Technology news

Amazon has been forced to explain how Alexa recorded a private conversation and sent it to an Echo user’s colleague without their knowledge. A Portland woman identified only as Danielle revealed the odd series of events in an interview with local TV station Kiro 7, claiming that an Amazon Echo device recorded a private conversation between her and her husband and sent the recording to an employee of the husband. In a statement to The Verge, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed this incident t

Essential has canceled plans to develop a second phone and is exploring selling off the entire company, according to Bloomberg. Much of the details remain up in the air. Talks of a sale sound like they aren’t very far along, and the report says that Essential still has plans for future products.
One thing that does sound certain is that Essential’s second phone — at least as it was originally planned — isn’t going to happen. Bloomberg says the development was cance

In a press conference today, Orlando Police Chief John Mina offered new details on the city’s facial recognition program, on the heels of new documents published by the ACLU-NC earlier this week. Speaking to local press, Mina said the existing pilot was limited to basic testing, and no members of the public were entered for search.
“We would never use this technology to track random citizens, immigrants, activists, or people of color,” Mina told the crowd. “The pilot pro

A Portland couple recently contacted Amazon customer support after an Echo smart speaker secretly recorded a private conversation and sent it to a person on their contacts list. Lucky for them, they were talking about hardwood floors at the time. But it’s still bad: They found out Alexa was snooping on them after one of the husband’s employees called them to say they’d just received an odd communication: a recording of a conversation between the couple. According to a report f

Prosecutors have indicted a California man they say phoned in a bomb threat during the FCC’s net neutrality vote in December. What’s more, they say, the suspect was involved in another high-profile crime the same month: a “swatting” incident that led to the death of a man in Kansas.Tyler Barriss allegedly threatened the FCC ahead of the vote
Tyler Barriss, 25, allegedly threatened the FCC ahead of its controversial vote to dismantle net neutrality rules. According to pro

The Nvidia Shield is one of the more popular options for Android TV set-top boxes, and its usefulness continues to escalate as it finally gets an Android 8.0 Oreo update today, via Android Central.The new software update brings a host of improvements to the Shield, including a new home screen that makes finding your content and most recently used apps easier, along with some more minor tweaks like improved support for game controllers and better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There’s also an update

In the beginning, the reason for the internet’s existence was to connect people as vastly and as easily as possible. Its fatal flaw, perhaps, is that nobody thought about the horrible things people might do once those walls were broken down. One of the most disconcerting trends of the modern internet is the specific, reflexive ways that bad actors have learned to manipulate and dismiss inconvenient truths by using the culture, systems, and mechanics of the internet. In the four decades si

For the fifth year in a row Adyen and TNW teamed up to find the fastest growing companies in Europe’s six hottest startup ecosystems: the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, and Sweden. The winner, mattress business Emma (Germany), was announced tonight at TNW Conference Founders Dinner in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. To search for the fastest-growing startup, TNW reached out to hundreds of companies identified as fast-growing based on their research and asked them to

Because we have not yet reached peak messaging on Google products, YouTube is now bringing its previously mobile-only messaging feature to the web. Now, when you’re logged into your Google account and browsing YouTube.com, you can share and talk about videos with your friends right on the site. You can access conversations from the chat bubble icon next to the notifications bell on the upper right corner. Chat histories will pop up on the bottom left of the screen and allow you to continu

Netflix’smarket cap is now larger than Comcast, which is pretty much just a symbolic thing given that the companies are valued very differently but is like one of those moments where Apple was larger than Exxon and may be some kind of watershed moment for technology. Or not.
A couple notes on this largely symbolic and not really important thing:Netflix users are going up. That’s a number that people look at. It’s why Netflix’s magic market number is going up.
People are c

The office of Cybersecurity Coordinator was implemented to help protect America from a burgeoning set of threats including electronic terrorism, ransomware, and weaponized AI. Unfortunately it was put in place by president Barrack Obama’s administration. While we can’t be sure that fact is related, we do know president Donald Trump signed an executive order to get rid of the position last week. The White House said it was redundant, and expressed confidence that National Security Ad

A T-Mobile web domain left millions of customers’ account information — including their names, addresses, and sometimes tax identification numbers — unprotected for anyone to access. The website is designed as a customer care portal for employees, according to ZDNet, which first reported the security flaw, but it was available to find through search engines and required no password to access the tools.
Adding a customer’s phone number to the end of the web address yielde

The BlackBerry KEY2 is the latest business-oriented Android smartphone from the company, teased in the below video and uploaded to YouTube today. The device appears to have a dual camera with LED flash setup, a physical keyboard, messenger apps support from BlackBerry Hub, Privacy Shade pre-installed, and for some reason, a new app drawer shortcut.
The KEY2 is the successor to the KeyOne, a phone that was brave for BlackBerry but not the best as a daily driver, functioning more as a collection

