Technology news

Ahead of the US midterm elections next Tuesday, Twitter is hard at work scrubbing its platform of thousands of fake accounts and coordinated activity seemingly designed to influence voter turnout, according to a report from Reuters today. The report says Twitter has removed around 10,000 such accounts targeting Democratic voters and masquerading as party members and officials, and it continues to monitor its platform for similar activity.Twitter confirmed to The Verge that it has been removing

Twitterhas deleted thousands of automated accounts posting messages that tried to discourage and dissuade voters from casting their ballot in the upcoming election next week.
Some 10,000 accounts were removed across late September and early October after they were first flagged by staff at the Democratic Party, the company has confirmed.
“We removed a series of accounts for engaging in attempts to share disinformation in an automated fashion – a violation of our policies,” said

Politicians are routinely compared to fictional villains, but Donald Trump is one of only a few to actively court these comparisons. Sometimes this is an ordinary act of reclaiming someone else’s insults, but often, it’s more like a quasi-ironic attempt to appropriate the coolness and machismo of villainy. Trump is the presidential version of 4chan denizens adopting Bane and the Joker as patron saints: some men want to watch the world burn, others salivate at the prospect of beating

Amazon launched a new delivery option for Prime members in the US today, just ahead of the holiday gift-giving season. The invite-only program is curiously called Amazon Day, not to be mistaken for Amazon’s yearly Prime Day shopping event, as spotted by CNET.Through Amazon Day, you can set the day of the week when you prefer all of your shipments to arrive. So far, the program is only open to a small group of users by invite, although Amazon plans to add more users in the coming months. Y

Blizzard and Lego showed off the first Overwatch Lego set last month in the form of a limited-edition Bastion figure, and now at BlizzCon the two companies are taking the wraps off the rest of the lineup.
There are a total of six sets coming from the two companies: a $14.99 Tracer vs. Widowmaker set, a $19.99 Hanzo vs. Genji set, a $29.99 Dorado Showdown set, a $39.99 D.Va & Reinhardt set, an even bigger $49.99 Bastion model (which fixes the first version by adding a conversion to turret mo

Taiwanese audio gear company MidiPlus has announced a new product called Mirror that is incomparably sexist. It’s an audio interface that’s designed to look like an eyeshadow palette, including a light-up mirror. The website says it’s “specially designed for females,” since women can only be tricked into using gear when being tantalized by pretty, shiny objects. We’re like crows, really.
People have been pinging me about this product since last night, and to

Bumble is looking to drop its $400 million countersuit against Tinder’s parent company —Match Group — nearly a month after it officially filed the case, according to documents filed in a Texas court last month. Yesterday, Match filed a notice of non-opposition, essentially saying that it’s okay with Bumble dropping its claims so long as the court issues declaratory judgments absolving Match from allegedly stealing Bumble’s trade secrets. Match is also hoping the co

You probably don’t know how much it should cost to get your home’s windows washed, yard landscaped or countertops replaced. But Setter does. The startup pairs you with a home improvement concierge familiar with all the vendors, prices and common screwups that plague these jobs. Setter finds the best contractors across handiwork, plumbing, electrical, carpentry and more. It researches options, negotiates a bulk rate and, with its added markup, you pay a competitive price with none of

Apple’s online store has started selling refurbished iPhone 8 and 8 Plus devices, via 9to5Toys. There are space gray, silver, and gold devices in the 64GB variant. Prices start at $499 for the iPhone 8 and $599 for the iPhone 8 Plus.A brand-new iPhone 8 currently costs $599, so a refurbished iPhone 8 will save you $100. It’s a pretty good deal, considering Apple’s refurbished products are pretty much as good as new, and they come tested and certified. The device also comes wit

Teslawon’t be joining the scooter wars. But electric bikes? Yeah, maybe.
During a lengthy podcast with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Tesla CEO Elon Musk talked about everything from AI and his fights on Twitter with journalists to Saudi Arabia and Mars. Even scooters. Of course, scooters.
But don’t get your hopes up for a Tesla scooter. According to Musk, they lack dignity. Swisher’s persistence on the topic wasn’t enough to dissuade him.
Here’s the exchange. You can

Many New Yorkers awoke to a bit of a surprise when “Kill all Jews” briefly made an appearance in their Twitter sidebar. On a social network with a hate speech problem, it’s not unusual to see this type of content. Twitter has been locked in a perpetual grappling match with hate groups clinging to the fringes of society — those most often responsible for creating vitriolic content — for some time now. What is surprising, however, is seeing Twitter amplify the messag

