Technology news

It hasn't been Facebook's year. Or, years, really. But it really, really hasn't been the company's day.
Over 24 hours starting Tuesday night, news organizations have dropped multiple reporting bombs on the social media company. The investigations at the very least call into question many of the statements CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made about privacy, user data, advertising, and more.
SEE ALSO: Facebook is trying to defang a strong law on facial recognition
We've emailed Facebook to ask if they're

It was several years ago, at a tech conference in Laguna Beach, Ca., that the venture capitalist Bill Gurley issued one of what would become repeated warnings that startups were staying private too long. Comparing companies that refuse to go public to undergrads whose college careers extend several years past the point that they should, Gurley suggested they should be embarrassed, not proud, for keeping their shares in private hands. “Until you get liquid, you really haven’t accompli

VR is a polarizing technology in its current iteration. On the one hand, for some people it’s an uncomfortable, discombobulating experience. But, on the other, for those of us who thrill in the abyss it’s the closest we can get to living inside our dreams. If you’ve played the gorgeous little puzzle game Gnog or watched the BBC’s “Home,” A VR space-walk, you know what I’m talking about. These are experiences that are impossible for the vast majority of

'Tis the season to watch the former president of the United States be cute as hell, apparently.
Barack Obama spent Wednesday donning a Santa hat and spreading holiday cheer while handing out presents at Washington's Children’s National hospital.
Footage shared by the hospital on Twitter shows an excited crowd singing carols, cheering for, and taking photos of Obama Claus in the hallway. The former POTUS greets patients with presents, dances into rooms, and even gives out some hugs.Thank yo

Securing your online accounts with two-factor authentication can be an effective way to ward off hackers. But the system isn't perfect. One mysterious group has been defeating the protection method in attempts to phish upwards of 1,000 people, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.
The group today published a report documenting the phishing attacks, which have been targeting journalists and activists based in the Middle East and North Africa through the use of phony emails an

Google’s AI-powered camera tool can now recognize over a billion items, the company wrote in a new blog post. Google Lens launched last year in a preliminary version on Photos and Assistant with only around 250,000 items within its repertoire.The expansion comes over a year after the Google Lens’ optical character recognition engine has been trained on reading more product labels. By recognizing text, Google Lens thus can put names to the faces of more goods. It has also been fed mo

OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition
$699View Product
The Good
Faster charging versus 6T • Gorgeous McLaren-themed design • Long-lasting battery • Great display and performance
The Bad
Warp charger is bulkier • Some apps perform worse versus regular 6T • Costs $150 more than regular 6T
The Bottom Line
The OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition is one of the fastest-charging phones, but most people can live without the incremental speed boost.
Mashable Score4.0Cool Factor5.0Learning Curve4.0P

Apple has confirmed to The Verge that some of its 2018 iPad Pros are shipping with a very slight bend in the aluminum chassis. But according to the company, this is a side effect of the device’s manufacturing process and shouldn’t worsen over time or negatively affect the flagship iPad’s performance in any practical way. Apple does not consider it to be a defect.The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro’s metal and plastic components during manuf

For years, queer representation has been sorely lacking in the most venerate genres: made-for-TV Christmas movies.
I personally can't say I ever cared, but for those who do: Congratulations! 2018 has brought you a Christmas miracle in the form of Life-Size 2, a new straight-to-Hulu Christmas movie featuring a bisexual character and Tyra Banks.
It's a gay double whammy. Minor cultural achievement unlocked!
SEE ALSO: Happy Holidays, internet: Here are 5 hilarious seasonal cards to send your loved

One of Tesla’sbig selling points is the company’s ability to wirelessly push software updates to its electric vehicles. It’s what allows these vehicles to improve over time long after they’ve been purchased by customers.
This week, one of those improvements was to deliver a few Easter eggs — as promised by CEO Elon Musk— including the ability to make a Tesla vehicle fart on demand or every time a turn signal is used.
Hopped in my @Tesla this morning and was de

WhatsApp is making group calls easier with a change to the way its mobile app works. Before, users would have to start a 1:1 video call, then add participants – there wasn’t an option to begin a group call at once, the company says. Now, the design has been updated so you can start group calls with just a couple of taps.
In the new design, you can go to the group whose members you want to call, then tap on the phone icon at the top right corner of the screen to get started. From the

Advertising Content from CitiPlatforms have existed for decades, but the modern platform economy has completely disrupted traditional business models in ways that have enhanced and continue to benefit our lives. But what exactly is a platform? A platform is a product or service that is reliant on a feedback-generating ecosystem to grow and thrive. As the platform scales, it offers more products and services, thereby attracting more users, who will then provide more feedback for the platform to e

