Technology news

Brian Krebs has revealed that a company that primarily works in real estate insurance has left as many as 885 million records exposed on its website — going back to 2003. First American Financial Corp’s big mistake should have been obvious to anybody who would have given a second thought to security. If you had the URL for any document on its website, you could simply add or subtract one to a number in the URL to access another document.Given the type of business this company is in,

Snap is in talks with Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group to license songs for users to embed in posts, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The deal would give users access to a broad catalog of songs to post on Snapchat, much like the features available for Instagram Stories and TikTok.
The licensing deal would come at a time when tech companies are increasingly leaning into music features as a core part of their offerings. The popularity of these vid

News just in from security reporter Brian Krebs: Fortune 500 real estate insurance giant First American exposed approximately 885 million sensitive records because of a bug in its website.
Krebs reported that the company’s website was storing and exposing bank account numbers, statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers and driving license images in a sequential format — so anyone who knew a valid web address for a document simply had to change the address by one di

Julian Shapiro ContributorShare on Twitter Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing agency that trains you to become a marketing professional. He also writes at Julian.com. More posts by this contributorHow do you hire a great growth marketer? How do startups actually get their content marketing to work?
Every company’s online acquisition strategy is out in the open. If you know where to look.
This post shows you exactly where to look, and how to reverse engineer

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. One of the advantages Android has over iOS is the control Google gives you over its operating system. Case in point is Android’s ‘developer options,’ a secret menu that provides all sorts of useful controls, including the ability to change animation speeds, choose a Bluetooth codec, or limit the number of apps that can run in the backgr

The following is a spoiler-free review of Netflix's The Perfection.After months of critic hype and fervent fan speculation, Netflix's mysterious and controversial The Perfection finally began streaming on Friday — and already, it's tearing the horror community apart. 
As vast and as varied as the many things that scare us, horror fans are a unique bunch. Whether you're dealing with a pack of Conjuring stans or an offbeat group of indie pushers, nailing down exactly what will (and wha

When you watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, do you find yourself criticizing HAL 9000’s machinations and thinking, “I could do better than that!” If so, Observation may be right up your alley. In it you play a space station AI called SAM that is called upon by the humans on board to help resolve a deadly mystery — though you may be a part of it yourself.
The game takes place in the near future on board the titular space station, a sort of expanded version of the ISS. You are bo

By all accounts, the OnePlus 7 Pro is the nicest phone released by the company yet — with a higher price that reflects as much. But some early buyers are reporting that they’ve noticed phantom screen presses, where apps are responding as if something on the screen had been tapped even when the phone is sitting idle.OnePlus is aware of the issue, according to Android Police, and says it’s treating it as a high priority after managing to successfully reproduce the problem. If yo

To those outside of YouTube, Social Blade is just another analytics site that tracks subscriber growth or loss. But it’s not. Social Blade has become a crucial component to being a YouTube creator, providing creators with numbers to prove why they matter as a community.
Now, Social Blade’s time might be up. YouTube’s product team is introducing a change to the platform in August that will hide live subscriber counts. The change will affect third-party sites that use YouTube&rs

Swedish music hardware company Teenage Engineering has developed a cult following around their design-forward synthesizers. Now it’s expanded into another portion of the music industry and launched a record label. Naturally called Teenage Engineering Records, the company says the label only has two rules for releases: “it needs to be a good song,” and the song must use at least one Teenage Engineering instrument.
The label’s first release is “You’re In Love w

Erik Finmanis a twenty-something bitcoin maximalist as famous for his precocity as he is for his $12 bet on the currency a few years ago.
Now, Finman, who built his first company while still in high school, is launching a new startup called CoinBits, which allows users to passively invest in bitcoin.
The idea, according to Finman, is to democratize access to the currency by letting everyday folks invest nominal sums through well-known mechanisms like roundups on transactions made with a credit o

Livekick, a startup that gives customers access to one-on-one personal training and yoga from their home (or hotel room, or elsewhere), is announcing that it has raised $3 million in seed funding.
The company was founded by entrepreneur Yarden Tadmor and fitness expert Shayna Schmidt. Tadmor said that with all his travel for work, his fitness routine “really eroded,” so he contacted Schmidt and asked her to train him remotely — they’d connect via FaceTime, he’d moun

If you were horrified by how easy it was for someone to create a fake viral video that made Nancy Pelosi look as if she was slurring her words on stage, you weren't alone. Facebook is now taking action to stop the misleading video, which has over 2.5 million views, from spreading further — though it won't go as far as deleting it entirely.
On Wednesday, a video that apparently showed the Democratic congresswoman seemingly "drunk" went viral, first on Facebook, and then on other social medi

Last night’s successful Starlink launch was a big one for SpaceX — its heaviest payload ever, weighed down by 60 communications satellites that will eventually be part of a single constellation providing internet to the globe. That’s the plan, anyway — and the company pulled the curtain back a bit more after launch, revealing a few more details about the birds it just put in the air.
SpaceXand CEO Elon Musk have been extremely tight-lipped about the Starlink satellites, o

If you've spent any time on planet Earth in the past five years, chances are that someone has recommended that you "Take some time for self-care." Maybe a friend has encouraged you to enjoy a "Treat yo' self" kind of day. Maybe they’ve told you to make yourself a bubble bath or get a gel manicure or download a self-care app that can teach you how to breathe better.
At the heart of all this advice is the same operational principle: If you want to feel better, you need to do the labor yourse

Listen, we know that Memorial Day Weekend is all about staying off the computer and keeping far away from anything resembling work (MDW is for the beach, isn’t it?). 
But, being on the computer, specifically a laptop, doesn’t have to be all business — they work just as well for leisure times like watching Netflix, playing video games, and a bunch of other stuffAnd they’re portable, AKA perfectly fine to take along on your beach trips (just keep the sand away from the

