Technology news

Image: The Verge The CIA allegedly launched a secret operation to troll Chinese officials and turn public opinion against them through leaked intelligence and negative news on social media.Reuters reports the operation began in 2019 and was also aimed at causing paranoia within Xi Jinping’s government. CIA agents reportedly made fake social media accounts to spread rumors, such as allegations that Communist Party members hid ill-gotten wealth outside the country, and criticize Chinese gove

Photo Illustration by Adrien Fillon/NurPhoto via Getty Images Pornhub has disabled its site in Texas in response to the state’s online age verification law. The site now displays a message to users in the state that says having to provide an ID when accessing an adult website “is not an effective solution for protecting users online.”
Last year, Texas enacted a previously blocked age verification law (HB 1181) that requires users to upload photos of their government IDs (or use

The third Starship test flight has fared far better than SpaceX’s previous two attempts. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX’s massive Starship took off from the company’s Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 9:25AM ET on Thursday morning.This test flight was far more successful than its two predecessors, as the vehicle became “the first Starship to complete its full-duration ascent burn” after the six Raptor engines powered it to its expected orbit. It completed th

With Max, you can stream sports as well as shows and movies like Wonka and The Last of Us. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Whether you’re looking for cheap cable-free ways to watch the NCAA championship games or are simply worried about Max’s forthcoming password-sharing crackdown, today’s Max deal arrives at the perfect time. Right now, Max is taking an additional 30 percent off of its annual subscription for one year, for a total 40 percent discount compared to the cost of

Keep an eye out on your home and what goes on around it with deals on Google Nest security cameras and video doorbells at Amazon. You can't put a price on peace of mind, but you can definitely save some cash with this sale. Google Nest security camera and video doorbell deals:Best security camera dealGoogle Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor)$139.98(save $40.01) Get DealBest security camera with floodlight dealGoogle Nest Cam with Floodlight$219.98 at Amazon(save $60.01) Get DealBest wireless video doo

Google I/O 2024 will be on May 14th.Google’s next I/O developer conference will kick off exactly two months from now on May 14th. Just like last year, the I/O 2024 keynote will be “broadcast in front of a limited live audience” and available for anyone to watch virtually.This year’s I/O will likely focus on AI, especially now that Google released its new flagship AI model, Gemini, and its smaller version, Gemma.The Gemini bot’s image generator caused a controversy t

Best Shark Days deals:Best robot vacuum dealShark IQ 2-in-1 Robot Vacuum and Mop$188 at Walmart(save $261.99) Get DealBest upright vacuum dealShark Vertex DuoClean Upright Multi-Surface Vacuum179.99 at Walmart(save $170.99) Get Deal
Have you started your spring cleaning regimen yet? Now's a great time to save on robot vacuums, upright vacuums, and more you need to cut through all the grime and debris with Walmart's Shark Days sale. From now through March 31, you can score discounts on vacuums, m

Image: iFixit via YouTube The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division filed a comment with the US Copyright Office asking for an expanded exemption to copyright law for the right to repair certain devices. The comment was submitted on Thursday, amid the Copyright Office’s deliberations over whether to issue new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that prohibits breaking software copy protection. Under Se

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge Even after Apple was hit with a $2 billion fine in the European Union over years-old complaints from Spotify about its App Store rules, Spotify says Apple is stonewalling updates issued in compliance with that very ruling. In an email to the European Commission obtained by The Verge, Spotify writes that Apple has “neither acknowledged nor responded to Spotify’s submission” to bring subscription pricing information into the app, preventing it from

Have you ever listened to a song and effectively time traveled? Maybe it's a slow jam that takes you back to a grade school dance, where putting your arms around your crush's shoulders felt like the most thrilling thing in the world. Maybe it's a rock song that transports you to your first real concert, the smell of sweat in the press of strangers' bodies as dizzying as the music itself.  Maybe it's a song that takes you back to that car and that night and that kiss.The Greatest Hits takes

A creepy demo of "Figure 01," a humanoid, conversational robot, has hit the internet — and I can't believe it's not a deleted scene from I, Robot.In the demo, Figure 01, packed with OpenAI-tech, is asked what it can "see." Showing off its visual recognition prowess, the avant-garde robot accurately explains what's in front of it: a red apple, a drying rack with dishes, and the man who asked Figure 01 the question.SEE ALSO:ChatGPT: How to make it read responses aloud
OK, a bit uncanny, but