When it comes to shift workers communicating with each other in the workplace when they are not face-to-face, gone are the days of cork announcement boards. Now, the messaging app is the medium, and today one of the startups tackling that opportunity in a unique way has raised a round of funding to get to the next stage of growth.
Crew, a chat app that specifically targets businesses that employ shift workers who do not typically sit at computers all day, has now raised $35 million in Series C f

M&A activity was brisk in the enterprise market this year, with 10 high-profile deals totaling almost $88 billion. Companies were opening up their wallets and pouring money into mega acquisitions. It’s worth noting that the $88 billion figure doesn’t include Dell paying investors more than $23 billion for VMware tracking stock to take the company public again or several other deals of over a billion dollars that didn’t make our list.
Last year’s big deals included Int

Pinterestmay follow Lyft and Uber to the public markets in the first half of 2019, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The visual search engine and shopping tool is expected to tap underwriters in January and complete an initial public offering as soon as April. The company was valued at just over $12 billion with its last private fundraise, a $150 million round in mid-2017, and is on pace to bring in $700 million in revenue this year.
The company, founded in 2008 by Ben Sil

If you wear glasses and want to use Magic Leap’s mixed reality headset, there’s good news. Magic Leap is finally getting prescription inserts for its Magic Leap One headset, as noted in an email from the company.
You can order these prescription inserts for a hefty $249 from FramesDirect and they’re supposedly anti-reflective. They’re available in two sizes and you’ll have to provide your prescription and your pupil distance when ordering. They notably also don&rsq

The start of 2019 is creeping up fast, and that means it's time once again to make a list of New Year's resolutions that you'll inevitably ditch after a couple weeks.
Here's one you can keep though: Vow to buckle down and get shit done in 2019 with an UltraSharp monitor from Dell — now $150 off and on sale for just $449.99.
As an extra bonus to keep you motivated, Dell will throw in a free $150 gift card, good toward literally anything on Dell's site. It ships two weeks after your monitor

Today, climate change deniers will resurrect the tired old argument that Earth's global warming stalled sometime at the beginning of this century. 
The evidence for such a slowdown, however, doesn't exist. 
A diverse group of global researchers published two papers in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters on Tuesday, affirming why such claims of a global warming hiatus are and always were misleading, at best.
"We find there never was any statistical evidence for it," St

Hold on to your stockings, because this is a stuffer that works for literally everyone. 
When you buy a $25 digital gift card to Starbucks, you'll get a complimentary $5 gift card to Amazon when you use the code SBUX at checkout. It's like getting a little something back for yourself each time you send a gift. (That's a win-win if you ask us.)
By now, most have us probably have our "main" holiday gifts covered. These are the gifts you carefully planned out in advance for the significant oth

The Komplete Kontrol A-series from Native Instruments is here to do work. The lineup features three keyboard MIDI-controllers that aren’t very pretty, but manage to give producers everything they need in a hardware package – and plenty to love in the included software. First things first, if you’re not familiar with what a MIDI-controller does, it’s important to point out that this isn’t an electronic piano or digital organ. It can perform some synth functions, and

Dark Sky has finally come to Wear OS, with the company behind the hyperlocal weather app announcing today that the watch extension will be available as part of its premium subscription on Android.
A relatively big name like Dark Sky making the jump to Wear OS is the sort of thing that would have been encouraging for the platform a few years ago, but now just feels like ticking a box on a feature list. Wear OS has felt like a half-dead zombie of a platform for years, dogged by poor software supp

Head's up, last minute shoppers: We know it feels like December started three days ago, but Christmas is officially less than a week away.
But somehow, by the grace of friendly competition, your procrastination may just be a blessing in disguise. Walmart has no chill this gifting season and has dropped the price of the new 32 GB Wi-Fi 9.7-inch iPad again — this time to $229. That's $100 off and the lowest price we've ever seen on this model.
SEE ALSO: Peep these awesome MacBook deals: Save

Snapchat is looking to increase user engagement with the app with the launch of a new feature called Lens Challenges. Users can opt to participate in the challenges by creating a snap with a Lens that’s themed to a particular song, dance, holiday, event and more, the company explains.
For example, one of the first challenges to launch is a sing-along with Gwen Stefani’s “Jingle Bells.”
Users access the new challenge from the Lens Explorer section of the app, then lip sync

Renewable energy is the future, but at present no one is tracking just who’s got solar panels on their roof, in their back yard, or a shared neighborhood installation. Fortunately, solar panels generally work best when exposed to the light. That makes them easy to spot, and count, from orbit — which is just what the DeepSolar project is doing.
There are a number of initiatives for collecting this information — some regulated, some voluntary, some automated. But none of them is

