Technology news

The FCC may have squashed net neutrality, but Newark mayor Ras Baraka says the city will keep its internet lanes open and equitable. 
Unlike most U.S. cities, Newark has its own internet fiber cables running through town, so it can offer its own fast broadband service, called Newark Fiber.
In a partnership with the internet connectivity company Gigxero, Newark Fiber provides streets, parks, and businesses 1,000 and 10,000 megabits per second of data. 
It's essentially super fast intern

Following huge waves of criticism and several lawsuits slamming Apple for purposely slowing down older iPhones to balance power consumption from aged batteries, the tech giant has now issued an apology and has reduced the cost of an out-of-warranty battery replacement from $79 to $29.
In a message posted to its website, Apple acknowledges that it miscommunicated what was happening with its power management features that were included in software updates since at least a year ago. Apple has been

Apple last week admitted that it was indeed slowing down iPhones based on the performance of their batteries. After multiple lawsuits and investigations by foreign governments unsurprisingly followed, Apple today published a letter of apology and offered a concession to affected iPhone users.
Starting in late January 2018 and continuing through December 2018, Apple will offer $29 battery replacements for any iPhone 6 or later iPhone model, which represents a discount of $50 off the normal price

In a press release today, Marvel announced Create Your Own, a new platform that allows fans to create original comic strips using Marvel characters and stock background illustrations. The tagline is “Your Own Marvel Universe.”Fans don’t have access to the platform yet, though details are “coming soon.” Whether the version of the Marvel Universe you create is “Your Own” is arguable, however, given that the terms and conditions state that users are forbidd

If you ever feel the need to break a wine glass but don't really want to go through with actually smashing it to the ground and would rather bully it to it's death, Gus Johnson has the trick for you. 
The YouTuber shared a video on Thursday that's short and sweet, but may not make you feel too great. "But it works," Gus says. Try it yourself. Or don't, and just enjoy your wine! Read more...
More about Youtube, Wine Glass, Youtuber, Culture, and Web Culture

Before taking over as CEO of electric car startup Faraday Future earlier this month, LeEco founder Jia Yueting was known as the company’s main financial backer and majority shareholder. But Jia is no longer the largest shareholder, according to three people with knowledge of the company’s finances, because he transferred his controlling shares in Faraday Future’s holding company to his nephew, Jiawei Wang, earlier this year.
Wang was named as the company’s chief financial

 Apple has today posted a letter on its website and a technical article in its Knowledge Base apologizing for not being more transparent about how it handles performance on iPhones with older batteries. Last week, Apple issued a statement that made it clear that changes it made a year ago were indeed slowing down the maximum performance of iPhones with older batteries. It will now also offer… Read More

Apple just published a letter to customers apologizing for the “misunderstanding” around older iPhones being slowed down, following its recent admission that it was, in fact, slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” says the company. “We apologize.”
Apple says in its letter that batteries are “consumable components,” and is offering anyone with an iPhone 6 or l

The 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, has tried, and failed, at many things over the course of his questionable career. From Trump University to Trump Steaks, the man who would be king seems to repeatedly stumble into avoidable morass after morass despite his promises to only surround himself with "the best people."
But if there was one thing he was supposed to be good at, it was insultsLittle Marco, low-energy Jeb, Rocket Man — all trash bon mots tailor-made for the reali

If you missed your grandmother this year, this video will probably make you feel a little better. 
YouTuber Ben Actis uploaded a video Wednesday of his 85-year-old Italian grandma trying to get acquainted with a new Google Home. Sure, her accent might get in the way, but she seems to have a difficult time understand the exact protocol when conversing with our new voice-activated assistants/overlords. 
And when it does work..."I'm scared. It's a mystery."
She is a wonderful mascot for

Things are getting more serious for Apple over the revelations that the company purposely slows down older phones. They could face criminal charges in France under a recently passed obsolescence law. 
SEE ALSO: Yes, Apple sometimes slows down old iPhones to prevent unexpected shutdowns
A report from French outlet The Local (via The Verge) detailed efforts by Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée (HOP, translated as "Stop Planned Obsolescence"), a group dedicated to "raise aw

Fun fact: Four of our 10 most popular stories this year are about Electronic Arts’s Star Wars: Battlefront II situation (aka “CrateGate”) even though it just happened last month.
As part of our GamesBeat Rewind year-end event, we’re taking a look back at our top stories from this year. It’s a mix of guides, news about big franchises testing the massively multiplayer online waters, and peeks at in-game events such as hitting Prestige rank in Call of Duty: WWII.