If you’ve ever wished for the simpler days of Twitter, before it became the floating dumpster of a social media site we’ve all submitted to like captives with Stockholm Syndrome, you’re not alone. But the good news is that you can go back again, albeit briefly. XOXO Festival co-founder and blogger Andy Baio has pointed out on Twitter that by using a hyper-specific filter, you can see what your Twitter feed would have looked like 10 years ago with the same people you now follow

Google’s Duplex, an under-development AI system that makes phone calls on a person’s behalf has taken a bit of a beating in the media in the days since it was announced at the Mountain View company’s I/O event. Basically, Google’s AI team built a neural network capable of conducting real-world business over the telephone on behalf of a human. When CEO Sundar Pichai debuted it on stage, it was immediately apparent from the crowd’s reaction that it was the first &ldq

Facebook’s new rules regarding disclosures for political ads take effect in the United States today, requiring election-related and issue ads to include information about who paid for them. A new “paid for” label will be visible at the top of ads on Facebook and Instagram, and clicking it will take you to a page with information about the cost of the ad and the demographic breakdown of the audience that saw it.
Advertisers will also have to verify their identity and location,

Today, Twitter announced new guidelines and stricter disclosure rules around political advertisements on its platform in response to widespread concern over Russian interference in the 2016 US election. The new rules, which the company refers to as the Political Campaigning Policy, are slated to go live this summer in the US and are designed to tell advertisers how Twitter differentiates a political ad from a standard, non-political one and what methods it will use to make the identity of the a

Before the internet, companies generally kept their important information in physical folders. Leads were kept in one folder, sales data was kept in another and so on. While this may have been the best method available at the time, there’s no denying that it wasn’t always very efficient. This was especially true of larger companies that had seemingly endless supplies of data and reports to sift through. Fortunately, today’s tech allows us to keep all of the data we might need

Epic Games’ Fortnite generated $296 million in the month of April across mobile, console, and PC platforms, according to digital game sales tracker SuperData Research. That amount is more than double what the game generated in the month of February, when it earned $126 million and surpassed Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds in monthly sales for the first time.
The big difference between the games, and what really makes Fortnite shine, is Epic’s free-to-play model, which gets the t

Rover,a dog-walking and dog-boarding service that merged with DogVacay around this time last year, is now the second of such startups this year to raise a massive new round of funding with its announcement of a $155 million financing round.
While competitor Waghas become a juggernaut, there seems room for both room for a second player and the potential to outmaneuver Wag even with its massive influx of capital. Both DogVacay and Rover had a very similar model and eventually merged in an all-stoc

On May 11th, SpaceX launched the inaugural mission of its powerful new Falcon 9 rocket, called the Block 5 — the same vehicle the company will use to send astronauts to the International Space Station. However, it turns out the vehicle used for that first launch wasn’t in its final configuration to fly crew members for NASA, Quartz reports, though it was believed to be.Before the launch, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was asked if the Block 5 rocket met NASA’s requirements for flying as

On June 30th, StumbleUpon as we know it will come to an end after 16 years. Co-founder Garrett Camp announced on Medium that the internet discovery service will shutter, and all StumbleUpon accounts will be transitioned over to Mix, a curation platform that incorporates your social media presence. “This will help you find obscure but interesting content that has been recommended by people you know and trust,” Camp says.
The conundrum of the internet in 2018 is that, despite being mo

The breakout star of Deadpool 2 is unquestionably Domino, a mercenary with a mutant power that ensures the odds always fall in her favor — especially when it means gliding through brutal fight scenes unconcerned and unscathed. Thanks to acharismatic performance from Zazie Beetz and fight choreography that demonstrates just how effortlessly cool this power can look, odds are pretty good that we’ll be seeing a lot more of Domino in the future. Fortunately for filmmakers, there’s

From fake malaria drugs to herbal supplements filled with stimulants, counterfeit medicine is everywhere. The problem is hard to track, it spans the globe, and if left unchecked, it’ll not only hurt those who take the fake drugs but everyone who needs to take medicine.That’s according to Boston University biomedical engineer Muhammad Zaman, who is the author of Bitter Pills: The Global War on Counterfeit Drugs. Growing up in Pakistan, Zaman was always aware that certain pharmacies c

Media darling Elon Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, is under fire for allegedly misleading consumers as to the efficacy of its Autopilot system. The responsible parties: A pair of consumer advocacy groups, The Center for Auto Safety and Consumer Watchdog, today sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate “dangerously misleading and deceptive advertising and marketing practices and representations made by Tesla Motors, Inc. regarding the safety and capab

When you’re thrust into power after only three years at a company and then successfully rebuild its business model, you learn a few things along the way. That’s exactly what Anjali Sud, the new CEO of Vimeo, experienced last summer. She shared her business tips with the audience at TNW Conference today. Video-sharing platform Vimeo has gone through a massive upheaval, as it moved from creating its own content to becoming a SaaS technology company. Anjali was responsible for this vis

