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WhatsApp on Thursday announced the introduction of voice and video calls on its desktop apps for Mac and PC, expanding the ways in which you can create the illusion of meaningful human interaction in this moment of crushing isolation. “With so many people still apart from their loved ones, and adjusting to new ways of…
Spotify and Apple Music are the two biggest players in the streaming music game, but thanks to a new deal valued at $297 million, Square is looking to change that tune by acquiring a majority stake in Tidal. In a series of tweets, Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey (who is also the CEO of…
Sound travels faster and farther underwater because it’s denser than air, and that can make it harder for researchers trying to study marine life who get an early heads up to go into hiding. But a new underwater robot could move stealthily through the waves using a propulsion system that doesn’t rely on a propeller…
Regulators in the UK have launched a new antitrust investigation into Apple’s App Store, according to an announcement from Britain’s Competition and Market’s Authority on Thursday. And if the details sound similar to the European Union’s antitrust probes, that’s no accident. The UK will investigate the terms developers must agree to when they build software…
Seresto, a popular flea collar produced by the company Elanco Animal Health, has been tied to over 1,600 pet deaths in the U.S. alone since 2012, according to a new investigation by USA Today. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates flea collars and any other pet treatment containing pesticides, still refuses to act.…
If you want a good example of the kind of havoc a well-placed cyberattack can wreak on an already stressed healthcare system, look no further than the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services center in Gallup, N.M. Rehoboth, a nonprofit hospital based in the rural, Northwestern part of the state, was struck by a ransomware…
Arizona legislators just passed an anti-monopoly bill in a 31-29 vote, which could have big implications for Apple, Google, and, weirdly enough, Fortnite. Arizona House Bill HB2005 “restricts the ability of certain digital application distribution platforms to require use of a specific in-application payment system.” (You can read the text of the bill here.) This…
In a string of attacks, several of Los Angeles’ most elite private schools have had their servers hacked in recent weeks, leaving confidential teacher information and parent contact details exposed. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the attacks follow an apparent pattern, with the hacker or group of hackers in each case sending out email blasts…
For anyone who feels like they’ve been held hostage by iCloud’s 5GB of free storage or just wants to try out a different photo storage app, this week Apple launched a new service designed to make it way easier to transfer photos and videos stored in iCloud over to Google Photos. As reported by MacRumors…
Shocker: Despite conservatives’ endless kvetching about the supposed liberal bias of Silicon Valley technocrats, one of the easiest ways to go viral on Facebook is spouting extreme, far-right rhetoric, according to a new study by New York University’s Cybersecurity for Democracy project. In results released Wednesday, researchers with the project analyzed various types of posts…
If you were planning to fly to Japan to attend the Olympics, love the optimism! But most likely, your plans have been spoiled because we are, in fact, still in a global pandemic. While the final ruling has not yet been announced, the paper Mainichi reported today that a source close to the Japanese government…
It’s an unfortunate truth that snake oil salesmen lurk behind every corner of the internet, waiting for the next conspiracy or wellness fad so they can swoop in with cure-all wares and rob people of their hard-earned cash. It’s also true that people generally fear the unknown—and new technology slots neatly into that category. So…
Alleged domestic terrorist haven/free speech network Parler has bowed out of its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. For a blessed moment it seemed we might get a break from conservative bitching and moaning about unfairness. No such luck. In January, following the storming of the capitol, major tech companies rushed to cut ties with the short-lived…
Today, AMD officially revealed the newest member of its Radeon 6000-series family: the RX 6700 XT. Situated just below the RX 6800, AMD said this is an ideal graphics card for anyone with a high refresh rate, 1440p monitor who wants to play games on max settings. And yes, Smart Access Memory is enabled, too,…
Apple’s Find My app has long been a handy way of keeping track of your iPhone, MacBook, and other Apple devices, but in the most recent iOS 1.5 beta, Apple looks to be expanding item-tracking to a wider range of non-Apple products. First spotted by MacRumors, in the third beta for iOS 14.5, Apple has…
In July 1697, Jacques Sennacques of Lille, France, scribbled off a missive to his merchant cousin, Pierre le Pers, in The Hague. The subject of discussion was a death certificate for their relative, a topic which the cousins had discussed previously but le Pers had neglected to follow up on. The letter was the Renaissance…
There are 3D-printing pens that let prolific doodlers turn their drawings into three-dimensional sculptures, but all users are really left with is a piece of art. Polaroid’s taking 3D-printing pens one step further by replacing extruded plastic with melted candy so that when your masterpiece is complete, you can eat it. The Polaroid CandyPlay 3D…
Will people actually be staying in space hotels by 2027? That’s the promise of Orbital Assembly and Voyager Station, space startups that got a lot of headlines this week. But there are plenty of skeptics that space hotels could become a reality for Americans who are still waiting on universal healthcare. The people behind Orbital…
Just a few months after rolling out what can probably be called the first privacy-preserving news reader, the folks at Brave are taking a stab at creating their own search engine to complement their namesake browser. Brave Search, which the company announced on Wednesday, is poised to become the “privacy-preserving alternative” to, say, Google search,…
Even if you’ve been using Google Chrome since it first rolled out back in 2008, the browser is capable of some tricks you may have not discovered yet. Google adds new features on a regular basis, while older features get lost and forgotten about if you’re not using them every day. Here are 12 things…