Seems like people are always saying the world is ending. So it probably is true, right?
The most recent date the world was supposed to end was Sept. 23, according to a theory that another planet called "Niburu" was supposed to collide with Earth. The reason this didn't happen was because that planet does not actually exist. But people are still hopeful for more end-of-world signs of the apocalypse that could be coming up in the near future.
SEE ALSO: I'm God and I completely forgot that I was su

One of the biggest shortcomings of Chrome OS, and a drawback to using a mobile and web-first operating system, is applications that don’t act like desktop software should. Google is working to remedy this, according to 9to5Google, with an upcoming update to Chrome OS that should make Android apps run smoothly in the background. Currently, these apps — part of Google’s broader push to unify certain aspects of Android and Chrome — will pause if you switch away from them, cr

2018 is the year we'll eat healthy, we'll go to the gym, we'll be nicer to our exes... but before we get into all that, let's set some realistic goals. 
For example, 2018 could be the year we watch more TV than ever! Wouldn't that be something? We've got a plentiful supply of new TV coming our way and an ever-growing list of things to catch up on — but for now let's plan ahead with this winter's TV premiere dates.
SEE ALSO: 10 TV shows we can't wait to see in 2018
Because there's roug

The iPhone X is basically one gigantic screen, but the "notch" right at the top of the display guides the owner on how to hold it. The phone should be held vertically, where the length is far longer than the width.
And yet, since the introduction of the iPhone a decade ago, online videos have forced people to turn their phone 90 degrees to view horizontally. The motion even inspired the name and marketing for Verizon's go90, a video streaming app that launched in October 2015. 
This year, h

The South Korean government is cracking down on bitcoin, with proposed legislation seeking to limit how conventional banks interact with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The law would prohibit South Korean companies from providing settlement services for cryptocurrency transactions, a crucial part of credit and debit card transactions.
Another set of rules issued earlier this month restricted financial firms from investing in cryptocurrencies more broadly, although the rules also levied capit

Every product here is independently selected by Mashable journalists. If you buy something featured, we may earn an affiliate commission which helps support our work.
Rule number one is do not believe everything you read on the internet—especially if someone is encouraging you to eat Tide pods. 
Seriously. 
Over the past week, Twitter has been filled with people talking about eating Tide pods—those convenient liquid laundry detergent alternatives—and it's really stran

You’re forgiven if you’ve forgotten about the Pixel C, an Android tablet Google started selling two years ago. At its launch, it was a confounding device with clever (or, as I said in our review, “too clever”) hardware saddled with software that didn’t work well on a tablet. Now its dubious run has ended, as you can no longer buy it from Google’s online store, as noted by Android Police.
Here’s Google’s statement on the “retirement” of

Every product here is independently selected by Mashable journalists. If you buy something featured, we may earn an affiliate commission which helps support our work.
2018 is nearly here. And while we wait to see what fresh joys and horrors it will bring, let's take a minute to rewind and see how far we've come.
From Google to Harry Potter, the most popular hits, movies and innovations are turning the big 2-0 in 2018. Here are some of the things that started way back in 1998, and how they've cha

If you missed Atlus’ punishing puzzle game, Catherine, the first time it came around, good news: Atlus is releasing a remake of the romance-thriller for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. The new edition, Catherine: Full Body, will include a new love interest, more puzzles, and online content.
Catherine first launched for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back in 2011. Visually, it has the vibe of a modern day Persona game (and notably, featured longtime series artist Shigenori Soejima as its art directo

 While preparing to do a little binge-watching over the holidays, something odd popped up on my TV’s screen upon launching the Netflix app on my Roku: a consumer survey. Well, that’s new, I thought to myself, while quickly navigating to the “Skip” button. Fortunately, skipping the survey was easy and getting back to the app was fast. Still, it was surprising to see… Read More

Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group has bought a 20 percent stake in Uber, completing a months-long process, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move drops Uber’s value by about 30 percent from around $70 billion to $48 billion — a reflection of the trouble that the ride-hailing company has experienced across 2017.More important than the valuation change, though, could be the impact SoftBank’s new stake will have on the influence former CEO Travis Kalanick still has on the

In an attempt to cut down on fraud, China’s central bank has announced plans to begin regulating payments by QR codes, barcodes, and other scannable codes. The regulations will initially cap payments by traditional QR codes to 500 yuan, or about $76 USD. When additional security measures are applied, the cap can raise to 5,000 yuan, or around $765 USD. At an even higher security level, banks and payment processors are given discretion over the cap.
The industry is being made to develop bet

This is an excerpt from a long interview between an anonymous data scientist and Logic Magazine about AI, deep learning, FinTech, and the future, conducted in November 2016. LOGIC: Alright, let’s get started with the basics. What is a data scientist? Do you self-identify as one? DATA SCIENTIST: I would say the people who are the most confident about self-identifying as data scientists are almost unilaterally frauds. They are not people that you would voluntarily spend a lot of time with.

While the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea are just around the corner, attention is already turning to the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo, Japan as reports indicate that facial recognition will be used as a security measure at those games.
SEE ALSO: Facebook's new facial recognition efforts help blind users know exactly who's in photos
Over the Christmas holiday, the Japan Times reported that sources confirmed the technology would be used to "streamline the entry o

Someone needs to end this madness. This insanity. This horrifying trend of smart speakers that look like trash cans.
Ahead of CES, LG announced its upcoming ThinQ smart speaker with built-in Google Assistant. I haven't seen it in person, and I have no idea how large (or small) it is, or even how it sounds, but I already can't stand it because its designers couldn't come up with a more imaginative look.
It's time for this trash can aesthetic to end.
SEE ALSO: Amazon's Echo Spot is the blueprint f

The Arctic blast is so severe in Canada that only those above the age of 24 have ever experienced something of this magnitude during the period between Christmas and New Years. Air temperatures from Nunavut to Ontario have plunged well below zero Fahrenheit, with wind chills colder than minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit. 
The cold is so dangerous that it's caused authorities in Canada, a winter-hardened country with a significant presence in the Arctic, to cancel outdoor ice skating for fear of f

Americans got tired of big social media in 2017. Or at least, we stopped wanting to look at it, and we stopped pretending to like it.This feels true to me as someone who uses the internet every day, but I also know it’s true because when The Verge partnered with Reticle Research to conduct a representative survey of Americans’ attitudes towards tech’s biggest power players, 15.4 percent of Facebook users said they “greatly” or “somewhat” disliked using t

Apple is currently under fire after news broke that the company was intentionally slowing down iPhones as their batteries aged, with lawsuits in New York and Israel already having been filed. However the latest suit, filed in France by the environmental group Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée (which roughly translates to “stop planned obsolescence”) could be far more significant for Apple, since planned obsolescence is illegal under French law, according to a repo

Even three years after launching, Jay-Z and Beyonce's family life still appears to be TIDAL's greatest asset.
A 30-second music video clip for 4:44's "Family Feud" showcases the couple's latest attempt to use their marital troubles — well-documented in Beyonce's TIDAL-exclusive visual album Lemonade — to get you to buy a subscription to their "premium" music streaming service.
And, tbh, it's kinda working.There's no doubt that Bey and Jay look fierce as hell in the brief trailer for

Video game addiction will be classified as an official mental health condition next year. 
The World Health Organization (WHO) will recognize "gaming disorder" as a mental health condition in its next revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), coming in 2018. A beta draft of the WHO's 11th ICD includes a gaming disorder entry, which is described as an addiction to video games both online and offline.
SEE ALSO: 10 video games we can't wait to get our hands on in 2018
Gam

First drafts are never good, but damn, Milo Yiannopoulos, WTF kind of book manuscript did you file to Simon & Schuster?
On Wednesday, Jason Pinter, a publisher at Polis Books, tweeted out excerpts of Milo Yiannopoulos's lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for canceling the publication of his memoir Dangerous in the February. This section of Simon & Schuster’s rebuttal to Milo’s lawsuit over DANGEROUS. 🤭 pic.twitter.com/JxydVQpx4f
— Jason Pinter (@jasonpint