Technology news

President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr, said at his first confirmation hearing today that he would look into whether Silicon Valley social media companies were abusing their market position to stifle competition and what the Justice Department’s role should be on the issue of consumer data privacy.
The question that prompted the response came from junior Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) who dedicated his allotted time to asking Barr about issues surrounding data privacy

Roku says it will continue to host Alex Jones’ conspiracy-theory channel Infowars despite public outcry, stating that the company doesn’t “curate or censor based on viewpoint.”In a statement, first reported by TechCrunch, Roku says that it is not “promoting or being paid to distribute InfoWars” and that it does “not have a commercial relationship with the InfoWars.”
Roku has been receiving angry tweets from users over the past few days after many

Twitter brought its traditional reverse-chronological timeline back to iOS last month, and now the optional feature is available to Android users in a new update. It’s a welcome choice that brings back some stability to the Twitter feed. Twitter switched to an algorithm-based timeline four years ago during a time when social networks like Facebook and Instagram were experimenting with how best to display feeds to users.Like on iOS, Android users can switch between seeing top tweets and th

It turns out that even robots are having a tough time holding down a job. Japan’s Henn-na“Strange” Hotel has laid off half its 243 robots after they created more problems than they could solve, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
One of the layoffs included a doll-shaped assistant in each hotel room called Churi. Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa can answer questions about local businesses’ opening and closing times, but Churi couldn’t. When hotel guests

Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel chats with August CEO Jason Johnson about smart locks and the challenges of integrating various technologies within a smart home. They discuss whether every company needs to be a data collection company, and why it’s so difficult to be a hardware company in tech.1:00August adds third-party door locks to its smart home platform
2:00 The biggest Apple HomeKit products from CES 2019
3:00 August’s leaked smart doorbell actually looks like a doorbell thi

Apple has been rumored to be working on battery cases for its latest iPhone XR and XS models for a while, and today, seemingly out of nowhere, the company has made those cases available for purchase on the Apple Store website, as spotted by Joanna Stern on Twitter.The new battery cases are available for all three of Apple’s 2018 iPhone models for $129, regardless of whether you’re choosing one for an iPhone XS, XS Max, or XR. The cases will also be offered in both black and white si

Microsoft-owned Turn 10 Studios, which develops the Forza series of racing games for Xbox and PC, today announced it would be removing two controversial dance emotes from its latest entry, Forza Horizon 4. The news, spotted by Polygon and announced on Forza’s website as part of the most recent update release notes, marks the first instance of a game developer backing away from asserting its right to copy and include a virtual version of a dance move popularized in real life. The news foll

Today, the research center that brought us Nobel Prize-winning news of incomprehensibly tiny particles announced its plans to get a whole lot bigger.The European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, already has the largest, most powerful particle accelerator in the world, called the Large Hadron Collider, but today it published a report that looks into the design of its larger, and more powerful potential successor, the Future Circular Collider.
The Large Hadron Collider is what was used to

Sony just announced the a6400, a refreshed compact mirrorless camera ideal for creators, specifically vloggers. What makes it so appealing? The a6400 comes with a touchscreen that flips all the way around — 180 degrees — so you get a vivid, easily adjustable preview of how you’ll look as you’re filming your latest video.That’s a feature we’ve seen on many a point-and-shoot and some DSLRs, but it’s a big deal for those who want the quality and features o

Roku just introduced Auto Sign Out Mode, which lets people sign onto your device and get logged out automatically. Say you have guests over, but they have their own logins to streaming services and a tendency to forget to log out, they’ll now be able to set a date when those credentials automatically expire from your device. This especially seems to make sense for Airbnb hosts who may have a rotating list of guests scheduled to visit, all of whom may have their own streaming services they

The computer mouse is one of the most important accessories ever invented, one that essentially carried in a new wave of electronic interaction when it was first released. But what if we went further, like YouTuber Electronic Grenade, who has done the seemingly impossible: built a mouse that not only can control a computer, but in fact is a fully functional computer on its own, complete with a built-in screen and keyboard (via Motherboard).
As Electronic Grenade details, the computer-mouse is a

YouTube is testing a new recommendation format for both mobile and desktop users that use blue bubbles to suggest keywords, creators, and related topics to help browse through videos.Screenshots obtained by The Verge show these blue bubbles in action. They appear just underneath the video player, and the idea is to help users filter recommendations. These are more specific recommendations than the videos that appear off to the side. The feature is currently being tested with a small set of peop

A facial recognition scan could become part of a standard medical checkup in the not-too-distant future. Researchers have shown how algorithms can help identify facial characteristics linked to genetic disorders, potentially speeding up clinical diagnoses.In a study published this month in the journal Nature Medicine, US company FDNA published new tests of their software, DeepGestalt. Just like regular facial recognition software, the company trained their algorithms by analyzing a dataset of f

LG’s 4K OLED televisions boast excellent picture quality and far richer contrast than LED is capable of, and in time for Super Bowl LIII, you can find the 55- and 65-inch B8 slightly discounted at several retailers.At Amazon, B&H Photo, and Best Buy, the 55-inch B8 is sitting right around the $1,500 mark (it has been hovering around $1,600 for the past few weeks.) If you want the 65-inch model, you’ll pay $2,300 instead of the usual $2,600 price point we’ve seen it at prev

