazon Salon: a combination augmented reality online shopping laboratory, also with barbers. Amazon has announced that the Barnes & Noble-sized flagship will open in a 1,500 square foot two-story space in London’s…
You probably have a bunch of apps you’ve installed on your phone but only use rarely, so to free up some extra space, it looks like Google is giving Android 12 a new feature that will automatically delete temporary files for apps you haven’t used recently. While the new app hibernation feature hasn’t been officially…
VR fitness is the future, baby! But there’s one major problem: sweat. As fun as fitness games can be, it’s less fun if sweat keeps trickling into your eyeball during an intense session, and properly cleaning a headset afterward can be annoying. All this makes the leaked HTC Vive Air intriguing The concept headset, which…
By now we’ve all “oohed” and “awed” over footage of thousands of glowing drones used to create elaborate animated light shows in the night sky. But artist Frodo Álvarez has come up with a different approach, using just a handful of pre-programmed drones to create towering long-exposure light paintings. Typically these types of images are…
As is the norm for Apple, we do not know what the company plans to announce at its big 4/20 event today. We can probably safely guess a few gadgets that could be revealed during the presentation, however. The most likely candidates are iPad Pros with miniLED screens, rumored to be arriving in 11-inch and…
Payment app Venmo will now let users buy, sell, and hold four cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash, according to a press release from the company Tuesday morning. But users won’t be able to send cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to their Venmo friends just yet. “Venmo customers can start their crypto journey with as…
Facebook hopes to launch a trial of its long-stalled digital currency project by the end of this year, according to a new report from CNBC. The currency, first announced in 2019 as Libra and then renamed Diem after some bad publicity, will now be pegged to the U.S. dollar, provided the tech giant can actually…
Car insurance giant Geico has quietly disclosed that a recent security breach allowed cyber thieves to steal customers’ driver’s license information right off the company’s website. The breach was made public Monday after TechCrunch noticed that the company had recently filed a breach notice with the California Attorney General’s Office—as is required by state law.…
YouTube temporarily halted ads on frenetic drama magnet James Charles’ channel as of Monday night, disabling the content creator’s ability to earn money on the platform amid allegations that he sexted with minors. The decision to temporarily remove Charles from its Partner Program comes after a review of YouTube’s “creator responsibility policy,” the platform told…
Many weird and wild things are coming out of Mike Lindell’s 48-hour bananathon livestream today—Ted Nugent, a crank call from a “reporter,” another crank call from “Donald Trump”—and somehow, I, too, was there. After a press request this morning to MyPillow, which has ignored my emails on two previous occasions, my phone rang. “Are you…
Discord has walked back an earlier decision to ban NSFW servers completely from its iPhone and iPad apps. The company changed the guidelineson accessing NSFW content after experiencing severe pushback from its users. The ban now only applies to servers specifically focused on explicit pornographic content, including any server either “organized” around NSFW themes or…
Shortly after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd last year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flew a Predator drone over the city in an effort to surveil the ongoing protests against police brutality occurring there. The drone, which took off from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota and flew in a holding…
Americans had prepared today (and also last week) for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to unleash his nebulous avant-garde invention, Frank: a social media platform billed as a cross between YouTube and Twitter with elements of newspapers and television, except with free speech. We’ll have to wait a little longer to see the nexus realized. Frank…
The Fitbit Luxe, the company’s newest and most expensive band, can best be described as: fitness tracker, but make it fashion. The $150 Luxe, which Fitbit announced today, is the first of Fitbit’s fitness bands to sport a color touchscreen. It offers 24/7 heart rate-monitoring, as you might expect, and comes with a six-month free…
Despite dropping hints that Facebook could be working on a new more powerful VR headset, Facebook VP Andrew Bosworth made it clear recently that the company doesn’t have any plans to release a Quest Pro or Quest 3 headset anytime this year. The subject of a new headset from Facebook came up recently during a…
