Technology news

Alex Stamos, who recently stepped down from his role as Chief Security Officer at Facebook, published an op-ed in The Washington Post today, saying that Facebook could have responded Russian interference on its platform earlier. But he also says that the issue is much larger than Facebook: Congress should update its laws regarding political advertisers, and social media users need to “adjust to a media environment in which several dozen gatekeepers no longer control what is newsworthy.&rd

Tumblr’s iOS app is missing from Apple’s App Store. Tumblr says that it is “working to resolve an issue with the iOS app,” but it’s not clear if the app is missing from the store because it was removed by Apple, or by Tumblr itself.
Earlier this week, users reported that there were issues with searching in the iOS app while Safe Mode was off. According to PiunikaWeb, Users who deleted the app in an attempt to reinstall it discovered that it was now missing from the

Brooks Rainwater ContributorShare on Twitter Brooks Rainwater is the director of the Center for City Solutions and Applied Research at the National League of Cities. More posts by this contributorAs tasks wane, skills rise Blockchain technology could be the great equalizer for American cities Scott Andes ContributorShare on Twitter Scott Andes is the program director for the National League of Cities City Innovation Ecosystem program.
The more than year-long dance between cities and Amazonfor i

Elon Musk’s Boring Company reached a new milestone this week: it completed digging out its first tunnel in LA. Musk posted a video of the breakthrough to his Twitter account, showing off the machine reaching the end point, which the company calls O’Leary Station.The video shows a crowd assembled at the end point watching as the machine breaks through. In October, the Boring Company Twitter account posted an image of the station, which ArsTechnica notes is named for a SpaceX/Boring C

Instagram has notified some of its users that their password might have been exposed due to a security bug, according to The Information (via Engadget). A spokesperson for the company says that the issue was “discovered internally and affected a very small number of people.”
In this instance, the bug was tied to a feature that the company rolled out in April that allows users to download all of their data, implemented after European lawmakers rolled out its General Data Protection R

It’s not the apps – they’ve got better. It’s not even the devices – they’re faster, slicker, with shortcuts and enhancements that make it easier, but not good. The problem is the medium itself – mobile communication has aspired to take over the entirety of our business communication, but the awkward way in which we type and the inconsistencies of a purely touch-based interface utterly shred precision and accuracy. I should also be clear that I’m t

Microsoftannounced plans to shut down HockeyApp and replace it with Visual Studio App Center. The company acquired the startup behind HockeyApp back in 2014. And if you’re still using HockeyApp, the service will officially shut down on November 16, 2019.
HockeyApp was a service that let you distribute beta versions of your app, get crash reports and analytics. There are other similar SDKs, such as Google’s Crashlytics, TestFairy, Appaloosa, DeployGate and native beta distribution cha

If you’re tired of those janky dockless electric scooters and ready for an upgrade, a new startup based in Oakland, California may have what you’re looking for. Unagi is the Japanese word for freshwater eel, but now it is also a stylish electric scooter for the luxury set.Electric scooters are fast becoming a convenient and fun way to commute for city folks. But not everyone lives in a city with dockless, shareable scooters like Bird and Lime. David Hyman, the former Beats Music CEO

You may not have heard of ByteDance,but you probably know its red-hot video app TikTok, which gobbled up Musical.ly in August. The Beijing-based company also runs a popular news aggregator called Jinri Toutiao, which means “today’s headlines” in Chinese, and the app just assigned a new CEO.
At a company event on Saturday, Chen Lin, an early ByteDanceemployee, made his first appearance as Toutiao’s new CEO. That means Toutiao’screator Zhang Yiming has hande

William ("Whurley") Hurley ContributorShare on Twitter William Hurley, commonly known as whurley, is an American entrepreneur and the founder of Chaotic Moon Studios, Honest Dollar, and Equals: The Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age. He is currently chairing the Quantum Computing Working Group for the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA), and is the founder and chief executive of Strangeworks.
The word “quantum” gained currency in the late 20th century as

WhatsAppalready ruined Snapchat’s growth once. WhatsApp Status, its clone of Snapchat Stories, now has 450 million daily active users compared to Snapchat’s 188 million. That’s despite its 24-hour disappearing slideshows missing tons of features, including augmented reality selfie masks, animated GIFs, or personalized avatars like Bitmoji. A good-enough version of Stories conveniently baked into the messaging app beloved in the developing world where Snapchat hasn’t prove

A steep and rapid rise in tourism has left behind a wake of economic and environmental damage in cities around the globe. In response, governments have been responding with policies that attempt to limit the number of visitors who come in. We’ve decided to spare you from any more Amazon HQ2 talk and instead focus on why cities should shy away from reactive policies and should instead utilize their growing set of technological capabilities to change how they manage tourists within city line

Today’s gig workers don’t just include your local Uber drivers or handymen on TaskRabbit. In fact, there’s a growing subset of knowledge workers who are looking to the gig economy as a viable alternative to full-time employment. Upwork’s 2017 Freelancing in America study predicts freelancers will become the majority of the US workforce in a decade, with younger generations primarily driving that acceleration in freelancing. That’s happening right now — the su

According to a new report from Thurott, Microsoft has been working on a new console in the Xbox One family. This cheaper model could play regular Xbox One games, but there would be no Blu-Ray drive.
This move would lower the price of the entry-level Xbox One. An Xbox One S officially starts at $299 but you can currently find it for around $250 on Amazon. The disc-less Xbox One could start at $199.
If you already have an Xbox One and physical games, you could imagine going to an official retailer