Huawei has been releasing products that look heavily inspired by those from Apple for years. Now, with its new Dongguan headquarters in China, the tech company is setting its sights on something even bigger to clone: all European architecture.Photo by Arjun Kharpal / CNBC
CNBC got a look inside Huawei’s new corporate campus, which is composed of 12 “towns” named and modeled after European cities. Thus, there’s a Granada area that’s modeled after the design of the c

AWS has been on a mini shopping spree since the first of the year. First it picked off Israeli disaster recovery startup CloudEndure last week. This week, it was TSO Logic, a Vancouver startup that helps companies make the most efficient use of cloud resources.
The companies did not share the purchase price.
Amazonconfirmed the purchase by email and referred to the statement on the TSO Logic website from CEO Aaron Rallo. “We are very pleased to share the news that TSO Logicwill be joining

George Kedenburg is a product designer at Instagram whose cute, tech-inspired AR effects have caught on within the community.Kedenburg has created a couple of AR effects inspired by cellphone battery indicators and 1990s desktop aesthetics. Instagram users can follow his effects account and download whichever ones they like. These effects can then be used in their own stories or posts.The image below, for example, is directly inspired by old desktop PCs and programs like Microsoft Paint. It&rsq

CM Group, the organization behind email-centric services like Campaign Monitorand Emma, today announced that it has acquired marketing automation firm Sailthru and the email personalization service Liveclicker. The group did not disclose the acquisition price but noted that the acquisition would bring in about $60 million in additional revenue and 540 new customers, including Bloomberg and Samsung. Both of these acquisitions quietly closed in 2018.
Compared to Sailthru,which had raised a total o

Airbnb,which is expected to go public this year, announced today a number of milestones. For starters, Airbnb says it was profitable on an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) basis for the second year in a row in 2018.
In Q3 2018, Airbnb said it had its strongest quarter ever, where it saw “substantially more” than $1 billion in revenue. The following quarter, Airbnb found a replacement for former CFO Laurence Tosi, who left amid tension between hi

Electric scooter companies are known to brag about their potential to reshape cities by reducing car congestion and pollution. Today, the city of Portland, Oregon, released a trove of data that backs up some of those claims.The data, released by the city’s Bureau of Transportation, offers some of the most detailed analyses of the impact that e-scooter services have had on a city. During a four-month pilot period, Portland residents took 700,369 trips covering 801,887 miles on 2,043 e-scoo

The Federal Aviation Administration is considering loosening its restrictions and allowing drones to be flown over crowds. The proposals, which were first unveiled on Monday, introduce three categories for drones, with varying restrictions on how they could be flown over people. In addition, flying drones at night, which is currently only allowed with explicit permission from the FAA, would be allowed if the drone is equipped with anti-collision lighting and if the pilot completes special train

On Tuesday, a group of 90 advocacy groups penned a letter to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, requesting that the companies pledge not to sell facial recognition technology to the government.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) were among the groups that pressed these companies. The letter marks mounting pressure on some of Silicon Valley’s most influential compani

DuckDuckGo has spent the last few years making the case that it’s the search engine that can protect your privacy, and now it’s trying to bolster that claim with a new partner: Apple. It is announcing that Apple Maps will now power its local search results on both desktop and mobile web browsers. Apple Maps will be the default provider for address and local searches, and it will also be the map you see when you click for more results. DuckDuckGo says that it will now have “imp

Walk into the new Southern California flagship location for location-based VR company Dreamscape Immersive, and the sights and sounds of the bustling shopping center it’s located in quickly fade away. A large clock hangs over a wooden concierge desk, while a pair of monitors advertises “departure times” for the location’s trio of immersive experiences, using three-letter abbreviations that echo an airport more than a movie theater or arcade.
The transition away from real

The Sonos Beam soundbar is $319 at West Elm when you use the offer code GIVEME20 at checkout. This is the lowest price that we’ve seen (the closest being $349 on Black Friday). As part of the promo, West Elm is offering free shipping, though it could take anywhere from one to three weeks to arrive.
If the Beam is on your wishlist, you should act quickly because, according to the terms, this promotion isn’t actually supposed to work for Sonos products even though it currently does, s

Amazon is now including its upgraded Alexa voice remote with its entry-level $39.99 Fire TV Stick, replacing the old, basic remote that the company previously included.
The Alexa voice remote for Fire TVs adds a bunch of new and useful features to the streaming device — specifically, the ability to directly control things like power, volume, and mute on your TV without having to fumble around for another remote, thanks to the inclusion of IR blasters.
Amazon has already offered the upgrad

An open-source hardware project promises to keep Amazon and Google’s smart assistants from listening in on your private conversations by constantly creating white noise, as first spotted by Fast Company.
The gadget, called Alias, is an always-listening speaker, but it only connects to the internet during the initial setup process. That way, Alias stays “off the grid” while you’re using it, preventing your conversations from leaving the device, Bjørn Karmann, one o

Netflix subscribers in the United States are about to see a price hike across all subscription tiers.The service’s most popular plan will increase from $11 to $13 per month for HD streaming. Netflix’s most expensive plan, which offers 4K content and up to four simultaneous streams on different devices, will increase from $14 to $16. And the service’s basic plan, which doesn’t offer HD, will raise from $8 to $9.
These price hikes will affect all new subscribers immediatel