Technology news

A new study says that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithm discriminates based on race and gender, even when advertisers are trying to reach a broad audience. The research backs up a similar claim that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development made last week when it sued Facebook for breaking housing discrimination laws. It also expands the scope of an already potentially damning body of research about online advertising and bias, adding new fuel to the push for regulation.
Numerous

Elon Musk sat stoically in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, hands clasped in front of him, as a federal judge weighed whether to hold him in contempt of court. The proximate cause was a tweet Musk sent in February that the Securities and Exchange Commission argues violated the terms of their settlement. And when the judge ultimately punted on the decision, ordering his lawyers and the SEC to work out their differences and come back in two weeks with a resolution, he seemed relieved.“Take a

Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer admitted last year that the software maker had “a ton of work to do on Windows” for PC gamers. Microsoft is now starting to improve its Xbox integration on PC with the unveiling of a big overhaul for the Game Bar feature in Windows 10. Available for beta testers today, the updated Game Bar now includes widgets that look more like the overlays you’d find in Nvidia’s GeForce Experience.
These widgets include many of the features you&rsqu

Google can now automatically suggest email subject lines for you through Gmail’s Smart Compose feature. The new ability arrived on Gmail today, moving us slightly closer to a future where we just use bots to replace our more mundane communications.
Smart Compose can already guess at the next part of your sentences based on your writing habits, offering suggestions when you’re about to ask someone “to revisit this next week,” or thanking them at the end of an email. It re

Amazon is working on a pair of earbuds with integrated Alexa support that would be designed to compete with other truly wireless headphones, including Apple’s own AirPods, according to a new report from Bloomberg.Like AirPods or Samsung’s Galaxy Buds, the Amazon earbuds are said to be truly wireless headphones that won’t need clips or cables to stay in people’s ears — but the big differencebetween those competitors and Amazon’s offering is support for the com

I’ve spent the past 18 hours in Chicago not feasting on hot dogs or deep-dish pizza, but kicking the tires on Verizon’s just-launched 5G mobile network. Yesterday, the leading US carrier triumphantly announced the launch of its 5G service in “select areas of Chicago and Minneapolis,” and that “for the first time ever, customers can access a commercial 5G network with the world’s first commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone.” Verizon welcoming cust

Microsoft employees have been sharing stories of sexual harassment and discrimination in an internal email chain that exceeds 90 pages, as first reported by Quartz. Many say that they had brought up initial complaints to HR, but no action was taken. Now that the email chain has taken off, senior human resources employees say they will look into it.
Beginning on March 20th, one employee sent out an inquiry to other women at Microsoft about how to tackle the glass ceiling, and stories about demea

Amazon will have to let shareholders vote on proposals to curb sales of its controversial facial recognition product, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a letter to the company this week.Activist shareholders have pushed proposals that, if approved, would require Amazon to audit its Rekognition tool for potential civil rights concerns, and to stop selling the tool to government agencies until a civil rights review is completed.Proposal asks Amazon to stop selling to government agenc

Snap today announced Bitmoji Party, its first original multiplayer game for Snapchat. Bitmoji Party offers players a series of lightly challenging mini-games for the mobile phone, and is designed to be played by small groups. If successful, it could attract new users to Snapchat while encouraging them to spend more time inside the app.Bitmoji Party, which casts players as their company’s popular personalized avatars, will begin rolling out today around the world, the company said today at

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his now ex-wife, MacKenzie Bezos, announced a divorce settlement on Thursday, assuring that Mr. Bezos will retain 75 percent of his stock in the company and all of the pair’s joint holdings in Blue Origin and The Washington Post.Prior to the divorce, the couple owned 16 percent of Amazon stock, worth over $140 billion. Because the couple married before the founding of Amazon, the stock was considered common property, and there was significant speculation that

In a bid to attract more users and advertisers, Snap today said that its pioneering Stories product would soon be available for developers to insert into their own apps. Tinder and video chat app Houseparty are two of the companies that have agreed to put Snap Stories into their own products, with the Tinder integration expected sometime this summer.The new integrations are part of App Stories, a new set of features inside Snap Kit, the company’s developer platform. When the integrations

Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Shinichirō Watanabe and Keiko Nobumoto’s revered 1998 anime series Cowboy Bebop has its main cast, and Star Trek’s John Cho is set to lead the group.Cho will play bonafide cool bounty hunter Spike Spiegel in Netflix’s series, according to a new report from Variety. Cho is joined by Mustafa Shakir, Daniella Pineda, and Alex Hassell, who will play Spike’s ex-cop partner Jet Black, amnesiac con artist Faye Valentine, and hitman

Snap is taking its augmented reality tools to a much bigger canvas. The company today announced Landmarkers, a set of lenses aimed at bringing new life to some of the world’s most famous locations. The lenses, which were designed by Snapchat users, transform locations like the Eiffel Tower into animated characters — one of which throws up rainbows. They’re rolling out inside Snapchat starting today.
At launch, Landmarkers are available in five locations around the world. In ad

