Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Expanding upon an existing feature that warns users who attempt to retweet content that has already been flagged as “misleading information,” Twitter will now issue the same warning when users attempt to like content that has been similarly designated. In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Twitter announced in September that it planned to…
After waging a nefarious and ultimately successful campaign to avoid paying gig workers in California a living wage at all costs, Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc have been rewarded with an $810 million government contract. Under the five-year agreement, issued by the General Services Administration on Monday, the ride-hailing companies will be tasked with…
Alexa, show me a corporate pivot to fitness tracking. Amazon announced that its Alexa-powered Echo Buds will soon have support for data-tracking related to user workouts. In the coming days, users will be able to prompt the voice assistant with the command, “Alexa, start my workout,” and the buds will begin tracking data about calories…
In another universe, this year in tech might have been defined by TikTok’s survival of numerous assassination attempts. Just as the (first) TikTok ban came down, Instagram swooped in with Reels; today, Snapchat announced that it’s launching a TikTok copycat feature called Spotlight. It’s not the first TikTok ripoff and won’t be the last. Spotlight…
Next year, Comcast will start charging Xfinity customers in northeastern US states overage fees for exceeding their monthly data cap. As The Verge reports, customers not on an unlimited plan who exceed 1.2 TB of data in a month will have to pay $10 for every 50 GB of data they go over, topping out…
A newly released indictment charges Apple’s Head of Global Security, Thomas Moyer, with for his alleged participation in a scheme to acquire concealed-carry gun permits for Apple’s security team in exchange for providing cops with iPads. On Monday, the office of the Santa Clara District Attorney issued an announcement that a grand jury investigation found…
As covid-19 continues to push theaters to the brink of bankruptcy, Disney has been cagey about the future of its planned theatrical releases. But a new report suggests more big-budget films could be heading to its service Disney+, as have recent releases like Mulan and Artemis Fowl. And even if theaters are able to make…
On November 19, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) announced it would now allow autonomous taxi companies to charge for their services across the state. California already had the most stringent rules in the country for AV operators, and the newly created Drivered Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Program and the Driverless Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Program will…
Clockwork, makers of the Gameboy-esque GameShell, are back with a new mobile product aimed even more squarely at lovers of retro tech. Their DevTerm is a self-contained computer powered by a low-energy CPU or Raspberry Pi aimed directly at folks who are looking for a low-profile, extremely portable computer for coding, sysadmin work, or writing.…
When you’re a journalist or club promoter or financier, fraud is always a gamble—you might be publicly disgraced and have your venal misdeeds replayed over and over in Netflix documentaries and prestige podcasts, but you might also get away with it. When you’re a scientist—working in a field whose bedrock principle is replicability—fraud is pointless:…
Smart lights are the easiest, most affordable entryway into the smart home. In terms of convenience, scheduling your lights is one of the biggest perks, especially if you’ve got a set routine, your hands are tied, or you are going away for a few days. This is why it was really annoying that Google Assistant…
Despite what you may have heard online, there is at least one redeeming feature of Apple TV’s divisive touchpad remote: it can be replaced. The latest alternative that more or less maintains its slim, compact footprint is from Universal Electronics and unlike other third-party Apple TV remotes, this one includes a Siri shortcut and swaps…
It’s never the good ones who want to ban Facebook. The President of the United States has refused to concede his loss in the national election, and the President-elect’s team has accused Facebook of “shredding the fabric of our democracy” with its failures to police misinformation that violates the network’s own rules. So, when the…
Spotify account usernames, passwords, and emails are all exposed
While you’ve been able to jailbreak iPhones and iPads for years, the same couldn’t be said for HomePods. Until now. If you’re so inclined, you can now jailbreak the first-generation HomePod via the latest Checkra1n update. Yay, I guess? Jailbreaking has gotten less popular over the years, but the main appeal is working around Apple’s…
If you’re thinking about buying a smartwatch, you might also be thinking about how well it’ll serve you when it comes to music playback—will it just act as a remote control for whatever’s on your phone, or will it actually stream and sync songs so you can listen to them anywhere (and leave your phone…
Another Uber Eats delivery worker in Sydney died on Monday evening, local time, after his bike was hit by a truck, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The unnamed man is the fifth death of an app-based delivery worker in Australia over the past two months, prompting questions about the safety of gig economy workers…
It looks like Twitter just can’t catch a fleeting break. Days after the company unveiled Fleets, its new Instagram Stories-like posts that are theoretically supposed to disappear after 24 hours, a bug has basically made them pretty useless. Even worse, the bug could open the door to snooping galore. According to TechCrunch, Twitter users disclosed…
Roughly one year after a data breach at GoDaddy compromised 28,000 customer accounts, the world’s largest internet domain registrar is once again at the center of a security scandal. Hackers brought down several cryptocurrency services using GoDaddy domains in recent weeks, and apparently the company’s own staff unwittingly helped in these attacks. Hackers purportedly duped…
Workers that make Teslas during the coronavirus pandemic are now apparently considered “essential” in the state of California, which has reported an average of 10,981 new covid-19 infections per day in the last week. This means that Tesla’s workers will not be affected by the state’s new limited stay-at-home order, which goes into effect Saturday.…
