Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Newly-elected member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates Derrick Evans was among the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, and we know this because he streamed video of himself doing it in which he referred to himself in the third person. In a video posted to Facebook, Evans, a Republican, pushes to the…
Facebook and YouTube removed a video of President Donald Trump expressing love for a violent mob of supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol and forced the evacuation of the Senate on Wednesday, but offered different reasons for taking action. In a brief video message, the president had addressed supporters who had shattered windows, waved confederate…
Update: A half hour after publication of this article, Twitter appeared to delete multiple Trump tweets falsely claiming he’d won the election. In a subsequent statement, the company said it had locked Trump’s account for 12 hours and that any additional violation of its rules would result in his permanent suspension. President Trump continued to…
An iOS beta clue seems to point to a forthcoming walking workout feature from Apple. An iOS 14.4 beta feature shared by Khaos Tian on Twitter and confirmed by 9to5Mac this week describes a new outdoor Apple Watch option that downloads walking workouts to the watch when it’s connected to power or near a paired…
In yet another dastardly twist in the ongoing SolarWinds debacle, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that hackers had accessed the inboxes of over 3,000 DOJ employee Microsoft email accounts. The news comes less than a day after the federal government formally blamed Russia for the giant cyberattack, alleging a hacker group attached to…
Researchers at UCLA have created a model to distinguish conspiracy theories from actual conspiracies which will possibly allow robots to differentiate between things like Pizzagate and Bridgegate in the future. The project, created by Timothy R. Tangherlini, Shadi Shahsavari, Behnam Shahbazi, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, and Vwani Roychowdhury, analyzes multiple narratives including “user-generated” narratives like Pizzagate, Qanon,…
New York could soon make it easier for people to legally get high. On Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his proposal for the state to legalize and regulate the cannabis industry. Though this would make New York the latest to embrace cannabis, health policy experts are pushing for a plan that openly tries to address…
Some 33 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 7 Americans, have disabilities related to mobility, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Considered something of a silent health epidemic, the degree to which older and middle-aged Americans struggle with difficulties walking or climbing is immense. However, a relatively new therapeutic technique,…
Tile is looking to make its Bluetooth item-finders more powerful with ultra-wide band technology and by adding augmented reality to its mobile phone app, reports TechCrunch. Like Tile’s current trackers, the new UWB trackers will also use short-range, wireless communication protocols, but they will reportedly be way more accurate than Bluetooth—and even wifi. UWB measures…
While AT&T prematurely scared its customers about the upcoming shutdown of its older 3G network, Verizon has recently decided to take things slower by delaying the shutdown of its 3G service indefinitely. Verizon spokesperson Kevin King told Light Reading that the carrier’s 3G network “is operational and we don’t have a plan to shut it down…
What fresh chaos will Facebook bring in the new year? How will it contend with a new political dynamic? Will Zuckerberg stick to his “no more annual challenges” pledge? To kick things off, the world’s biggest social network is making some changes to Pages including the retirement of “likes.” On Wednesday, Facebook announced a wide…
Amazon might be working on an Alexa-enabled device that could potentially track sleep and detect sleep apnea, according to a Business Insider report. Citing anonymous sources and an internal Amazon document, Business Insider claims the device is about the size of a person’s palm and looks like a hexagonal pad with a metal wire base.…
Intel announced today that it will make its RealSense 3D cameras available for customers hoping to utilize the tech for faster facial recognition in the form of RealSense ID. The move comes months after competitor Amazon shied away from its own facial recognition program, which has been accused of perpetuating dangerous racial biases and endangering…
Big changes are coming to the Samsung home entertainment product lineup in 2021. The company recently announced that it was borrowing the technology used for its modular microLED display The Wall for new consumer-ready microLED TVs that don’t require professional installation. When Samsung initially broke the news last month, it had only announced a monstrous…
It’s a feature first introduced on robovacs from companies like iRobot and Shark, but LG has just revealed a cordless stick vacuum with a charging station that automatically empties the vac’s dirt bin whenever it’s docked, giving you one less excuse to deal with all the chip crumbs that fall onto the floor during your…
As a child of the 80s, I didn’t have an Atari, an NES, or even a Sega Master System. My first console was actually our family’s first computer: the Commodore 64. It was a passable gaming system, but more importantly, it was a device that taught me that technology was something that could be fun…
Julian Assange has been denied bail while the Trump regime appeals a UK court’s ruling on Monday that the Wikileaks founder should not be extradited to the U.S. to face espionage and computer hacking charges. The court is worried Assange will skip bail like he did in 2012 when he claimed asylum at London’s Ecuadorian…
The U.S. government appears to be officially blaming Russia for the expansive and damaging SolarWinds hack, which it says was “likely” an “intelligence gathering” effort on the part of a hacker group connected to the Kremlin. The announcement came Tuesday in a joint statement issued by multiple security agencies, including the FBI, the NSA, the…
A threat to fly a plane into the US Capitol building made through an air traffic control system on Tuesday doesn’t appear to be credible, but the FBI is still planning to investigate how the aviation frequency was hacked. According to CBS News, the threatening broadcast picked up by air traffic controllers in New York…
Last October, Microsoft rolled out tab syncing across devices for users in its insider Edge Dev and Canary channels. Tab syncing is not a new thing in browser land; Google Chrome and Apple Safari both offer it. Just load up your browser with tabs and then log into another device and open up the same…