Beijing-based ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of tween and teen-focused social app Musical.ly is paying off. The company this year merged Musical.ly with its own short video app TikTok as a means of entering the U.S. market. Today, the result of that merger is sitting at the top of the U.S. App Store, ahead of Facebook. More importantly, it recently surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in monthly installs for the first time in September.
According to data from app intelligence

Blizzard’s beautiful cinematics have long caught people’s attention when they debut at BlizzCon, the publisher’s annual convention, and this year’s shorts stole the show once again.World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch all received their own cinematic shorts, teasing new players, worlds, and experiences for fans of the franchises. Overwatch’s latest short focused on McCree, the game’s popular, roughneck cowboy character. (It’s an appropr

Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday that the Securities and Exchange commission has subpoenaed Tesla about Musk’s many projections for Model 3 production, signaling that the investigation — which first came to light in August — is ramping up.It’s the third open investigation to intensify in recent weeks. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe for any potential criminal activity surrou

Blizzard is bringing Diablo to mobile devices, the company announced today during BlizzCon 2018. The game’s creators promised a “full-fledged action RPG’ called Diablo Immortal.
Blizzard has been quiet as of late about the future of Diablo, though job listings discovered earlier this year for an “unannounced Diablo project” suggested something on the way. Diablo III launched for PC in 2012, after which it rapidly became a best-seller; it was later ported to console

Village Globalis leveraging its network of tech luminaries to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The $100 million early-stage venture capital firm, which counts as limited partners (LPs) Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and many other high-profile techies, quietly announced on Friday that the accelerator it piloted earlier this year would become a perma

Twitter is one of the most open social media platforms on the web, which is why it might be easier to ignore the privacy settings. Admittedly, Twitter doesn’t offer the level of granular control as, for example, Facebook. But it does have some decent options for controlling what other users can see and what level of access they have to you. Here’s a quick primer on your Twitter privacy settings, and what they mean. Note these will be sorted based on the browser version, rather than

For as long as I’ve been reading and writing about headphones, one thing has remained true: the very best cans have an open back. They leak music out to the world and let noise in, a necessary compromise to reduce reflections and resonances that could distort the sound. Closed-back headphones can be great, but they can’t match the expansiveness and transparency of their open brethren. Sennheiser’s HD820 – its first go at premium closed-back cans – doesn’t des

At Blizzcon in Anaheim today, Blizzard revealed the latest of its Overwatch animated shorts, called “Reunion.” It delves into the backstory of McCree, everyone’s favorite gunslinger, as he goes up against a gang of outlaws led by a new character named Ashe — who also happens to be the next hero being added to the game. She’s a damage-dealing hero, has an excellent robotic helper named Bob as her ultimate ability, though there’s no word yet on when she’l

Uber is seeking permission from the state of Pennsylvania to resume testing its self-driving cars on public roads more than seven months after a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona.The ride-hailing company released its voluntary safety report to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday, becoming the sixth company to do so. In it, Uber commits to resuming testing with two employees in each autonomous vehicle, enabling automatic braking, and strictly monitoring safety drivers. Th

Tencent, China’s biggest tech company, has made its own pair of video-recording sunglasses this week that bear a slight resemblance to Snap’s Spectacles. The Weishi smart glasses have a camera on the front, like Spectacles, so you can record video.Snap’s Spectacles haven’t exactly done well in sales — the first generation lost the company nearly $40 million in unsold pairs. Unlike the first generation Spectacles, the Weishi glasses don’t highlight the camera

Twitterhas brought on its first-ever global director of culture and community, God-is Rivera. As global director of culture and community, Rivera will report to Global Head of Culture, Engagement and Experiential Nola Weinstein. Rivera previously led internal diversity and inclusion efforts at VMLY&R, a digital and creative agency.
“As a black woman who has worked in industries in which I have been underrepresented, I feel a great responsibility to amplify and support diverse

As an MBA student at the University of Chicago’s Booth school, Kathleen Wilson was struck with an idea while looking at businesses that provided daily housekeeping in one of her classes. Given the density and physical structure of many apartment buildings, she wondered why a housekeeper couldn’t similarly push a cart down the hall and spend an hour or less in each unit.
To test out her theory, Wilson and a classmate started cleaning the apartments of friends, spending 30 minutes to a

