Technology news

Microsoft just released several updates aimed at helping protect Surface devices from the two security vulnerabilities exposed by CPU bugs. The two bugs, nicknamed Meltdown and Spectre, affect almost every device made in the past 20 years, including AMD, ARM, and Intel systems and processors.Installing the newest patch is one of the main ways users can protect themselves from Meltdown and Spectre. The support article about the new updates by Microsoft states that the company is also aware of ho

Sony appears close to refreshing three phones from its lower and mid-range lines, the Xperia XA, XA Ultra, and L1. The biggest change will be the Xperia XA and XA Ultra’s apparent switch to Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processors instead of MediaTek processors, as spotted by VentureBeat, which also acquired leaked pictures of the phones. The Snapdragon chips look to be 2.2GHz octa-core processors.
Sony introduced the XA1 and XA 1 Ultra last February, so they’re due for a refresh. The L1

Animaniacs, the animated kids’ show starring three toon siblings who are possibly cats, possibly dogs, or possibly a nightmare combination of both, is coming to Hulu with brand-new episodes. Steven Spielberg will reprise his role as an executive producer for the series, which kicks off in 2020. Hulu is now also streaming all 99 episodes of the original series, which first aired in 1993.
The original Animaniacs is an anthology show primarily centered on Warner siblings Yakko, Wakko, and Do

Google just gave chipmakers some much needed good news. In a post on the company’s Online Security Blog, two Google engineers described a novel chip-level patch that has been deployed across the company’s entire infrastructure, resulting in only minor declines in performance in most cases. The company has also posted details of the new technique, called ReptOnline, in the hopes that other companies will be able to follow the same technique. If the claims hold, it would mean Intel an

An NSA contractor who was arrested in October 2016 plans to plead guilty to stealing classified information, according to Reuters. The former contractor, Harold Martin, apparently hasn’t struck a plea deal, so it’s not clear that the case ends here. Reuters reports that there are still 19 other charges levied against him.
Martin is alleged to have stolen 50TB of data over the course of his more than 20 years working as an NSA contractor, including most recently at Booz Allen Hamilto

 TiVo today introduced a new “Next-Gen Platform,” as it’s being called, that will allow pay TV operators to better keep up with the changes in how consumers prefer to watch television today. The platform lets operators offer modern-day features to their customers – like personalization, recommendations, voice control, and more to their managed set-top boxes. It also… Read More

 Appcanary, a Y Combinator-incubated service that helps developers scan the third-party packages and libraries they use to write their code for potential security vulnerabilities, today announced that it will shut down its service on June 1 and that the team is joining GitHub.
The two companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction, but our understanding is that this is… Read More

Intel says it and its partners have “made significant progress” in rolling out security patches and firmware updates to protect against two major CPU bugs. The flaws were disclosed by Google’s Project Zero team this week, and the industry is scrambling to issue fixes and secure machines for customers. Dubbed “Meltdown” and “Spectre,” the flaws affect nearly every device made in the past 20 years, and could allow attackers to use JavaScript code running

Spotify just announced on Twitter that it now has 70 million subscribers. Before today, the company’s most recent subscriber count was at more than 60 million back in July. Spotify hasn’t given any new details on its total number of active users, but in June it claimed to be up to 140 million.
In the last few months, the streaming service renegotiated licensing deals with Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, which will give Spotify a break on royalty payouts. T

Two major computer processor security bugs, dubbed Meltdown and Spectre, affect nearly every device made in the last 20 years. The ramifications of how much these bugs will impact computing is still playing out, but it could lead to compromised servers for cloud platforms and other farther-reaching effects.Meltdown is specific to Intel devices, and companies are already working on patches that will provide protection, although there is the possibility of performance loss due to the patch.Spectr

HBO has confirmed that the final season of Game of Thrones won’t premiere until sometime in 2019. It’s a decision that has been rumored since last June and characterized as a strategic move that gives the network more time to work on its numerous proposed spinoff series.The network reiterated that the eighth season will have six episodes — which will likely be very long, given that episodes in the seventh season ranged from 59 to 80 minutes. The directors and writers for the f

Awards season is up and running this weekend with the 75th Golden Globe Awards, which will kick things off with Hollywood’s least serious award show. But even if winning a Golden Globe isn’t considered as much of an accomplishment as winning an Oscar, the Globes can often indicate which way the Hollywood winds are blowing. Here’s everything you need to know to enjoy the red carpet.Who’s the host?
Seth Meyers, who you may know from his NBC late-night show, the aptly named

Apple has agreed to join the Open Media Alliance, a consortium of tech companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft that is working on a new compression technology to make online video streaming and downloading use less data. The group was formed back in 2015 around a new video codec initiative that ultimately resulted in AV1, a next-generation video compression technology that could be used to push media files to all sorts of devices. Apple’s participation came quietly wit

Did you know Twitter has an option that lets you add a description to pictures, to help the visually-impaired? Well, now you do. The accessibility option has been there for some time, but it’s nevertheless an important one. And, as Twitter user Rob Long pointed out, it’s easy to use. I’m a blind twitter user. There are a lot of us out there. Increase your ability to reach us and help us interact with your pictures, it’s really simple and makes a huge difference to our tw