Coinbaseacquired Earn.com for at least $120 million back in April. And the company now plans to transform Earn.com into Coinbase Earn, a website with educational content to learn more about cryptocurrencies. Users who complete those classes will earn tokens.
Coinbase bought Earn.com partly so that it could appoint Earn.com co-founder and CEO Balaji Srinivasan as Coinbase’s CTO. The previous iteration of Earn.com wasn’t a priority for Coinbase.
Earn.com started as a service where you

Challenges on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram dominate the way people participate in online trends, and now Snapchat is trying to get in on the action with Lens Challenges.Lens Challenges are exactly what they sound like: themed challenges that incorporate a special Snapchat Lens, which can then be featured for the app’s community. The first challenge, which launches today, is tied into the holiday season. Snapchat users can select a specific Lens that will allow them to sing a version of

Hellboy is back. Lionsgate released a first look at the upcoming adaptation of Mike Mignola’s classic noir-horror comic, showcasing Stranger Things star David Harbour as the titular demon.
The trailer shows off the titular character working alongside members of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) as they fight against monsters that threaten the world. In Mignola’s story, Hellboy also struggles against his demonic nature, and against the reactions of humans who see

If there was a word that dominated startup and tech news coverage this year, it was SoftBank. The Japanese telecom conglomerate’s Vision Fund pushed out a prodigious amount of capital this year — quite literally billions of dollars — into companies as diverse as a molecular manufacturer (Zymergen) and a robotic pizza delivery business (Zume Pizza). It was a year of highs as its Flipkart transaction produced billions in returns, as well as a year of incredible lows, what wi

These days drones are everywhere, and so is the risk of bad actors using them to execute terrorist attacks, spying operations, and other illicit activities. For that reason, Fortem Technologies has built DroneHunter, a large drone that fires a massive net to capture any unauthorized drones flying over restricted areas. In the past, we've seen other solutions being deployed such as OpenWorks' net-firing gun or even training eagles to catch drones. Read more...More about Mashable Video, Drones, Te

Last night, we got word of yet another Facebook privacy scandal. What is that, Number 427 for the year? In this case, a report from The New York Times revealed the social media company gave an extreme amount of access to certain partner companies, over and above what users might have expected. According to the NYT report, Facebook offered these companies access to everything from friends lists to private messages, even after it claimed it no longer offered such access to anyone.

The first trailer for Hellboy has arisen and it honestly looks like a lot.
Hellboy, starring Stranger Things daddy David Harbour, looks like it's going to contain a hell of a lot of monsters for Hellboy and friends to fight against as well as a decent helping of slapstick comedy. It's not as dark of a trailer that I expected coming from a movie based on the Hellboy comics, but it's probably for the best to avoid any super dark superhero movies these days.
Hellboy barrels into theaters April 12.&

Microsoft today announced a new Office app that’s now available to Windows Insiders and that will soon roll out to all Windows 10 users. The new Officeapp will replace the existing My Office app (yeah, those names…). While the existing app was mostly about managing Office 365 subscriptions, the new app provides significantly more features and will essentially become the central hub for Office users to switch between apps, see their pinned documents and access other Office features.

Over the past few years, podcasts have developed into an incredible medium for long-form reporting and creative fiction, with shows like Serial and Welcome to Nightvale garnering massive mainstream followings.If you’re a fan of these types of programming, and want more to add to your listening queue, there are 11 of our favorite podcasts that debuted (or ran a new season) this year.Image: NHPRBear Brook, NHPR
33 years ago, a hunter in New Hampshire stumbled upon a gristly find: a pair of

Say what you will about MoviePass (and there’s plenty to be said), the company doesn’t give up. The theater ticket subscription service’s production wing has dried the ink on a three-picture deal with John McClane himself, Bruce Willis.Deadline, which first broke the news, notes that Willis has a longstanding relationship with Randall Emmett and George Furla, MoviePass Films’ dual CEOs, who founded the company as Emmett/Furla Films way back in 1998.
MoviePass’s pare

The US Department of the Treasury has issued new sanctions against Russian nationals who allegedly attempted to interfere with US elections. Today’s sanctions target 15 military intelligence operatives for a range of activities, including nine who were indicted this summer in connection with the Democratic National Committee hack in 2016. It also sanctions people and entities related to Project Lakhta — a broad political interference campaign that includes the Internet Research Agen

B&H Photo is picking up where Google left off, continuing its aggressive deal that might be all many people need to outfit their house or apartment with Google Assistant this holiday season. When you buy a Home Hub smart display, two Home Mini smart speakers will be included for free, at a total price of $129. The Hub ordinarily retails for $149, with the speakers going for $49 each. This deal will end once Wednesday, December 19th expires.
Obviously both products have been discounted at ti