Image: Netflix A seventh season of Black Mirror is on the way. Netflix has confirmed that Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology will return in 2025 and that the new season will be six episodes long.
There aren’t many details yet, of course. But the company does say that, while it’ll otherwise consist of new stories, one of the episodes will be a sequel to “USS Callister” from season 4, which starred Jesse Plemons. “Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS

The SpyraGo electric water blaster | Image: Spyra Would you pay $180 for a USB-C water blaster that blasts an entire shot glass full of liquid every time you pull the trigger? That’s been Spyra’s pitch for the past six years, but today it’s revealing a new toy that costs (and weighs) less than a third of its previous products.
The new SpyraGo will cost just $54 when it arrives on March 26th, a price finally low enough to tempt me! It’s five inches shorter, between one and

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is expanding its $20 monthly Copilot Pro subscription to more markets today, after launching the AI-powered assistant for consumers in January. The expansion sees Copilot Pro available in 222 countries in total, and Microsoft is launching a free one-month trial to entice consumers to subscribe to its AI vision of the future.
Copilot Pro includes priority access to the latest OpenAI models, the ability to build your own Copilot GPT, and access to Copilot inside Office a

In his State of the Union address last week, President Joe Biden urged Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill “with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen.” The bill would have, among other things, funded “100 more high-tech drug detection machines to significantly increase the ability to screen and stop vehicles from smuggling fentanyl into America.”
The high-tech drug detection machines are actually just X-rays — really high-res

Computer-controlled video game characters aren't anything new. Non-playable characters or NPCs are longtime staples of gaming. However, Google's AI research lab, DeepMind, has announced work on something distinct and new in computer-controlled gameplay: SIMA, which stands for Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent.Tweet may have been deletedUnlike NPCs, Google DeepMind's AI-controlled gaming companion isn't programmed into a specific game to act a certain way or respond to certain human-pro

Midjourney, the AI image generator known for creating fake images of Donald Trump's arrest, has banned image prompts that include the name of the presidential hopeful as well as current president Joe Biden. The decision comes as experts and advocates warn about the fear of AI technology being used to influence voters and spread misinformation ahead of the 2024 presidential election.SEE ALSO:Victims of nonconsensual deepfakes arm themselves with copyright law to fight the content's spread
Tests o

Even if you're not a nervous flyer, you'd be forgiven for feeling a little uneasy about flying on a Boeing plane these days. The aircraft manufacturing giant has had a slew of issues lately, which Mashable covered in detail. The TL;DR? There have been entire panels flying off mid-air, emergency landings, detached tires, and more. All this after a couple of high-profile, deadly crashes a few years back and multiple investigations into lax safety standards. SEE ALSO:What's going on with Boeing pla

Image: Wooting Wooting’s 60HE is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, gaming keyboards on the market. That’s all thanks to Rapid Trigger, a feature that speeds up how quickly you can activate a key to respond in games like Valorant or Counter-Strike 2. Now, Wooting is launching the 80HE, a larger keyboard with an 80 percent layout. It comes with a new “Rappy Snappy” feature that combines with Rapid Trigger to make it even faster to pull off moves like stra

The SEC claims that Musk “has done everything he can to delay the completion of this matter.” | Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images The officials assessing whether Elon Musk violated federal securities law during his acquisition of Twitter are growing tired of his alleged attempts to stall their investigation. In a new filing on Wednesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Musk of trying to “misrepresent” the scope of its investigation, c

Amazon announced Thursday that it will host a new "Big Spring Sale" later this month — and, in a deviation from the retailer's flagship Prime Day sales, the deals won't be entirely exclusive to members of its paid Prime subscription service.Here's a rundown of everything we know about the Big Spring Sale so far.When is Amazon's Big Spring Sale?The Big Spring Sale will officially run from Wednesday, March 20 at midnight PST through Monday, March 25, with new doorbusters dropping every day t

Quantum computers have an almost mythical status among data scientists and researchers. The dream of emerging out of the NISQ (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era into a world of fault-tolerant qubits generating unbreakable encryption or solving climate change keeps many startups going despite difficult investment propositions with longer return horizons. But quantum technologies don’t only inspire wonder and excitement — they are also a growing geopolitical concern. More and more

SAVE 42%: The Waterpik Aquarius water flosser (white) is just $57.98 at Amazon, down from the normal price of $99.99. That's a savings of $42.01. Opens in a new windowCredit: WaterpikWaterpik Aquarius water flosser (white)$57.98 at Amazon $99.99 Save $42.01Get DealThere are plenty of healthy habits that sound good on paper but feel less rewarding in real life. We know we should floss our teeth everyday, but when bedtime rolls around, flossing can sometimes feels like a task that can wait until t