When Disney’s Star Wars land Galaxy’s Edge opens next year, it’ll come with a familiar soundtrack — Entertainment Weekly reports that John Williams will provide the score, and has a preview of what to expect, along with looks at two of the park’s big experiences.The first of EW’s videos shows off a new behind-the-scenes look at the park’s construction, revealing an extensive array of buildings and landscapes, set to a music that is the “overarchin

Microsoft has now started selling Amazon’s Echo devices in its retail stores. Twitter user WalkingCat spotted that Microsoft is selling the latest Echo Dot and second generation Echo. Both devices are available online and in Microsoft Stores in the US. The move follows Microsoft forming a partnership with Amazon to integrate Alexa and Cortana, and previewing this feature earlier this year.
Microsoft has been increasingly focusing on its Amazon partnership and Alexa integration, all while

YouTube recently began to roll out a series of feature films that viewers can watch for free, supported by ads. While the selection isn’t large, there are some notable ones to catch, like The Terminator, Legally Blonde, and Rocky.According to AdAge, the video platform began releasing the movies in October with a “Free to watch” category in its movie section, where users have traditionally purchased or rented movies. The films come with commercial interruptions, with pop-up ads

In early August an assassination attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro served as a jarring wake up call that the possibility of a drone attack against a public figure or civilian is real. To the security industry and United States Government, this attack was not surprising. Frighteningly, there has been little resolve within Congress to determine who or what security agencies have the authority to mitigate these threats. On June 6th, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron

Of all the original 151 Pokémon, Eevee’s name might just be the easiest to pronounce. E-vee. Eee-vee. It’s exactly what it looks like. Or so I thought, until I started playing Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, where I listened my little fuzzy friend pronounce its own name as eh-vie for 30-something hours. Have I been saying its name wrong? Is Eevee saying its name wrong? Do pokémon have accents?
Pokémon: Let’s Go is modeled after Pokémon Yello

SparkLabs Taipei, part of SparkLabs Group, the global network of accelerator programs and funds that works with emerging startup ecosystems, has raised $4.25 million in an initial close led by CTBC Group, along with individual investors, for its first venture capital fund. SparkLabs Taipei also announced today that it has added Atlanta Hawks player Jeremy Lin, who sparked “Linsanity” as the first player of Chinese- or Taiwanese-descent in the NBA, to its board of advisors.
The fundin

Pretend for a moment that you run a large and successful company. After years of outsized success, the company is confronted with a crisis. Public perception has begun to turn — against your company in general, and against you specifically — and your leadership team is now presented with the question of what to do.Your head of communications is charged with managing the public response. In time it will come out that this response including hiring a public relations agency whose work

YouTubequietly added around 100 ad-supported Hollywood movies to its site, beginning last month, according to a new report from AdAge. The titles include a mix of classics like “Rocky” and “The Terminator,” as well as other family fare like “Zookeeper,” “Agent Cody Banks,” and “Legally Blonde,” among others.
Before, YouTube had only offered consumers the ability to purchase movies and TV shows, similar to how you can rent or buy content

Fortnite, the free multi-player survival game, has earned an astonishing $1 billion from in-game virtual purchases alone. Now, others in the gaming industry are experimenting with how they too can capitalize on new trends in gaming.
Mythical Games, a startup out of stealth today with $16 million in Series A funding, is embracing a future in gaming where user-generated content and intimate ties between players, content creators, brands and developers is the norm. Mythical is using its i

Walmart has overtaken Apple to become the No. 3 online retailer in the U.S., according to a report this week from eMarketer. While Amazon still leads by a wide margin, accounting for 48 percent of e-commerce sales in 2018, Walmart – including also Sam’s Club and Jet.com – is poised to capture 4 percent of all online retail spending in the U.S. by year-end, totaling $20.91 billion.
The news of the shift in e-commerce rankings comes alongside Walmart’s strong earnings&

Elon Musk has shot out some crazy, unbelievable tweets over the last year, but he wasn’t joking about the bricks. Musk has started a company called The Brick Store LLC to produce and sell bricks, according to public documents obtained by TechCrunch.The new company, which was founded in July, will be managed by Steve Davis, the ex-SpaceX engineer who is also running The Boring Company (TBC).
TBC is developing new tunneling and transportation technologies, and the bricks will be made from so

It’s clear that driverless cars will revolutionize the way we get from Point A to Point B. Perhaps less obvious is how it’ll change our sex lives. According to a new study by the Annals of Tourism Research, ditching the driver could open up a whole lot of doors for transit-related sexual activity. Scott Cohen, the deputy director of research at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of Surrey stated in the report that approximately 60 percent of Americans

When Aileen Lee, the former Kleiner Perkins partner and founder of the seed-stage venture capital firm Cowboy Ventures, coined the term “unicorn” in 2013 on this very site, there were just 39 companies that had earned the title.She called them “the lucky/genius few.” Her definition: U.S. software startups launched since 2003 worth more than $1 billion. When she authored the viral post, just four companies were garnering valuations that high each year, according to her cal

When Equidate, a venture-backed secondaries marketplace based in San Francisco, closed its most recent round of funding with $50 million four months ago, it was hardly a surprising bet on the part of its backers. As startups linger ever longer as private companies, more people are looking to lock up shares wherever they can find them.
Investors have plenty of platforms from which to choose. In addition to Equidate,other companies that match investors with “pre-IPO” company shares inc

Xiaomi has a couple of new products out in Walmart and gave press the rundown today at an event in New York City. The first is a 150-inch projector going for $1,999.99 at Walmart doubles up as a television with Android TV. It’s strangely overpriced for what it is, but it also marks one of Xiaomi’s infrequent expansions into American offerings.
There are a couple of things to break down here, namely that projector is oddly expensive for a 1920 x 1080p screen. Xiaomi says it has no co