With thousands of attendees from every field of interest, from tech to marketing, we asked the crowd at TNW’s 2018 conference one simple question: Why are you here? The diversity of answers didn’t disappoint us. “I gave a talk today on how we shifted our strategy to focus more on creators and the future of video. It’s been really great to share our strategy and mission and story at The Next Web. Also, it’s really nice to be here in Amsterdam and to connect more dir

It appears that the pumpers and dumpers of the cryptocurrency community are in for trouble. The US Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have together launched a criminal probe into cryptocurrency market manipulation, Bloomberg reports. As per the report, the investigations, which are still in an early stage,  are looking into all forms of illegal activities that can unfairly affect the market prices of cryptocurrencies, including pump-and-dump schemes, spoofin

When 31-year-old Finnish actor Joonas Suotamo first stepped into the role of Star Wars’ towering, hairy Wookiee character Chewbacca for 2015’s The Force Awakens, he repeatedly dodged press questions about which scenes he appeared in. Peter Mayhew, who originated the role in 1977’s A New Hope, was also playing Chewbacca in some scenes, but he was having mobility issues and using a cane. Suotamo was eager to tell the story of how he ended up on Star Wars as his first film acting

Earlier this month, the Syfy channel canceled The Expanse, prompting fans to petition streaming services such as Amazon and Netflix to save the show. Amazon is reportedly interested in picking the series up for its fourth season, and after last night’s episode “Delta-V,” we really hope that it will.
Spoilers ahead for the TV and book series.In the first two and a half seasons of the series, we’re introduced to a solar system in the midst of a cold war between Earth, Mars

Recently released internal Apple documents (revealed by Judge Lucy Koh as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Apple regarding touchscreen failure due to bending) has revealed that Apple knew that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus phones were more likely to bend than previous models, via Motherboard.According to the court documents, Apple’s internal tests found that the iPhone 6 was 3.3 times more likely to bend than the iPhone 5S, while the larger iPhone 6 Plus was 7.2 times more likely to bend.The

Judging by the lines to get in, not to mention those turned away at the door, people were excited to hear Mark Adams speak. Adams, the exuberant young VP and head of innovation at VICE, nearly missed the talk altogether. His plane was delayed, we’re told, and he sprinted, quite literally, from the airport. Adams’ talk was a peek behind the curtain, however brief, on how the world’s biggest media company does business. Specifically, how it’s able to tell such captivating

When we think about artificial intelligence, it’s usually something involving robot overloads and the answer to how many tablespoons are in a cup. Less often do we think about their emotional intelligence, something so intrinsic to human interaction that we take it for granted. Pamela Pavliscak, CEO of Change Sciences to took the stage at TNW Conference 2018 to discuss the “emotion revolution” we’ll see in our machines and software within the next years. For AI and virtu

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its preliminary report into the fatal crash involving a self-driving Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, last March. Among the findings, investigators say the vehicle decided it needed to brake 1.3 seconds before striking a pedestrian, but Uber had previously disabled the Volvo’s automatic emergency braking system in order to prevent erratic driving.
The four-page report provides a detailed account of what happened that night on March 1

Verizon has apparently given up on launching its own streaming TV service that would’ve competed against the likes of Dish’s Sling TV, DirecTV Now, YouTube TV, and PlayStation Vue. The project has been routinely delayed over the last couple years, and spring 2018 was the last target launch time frame floated by Bloomberg. The new change in course was first reported by Multichannel.
Most recently, the company had been planning to offer themed channels (news, sports, entertainment, et

DICE is returning to World War II with Battlefield V, and it’s doing so with the help of feeemales. Following the game’s reveal trailer and confirmation that it will include women, some fragile fans have confirmed they’ve never read a book by protesting what they see as “historical inaccuracy.” Please, keep your women out of my war games!
Online, this infantile cry has rallied around its own hashtag — #NotMyBattlefield — and it is full of users shriekin

Warning: mild spoilers below for the first five episodes of Westworld season 2, including the promotional teaser for episode 6.
For most of the people watching HBO’s science fiction series Westworld, when Betty Gabriel’s character Maling mentions “the Cradle” in the second season’s third episode, it’s just a throwaway reference. But hardcore fans know better — at least, the ones who have been willing to dive into the in-world websites, chatbots, and ema

Pornhub is launching its own VPN service today with free and unlimited bandwidth. The VPN is supposed to help users avoid ISP throttling and geographic limitations. It’s also designed to let users transmit data anonymously without saving or collecting any of that data.
To get started, you download the VPNHUB app on your device and then tap setup. On the iPhone running iOS 11.3.1 that I tested it with, the app prompted me to create a VPN in settings. You might see an error message at first

The increasingly popular “stories” format has infiltrated yet another app: Airbnb. The company quietly launched a new feature called Travel Stories that allows guests to create and upload video sequences in order to show off highlights from their trip, as spotted by TechCrunch,
In an FAQ, Airbnb gives several tips on how to make effective video stories, including holding your phone steady (“try not to pan, but pan slowly if you must”); focus on capturing what you find mo