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The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has assessed a civil penalty of $60 million from Larry Dean Harmon, the founder of “bitcoin mixers” Helix and Coin Ninja. The penalty is the first of its kind in the United States. FinCEN claimed that Harmon “willfully violated the BSA’s registration, program, and reporting requirements by failing to…
After a 16-month investigation, the Department of Justice and 11 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Tuesday, arguing that the company’s search app—which is a permanent, preloaded fixture on Android phones—hurts search competition and disproportionately funnels traffic to Google’s ad business. “Two decades ago, Google became the darling of Silicon Valley as a…
Earlier this year, at CES 2020, LG announced that it was finally putting its roll-up OLED TV into production, after first debuting the display as a concept two years earlier. It promised the TV would ship sometime in 2020, and true to its word you can now buy the LG Signature OLED R, if you…
Just days out from the last ordained shouting match of the 2020 election, the Commission on Presidential Debates has declared new guidance for Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s final matchup. That’s right folk, we’re cutting the mics! Trump frequently interrupted his opponent during the first debate—a situation anyone could have foreseen—while moderator Chris Wallace did…
For the last couple of years, if you wanted a super portable camera to help you capture stills and video while traveling, you couldn’t really do better than the DJI Pocket. It was tiny, had a built-in gimbal, and support for 4K. Now, DJI has returned to give its pint-sized camcorder a big revamp with…
I love the functionality of true wireless headphones, but I’ve had trouble with earbuds for years. My problem is my freakishly small ear canals that ache when I use earbuds for too long. Nothing ever quite fits right, and even Apple’s AirPods Pro—by far my favorite buds—seem to hurt when left in my ears for…
Google seems to be on a big hack-and-slash spree this year, culling products—even beloved ones—in an attempt to streamline its offerings. The tech giant is known for abandoning or restructuring certain devices, services, and apps that didn’t take off the way it hoped, but 2020 seems to be the year for it. And now Android Police…
As if the 2020 Olympics haven’t had enough hurdles to contend with, it looks like we can add cyberattacks to the list. Earlier today, UK officials put out a memo noting that hackers working with the GRU—Russia’s military intelligence agency—had carried out numerous cyberattacks against major sponsors, organizers, and other key players at this year’s…
It’s happened to the best of us during this period of extended working from home: You’re minding your own business when suddenly a Zoom room full of your colleagues and/or business partners gets a non-consensual eyeful of unsecured loin. Accident or not, that’s really fucked up. It’s even possible that the incident could lead to…
It’s going to be a challenging year for trick-or-treaters, given that the safest approach to collecting candy is to simply not to. But that hasn’t stopped Halloween die-hards from finding clever ways to distribute treats while still social distancing, including Hershey’s. The company invented a rolling door with a candy slot controlled by remote. It’s…
In these pandemic times, the best way to watch a movie is alone rather than squished between strangers. Theaters are making that possible—but you’ll have to pay a small fortune to make it work. Theaters have been pummeled by lockdown and social-distancing measures that make moviegoing the old-fashioned way damn near impossible. But some chains,…
The last haven for “real” Qdrops, 8kun (previously called 8chan), briefly went down Sunday night after a security researcher called the head of CNServers, the anti-denial-of-service provider that controversial site uses to stay online. CNServers quickly pulled their support for the message board, resulting in a vanishingly brief outage. The site currently runs on a…
Amazon is being hit with a class-action suit alleging that the tech giant’s severs are storing biometric voice data from countless callers, in contravention of an Illinois privacy law. At the center of the suit is Amazon Connect—a suite of call-center software that Amazon Web Services began licensing out under since 2017. One of the…
The problem with most handheld gaming systems is that they sacrifice ergonomic controls for portability, but the RetroBlock2 could change that. It’s designed from the ground up around the much-loved Nintendo GameCube controller, and will soon be hitting Kickstarter. Nintendo has long dabbled in unique controller designs; everything from the N64 to the Wii to…
Every time I’ve bought an Apple product, I’ve always hesitated at shelling out extra for Apple Care. Even though I’m a documented klutz, I always use screen protectors and cases. I haven’t lost my phone. Generally, I’ve gotten lucky. Maybe you aren’t. Maybe you’re accident-prone and paid top dollar for a new iPhone 12 or…
The role of AI-powered smart home devices has quickly evolved from things used to answer simple queries to gadgets that can help control various aspects of your home. However, with a major software update for Google’s Smart Displays, Google is trying to turn devices like the Nest Hub and the Lenovo Smart Display into true…
In the next few months, we’re likely to see streaming services begin to show some strain as the pipeline of new content dries up due to pandemic production delays. Ahead of this inevitable turn, Apple’s digging into the buzz bin to bring back the forgotten medium of set-it-and-forget-it music videos. On Monday, the Cupertino giant…
There are lots of valid reasons to raise concerns over the capabilities of AI-powered image editing tools, but if you’re a professional pixel pusher, there are just as many reasons to be excited about them too, as Skylum Software demonstrates with its new image editing software, Luminar AI that does automated sky replacements so thorough…
The Amazon Fire tablets, running Amazon’s Fire OS take on Android, are perfectly fine budget tablets for doing the basics: Emailing, streaming, posting to your social media channels, and so on. They’re designed with simplicity in mind, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some useful tweaks and features to be found if you dig a…
The Raspberry Pi—a single-board computer that lets you run Linux systems on devices the size of a deck of cards—is popular with DIYers thanks to its small size and extreme power. But when you need something even smaller, you turn to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, essentially a stripped-down RaspPi without many of the built-in…