Activision is celebrating the PC release of Destiny 2 by offering the game free for a limited time, game director Steve Cotton announced today.Cotton made the announcement during Blizzard’s pre-show at this year’s BlizzCon festival. Those who download the game between today and November 18th will be able to keep it forever. All you have to do is claim it. The free version of Destiny 2 will also come with a free gift that players will be able to grab, too. All you need to download th

Teslasaid Friday in a regulatory filing that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice are investigating projections made last year about Model 3 production rates. The SEC has issued subpoenas for information related to Model 3 production estimates. The DOJ, which is running a separate investigation over Model 3 production targets, has stopped short of taking that action.
The information contained in Tesla’s 10Q filing backs up an October 26 article by The Wall

Yesterday, Dish customers lost access to HBO due to an ongoing licensing dispute between the premium cable channel and the TV distributor. It marks the first time in HBO’s 40-plus-year history that it’s gone dark. This sort of thing seems to happen every once in a while in the cable industry, but it also might be the first indication of the closed-off cable nightmare that could be in our future as companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Disney take control of ever-larger chunks of the

General Motors is canceling its $1,800 a month Cadillac car subscription service and is shutting down by the end of the year, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Book by Cadillac service debuted early last year and follows a similar subscription model to Rent The Runway, which allows customers to drive different Cadillac models each month for the $1,800 price tag.
Speaking to The Verge, Cadillac confirmed that the service was ending next month, but could make a comeback in the future. Its full

Some were surprised to see Snaprelease a second version of its “face-camera” Spectacles gadget, since the original version failed to convert hype into sales.
But those lackluster sales — which dropped to as low as 42,000 per quarter — didn’t only fail to dissuade the U.S. social firm from making more specs, because now Tencent, the Chinese internet giant and Snap investor, has launched its own take on the genre.
Tencent this week unveiled its answer to the video-rec

Pop quiz time: What’s estimated to be worth between $5 and $10 billion by 2020 and is (at least, in my humble opinion) largely bullshit? Answer: Influencer marketing. Okay, let me clarify something. The idea of paying people with huge amounts of reach to advertise your products isn’t dumb. Celebrity endorsements are a thing, and have been known to work wonders for brands. Think about LeBron James’ nearly $1 billion deal with Nike, or George Foreman with his eponymous lean, mea

General Motors unveiled two new electric vehicles Friday, but not the kind you would expect from the nation’s largest automaker. Two new electric bikes — one foldable, the other compact — are introduced as part of a broader effort by GM to promote its plans for an electric future.
GM isn’t saying much about the bikes themselves, staying silent on key specs like size, weight, range, and price. The company is seeking input from consumers to help name the e-bikes, offering

Following yesterday’s series of announcements about Flickr’s plans to revamp its site under its new owners, SmugMug, one major concern has been raised: its decision to now limit free accounts to 1,000 photos may impact the number of photos available through Creative Commons.
Creative Commonsis a U.S. nonprofit that helps make creative works — like photos — available for legal use through several different types of copyright licenses that respect how creators want to share

On Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first consumer DNA test that promises to tell buyers which drugs might work best for them according to their genetic profile. The manufacturer, 23andMe, won FDA approval by being very careful not to overpromise what its test can do— so careful that the approval highlights the limited usefulness of the test and how much we still don’t know about this field of medicine.The test is related to a segment of medicine called ph

You may recall my tale of woe from last year when I recounted how I was locked out of my Google account for a month. It was a tough time, made all the more frustrating because there wasn’t any customer support to contact. That is changing for Google One users though, and it’s about time.
I received an email this week from Googleinforming me that my paid Google storage had been upgraded to Google One, Google’s freshly designed storage options announced last May. It comes with tw

Amazon,one of the world’s largest companies, has transformed the face of commerce in part because it has managed at once to be “The Everything Store” but still with a route into its sea of products that, for most users, surfaces what they might most want to see (and importantly buy or consume). That kind of personalisation has become a goal not just for e-commerce companies, but for any organization running a digital business: users are constantly distracted, and when their att

Rapper Vince Staples released his latest album FM! today, and it’s chock-full of certified slappers. The music video to “FUN!,” one of FM!’s singles, takes place entirely in Google Maps. (Realistically, it’s in a UI that looks like Google Maps, but whatever.) In the video, Staples gives us a Street View tour of the neighborhood he grew up in and still raps about: the Ramona Park area of Long Beach, California.The video opens by zooming in on our Google Earth-sized