Technology news

The password “ji32k7au4a83” might look fairly secure thanks to its seemingly random jumble of letters and numbers. But surprisingly, that exact password has appeared in 141 data breaches, as cataloged by the site Have I Been Pwned and spotted by Gizmodo. It leads to the obvious question: how are so many people using this one password?
Robert Ou, a hardware and software engineer, first spotted this interesting chain of characters and challenged people to figure out why ji32k7au4a83 i

I think the hilarity in this image may speak for itself:
But I will translate anyhow.If you happen to be the kind of person who’s willing to spend $1,295 on one of the least inspiring gadgets we’ve ever reviewed, an utter mess of a phone — and yet also the kind of person who hasn’t already bought one and was miraculously waiting until just now — now is your golden opportunity, your limited-time-only chance to get a free copy of a disappointingly average superhero f

Chinese EV startup NIO no longer plans to make its own cars, the company announced Tuesday. Plans to build a factory in Shanghai — where Tesla is currently constructing the third Gigafactory — have been scuttled, and NIO will instead continue using its current contract manufacturer, state-owned automaker JAC Motors.It’s a stark change in direction for the young company, which started making its first car, the ES8 SUV, for the Chinese market last year. NIO also just went public

Nearly 60 former leaders in the military and national security community sent a letter today urging President Trump not to subject the government’s own authoritative climate reports to an apparently partisan review, The Washington Post reports.The letter references the Post’s recent report that the National Security Council may establish a panel of federal scientists to “reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burn

Amazon may have backed out of New York City, but it’s still got one HQ2 left in Arlington, Virginia. A $23 million contract has been drawn up for a county board to vote on March 16th, and The Washington Post saw the terms of the agreement early.
The contract doesn’t require Amazon to provide construction workers with a living wage, what would typically be called a project labor agreement, and it doesn’t ask Amazon to contribute to Arlington’s affordable housing trust fun

After months of teasing, Italian automotive design-outfit-turned-manufacturer Pininfarina has revealed its first car, the Battista. It’s a sleek $2.6 million hypercar with power that lives up to its brawny-sounding name, and it’s sure to blow nearly any other car in the world off the asphalt, all without using a drop of gas. Just 150 will be made.
Pininfarina says the Battista is “the most powerful road-legal car ever designed and built in Italy.” Considering Italy is th

Ethan Lindenberger, an 18-year-old from Ohio who defied his parents’ anti-vaccination beliefs by getting inoculated, appeared today before Congress to promote vaccine education and outreach campaigns. Lindenberger was one of five people who testified in a Senate committee hearing titled “Vaccines Save Lives: What Is Driving Preventable Disease Outbreaks?” According to experts, the answer is complex — but it’s often centered on a communications gap between medical i

iPhones with third-party batteries are now eligible to be repaired at Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP), according to internal Apple documents reportedly obtained by MacRumors and French outlet iGen. Before, Apple policies stated that customers were ineligible to receive any kind of repair service if their iPhones were previously repaired with any non-original, third-party components, meaning you’d be taking a big risk by replacing an iPhone battery yourself.Accord

US Food and Drug Administrator Scott Gottlieb has resigned, according to the Washington Post. The move, which Gottlieb has said is because he wants to have more time with his family, supposedly came as a surprise to senior White House officials. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar later confirmed the news.Gottlieb, who became FDA commissioner in May 2017, had been a top official at the agency during the George W. Bush administration. When his name was first floated to head the F

Chinese hackers singled out over two dozen universities in the US and around the world in an apparent bid to gain access to maritime military research, according to a report by cybersecurity firm iDefense, which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
The hackers sent universities spear phishing emails doctored to appear as if they came from partner universities, but they unleashed a malicious payload when opened. Universities are traditionally seen as easier targets than US military contracto

Electric car startup Piëch Automotive, named for legendary Volkswagen executive (and grandson of the founder of Porsche) Ferdinand Piëch, arrived at the Geneva Motor Show this week with an electric supercar and an interesting story to tell. According to the company, the all-electric Mark Zero is powered by a new type of battery that will recharge to 80 percent in less than five minutes. If true, that represents a pretty incredible breakthrough in battery technology. But until we see s

Microsoft is reportedly launching a new Xbox One S without a disc drive next month. Windows Central reports that Microsoft will unveil a disc-less “Xbox One S All-Digital Edition,” with preorders expected to be available in mid-April. This new console is said to be available in stores in May, ahead of Microsoft’s typical E3 show in June.
Codenamed “Xbox Maverick,” details on the disc-less console appeared in November. Microsoft is also rumored to be creating an opt