Claire Denis’ grotesque, mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind new science fiction movie High Life opens with a series of peculiar images. A lush garden covers the floor and walls of a spaceship greenhouse. A toddler cries from an improvised playpen. An astronaut tries to console her from outside the ship, and accidentally loses one of his tools, which drops down into the void below him — emphasis on down, as it appears gravity is still asserting its will far outside the Solar System. All thes

Proto, the company WhatsApp has partnered with on its new Checkpoint Tipline service, has clarified that the service is “not a helpline” and is meant first and foremost as a research project. In an FAQ posted on its website, the company said “The Checkpoint tipline is primarily used to gather data for research, and is not a helpline that will be able to provide a response to every user.” A WhatsApp spokesperson later confirmed to Buzzfeed News that the announcement hadn&

It’s rare that the stars of the year’s biggest movie reunite for an entirely separate feature film a month later, but that’s not exactly what happened with Unicorn Store, a new movie hitting Netflix on Friday. It’s the second 2019 film starring Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson; the first, Captain Marvel, will likely remain the highest-grossing movie of the year until Avengers: Endgame (definitely co-starring Larson, possibly co-starring Jackson) comes out on April 26th.

The Palm phone launched last year as a companion device, something that shares a phone number with your smartphone and costs an extra $10 a month. The 3.3-inch Android handset was marketed as an alternative to your main phone that you could grab on the weekends. Now, Verizon is also selling it as a standalone device. It’s currently on sale through April for just $199, which is a hearty discount from the original $350 price tag.If you read and watched our review of the Palm phone, you&rsqu

Today, Amazon announced that six health care companies and providers will allow customers to access some of their personalized medical information by talking to Alexa-enabled devices. The announcement marks another huge move for Amazon into the health care business.The main health privacy law in the US — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) — typically ensures that health information can only be shared between patients and those in the health care

Amazon plans to launch a constellation of 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit in order to provide internet to “unserved and underserved communities around the world.” The so-called Project Kuiper initiative first came to light after GeekWire spotted that Kuiper Systems LLC recently made three sets of filings with the ITU, the international organization in charge of coordinating satellite orbits. Amazon confirmed that Kuiper Systems is one of its projects.Amazon is the latest in a

Tonal is today announcing its series C financing that it hopes will allow the company to bring its at-home gym to even more homes. The funding round shows investors’ excitement around the new generation of personal exercise equipment that combines on-demand training with smart features. Tonal,like Peloton, offer features previously unavailable outside of gyms and with this injection of capital, the company expects to build new personal features and invest in marketing and retail experience

A tiny robotic spacecraft from Israel just inserted itself into orbit around the Moon in a critical maneuver that sets the vehicle up for a landing on the lunar surface next week. If the touchdown is successful, the spacecraft will become the first private vehicle to land on the Moon.
The lander now speeding around the Moon is Beresheet, which is built and operated by Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL. On February 21st, Beresheet launched to space on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which deployed the

Fresh from closing a notable investment from Airbnb, India’s OYO has expanded its footprint into Japan. The move comes through a joint venture with investor SoftBank — which led OYO’s $1 billion round last year through its Vision Fund — which will cover hotel-based accommodation and home rentals.
Financial details around the joint venture were not disclosed. An OYO representative declined to go into details when asked.
OYO started out in India, where it initially aggregat

Game of Thrones fans, rejoice! You will now be able to watch the final season of the HBO series through Roku. The company announced today that it is adding HBO as a premium subscription through its Roku Channel.Roku began selling premium add-on subscriptions to users back in January, allowing viewers to buy subscriptions for Showtime, Starz, Epix, and other networks. Users can pay for the channels directly through the Roku Channel. It’s a similar model to what Amazon does for Amazon Prime

Alexa is moving into healthcare. Following a trial of Amazon’s smart speakers in patients’ rooms at Cedars-Sinai, the company this morning announced an invite-only program allowing select developers to create and launch HIPAA-compliant healthcare skills for Alexa. The skills allow consumers to ask the virtual assistant for help with things like booking an appointment, accessing hospital post-discharge instructions, checking on the status of a prescription delivery, and more.
Amazon s

We have two great deep dives on the future of scooters and the future of media. Thanks to the many of you who joined our live conference call today with Kate Clark and Kirsten Korosec, where we talked all things Lyft today. If you weren’t able to join us, we will be publishing the transcript in the next few days, and we are going to try to embed the audio as well (we’ve heard your requests and working out a solution as we speak).The Future of Scooters
 
Our long-time transportat

French startup OpenClassrooms is announcing a new partnership for a masters-level online program. Students who enroll in this program will access a fully online program about artificial intelligence. Eventually, future graduates will join companies — Microsoft will likely hire some of them.
If you aren’t familiar with OpenClassrooms,the company first started with basic massive open online course content for people willing to learn more about a particular topic. The startup then start

The return of Palm has been a strange one. It’s the small device no one knew they needed — and to be honest, probably didn’t. When I first showed it to some coworkers, they were actually pretty psyched. If nothing else, the 3.3-inch in device was an interesting one. The design was nice, too — if only because it was a pretty straightforward iPhone knockoff.
But enthusiasm died quickly as the reality of the product set in. Among the many complaints was the fact that Palm an