Tag Archives: Tech

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok and ordered a Commerce Department review of security concerns posed by those apps and others. The administration of former President Donald Trump had attempted to block new …

Facebook says it will no longer remove claims that Covid-19 is man-made or manufactured from its apps. The change comes “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” Facebook says. The company based in Menlo Park, California, has long battled a …

A Russian court on Thursday fined Twitter 19 million roubles ($259,000) for failing to delete content considered illegal by Moscow, in the latest episode of a long-running dispute between Russia and the social network operator. Twitter has been subjected to a punitive slowdown in Russia since March, part of a …

Microsoft Corp is pulling the plug on its once omnipresent browser, Internet Explorer, next year as it prepares to battle market leader Chrome with its slicker Edge browser. Launched in 1995, Internet Explorer became the dominant browser for over a decade as it was bundled with Microsoft’s Windows operating system …

Facebook, Alphabet unit Google, and other tech giants will have to pledge to do more to curb the monetisation of false information through advertisement placements, according to a European Commission document seen by Reuters. The EU executive also wants smaller social media or search services, private messaging services, ad exchanges, …

Wall Street’s main indexes fell on Tuesday, led by tech-related stocks, as investors feared that rising inflation could push the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy faster than expected. The outperformers of 2020, Apple, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, Google-parent Alphabet Inc, and Tesla Inc fell between 0.8% and 2.4%, weighed …

US aerospace giant Boeing will reportedly stop making its iconic 747 aircraft for good after it completes the last of the 16 jets currently on order. Covid-19 has crippled an already declining market for the plane. The final 747 is now expected to roll out of the company’s Seattle-area factory …

Boycotts can be extremely effective – as Facebook is finding out. In the late 18th century, the abolitionist movement encouraged British people to stay away from goods produced by slaves. It worked. Around 300,000 stopped buying sugar – increasing the pressure to abolish slavery. The Stop Hate for Profit campaign …

Alphabet Inc’s Google on Thursday published reports for 131 countries showing whether visits to shops, parks, and workplaces dropped in March when many governments issued stay-at-home orders to rein in the spread of the novel coronavirus. Google’s analysis of location data from billions of users’ phones is the largest public …

An election app in use by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political party potentially exposed sensitive personal information for the country’s entire national voting registration of about 6.5 million citizens, according to Israeli media reports. The cellphone-based program, identified as the Elector app, is meant to manage the Likud party’s …

Mercedes-Benz managed to make a car that looks even more ridiculously futuristic than Tesla’s Cybertruck. At CES on Monday Mercedes-Benz revealed a new concept car called the AVTR. The acronym stands for advance vision transportation, but it is also a reference to the 2009 film “Avatar,” which features blue-skinned characters …

NASA, most prominent for its many Florida-launched exploits into space, showcased an early version of its first all-electric experimental aircraft, the X-57 “Maxwell,” on Friday at its lesser-known aeronautics lab in the California desert. Adapted from an Italian-made Tecnam P2006T twin-engine propeller plane, the X-57 has been under development since …

The Boston Dynamics humanoid robot Atlas has channeled his inner Simone Biles to put on a gymnastics display showcasing the machine’s uncanny fluidity of movement. A new clip posted by its developers shows the robot running through its floor routine, including a handstand, some impressive rolls, and a 360-degree mid-air …

Technologies linking human consciousness to any sort of a cloud computing service could not just open the way for totalitarian mind control, but destroy the very essence of human relations, philosopher Slavoj Zizek says. A computer that can read the thoughts of many people at once would make normal human …

Google has issued new community rules barring employees from political discussions on internal message boards and seeking to curb leaks that could “undermine trust” in the tech titan, amid swirling accusations of endemic bias. The company released its updated guidelines on Friday, which remind employees to “be responsible,” helpful” and …

Minecraft will be keeping its block-based look for the foreseeable future as plans to update its graphics are canceled. In a statement Minecraft developer Mojang said it had ended development on what was known as the Super Duper graphics pack for the game. The pack would have given the game …

Some of the World’s newest and most popular cars are at risk of being stolen in seconds by exploiting weaknesses in keyless entry systems. The systems let drivers open and start their cars without taking their key out of their pocket. What Car? magazine tested seven different car models fitted …

WhatsApp and Instagram are to be renamed as part of a Facebook re-brand. The two apps are to be known as “WhatsApp from Facebook” and “Instagram from Facebook”. The move is part of a broader change towards linking the three apps together and bringing them under the Facebook banner, according …

“Voice assistants have a dark side, and we may be paying for their limited benefits with our privacy” A news story in the Guardian last week confirmed what many Apple users likely already suspected: Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, has the power to record private conversations, and these audio clips aren’t …

Saudi Arabia has reportedly purchased $300 million worth of spy software from Israel as Riyadh presses ahead with its crackdown against dissidents and pro-democracy campaigners in the ultra-conservative kingdom. Arabic-language al-Khaleej Online news website, citing unnamed senior Arab sources, reported that representatives from the Riyadh regime and Israeli firms met …