Technology news

Hey Twitter voters, find a time machine. 
Twitter launched additional features for its #BeAVoter election campaign on Thursday. But even the best laid plans don't always go off without a hitch.
SEE ALSO: Twitter is launching a voter registration campaign
One of the new features was a countdown to the election, along with a link to resources on where to vote.
But the countdown feature caused a bit of hilarious confusion. Some Twitter users reported that Twitter was reminding them to vote &md

Amazon’s 4-star store wasn’t just a one-off shtick. The e-commerce giant is going to continue opening up brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to its most popular online products just like the current one in Manhattan, but this time in Colorado. On Thursday, a midwestern location will be opening up in Lone Tree, Colorado — only a few miles away from Denver. The company has plans for its first West Coast store to open up in Berkeley, California in the next few months as well.As the

You might not know it, but Facebook's not done with breaking news.
The company is rolling out its "breaking news" labels to publishers in Australia, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the UK, and will start testing the labels in Europe and Asia. The feature was previously only widely-available in the United States and Canada.
The labels allow publishers to append "breaking news" labels to a limited number of stories — about once per week, according to Facebook. 
"We've seen that break

During its Q4 earnings call, Apple’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri announced that the company will no longer report unit sales of its main hardware divisions, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac. This is the same as protocols Apple already follows for its smaller devices, such as the Apple Watch, AirPods, and HomePod, which are bundled under the “Other Products” category.
“A unit of sale is less relevant today than it was in our past”
The announcement comes afte

While people on Earth celebrated Halloween, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft quietly gave up the ghost.The spacecraft, which explored two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt missed its last two check-ins, one on October 31st and another on November 1st. Without a signal from the spacecraft, NASA engineers concluded that Dawn had finally run out of fuel, officially ending its mission.NASA’s Dawn spacecraft quietly gave up the ghost
The people working on the project knew this day was co

Is it really a walkout if you barely... walk out?
Google offices around the world protested sexual harassment and workplace discrimination at the company on Thursday. But in Los Angeles — a center of the #MeToo movement, thanks to Hollywood — Googlers staged a more staid, internal affair than the rabble-rousing actions of their co-workers worldwide. 
SEE ALSO: Report: Google paid Android creator Andy Rubin a ton of cash following sexual misconduct allegations
The protests came i

Google Chromecast (3rd gen)
$35View Product
The Good
Quick and easy setup • Affordable • Casting from phone to TV still dirt-simple
The Bad
Few upgrades over previous model • Does not automatically pause videos for calls • Amazon video not Cast-compatible
The Bottom Line
The latest Google Chromecast is still a good buy for anyone looking for a simple, affordable streaming option, but if you already have a second-gen model, you should pass.
Mashable Score4.0Cool Factor3.0Lear

If you've been at the internet at all today, you've probably seen the words "Black Friday" more times than you would have predicted for it being the day after Halloween.
Nov. 1 kicks off deals season now according to Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, and numerous other retailers duking it out with super early gift deals. But Target had even bigger plans: They're among the first of the big guys to drop their official 2018 Black Friday ad. To really put the nail in the coffin, they also put Instant Pots,

Despite a zero percent change in iPhone unit sales year over year, Apple ended its fiscal fourth quarter with a 29 percent revenue increase in its smartphone division. It also met its overall revenue target of $62.9 billion — up from $52.5 billion this quarter last year. Both sales and profit exceeded Wall Street expectations for the quarter.Apple’s Q4 quarter ended in September, meaning it only accounted for the first few weeks of the new iPhone XS and XS Max going on sale. (The iP

Currant, a startup dedicated to making smart home devices that reduce energy consumption, has announced its first AI-driven product, as spotted by VentureBeat. It’s called the Currant Smart Outlet, and it sports two individually controlled outlets and can be rotated when plugged in to keep cords tidy. The company says its outlet has the highest safety ratings of any smart outlet on the market.The gadget works with a companion app that tracks real-time electricity usage and displays graphs

Target, along with pretty much every other retailer in the US, will ring in Black Friday (November 23rd) by offering deep discounts on something for everyone. The brunt of its deals will kick off on Thursday, November 22nd at 5PM when stores will first open doors for Black Friday shoppers. It will then close its doors at 1AM on Friday, only to re-open at 7AM for early risers.While you wait, Target is getting things started early this year with a few of its early access deals. You can find those

A state-owned Chinese company was charged by the Justice Department on Thursday for stealing trade secrets from an American chip manufacturer. It’s the fourth instance in which the Department has indicted Chinese conspirators for attempting to steal trade secrets in the past month, and with this momentum, the Department is announcing a new initiative to combat economic espionage from the country.
In its indictment, the Department claims that China’s Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit

