Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Outgoing President Donald Trump is set to receive a rude awakening on Jan. 20, 2021 on his favorite social media platform: Twitter. That day, Trump will no longer see a picture of himself on the popular @POTUS account—the official presidential Twitter account, although Trump prefers to use his own personal, @realDonaldTrump, as the world knows—but…
Starting next year, you won’t find HBO among Amazon’s Prime Video Channels selection anymore, CNBC reports. That was apparently one of WarnerMedia’s conditions in the months-long negotiations to bring its subscription streaming service, HBO Max, to Amazon Fire TV devices. Once the companies’ current placement deal expires next year, subscribers will have to navigate to…
The eldest Trump spawn, Donald Trump Jr., has reportedly contracted the coronavirus. Honestly, given the rate at which the virus has spread among the president’s staff and associates in recent weeks, is anyone really surprised? “Don tested positive at the start of the week and has been quarantining out at his cabin since the result,” a…
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is using a “standard, paid Google workspace network” with only limited support from the federal government thanks to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 elections and efforts to hobble the inbound Democratic administration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Presidential transition teams typically have the support of the…
Earlier this year, human rights and privacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch wrote to Apple, asking why it was delaying the introduction of a feature that would force apps to receive explicit opt-in from iPhone users before tracking them. Apple responded, according to Bloomberg, with a letter slamming Facebook. Apple…
Well, this is horrifying. One of the foremost VFX companies on the planet, Digital Domain—the outfit behind some of the biggest effects in films in recent decades, including Titanic, Avengers: Infinity War, and Deadpool—has unveiled a new “realistic real-time autonomous digital human,” which it calls “Douglas.” Douglas, which will head to market next year, is…
I will not knock a person for eschewing bras, particularly in the summer months when they join forces with the underside of your boobs to create a miasma of sweat and good intentions. I will especially not knock a person for eschewing sports bras, which attempt to turn your double outies into innies through the…
One of the most awful elements of the devastating August 4 explosion in Beirut, which killed over 200 people and injured more than 6,500, was that it could have easily been prevented. Using videos of the event that were shared on social media, forensics researchers have been able to reconstruct exactly what happened, including the…
Late last month, the UK banned carriers from locking smartphones. Now, Wired is reporting that the same thing might happen in the U.S. in 2021, as consumer activists push legislators to do away with some pesky regulations that allow for locked phones in the first place. The reason for locked smartphones can be traced back…
Adobe’s Flash died many deaths, but we can truly throw some dirt on its grave and say our final goodbyes because it’s getting the preservation treatment. The Internet Archive announced on Thursday that it has begun cataloging Flash animations and games for us all to visit and remember the good stuff with none of the…
The government of Vietnam is threatening to shut down Facebook within the entire country over the social media company’s refusal to censor more local political content, according to a new report from Reuters. Facebook had previously censored some political speech on the platform to appease the Vietnamese government, but apparently, that wasn’t enough. Back in…
Digital life is easier now that we’ve got services like iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox to fall back on—not least because if you accidentally delete a file or folder from one of these platforms, you’ve got a few days before it’ll be erased for good. Here’s how to bring back deleted data, or—for more…
Facebook filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a website owner who allegedly operated a network of Instagram clone sites using information from more than 100,000 public profiles. This complaint marks the social media giant’s latest crackdown on organizations both large and small for violating its terms of service. According to Facebook, Ensar Sahinturk, who is…
I’ll admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of boba tea even before the pandemic brought my social life to a grinding halt. Tapioca pearls just taste gross to me, as does bacon, avocado, and a slew of other oft-hyped food that the internet goes crazy over, so I realize I’m very much in the…
Since his loss in the Nov. 3 elections, Donald Trump has largely dipped out of public view and occupied his time in some gold-plated panic room, issuing a ridiculous series of tweets claiming victory in various states and ordering his cartoon parody of a campaign legal team to sally forth and step on rakes while…
A fix for a number of reported iPhone 12 troubles has arrived—at least for some of them, that is. Owners of Apple’s new iPhone 12 models have been reporting trouble both with receiving messages as well as with responsiveness on the lock screen on the iPhone 12 Mini, as noted on Apple forums and by…
Rudy Giuliani on Thursday took one of the last, desperate laps of the fifth-or-so act of a storied career. On display during a YouTube’d press conference filled with contempt for the press, the endurance of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer was spectacular as always, with over an hour of him playing all the hits: “Democrat bosses”…
As a political weapon, Section 230 is becoming a mutually assured destruction device. I’m old enough to remember a time when the phrase “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act” meant nothing to the general public. It was about 18 months ago, and in the meantime, millions of people have become self-declared experts on the…
With iOS 14, iPhone users finally got a taste of the sweet, sweet widget life anyone who’s used an Android phone in the last decade was already familiar with. I’ve shied away from most of the early widget apps and largely avoided using most widgets in general (and maybe you should, too!). It is not…
The U.S. Secret Service has some 700 pending investigations centering on Paycheck Protection Program and the Unemployment Insurance Relief fraud, CNBC reported on Wednesday, and a large number of them involve money laundering via Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and other payment apps. Some 80 defendants have been charged with trying to steal $240 million…
