Technology news

The Secret Service has been warning US financial institutions that domestic ATMs are being targeted in jackpotting attacks, according to a new report from well-known security journalist Brian Krebs.Jackpotting, in which thieves use a variety of tools to hack into ATMs and cause them to dispense large amounts of cash on demand, has been a legitimate threat for several years now. The late computer hacker Barnaby Jack famously showed off an ATM exploit at the Black Hat conference back in 2010. But

Faraday Future claims that former CFO Stefan Krause solicited employees to follow him to a new project in his final days with the company, and that his new startup may have been involved in the theft of trade secrets, according to a new lawsuit filed today in Central California District Court.A company spokesperson for Faraday Future merely confirmed that the lawsuit has been filed, but offered no additional comment at this time. Representatives for Evelozcity could not be reached in time for p

Those who’ve relied on their TomTom navigation devices for years could be at risk of not having the latest maps on their mobile unit unless they upgrade to the latest hardware, the company warned.
TomTom announced Monday it would stop supporting several navigation devices because a variety of their older systems, “do not have sufficient resources to run the newest maps and software available,” the company said in a post. The Verge has reached out to several automakers —

Apple plans to put custom processors inside at least three more Macs by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg. There are no details on what the chips will be used for, but the report says they’ll appear in updated laptops and a new desktop.
Though Apple has been making custom chips for its phones, tablets, and wearables for years now, the company is only just starting to bring its house-made chips to the Mac. That started in a small way in 2016 with the high-end MacBook Pro with Tou

There have been rumors swirling about the iPhone SE getting an update sometime in 2018, but KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has thrown some cold water on those fires. A new research note claims that Apple might not have an updated SE in the cards at all — or if there is one, customers can expect a minor update that amounts to a run-of-the-mill spec boost and no new features like wireless charging or Face ID, via MacRumors.According to Kuo, between the three phones Apple released last

Film audiences are used to seeing impossible things on-screen. Computer-generated creatures and digital alterations of images are so commonplace that watching a dragon fly through an arctic wasteland to incinerate a zombie army in Game of Thrones is more notable for its narrative importance than for the sheer thrilling impossibility of the image.But even in the current digital wonderland of Hollywood, one shot in I, Tonya stands out. Craig Gillespie’s surprisingly funny, sympathetic, Osca

Over the weekend, news broke that data from the fitness-tracking app Strava was revealing information on clandestine locations. The data was anonymized, but the map was so detailed that it revealed paths on military bases.While broadcasting your whereabouts is a bad security policy, users likely weren’t aware that their information would be available in this much detail. A scroll through the Strava app also shows it takes some dedicated digging to find the opt-out for the heat map specifi

Facebook will begin prioritizing the placement of local news in the News Feed, the company said today. The move means that you’re more likely to see stories from your local newspaper or television station. While the changes are currently limited to the United States, Facebook plans to introduce them globally.
Facebook said it considers publishers “local” if their links tend to be shared “by readers in a tight geographic area.” “People consistently tell us the

The African Union, a coalition of 55 countries established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has reportedly been a victim of state-sponsored espionage after an investigation from French newspaper Le Monde revealed China was using the computers in a new building’s IT division to spy on its continental neighbors.China was able to do this because it financed and built the new building itself to act as the African Union’s new headquarters and gifted it under false pretenses of cordial partnersh

The Lego brick celebrated its 60th anniversary over the weekend. To celebrate, Lego put together a massive, 10-foot-tall, 133,000-piece version of the iconic building block, which the company filmed in an incredibly satisfying time-lapse video.Lego says it took 350 hours for its “Master Builders” to construct, which is pretty impressive considering the size and scale of the build. For reference, the largest Lego set available to consumers is the 7,541-piece Millennium Falcon that wa

On Wednesday morning, a very wordy lunar event will take over the night sky: the “Super Blue Blood Moon.” Yes, really. So what do all those adjectives mean exactly? The short explanation is that this is an eclipse of the full Moon that happens to have really good timing.For a longer explanation, we’ll need to analyze each word. Let’s start with the end and work our way backward:
Moon
You know what the Moon is.
Blood
The term “Blood Moon” is used to describe a

At this point, people who follow cinema know to manage their expectations when anyone prominent claims they’re leaving the film industry. Steven Soderbergh said he was retiring from filmmaking back in 2013, but he returned to the big screen for 2017’s heist film Logan Lucky. He’s also stayed active in television with The Knick and Mosaic, and now he’s back with the horror movie Unsane. It seems like all he needs to be drawn out of retirement is some new piece of technolo

Americans are saving energy because they don’t go outside as much anymore, researchers say. It’s a plus for the environment, though in another light (no pun intended), it’s just sad.In 2012, Americans spent an extra eight days at home compared to 2003, according to the American Time Use Surveys. Being at home means using more energy by keeping the lights on and watching TV. But it also means less travel, and it means that fewer people are outside operating offices and stores.

 Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, rolled out its biggest update since the software’s launch last year, the company says. The focus of the new set of features is allowing users to better work with apps – something Microsoft Teams accomplishes via integrations, new search and discovery features, commands, and more.
Some of the features are, in fact, quite… Read More

Last night, Axios broke the news that officials in the Trump administration were considering a fundamental rethinking of the US telecom industry. A proposal presented by a senior National Security Council official laid out a plan for aggressive federal intervention in 5G wireless technologies, with the federal government laying its own infrastructure to be leased to carriers. The White House is already distancing itself from the proposal, along with the FCC, but it’s noteworthy that the i

Last night at the Grammys, only one woman accepted an award on stage during the three-plus hour live broadcast — Best New Artist winner Alessia Cara. Total, 11 awards out of 84 went to women. In the last six years, as The New York Times pointed out on Thursday, 899 people have been nominated for the awards, and 9 percent of them were women.The hashtag #GrammysSoMale has been trending on Twitter for about 12 hours. In response, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow told Variety, “

Airbnb is offering a free, two-night stay aboard the research vessel Alucia, coupled with an underwater dive on a submarine. All you have to do in order to spend April 5th–7th out at sea off of Cape Eleuthera in the Bahamas, is enter and win a competition. Contestants have to submit a 50- to 550-character essay about “what you dream of exploring beneath the waves.”
The Alucia is an 184-foot exploration vessel designed to conduct scientific research out in the ocean. The ship w

On Saturday, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) announced that songwriters will get a pay raise from streaming services for the next five years, increasing their rate from 10.5 percent of revenue to 15.1 percent, a 43.8 percent increase. The shift, which is the largest increase in CRB history, came as a result of a dispute between the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the music streaming services run by Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora.The ruling also included a

After seven years of planning and construction, Amazon’s mini rainforest spheres are finally opening in Seattle. “The Spheres,” as they’re known, hold 40,000 plants from 30 different countries around the world. They were designed as places employees can go to take a break or meet up with others away from their desks. The spheres also feature living walls, which are vertical gardens with over 25,000 plants woven into 4,000 square feet of mesh.
The structure is made of thr

Over the past few months, the internet has found a creepy new hobby: using artificial intelligence to paste the faces of celebrities onto porn videos. The technology has some disturbing implications, especially with regards to consent, harassment, and fake revenge porn. But on Reddit, where most of this content is being shared, users have found at least one wholesome (sort of) use for it: inserting Nicolas Cage into movies he never acted in.
Cage has long been an internet favorite, thanks in pa

King Krule’s The OOZ, released last October, is pretty much one hour of a benevolent alien approximating human speech, as well as hip-hop and jazz. The emotional takeaway is something like if the person you loved most in the world suddenly told you they would prefer to talk to you only underwater, and that they would not be providing bubble translations. It would be a gorgeous thing to do, but you might also wonder “does this need to be so hard?”The British singer-songwriter a

 Zelle, U.S. banks’ answer to mobile payment services like PayPal and Venmo, claims that nearly 100,000 consumers, on average, are signing up for its service per day. The company also painted a picture of growing traction, noting it processed over 247 million payments in 2017, an increase of over 45 percent year-over-year, totalling $75 billion in peer-to-peer payments, up from $55… Read More

Over the weekend, Axios reported that officials within the Trump administration have been proposing the creation of a nationwide 5G network in order to protect against Chinese leadership in forthcoming networking technology.However, it seems that the unnamed senior national security officials who presented the proposal failed to talk to current FCC commissioner Ajit Pai first. Pai released a statement this morning that, in no uncertain terms, opposes the plan for a government-run 5G network:
&l

I love trying on makeup at Sephora and taking samples home, but when I want to buy adrugstore brand, I have to commit the money without first seeing how it looks. It's an unpleasant experience. Now, makeup companies are experimenting with technology to give customers a more personalized and experimental cosmetic experience through augmented reality, actual custom-made products, and gadgets. Basically, they're offering a more user-oriented experience with the promise of delivering more suitable

With leaked photos of the Galaxy S9 emerging last week, we’re fast approaching the 2018 season of new phone launches and the annual cycle of companies trying to convince us we’re in desperate need of an upgrade. Typically, there’s a fair amount of hot air inflating the importance of the latest spec, but this year, I’m actually starting to feel the real need for something more. I’m talking about storage.
No doubt the star attraction on any 2018 spec sheet will be th