Technology news

Instagramis preparing to launch a feature called Nametags that lets you create a special image that people can scan with the Instagram Stories camera to follow you. TechCrunch broke the news of Nametags code in Instagram’s Android APK last month. But now thanks to reader Genady Okrain we have screenshots and more details of the Instagram Nametags feature.
Nametags could make it easier for people to visually promote their Instagram account. It could make it simple to follow a friend you jus

Of all the museums that could be trending on social media, you probably wouldn't expect to see The Museum of English Rural Life (or the MERL, as it's apparently called) popping up on Twitter.
SEE ALSO: We're calling 'fake news' on the report that 'Black Panther' caused a surge in black cat adoptions
But after posting a picture of this "absolute unit" of a ram, the official MERL twitter found itself rocketing to internet fame.look at this absolute unitpic.twitter.com/LzcQ4x0q38
— The Museum

Ikea is bringing two speakers to the US and UK to keep those anticipating the 2019 Sonos-Ikea partnership sated. These are Ikea’s first attempts at making speakers. The Bluetooth-connected units are called the Eneby, and there are two sizes: a smaller 8 x 8-inch model and a larger 12 x 12-inch version.Customers can choose between black or gray polyester fabric on top of black or white plastic. The smaller speaker is intended to be more portable, as it comes with a handle, and you can choo

Last week, online classified site Backpage.com was suddenly replaced with a warning noting that it had been seized by the FBI. The move was abrupt, but not exactly a surprise for a site that’s been mired in controversy for years.
The Justice Department had previously acknowledged the move, but it’s shedding more light on the 93-count federal indictment. It’s a laundry list of activities for which you definitely don’t want to get busted by the DOJ, including,
Crimes of con

Few nights will ever compare to that one night The Office aired the "Dinner Party" episode and set a whole new bar for comedy.
The thirteenth episode of Season 4 gave fans a very rare view of their favorite characters outside of the office, when Michael and Jan wound up having Jim, Pam, Angela, Andy, Dwight, and Dwight's special guest, over for a dinner party.
The episode was ridiculously funny, and in honor of its 10 year anniversary Rolling Stone caught up with the cast and writers to reminisc

HQ Trivia is already great at bringing friends and coworkers together IRL (usually to scream at their phones, but still). Now it's looking to facilitate connections inside the app, too.
The mobile game has announced a new feature called "Friends on HQ." Per TechCrunch, it will be available immediately to UK players, with a US launch soon to follow. 
SEE ALSO: HQ trivia is far from a one-man show. Meet Sharon Carpenter
Users will be able to add "friends" inside the app, then see which of tho

TL;DR review: The Vivo V9 is one of the first Android smartphones to sport an iPhone X-like notch. But it's far cheaper than its role model, and it performs well — especially in the selfie department. The rear camera won't wow you, though. 
Cool Factor: 😎😎😎 (3 out of 5)
Camera performance: 📘📘📘 (3 out of 5)
Overall Performance: 💪💪💪 (3 out of 5)
Bang for the Buck: 💸💸💸 💸 (4 out of 5)
M

All of us grew up around tech different from what we have today, and many of us look back on those devices with fondness. But can you recall the exact sound your first Casio keyboard made, or the cadence of a rotary phone’s clicks? Conserve the Sound aims to, well, conserve the sound of gadgets like these so that future generations will know what it sounded like to put a cartridge in the NES.
It’s actually quite an old project at this point, having been funded first in 2013, but its

Federal authorities have charged the two founders of classified site Backpage.com, along with five other employees, with laundering money and facilitating prostitution. According to The Washington Post, the Justice Department claims Backpage took “consistent and concerted action” to knowingly allow illegal ads for sex work. The indictment says that “virtually every dollar flowing into Backpage’s coffers represents the proceeds of illegal activity.”
Law enforcement

In a letter obtained by The New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg responded to a group of Myanmar activists who have criticized Facebook’s handling of material meant to incite violence in the country. But the groups continue to say Facebook isn’t doing enough.Last week, Zuckerberg was interviewed by Vox’s Ezra Klein. During the interview, Zuckerberg was asked about violence in Myanmar, where investigators say Facebook drives hate speech against the minority Rohingya population. To i

'Fribo' is a cat-like robot that's designed for people who live alone but want to feel like they have a roommate. When 'Fribo' hears a noise it recognizes, it sends a message to another 'Fribo' in a friend's home, or an entire network of 'Fribos' belonging to people you know, and sends them a notification. 
The designers hope 'Fribo' will drive daily connections with friends and encourage users to participate in follow-up interactions.  Read more...More about Privacy, Mashable Video, S

