Technology news

In a recent appearance by YouTubeCEO Susan Wojcicki at the South by Southwest Festival, she suggested that YouTube is countering the conspiracy-related videos that have been spreading like wildfire on the platform — including videos telling viewers that high school senior and Parkland, Fl. survivor David Hogg is an actor.Specifically, Wojcicki outlined YouTube’s plans to add “information cues,” including links to Wikipedia pages that debunk garbage content for viewer

As an unabashed homage to geek culture and 80s nostalgia smorgasboard, you probably assumed Ready Player One would be dripping with Star Wars references.
You'd be wrong.
While the marketing for Steven Spielberg's upcoming movie showed zero restraint when it came to pop culture references, the director said he was actually careful about name-dropping Star Wars. Or rather, which Star Wars movies he included from the ever-expanding movie franchise.
SEE ALSO: These icons of girlhood culture deserve

D'oh! What are you doing Microsoft?
Do you really think it's a good idea to only let users open links from within Windows 10's default Mail app in the Edge browser? Go ahead and slap your face a few more times and maybe splash a glass of cold water on it to wake yourself up.
SEE ALSO: Microsoft is ditching Windows 10 S for 'S Mode'
In this latest episode of "Who the heck thought this was a good idea?," Microsoft is reportedly punching itself in the face again.
According to PC World, the newest c

On March 16, we learned that Facebookwill be suspending Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) and its offshoot Cambridge Analytica. According to Facebook, a University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan was using Facebook Login in his “research app,” collecting data about its users, and passing it on to Cambridge Analytica,a third party. Cambridge Analytica, in turn, obtained personal information belonging to as many as 50 million Facebook users, through Kogan’s app,

On March 27, Apple's holding a special education-focused event at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago.
As always for Apple, the invite is a bit cryptic. "Let's take a field trip," and "join us to hear creative new ideas for teachers and students," the invite reads. 
Beyond pushing kids to learn its Swift coding language and to program in general (an initiative CEO Tim Cook champions every chance he gets), what else could Apple have in store? Let's see if we can make a few educated

One of the major highlights of Marvel’s Black Panther was the Dora Milaje, the all-female special forces team that protects the secretive African country Wakanda. This week, Marvel announced that the characters will get their own arc in a three-part comic series, Wakanda Forever, which will be written by Black Panther: Long Live the King and Binti trilogy author Nnedi Okorafor.The group is a team of special forces soldiers dedicated to protecting Wakanda led by General Okoye (played by Th

The recently released Love, Simon is not only making LGBTQ+ history; it's also elevating the rom-com genre in unprecedented ways.
It's been met with a choir of critical praise so far. Mashable's own MJ Franklin showered it with love in a review that called it "a gotdamn delightful romcom, and gay as hell." In a perfect summation of the movie's far-reaching impact, he wrote: Voices all around the internet are in agreement: Love, Simon is not only a triumph of cinema, but a huge leap toward a

Late last year, concept art website ArtStation unveiled its first print book: Martin Deschambault’s Project 77, a neat collection that blends science fiction concept art and storytelling. The site announced its next book earlier this week: Howling at the Moon by Jakub Rozalski, the artist behind the acclaimed board game Scythe.The book is a beautiful collection of fantastical art that reminds me of the style of Simon Stålenhag’s Tales from the Loop, which depicts an alternate,

The epic battle between Qualcommand Broadcom seems to have reached its armistice, with President Trump using the power of CFIUS to block the transaction this past week, ending what would have been the largest tech M&A transaction of all time.
It may be all quiet on the semiconductor front, but Qualcomm and Broadcomwill now need to find a path forward to win the peace and secure access to the coming 5G wireless market. Qualcomm faces a daunting number of challenges, including a potential take

Over the years, you've probably logged into a lot of services on Facebook without thinking about how those services use your data. Some of those services may have leveraged your data to undermine the very foundations of American democracy. Hard to say!
New reports from the Guardian and New York Times reveal how a Trump-aligned data-gathering service called Cambridge Analytica "exploited" information from millions of people in the lead-up to the 2016 election. It was pretty simple: The firm creat

“$43 million and the only thing you can buy in it is a coffee.”
So said Samsung’s Senior Director of Store Development Michael Koch about the company’s flagship Manhattan “popup”—Samsung 837—though “popup” is an understated description for a 56,000 square-foot cavern with interactive art, virtual reality, lounge areas, a recording studio, and a three-story 96-screen display wall. The most shocking thing about it isn’t what’

Compelling virtual reality shipped to developers and consumers nearly two years ago. The first flagship headsets arrived from Oculusand HTC back in the spring of 2016, offering enough resolution, frame rate, field of view, latency mitigation and position-tracking to produce believable visual immersion.
But no one seems to know what to do with it. To date, no killer app has extended the promise of VR from a novelty to a sticky experience or utility that reaches beyond enthusiasts to resonate with

When California proposed a bill this week to preserve net neutrality rules in the state, it was the most comprehensive effort in the nation. The bill would even move beyond the protections that the FCC recently moved to roll back.Listed efforts in 35 states
But the bill is only one way states are moving to keep the rules after last year’s FCC decision. The activist group Fight for the Future has listed efforts in 35 states and the District of Columbia, including legislation under consider

