Tag Archives: technology

CNN Business reports: Airlines, banks, stock exchanges and trading platforms suffered website outages early Thursday after a key piece of internet infrastructure failed, sparking the second major interruption of the past 10 days. The outages come just over a week after countless websites and apps around the world went down for about an hour when Fastly, another major content delivery …

The Guardian reports: A global sting in which organised crime gangs were sold encrypted phones that law enforcement officials could monitor has led to more than 800 arrests in 18 countries. Operation Greenlight/Trojan Shield, conceived by Australian police and the FBI in 2018, was one of the biggest infiltrations and takeovers of a specialised encrypted network. It began when US …

CNN Business reports: Countless websites and apps around the world went down Tuesday after Fastly, a major content delivery network, reported a widespread failure. Fastly supports news sites and apps like CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times and many others. It also provides content delivery for Twitch, Pinterest, HBO Max, Hulu, Reddit, Spotify and other services. Other major internet …

The Verge reports: Android and Windows users will finally be able to join FaceTime calls. During its WWDC keynote, Apple announced that FaceTime is going to be available on the web so users can call in from Android devices and Windows PCs. The video calling service was previously only available on iOS and Mac devices. Apple is turning FaceTime into …

The Guardian reports: Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices. The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Alphabet Inc.’s Google and national hospital chain HCA Healthcare Inc. have struck a deal to develop healthcare algorithms using patient records, the latest foray by a tech giant into the $3 trillion healthcare sector. Nashville, Tenn.,-based HCA, which operates across about 2,000 locations in 21 states, would consolidate and store with Google data from digital …

Roll Call reports: The advent of self-driving cars is raising questions in the insurance sector about who should pay when the vehicles crash and how insurers will set equitable rates. When cars can operate themselves, the central question will be whether accidents are the manufacturer’s responsibility and therefore covered by product liability insurance or whether the fault would lie with …

Bloomberg News reports: CNA Financial Corp., among the largest insurance companies in the U.S., paid $40 million in late March to regain control of its network after a ransomware attack, according to people with knowledge of the attack. The Chicago-based company paid the hackers about two weeks after a trove of company data was stolen, and CNA officials were locked …

Milwaukee’s NBC News affiliate reports: The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office said it was dispatched to northbound I-94 near the Illinois/Wisconsin state line Sunday for a report of a Tesla driver who appeared to be asleep at the wheel. The deputy tried to initiate a traffic stop and activated the lights and sirens in his car. The driver didn’t pull over …

The Verge reports: Apple Music is getting two big updates next month: support for high-quality, lossless audio and for spatial audio through Dolby Atmos. But even more surprising, the features will be available for free to all subscribers, including those on family and student plans. The company says it’ll have 75 million lossless audio songs in its catalog by the …

CNN reports: Two White House officials were struck by a mysterious illness late last year — including one who was passing through a gate onto the property — newly revealed details that come as investigators are still struggling to determine who or what is behind these strange incidents. The cases are consistent with an inexplicable constellation of sensory experiences and …

Reuters reports: A Tesla car driver killed in a recent accident in California praised the automaker’s “full self-driving” features, and posted videos on his apparent Tiktok account, in which he appeared to drive with his hands off the wheel. On May 5, a Tesla Model 3 crashed into an overturned truck on a highway in Fontana, killing the Tesla driver …

The New York Times reports: The United States now has company on Mars. A Chinese spacecraft descended through the thin Martian atmosphere and landed safely on a large plain on Saturday morning, state media reported, accomplishing a feat that only two other nations had before. The landing follows China’s launch last month of the core module of a new orbiting …

CNBC reports: Ireland’s health service shut down its computer systems on Friday after being hit with a “sophisticated” ransomware attack. The Irish Health Service Executive said there was a “significant ransomware attack” on its IT systems, without commenting further on specifics. Ireland’s vaccination program has not been affected and appointments will go ahead as planned, but the registration portal has …

The New York Times reports: The order, drafts of which have been circulating to government officials and corporate executives for weeks and summaries of which were obtained by The New York Times, is a new road map for the nation’s cyberdefense. It would create a series of digital safety standards for federal agencies and contractors that develop software for the …

The New York Times reports: Verizon Communications, signaling that it has given up on its media business, said on Monday that it agreed to sell Yahoo and AOL to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. The transaction is the latest turn in the history of two of the internet’s earliest pioneers. Yahoo used to be the …

The Verge reports: Apple has begun rolling out iOS and iPadOS 14.5. The latest software update includes the new App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets users decide whether to allow apps to track their activity “across other companies’ apps and websites” for advertising purposes. A pop-up will now appear whenever apps are designed to share your activity in this way. …

The Verge reports: Twitter has said it’s exploring features like tipping to give people a way to pay other Twitter users, and now we have further evidence that a tip feature may be on the way. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared images on Thursday and Friday showing that Twitter could offer a tipping button right on user profiles. Twitter …

The Associated Press reports: Amazon is rolling out pay-by-palm technology at some Whole Foods grocery stores near its headquarters to make paying quicker and more convenient. The technology, called Amazon One, lets shoppers scan the palm of their hand and connect it to a credit card or Amazon account. After the initial set up, which Amazon says takes less than …

Variety reports: Netflix wants people to pay their fair share to access its streaming service. But Reed Hastings promises that any crackdown on illicit password-sharing that the company decides to launch across its global footprint won’t be done in an aggressive manner. “We’ll test many things, but we would never roll out something that feels like ‘turning the screws’” on …