By now, dear reader, you may have surmised that some of us are Mad Online™ about how The Simpsons addressed its largest and longest-running controversy: The character of Apu. Sunday's episode had Lisa and Marge vaguely alluding to the Apu controversy only to shrug it off and say they might never address it – and that's just sad.
SEE ALSO: People feel let down by 'The Simpsons' response to Apu stereotyping#TheSimpsons completely toothless response to @harikondabolu #TheProblemWithApu

There’s a lot of keen analytical hindsight on display in Facebookchief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s written testimony to Congress ahead of his appearance at hearings on Wednesday, but nothing that indicates Facebook is ready to come to terms with the problems rotting the core of the social network.
The bulk of Zuckerberg’s opening statement is an historical analysis of the events of the past two years that have bruised the company’s reputation and share price.
Zuckerberg i

PayPal is looking to expand into something closer to a real bank, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. It’s beginning to roll out more traditional banking services to customers, including ATM-compatible debit cards, direct depositing paychecks, and FDIC insurance.How PayPal can actually do this is fascinating since it doesn’t actually have a banking license in the US. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company is getting around that by quietly partnering with sev

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie have been through a lot over the years. Thank goodness everything seems to be hunky-dory these days. 
The stars of The Simple Life were just seen together in public for the first time in years — and their reunion quickly sparked rumors about a reboot of the iconic reality television show that debuted 15 years ago.
SEE ALSO: Paris Hilton's New Music Video Is Very Unicorn-yImage:Getty Images for The Daily Front RowHilton and Richie were spotted catching up

Mark Zuckerbergis an autocrat, and not hypothetically. Through his special voting rights held in Facebook’s Class B shares, he wields absolute command of the company, while owning just a handful of percentage points of the company’s equity.
Like any autocrat, he has taken extraordinary measures to maintain control over his realm. He produced a plan exactly two years ago that would have zeroed out the voting rights for everyday shareholders with a new voteless Class C share, only to p

The creators of HBO’s Westworld have announced a novel plan to combat the perils of online spoiler culture: they’re going to give away all the big secrets from the show’s upcoming second season before a single episode airs. Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy made the announcement today during a Reddit AMA, acknowledging the plan as a “potentially highly controversial decision.” They do say their cast is onboard with the plan.
“If you guys agree, we’re

Duolingo has begun rolling out a new update that will add more advanced lessons to each component of a language course. Called Crown Levels, users now have the option of sticking to a skill to “level up” before they move on to the next skill or finish all the courses then come back to a particular skill for more difficult sessions.
Previously, users could see how far they got through a skill via a bar graph, but with Crown Levels, Duolingo now offers five levels of difficulty for th

ZTE was probably thinking “two is always better than one” when designing its new concept phone, and deciding to add two notches. The ZTE Iceberg, as it’s referred to, has a notch on the top and bottom, according to renders shared by WinFuture, leaving the rest as an edge-to-edge display. The bottom notch contains the phone’s front-facing speaker, while the top notch contains a selfie camera, a sensor for ambient light, and an earpiece for phone calls.ZTE doesn’t st

A powerful activist investor group called for Mark Zuckerberg to step down in a statement today, citing new admissions of irresponsibility in the CEO’s planned testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared testimony highlights a simple fact: He doesn’t understand how a large, global and publicly-held company is run,” Open MIC CEO Michael Connor said in a statement. “He currently has two jobs at Facebook — CEO and Chai

Last week, Apple called out the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to rollback the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The company cited both the obvious environmental impact of such a move, along with potential economic fallout.It turns out Apple’s got quite a bit invested in the latter.  The company announced today that its global facilities are now 100-percent run by renewable energy.
The move is in line with the company’s 2015 plan to push toward 100-percent renewable ener

Apple announced today that its business is now powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources. The news is a major victory that the iPhone maker has been working toward for years through the purchase of green energy bonds and other renewable investments in its supply chain and physical infrastructure. The company’s last milestone, announced two years ago, was 93 percent of its worldwide operations running on clean energy.The announcement comes just one week after Google announced that it

Over the course of the last few years, the Holberton School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Engineering has made a name for itself as one of the more comprehensive coding schools. The two-year program trains full-stack engineers with a focus on the basics of engineering and sees itself as an alternative to a traditional college experience. Today, the San Francisco-based school announced that it has raised an $8.2 million Series A round that will help it expand its programs.
The funding round was led