Happy Saturday, everyone! While many things in the world are very bad today, if you were on the Internet last night, you probably caught wind of a pretty cool historic moment in college basketball: UMBC — University of Maryland, Baltimore County — knocked off the overall number one seed in the annual NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament in an absolute landslide.
So, naturally, I absolutely had to find the tech angle here, and if you owned a smartphone, you probabl

If you're a child of the '90s then you probably remember Tamagotchi, the egg-shaped digital "pets" we had to attend to constantly lest they die of neglect.
Now they're back, thanks to a new mobile game from Bandai NamcoFirst teased last year, My Tamagotchi Forever is the latest attempt to give you all the '90s feels.
SEE ALSO: Netflix’s comedy ‘Everything Sucks’ is pure ‘90s nostalgia
The game itself is more of an updated spin on the original concept — think Tamagot

It's March Madness time for TV fans. Of course I don't mean basketball; I mean the nail-biting agony of waiting for networks to renew your favorite shows. This is the fourth year in a row of that special hell for Jane the Virgin viewers, and the third for a dangerously small but fiercely dedicated Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fans.
And not that my personal opinion has any effect on these decisions, but if I lose either of these shows I will literally lose my shit.
SEE ALSO: There's a HUGE problem with Xi

One of the most critical tasks startups face, is creating a killer elevator pitch — a short, verbal description of who they are, what they do, and how they are going to succeed as a business. There are countless blog posts and listicles that have been created to guide founders through this process, but they rarely include how to get to actually get the chance to do the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch process has led to parodies on sites like the Startup Elevator Pitch Generator and &ld

It seems like startup news is full of overnight success stories and sudden failures, like the scooter rental company that went from zero to a $300 million valuation in months or the blood-testing unicorn that went from billions to nearly naught.
But what about those other companies that mature more gradually? Is there such a thing as slow and successful in startup-land?
To contemplate that question, Crunchbase News set out to assemble a data set of top late-blooming startups. We looked at compan

RuPaul Charles is many things — if not everything: a two-time Emmy winner, a trailblazing talent, an icon of the LGBTQ community, a self-love guru, and the world's most beloved drag queen. 
And now, he's officially a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the first drag queen to ever achieve that honor.
"As a kid we'd come up here — they'd drop me off right here on Hollywood Boulevard — so I could look at all the stars and dream that one day, I could be one of the stars,"

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 SXSW Interactive Festival.
Anybody who knows their folklore is going to be pretty clear on what’s going on in the first act of Sebastian Gutierrez’s Elizabeth Harvest, which had its world premiere at SXSW 2018. Henry (Ciarán Hinds), a wealthy, successful Nobel-winner, has just married wide-eyed, naïve young Elizabeth

Facebooksaid on Thursday it had suspended a data analytics firm associated with the Trump campaign, but may have indeed greatly downplayed the scale of the data that firm actually had access to, according to a new report in The New York Times.
Cambridge Analyticahad worked with University of Cambridge psychology professor named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who had developed an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” and obtained user information — which the Times is reporting

Pop quiz time! Who owns Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com, and Plenty of Fish? If you said Match Group, Inc., you're correct and you should treat yourself to a cookie.
After failing to buy Tinder/OkCupid/Match/PoF competitor Bumble last year for a reported $450 million, the parent company behind all of the aforementioned popular dating services is now suing the dating app for infringing on two of its patents.
SEE ALSO: Bumble bans guns from profile photos in wake of Parkland shooting
According to the l

Enthusiasts will talk your ear off about the potential for drones to take over many of our dirtiest, dullest and most dangerous tasks. But most of the jobs we’ve actually seen drones perform are focused on the camera — from wildlife surveying to monitoring cracks on power plant smokestack.Aerones is working on something much larger. The Y Combinator-backed startup is building giant drones with 28 motors and 16 batteries, capable of lifting up to 400 pounds. That kind of payload means

In January, movie ticket company Fandango reported that Black Panther set a record for ticket presales for Marvel movies (beating out 2016’s Captain America: Civil War’s previous record), setting up it up for a massive box office haul that’s since surpassed $1 billion. Tickets for Marvel’s upcoming Avengers: Infinity War just went on sale on Friday, and Variety reports that the ticket sales for the film have already blew past Black Panther’s record — in just

Harry Potter fans took Mad-Eye Moody's warnings of "constant vigilance" to heart. So much so that they were dubious about whether J.K. Rowling herself messed up an integral aspect of the canon she created.
SEE ALSO: 'Fantastic Beasts 2' teaser shares images from 'Harry Potter' book so you can cry
When a trailer for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts sequel released, a second-long clip sent the Potter Twitterverse into an absolute frenzy, decrying a perceived plot hole in the most Hermione way possibl

