Technology news

Tesla will stop factoring estimated fuel savings into the price of its cars in Germany, according to Reuters. The German Centre for Protection against Unfair Competition said Wednesday that Tesla agreed to be more straightforward with pricing on its website by March 20th.
The order pages of Tesla’s website currently feature multiple prices for each car, including ones that include “incentives and gas savings.” These adjusted prices show up next to the pictures of the company&r

I’d like to think that everyone who reads TNW knows that vaccines work. That they don’t cause autism, as demonstrated time and time again. That autism doesn’t need the extra stigma and is most certainly preferable to sick and dead kids. That vaccines keep everyone safer, not just the vaccinated. But there are people who don’t believe in vaccines, and they are often led to those beliefs by misinformation spread on social media. Now Facebook says it’s taking a m

Chicago may be a no-go for The Boring Company's high-speed underground tunnel system, but there's always Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced a plan this week to build an underground "Loop" tunnel at the Las Vegas Convention Center — yes, the home of the annual consumer tech show known as CES. More than 182,000 attendees were at the show last year, and they absolutely mobbed every train, taxi, and CES-provided shuttle. 
The proposed Loop is expected to

Gaming company Valve confirmed today that it has laid off several full-time employees and contractors, possibly from its virtual reality hardware team. “Last month, 13 full time employees were let go and a portion of our contractor agreements were terminated. It’s an unfortunate part of business, but does not represent any major changes at the company. We thank those affected for their contribution and wish them well in future endeavors,” spokesperson Doug Lombardi told The Ve

Blizzard today announced it’s partnering with GOG.com to bring back the original Diablo, in all its 90s RPG glory. This is the first time the game will be available digitally, and both companies have made an effort to ensure gamers are getting the real deal. According to Blizzard, the version of Diablo that’s coming to GOG will be an “authentic Diablo experience” allowing players to “play the game as it was in 1996, with period-appropriate 20 FP

Twitter is adding new options to its reporting process for tweets that share personal information, adding much more specific fields that users can highlight when submitting reports.
Now, when reporting a tweet that contains private information, users will be taken to an additional menu allowing them to specify whether the tweet contains contact information, a home address or physical location, financial information, or ID pictures or numbers. The new feature should be rolling out today on both

If you could request anyone and anything, what would it be?
The new "summoning circle" meme has Twitter users requesting everything, from not being depressed to a new season of The Office. In one of the first versions, Twitter user @depressbrethren tweeted a circle of candles surrounding serotonin. 
"Hope this works," they said. summoning circle, hope this works 🕯🕯🕯🕯 🕯🕯 serotonin🕯 🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯
&mda

YouTube is dealing another blow to conspiracy theorists and disinformation peddlers.
 The video platform has started rolling out text prompts, known as “information panels,” that provide fact checks when users search certain terms or phrases. The feature is currently being rolled out to a limited number of users in India, one country in particular where the spread of fake news has fatal consequences.An example of YouTube's information pane feature which fact checks search result

Disney+, the company’s upcoming streaming service, will carry Disney’s entire catalog of animated films, ending Disney’s long-standing “vault” program. CEO Bob Iger told shareholders today that Disney+ “at some point fairly soon after launch” will carry films that “traditionally have been kept in a ‘vault’ and brought out basically every few years.”That’s a major policy change for the company, which, until now, has delibera

Captain Marvel may have a kickass female hero, two new alien races, and the solution to all of our Infinity War problems — but as any rational, totally objective cat lover can tell you, this multi-million dollar tentpole is mostly (if not entirely) about Goose the cat.
Carol Danvers' feline companion (who's like trying to not outshine her, but also can't hold back his star power?) marks the first starring role for a cat in the MCU. This landmark appearance continues a long legacy of on-scr

Under fire for serving up anti-vaccine propaganda, Facebook announced today that it will remove groups and pages that share anti-vaccine misinformation from its recommendations. The company also pledged that it will stop allowing advertisers to target people who Facebook’s advertising algorithm identifies as interested in “vaccine controversies.”The news comes three weeks after Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a stern letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, criticizing Facebook an