Online dating is officially mainstream. "We met on Tinder" is the new "we met at a bar." 
Countless children have been born whose parents met via an online dating app like Match or eharmony. According to a survey conducted by popular wedding planning site The Knot, online dating is the most popular way that currently engaged couples met, up 5% in just two years.
SEE ALSO: Best hookup apps and sites and how they can help you get it on
With so many options, it can be hard to know where to fin

Corals are bleaching more and more often around the world because of warming ocean waters, a new study shows. Since bleaching can cause corals to die, this means that coral reefs — which provide food and profits for thousands of people — risk disappearing in the future if we don’t stop climate change.Researchers analyzed data about bleaching events at 100 reef locations around the world from 1980 to 2016. They found that the rate of bleaching has increased more than fourfold i

The Consumer Electronics Show won’t have any female keynote speakers this year after weeks of attempting to add some diversity to the lineup, a source told Fast Company. All six top positions will instead be filled by male CEOS: Intel’s Brian Krzanich, Ford’s Jim Hackett, Huawei’s Richard Yu, Turner’s John Martin, Hulu’s Randy Freer, and the Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) Gary Shapiro.
The news is a blow to attendees of the show looking to be i

What do you do if you’re in charge of a billion-dollar corporation and you’ve just found out your company has left hundreds of millions of people vulnerable to electronic attack? If you’re Richard Smith, former CEO of Equifax, you cash out your stocks before anyone finds out. And if you’re Brian Krzanich, current CEO of Intel you copy/paste that method – screw it, nobody cares about ethics anyway. We’re less than a week in, but the biggest tech story of 2018,

On paper, at least, nearly everyone is against online harassment. But how that line is defined — and how consistently the rules are applied — can vary dramatically on platforms and social media. Does it require a direct or immediate threat of violence, or is it enough to say you “hope” someone dies? Does it count if a popular user targets someone for dogpiling by their followers, even if their own language isn’t abusive? Do the rules apply to the president of the U

This week, two disastrous new processor vulnerabilities spilled out into the open — and the tech world is still coming to terms with the damage. The vulnerabilities, dubbed Meltdown and Spectre, affect nearly every processor made in the last 20 years. Meltdown is the immediate threat, with proof-of-concept exploits already available, but Spectre is much deeper and harder to patch, potentially leading to generations of more subtle exploits in the years to come. The result has left nearly e

In case the massive influx of newbie coin investors in the latter half of last year did little to convince you how real the cryptocurrency hype is, this ought to. People want to get in on the action so bad that exchange desks – including leading companies like Binance, Coinbase and Bittrex – can barely keep up with demand for new users. Yesterday the Binance team took to its announcement board to warn users that, due to “recent increase” in user growth, withdrawals

 Healthcare in America is a mess with no quick solutions and many people aren’t getting the help they need. Created to bridge mental and physical healthcare, New York City-based Quartet Health wants to make life better for patients with a platform that allows providers to collaborate on treatment plans. Currently available in six U.S. markets, Quartet announced today that it has raised… Read More

This morning, people on the US East Coast woke up to a “bomb cyclone,” a powerful winter storm that acts a bit like a snowy hurricane, and pictures of this explosive weather event from space show just how hurricane-like it actually is.The GOES-16 weather satellite — operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — has been capturing the cyclone’s progress toward the coast. Its imagery shows what looks like a pillowy white hurricane, one that rapidl

Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook has “a lot of work to do” when it comes to harassment, election interference, and just making sure that it’s a meaningful platform to be on. So he’s making it his “personal challenge” for 2018 to “focus on fixing these important issues.”
Zuckerberg has given himself a personal challenge every year since 2009, but they’re usually more along the lines of “meet new people” or “read more books

 Amazon and Google were willing to lose money on smart speaker sales over the holidays by discounting their hardware in order to gain market share. The reason? Smart speakers are now the fastest-growing consumer technology – faster than any other recent consumer technology, including AR, VR or wearables, according to a new report today from Canalys, which pegs smart speaker shipments to… Read More

 Mark Zuckerberg is arguably the public face of the internet we never chose, but also the one we deserve based on the time we all spend using Facebook products. At some point, Facebook became so big that Zuckerberg’s personal challenges became news. And this year’s personal challenge is not personal at all — it’s all about work. In 2017, Zuckerberg wanted to meet and… Read More

When the OnePlus 5T got a Star Wars makeover, I was pretty jealous that the beautiful white finish and red accents were only available in a handful of markets. Now we know why: OnePlus was already planning on bringing a white model to the rest of the world, sans Star Wars branding. Color aside, the new model bring back the grippy sandstone texture so many people liked about the company’s first devices a few years ago. OnePlus says the process behind the design makes the new model its most

Personal devices are now banned from Donald Trump’s White House, according to a statement from press secretary Sarah Sanders. Staff will be still be allowed to use government-issued devices, but they can’t send texts on those devices.
In a statement, Sanders attributes the ban to upholding "the security and integrity of the technology systems.” The move comes only a day after excerpts of journalist Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House were

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing a policy that advised federal prosecutors to take a hands-off approach in enforcing federal marijuana laws (which prohibit the drug) in states where the drug has been legalized. Now, prosecutors will be able to decide how strictly they want to enforce federal law in states where it’s legal — presumably with the goal of cracking down more aggressively.Marijuana is illegal under federal law. But in 2013, the Obama administration said it woul