Now we know why Facebook gave Cambridge Analytica the boot on Friday. What's less clear is why it took so long.
The social media company was aware as far back as late 2015 that, starting in early 2014, the Trump-linked U.K data firm had secretly harvested profile data belonging to 50 million users, according to a follow-up report from The Observer. The paper calls it Facebook's biggest data breach to date.
SEE ALSO: Pennsylvania attorney general sues Uber over 2016 data breach
The details come f

There’s marketing. Then there’s social media marketing. And after you drill into the philosophies of both, the two appear as different as a horse and buggy parked next to a Tesla. Opinions change fast, algorithms change fast — and if you’re trying to sell a product or an idea in the online landscape of Facebook, Twitter, and their contemporaries, there’s a hyper-specialized skill set you need to possess. The Silicon Valley Digital Marketing Institute prides itself

You can find many delightful ways to waste your time on YouTube, but one of the best is to spend an afternoon looking at cooking and food channels. 
SEE ALSO: When bad music videos happen to good songs
There are plenty of regular food channels out there for the usual aspiring chef and hungry human being. Then there are channels that focus on far more specific (and interesting!) ways to cook and appreciate food.
From the vintage to the innovative to international cuisine, here are the greate

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are now out, and to celebrate its launch, Samsung is blowing it out big time. When you purchase an S9 or S9+, you can get The Samsung Ultimate Bundle, which consists of Samsung Gear IconX Wireless Headphones, Gear VR, and a Wireless Charger for $99, nearly a $400 value. Samsung is also offering more than $100 off on a power bundle. Outside of the Samsung’s deals, Verizon is doing a buy one get one free deal on S9 phones and S9s are 50 percent off at AT&T. These c

Last month, the Venezuelan government launched Petro, the world's first state-issued cryptocurrency, in hopes of boosting its struggling economy and circumventing U.S. and European sanctions.
The Trump administration, however, isn't buying into the country's new digital currency, which has been called "snake oil" by some financial experts.
SEE ALSO: Venezuela's national cryptocurrency is officially up for sale
Donald Trump is reportedly planning to impose additional sanctions on Venezuela restri

There's a never-before-studied aurora gracing night skies around the world, and NASA wants you to try to spot it.
The newfound aurora, named Steve (short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), looks like a purple light with some green features. 
Scientists think that Steve likely appears when charged plasma from the sun hits the Earth's magnetic field in a certain way, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances.  
SEE ALSO: 'Steve' is the name of a n

On September 12th, 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University in Houston, Texas, about the need for America to land on the Moon “before the decade is out.” The space race was never primarily about exploration or science, but rather capturing the highest ground there was in the chilly nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. In his new novel, Gunpowder Moon, David Pedreira envisions an inhabited Moon and its role in a larger geopolitical fight for planetary dominance.The

The European Union recently adopted laws embodying a proposed “right to be forgotten,” to protect individuals from eternal memorialization of unfortunate past indiscretions. However, I feel it’s time to propose a complementary “right to remember,” to ensure that history cannot be erased or rewritten at the whim of those who control the systems we use to communicate, plan, and lead our lives. Recent court cases have shown that the largest, most powerful companies co

In a quest to make a less toxic hair dye, scientists created a dye using graphene. And it has an added bonus — it tames static frizz, according to new research.
Most permanent hair dyes use harsh chemicals to open up the outside layer of the hair so that other chemicals can get inside and change its color, Chemical & Engineering News reports. A team of researchers at Northwestern University decided to use a different strategy: Instead of opening up the hair, why not just coat it with

Every week the Senate has been in session since April 2012, one lonely Democratic senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, has taken to the Senate floor to speak about global warming. On March 13, Senator Whitehouse gave his 200th “It’s Time to Wake Up” speech on climate change. 
The speech was atypical for Whitehouse, who has grown accustomed to the unsettling feeling of standing virtually alone on the Senate floor while speaking about a topic that he believes is of

The immutability and decentralized nature of public blockchain networks, such as bitcoin and Ethereum, could allow governments to process large amounts of sensitive information on an unchangeable and transparent platform. In an exclusive interview with Binary District, Daniel Gasteiger, the co-founder of Procivis, an electronic ID solutions company built on integrated e-government platform eID+; and Patrick McCorry, a Research Associate at University College London (UCL), discussed the potentia

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Here's a quick trick to remember how much water you need to drink every day: Take your weight and divide it by two. That number is how much H2O (in ounces) you should aim to consume in a 24-hour period. If you're super active or sweating because of the heat, you'll want to get even more.
If even that little

Heads up: All products featured here are selected by Mashable's commerce team and meet our rigorous standards for awesomeness. If you buy something, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.
So you're fluent in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Congratulations! You can now create all sorts of fun things, like websites, apps, and video games. But if you want to grow as a programmer — and rake in big bucks while you're at it — don't pigeonhole yourself to just client-side languages. It's tim

Heads up: All products featured here are selected by Mashable's commerce team and meet our rigorous standards for awesomeness. If you buy something, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.
The main reason to buy a portable gaming system is so you can use it anywhere: in the sky aboard a plane, or on the ground inside a train. In a bus or in a car, somewhere near or very far (as Dr. Seuss would put it). With Nintendo Switch, you can play Zelda no matter where you are, and it's glorious. The on