Facebook is crawling with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Now the company will finally do something about it.
The company announced a series of new policies aimed at combatting the spread of anti-vaccine content on its platform. The new policies, which will make it harder to find false information about vaccines, come after mounting public pressure to take a more active role in fighting viral misinformation critics say has contributed to the outbreaks of preventable diseases.
In some ways, the

It's 2019. More people are watching movies and TV shows on their smartphones and laptops instead of on an actual TV. In fact, there's a whole generation of people who "cut the cord" and never looked back. 
However, there are a lot of amazing TV shows like The Walking Dead on AMC, The Voice on NBC, and The Bachelor on ABC that are so buzzworthy that they have to be seen live and cannot wait for Hulu or some other site to post the episode the next day. Otherwise, you risk catching spoilers or

By now, you might have heard the news that TNW has sold a majority stake to the — and we don’t use this word lightly — venerable Financial Times. For us, it’s an honor and a tremendous vote of confidence in our business. Yesterday we put out a press release that announced the news and gave some basic details on the reasons and strategy behind it. That’s nice, but we’re also a publisher with multiple ways of disseminating information. One of those ways is

Last week, review site Rotten Tomatoes disabled a couple of long-standing features to fight a new kind of internet culture war. In advance of Captain Marvel’s release, it stopped letting users leave comments before a movie launches, and it removed a badge showing the percentage of people who indicated they wanted to see the film. “Unfortunately,” a staff blog post said, “we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling.”
Most online

A previously reported Facebook vulnerability was similarly found in the company’s Messenger product, according to security research group Imperva. Nearly a year ago, Imperva researchers discovered that, through Messenger, a hacker could use “any website to expose who you have been messaging with.” The bug was disclosed to Facebook in May and subsequently patched.
Hackers could target a Facebook user’s web browser and exploit iframe elements to see which friends the user

Airbnb today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire last-minute hotel booking app HotelTonight for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition comes just a little over a year after Airbnb first launched Airbnb Plus, a subsection of its service that includes boutique hotels and traditional bed and breakfasts.
Airbnb had been working over the years to expand its home rental marketplace into a travel platform, which now includes concierge services and optional tours for select bookings. Since lau

As the weather warms up slightly, it might be time to revisit old superhero classics and recent blockbusters. We haven’t reached springtime, but the new crop of summer action movies is already being phased in. With Captain Marvel in theaters and Avengers: Endgame’s release in April, why not start getting ready for the season?Hulu has the entire Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, from 2005’s Batman Begins to The Dark Knight Rises. This is DC at its best — not just dark and

Apple CEO Tim Cook has slyly changed his name to “Tim Apple” on Twitter, an apparent reference to the president of the United States, perhaps mistakenly, messing up his name at a meeting. Technically, it’s “Tim ,” but only Mac and iOS users can see the Apple logo symbol.
Last night at a typical American Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting, President Trump flubbed Cook’s name and unmistakably called him “Tim Apple.” Shortly after The Ve

T-Mobile says it’ll launch a 5G home internet service with fast speeds, easy installation, and low prices that will reach half of all US homes within five years and meaningfully shake up the woefully anti-competitive cable industry. There’s just one catch: T-Mobile says this only comes true if its Sprint merger is approved.
In a blog post and Federal Communications Commission filing today, T-Mobile outlines in the most detail yet what its 5G home internet service will look like. The

The first ever test flight of SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon capsule will come to an end tomorrow, when the spacecraft detaches from the International Space Station and attempts to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean using a suite of parachutes. This is the last major milestone of the capsule’s mission — and perhaps the biggest challenge the Crew Dragon faces yet.
The vehicle needs to prove its novel shape and parachute system can survive the plunge through Earth’s atmosphere in

As Airbnb gears up for its big leap into the public markets, it’s expanding its accommodations platform to include more than just treehouses and quirky homes.
Today, the company has confirmed its intent to acquire HotelTonight, the developer of a hotel-booking application that lets travelers arrange last-minute accommodations. The deal was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, which wrote in January that negotiations for the transaction had “gone cold.”
Airbnb is expe