Hopefully you didn’t cancel your HBO subscription now that Game of Thrones has officially reached its bittersweet ending (well, maybe the “sweet” part is up to your own discretion). There are still plenty of great shows on the channel, including Barry and Chernobyl. If you’re at all interested in checking them out, there’s only one way you should be watching them: On a nice 4K TV. 
Lucky for you, there are a ton of great TVs on sale (4K and otherwise) for Memor

Amazon can’t seem to decide whether it wants its own mini-stores inside shopping malls. After the company decided earlier this year to close the many kiosks it had maintained at malls, a few new ones have sprung up. As Business Insider notes, Amazon’s revamped mall presence is being called “Presented by Amazon.”Unlike the previous mall kiosks, which were showcases for Amazon’s Echo, Kindle e-readers, Fire TV, and other first-party hardware, this new approach offers

Evan J. Zimmerman Contributor Evan J. Zimmerman is an entrepreneur, investor, and writer. He is the Chairman of Jovono and Chairman of the Clinton Health Access Initiative technology council. He is a partner and director in Mighty Mug/Mighty Products, Inc, and chairman of Brush Up Club, an innovative oral health company.
On January 12, 2016, Grindrannounced it had sold a 60% controlling stake in the company to Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese gaming firm, valuing the company at $155 million. Cham

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. WikiLeaks’ Assange charged under the Espionage Act in a ‘major test case’ for press freedom
Julian Assange,founder of whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, is facing more than a dozen additional charges from U.S. federal prosecutors.
According to the newly unsealed indictment, Assan

Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi’s next big-budget project, a live-action version of the beloved manga series Akira, finally has a release date, The Wrap reports: May 21st, 2021.Waititi’s project, which is being distributed by Warner Bros., was first announced in 2017. The announcement came just before Waititi’s first major blockbuster film, Thor: Ragnarok, was released. Although Waititi built up a cult-like fan base around himself thanks to movies like What We Do in the

CrossFit, the branded workout regimen, deleted its Facebook and Instagram pages earlier this week and explained the reasoning through an impassioned press release. The announcement lists various reasons for the indefinite suspension of its accounts, including accusations that Facebook’s News Feeds are “censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists.”The issue stemmed from the deletion of a South Africa-based Facebook group, Bantin

Hulu has ordered a new horror anthology series based on Nathan Ballingrud’s short-story collection North American Lake Monsters, according to Deadline. It’ll be produced by Babak Anvari and Lucan Toh, the creative team behind the horror film Wounds, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. They’re already familiar with Ballingrud’s work: Wounds is based on another Ballingrud story, The Visible Filth. Anvari wrote and directed the movie, and Toh was one of

The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, staged a race recently between two Tesla vehicles: one on the road in normal traffic, and the other in the 1.14-mile tunnel that runs underneath SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. Suffice to say, it wasn’t much of a contest.The tunnel Tesla was the clear victor, emerging out onto the road a full 3 minutes and 8 seconds before the one took surface streets. In fact, the car in the tunnel reached the finish line before th

Imagine what $100,000 cash could do for your startup dreams. If you’re an early-stage startup founder determined to take your business to the top, it’s time to stop dreaming and get down to the serious task of competing in Startup Battlefield, our premier pitch-off that takes place at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4.
Step one is ridiculously quick and easy. Simply fill out this application form. Applying to and participating in Startup Battlefield is 100% free, so you

The effects of the United States’ Huawei ban continue to grow, with the Chinese hardware company now barred from being a member of the SD Association (the trade group that agrees upon standardized specs for SD and microSD cards). In other words, Huawei is no longer allowed to put official SD or microSD card support in its future phones or laptops, via 9to5Google.Existing devices will still work
The SD Association has confirmed to Android Authority that Huawei’s removal from the grou

Altered video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) circulated across social media networks this week in what appeared to be a right-wing attempt to discredit and embarrass her. One of the clips, which was shared by President Donald Trump on Twitter, was edited in a way that muddled and repeated her words, making her appear confused or even ill.
One video, first reported by The Washington Post, shows Pelosi speaking at an event held by the Center for American Progress on Wednesday. According to

Microsoft is revealing some of the more finer details about its upcoming xCloud game streaming service today. The software maker has been testing the service with employees recently, allowing them to take the service anywhere to test streaming of Xbox games. Microsoft is currently building out the servers required for xCloud, but it’s revealing today that the service “has the technical capability to stream more than 3,500 games” without developers needing to make any changes t

The internet has won. The release date of the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie has been pushed back to February 2020.
While normally the public doesn't really know what causes these kinds of delays, this time the public caused this delay thanks to the barrage of complaints levied against the design of the titular hedgehog after the first trailer dropped in April.
Sonic the Hedgehog director Jeff Fowler announced the delay on Twitter Friday.Taking a little more time to make Sonic just right.#

Attention, active audiophiles: You've got a friend in Walmart lately. 
For the second month in a row, the retail giant is having a sale on one of our favorite pairs of headphones for runs and workouts: the Bose SoundSport in-ear headphones.
If you head over to Walmart's website right now, you can pick up a pair for just $49. That's a 50% discount on their usual retail price, and 95 cents less than what you'd pay had you bought them directly from Bose during its own Memorial Day sale. (Hey,

The Vergecast roundtable rides again.Of course the big news of the week has been revocation of Huawei’s Android license so The Vergecast brings back policy editor Russell Brandom to the show to decipher this ordeal as well as its larger implications.Second half of the show, executive editor Dieter Bohn explains how Apple is tweaking its troubled keyboard design on its current and future Macbooks. Editor-in-chief and host Nilay Patel ends the show with updates on the T-Mobile and Sprint me