Facebook is currently facing hard questions about how it handles user information, but most of the discussion has focused on the social network itself. Facebook owns plenty of other apps and services — including the Oculus virtual reality platform, which (like all VR platforms) collects incredibly detailed information about where users are looking and how they’re moving. VR headsets have a clear potential for surveillance and data harvesting, and Facebook has a bad track record rega

Mobile game show HQ Trivia today announced a few new in-app social features designed to make the game more enjoyable with friends. While the app has brought co-workers, family members, and friend groups together in real life, not everyone has a core group to play with at the 3PM and 9PM match times, at least not every day. So HQ is adding a new feature called “Friends on HQ,” launching today in the UK with a US launch soon, to let you connect with friends, see who’s actively p

The Walking Dead is back and careening toward the conclusion of the “All Out War” saga. That means the end of the feud between Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his arch-nemesis Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) — and perhaps that’s a good thing. Overall, the show’s big bet on Negan has been a bit of a misfire, with ratings hitting staggering lows last year, and Negan himself largely absent from the first half of the show’s eighth season.
But a season-ending climax

Duolingo today launched one of its biggest updates in recent years. The company is introducing a range of new exercise types, as well as a new leveling system that lets you choose between delving deeper into specific skills or learning new content.
When you are building a popular language learning service like Duolingo,you’re inevitably confronted with a problem: Some of your users are really serious about learning a new language and some are just casual users. Finding a balance is hard, e

After 18 months of cascading scandals, and under mounting pressure to address data privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress for the first time this week. On Tuesday, the Facebook CEO will appear before a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees. The next day, he’ll face the House Energy and Commerce Committee.In prepared testimony, Zuckerberg apologizes for neglecting to address abuses of the platform, includ

The popular quiz startup HQ Trivia is beginning to roll out the first of many new social features to its app focused on leveraging competition with friends and family during game time.
HQ Trivia has managed to bring people together in real life to play the game on their phones, but the startup has done surprisingly little when it comes to bringing social interactions to the app itself. Today, HQ is launching a new feature called “Friends on HQ,” which will roll out to U.K. users for

PayPalis expanding into traditional banking through partnership with smaller banks to offer consumers debit cards connected to their PayPal accounts, along with direct deposit for paychecks and other services, according to news the company shared with The Wall St. Journal. The company says its new products are targeted specifically at the unbanked, and will launch in the first half of 2018, following consumer testing.
As PayPal itself is not a bank, it’s been working with other bankin

Western Digital has made three external SSDs for video creators dealing with large files. Most of these are business-facing video storage drives, given the steep prices and amount of storage. The three new drives all support high transfer speeds and have huge amounts of storage (up to 16TB). The drives are meant to give video producers faster upload speeds of up to 2800MB/s so they can better deal with large 4K and 8K RAW files, which take up a lot of space and are usually slow to upload.
The f

Microsoft has unveiled its latest research project today, Project Zanzibar. It’s a smart mat that’s designed to blend the digital and physical worlds by sensing touch, gestures, and objects. A team of researchers, with a love of toys, created the project at Microsoft’s research labs in the UK. The mat folds and combines sensing, near field communication (NFC), and multi-touch to imagine a future where you could place objects on this smart mat and play games.
Microsoft’s

Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared testimony for Wednesday’s Congressional hearing has been posted online. The seven-page statement starts with an apology from Zuckerberg, who says Facebook failed to take a broad enough view of its responsibilities. “That was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” he says. “I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
Zuckerberg will be testifying before the US House of Representati

As Coinbase slowly earns the opportunity to begin thinking about taking a breath after the insane growth of the past few months, it’s thinking more about what all it has to say.
The cryptocurrency exchange startup has hired Spark Capital partner Rachael Horwitzas its first VP of communications.
Horwitz led marketing and communications work for Spark Capital and served as an advisor to some of the firm’s portfolio companies, one of which was Coinbase . Previous to that, she 

Dwayne Johnson will host a game of HQ on Wednesday with a prize pot of $300,000. That’s the largest amount of money the 12-question trivia game has offered up yet. The Rock will take on guest hosting duties as he continues the press tour for his upcoming film Rampage, which hits theaters on April 20th.Johnson will be hosting the afternoon game. He’ll be joined by regular host Scott Rogowsky, according to People, so The Rock will have some backup if HQ runs into technical issues from