You can buy Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown for just $30. | Image: Ubisoft What’s with all the good PlayStation deals lately? First, the disc-based and discless versions of the PS5 “slim” dropped to an all-time low (with a digital copy of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, no less). Now, Sony is taking up to 80 percent off a ton of PlayStation games through March 27th as part of its Essential Picks sale, which drops digital copies of newer hits like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Illustration: The Verge Google has added real-time browsing protection to Chrome that it claims should protect your privacy. The feature, which Google says hides your visited URLs, is now available on the default Standard mode of Safe Browsing on Chrome.
For years, Chrome’s Safe Browsing feature has automatically added potentially unsafe URLs to a list Google stores on your device. Every time a user visits a site, Google checks the URL against that list and issues a warning. The problem is

SpaceX's colossal Starship reached orbital speed for the first time as well as demonstrated a first step toward being able to refuel in space, before the company ultimately lost the ship on Thursday.No injuries or property damages were immediately known.Starship, a nearly 400-foot-tall, super-heavy-lift rocket and spacecraft, took off at about 8:25 a.m. CT from SpaceX's private launchpad in South Texas. For its third flight, the rocket survived longer and flew much farther than it did in Novembe

Curious about how to take a screenshot on a Chromebook? You're not alone. On your own, it's not easy to figure out how to grab a snapshot of what's on your display. However, once you know this simple, two-key shortcut, you'll be taking screenshots in no time.Follow the easy-to-follow instructions below to take screenshots on your Chromebook with ease.SEE ALSO:The absolute best laptops you can buy
How to take a screenshot on a ChromebookTotal Time2 minutesWhat You NeedChromebookStep 1:Find the Ct

TikTok’s rough week in the west went from bad to worse today when Italian authorities slapped the app with a €10mn fine over a viral challenge called the “French scar.” The game invites users to pinch their cheeks until they leave a lasting bruise. It became particularly popular in Italy, which prompted scrutiny from the country’s competition regulator. Following a probe, investigators concluded that TikTok had failed to protect users from “the potentially dan

Never mind the calendar: Home Depot shared a sneak peek of its Halloween 2024 lineup at its annual Store Managers Meeting Thursday, revealing that its beloved 12-foot skeleton will be returning for the fourth year in a row — and for the first time, with a slight makeover. This year's iteration of the iconic prop (nicknamed "Skelly") will feature newly upgraded LCD eyes with eight swappable settings while remaining at its same usual price of $299.SEE ALSO:Live, laugh, LifeEyes™️

SAVE $180: As of March 14 (Pi Day!), the Acer Chromebook 516 GE is on sale for just $469 at Best Buy. That's a savings of 28% and a new record-low for the cloud gaming laptop. Opens in a new windowCredit: AcerAcer Chromebook 516 GE (Intel Core i5-1240P, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD)$469.00 at Best Buy $649.00 Save $180.00Get DealIf you're in the market for a gaming laptop, but don't want to spend a small fortune, allow me to introduce the Acer Chromebook 516 GE. Hands-on tested by Mashable's own Dylan Haa

Image: Intel Intel is launching its flagship Core i9-14900KS processor today, with clock speeds that boost all the way up to 6.2GHz. That’s 200MHz more than the previous Core i9-13900KS that launched last year and was the first desktop processor to break the 6GHz barrier at stock speeds.
This new Core i9-14900KS will be priced at $699, the same as the previous 13900KS, and will be available in stores today. The 6.2GHz max turbo frequency is an out-of-the-box boost, so there could be room f

Image: Intel Intel is launching its flagship Core i9-14900KS processor today, with clock speeds that boost all the way up to 6.2GHz. That’s 200MHz more than the previous Core i9-13900KS that launched last year and was the first desktop processor to break the 6GHz barrier at stock speeds.
This new Core i9-14900KS will be priced at $689, $10 less than the previous 13900KS, and will be available in stores today. The 6.2GHz max turbo frequency is an out-of-the-box boost, so there could be room

You don't have to be a fan of mathematics to score great deals on Pi Day. Here are some of our favorite deals to help celebrate 3.14.Best Pi Day sales to shop todayBest Pi Day outdoor dealSolo Stove Bonfire 2.0$229.99(save an extra $20 with code PIZZA) Get DealBest Pi Day tech dealLenovo Tab P11 Pro Gen 2$299.99(save $130) Get DealBest Pi Day pizza dealPapa Murphy's Take and Bake Pizzasave 31.4% on all online orders with code PIDAY24 Get Deal
Pi Day only comes around once every year. For those w