Instagram announced a new feature today that lets you share IGTV videos to your Instagram Story. Tapping the paper airplane icon will open up an option to ‘Add video to your story,’ and your friends can tap the preview to go watch the entire video in IGTV.
Until now, its only been possible to add a link to an IGTV video on business accounts, which allowed users to swipe up and be taken to watch the full IGTV video. The new feature allows for users to share a preview of any IGTV vide

iHeartMedia, the largest radio company in the US, is exploring investments with several companies, including Apple, in advance of filing a reorganization plan with bankruptcy court, the Financial Times reports. The company has $20 billion in debt and filed for bankruptcy protection in March.
Sources tell Financial Times that Apple is one of several investors that have been considered, and iHeartMedia is looking for an equity stake worth tens of millions of dollars. An alternate source suggested

The U.S. Justice Department unveiled an indictment against two companies based in China and Taiwan and three individuals on Thursday, saying they conspired to steal trade secrets from U.S. semiconductor company Micronrelating to its research and development of memory storage device products.The charges against Taiwan-based United Microelectronics Corp , China state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, Co., Ltd and three individuals, mark

Hundreds of Google employees gathered in a New York park today to protest their employer’s handling of sexual harassment, part of a worldwide protest that included events in Dublin, London, Tokyo, Berlin, and several other cities. The employees are demanding that Google create a more transparent and effective process for handling sexual misconduct — and that it improve a culture that has allegedly fostered harassment and assault.
The mass walkout followed an explosive report that An

Today, Russian space agency Roscosmos blamed a bend in a sensor for last month’s dramatic failure of a Soyuz rocket launch, which forced two astronauts to make a harrowing emergency landing.After the launch failure on October 11th, Roscosmos promptly started looking into the cause. Initial speculation focused on the rocket’s boosters, one of which didn’t seem to separate properly from the rest of the spacecraft.Roscosmos just released new information from the investigation, wh

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and more than 50 other companies issued a joint letter today opposing President Trump’s possible rollback of rights and protections for transgender people under federal law.
The companies jointly say that they “oppose any administrative and legislative efforts to erase transgender protections through reinterpretation of existing laws and regulations,” as well as “any policy or regulation” that violates privacy rights of a

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) released an early draft of legislation today that would create substantially stiffer guidelines for the misuse of consumers’ data. Among other provisions, the bill suggests creating a penalty of 10 to 20 years imprisonment for senior executives who fail to follow new rules around data use.The tech industry has faced enormous scrutiny over the past two years, as companies like Facebook and Google have been roiled by scandals, including Cambridge Analytica’s use

The past decade in retail has been the golden age of direct-to-consumer (D2C) and digitally native vertical brands (DNVBs) that use the internet to communicate with customers, execute transactions, handle distribution and offer better economics.
But as small independent startups have scaled into unicorn territory and as countless brands have saturated digital channels, customer acquisition has gotten harder and costlier. Companies are now trying to meet customers with different purchase hab

Apple is reportedly preparing a “Repair Vintage Apple Products Pilot” program for a number of devices that were previously too old to repair, according to 9to5Mac. Although Apple reserves the right to refuse to repair a device if it doesn’t have the parts in stock, the pilot program will eventually mean that devices as old as 2011’s iPhone 4S or a MacBook Pro from mid-2012 will be eligible for repair by Apple and its authorized service providers. Apple did not immediatel

It’s been almost exactly a year since Apple released the iPhone X, and today, Mophie is finally releasing its first battery pack case for Apple’s former (now no longer sold) flagship called the Juice Pack Air, via MacRumors.
The Juice Pack Air is only compatible with the iPhone X — sorry, new XS owners — and it offers an additional 1,720mAh battery that Mophie says will extend your battery life for a total 30 hours. While a regular battery case would be too thick to allo

Last week, Anker debuted a tiny new power brick, crediting its small size with the component it uses instead of silicon: gallium nitride (GaN). It’s the latest example of the growing popularity of this transparent, glass-like material that could one day unseat silicon and cut energy use worldwide.For decades now, silicon has been the backbone of the technology industry, but we are “reaching a theoretical limit on how much it can be improved,” says Danqing Wang, a doctoral cand

Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, is the latest YouTube executive to publish an ominous forewarning about the European Union’s controversial Copyright Directive and the effect it will have on the music community.“Let me be clear: we understand and support the intent of Article 13. We need effective ways for copyright holders to protect their content,” Cohen wrote. “But we believe that the current proposal will create severe unintended consequences for the

HashiCorp, the company that has made hay developing open-source tools for managing cloud infrastructure, obviously has a pretty hefty commercial business going too. Today the company announced an enormous $100 million round on a unicorn valuation of $1.9 billion.
The round was led by IVP, whose investments include AppDynamics, Slack and Snap. Newcomer Bessemer Venture Partners joined existing investors GGV Capital, Mayfield, Redpoint Ventures and True Ventures in the round. Today’s investm