Progressive freshman Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is leading an effort in the House to block the proposed $26 billion merger deal between T-Mobile and Sprint, according to The Hill.
Tlaib is reportedly planning to send letters to Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai and the Justice Department’s antitrust head Makan Delrahim later today asking that the two refuse to approve the merger. Approval from the FCC and DOJ are necessary for the merger to go through. According to

As the first female-led Marvel movie, Captain Marvel is arriving in theaters under a heavy burden of expectations. Even after years of fans clamoring for a Black Widow standalone movie, it took a full decade and 20 Marvel Cinematic Universe films for the franchise to produce a single movie with a woman protagonist. And it took the example of rival studio DC Entertainment releasing Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman to both critical and monetary success. That gives Captain Marvel the triple chall

Dubset, the rights clearance startup that helps DJs use licensed songs in their sets or remixes and monetize the content, has inked a deal with Warner Music. Warner Music Group is one of the biggest music labels to sign a deal with Dubset, meaning a large majority of music that DJs want to play — which includes artists like Daft Punk, Bruno Mars, Cardi B, and Migos — is now available to them with full monetization privileges. Essentially, artists using the Dubset platform are legall

Wefox Group, the Berlin-based insurtech startup behind the consumer-facing insurance app and carrier One and the insurance platform Wefox, has raised $125 million in Series B funding. Notably, the round is led by Abu Dhabi government-owned Mubadala Ventures (which is also an LP in SoftBank’s Vision Fund) and is the first investment from Mubadala’s newly created European Investment Fund. Chinese investor Creditease also participated.
The investment, which Wefox Group says is the first

Google Glass may not have exactly set the world on fire with its vision of an augmented reality, wearable future, but it got a second life back in 2017 with the Google Glass Enterprise Edition. And now, leaks for the second-generation model of that enterprise version are starting to appear, with Google set to add boosted specs and a USB-C port, via 9to5Google.From the outside, the biggest change to the second-gen Google Glass Enterprise Edition is a USB-C port for charging, replacing the magnet

SoundCloud has announced a new deal for college and university students that will let them buy a subscription to SoundCloud Go+ at half price. The offer knocks 50 percent off the price, making it only $4.99 a month for eligible students.
SoundCloud Go+ is the premium consumer tier of SoundCloud, which comes with high-quality audio streaming (256kbps AAC), an ad-free experience, the ability to download tracks for offline listening, and access to SoundCloud’s full catalog, which now encompa

I’m reluctant to say that there’s something for everyone in today’s roundup, but it does include several product categories, from PC components, phones, and wearables to TVs and connected home tech.
Best Buy has several TVs for less than their usual prices as part of its Tax Day sale. If you’re looking to save money on a big 4K HDR smart television, this is a good time take the plunge, what with March Madness coming soon. Toshiba’s 50-inch 4K HDR TV with Amazon Fir

Bumble recently added a filter to its professional networking mode, Bumble Bizz, to give women the option to only match with other women. The immediate response — mainly from men’s rights pages — was, “Isn’t this illegal?”
Part of the outrage stems from the first article written about the feature, from CNBC, with aheadline that said the tool “lets recruiters exclude men.” Another headline from Fortune followed, calling it a “‘Women Onl

In college, Caroline Criado Perez picked up a book on linguistic theory that pointed out that when women hear the word “he” — the default pronoun that is often used to mean “he or she” — they picture a man. “It blew my mind because I realized that I do that, but I had never realized that that’s what I do,” says Criado Perez. “I never realized that I had been going through life blithely picturing men all the time when the gender of the

In K. Chess’ debut novel, Famous Men Who Never Lived, at some point in the past, reality diverged, and an alternate timeline played out alongside our own. Then, that world was devastated by a nuclear attack, and extradimensional refugees started showing up in our own reality. As Chess follows the lives of refugees from that alternate world, she delivers a story about immigration and how those who lose everything they’ve ever known are able to cope with their new reality.Chess introd

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, adult acne is on the rise, affecting up to 15 percent of women. (As if adulting wasn’t already stressful enough!) 
Though topical creams may get the job done for some, there’s a new kind of acne treatment that’s becoming increasingly popular: acne light therapy. Basically, this high-tech solution aims to kill the bacteria that causes acne and prolongs the vicious breakout cycle. It also targets age spots, acne scars, discol