Tag Archives: technology

The New York Times reports: Verizon and AT&T said on Tuesday that they would delay the debut of new 5G cellular service near some airports, an attempt to address concerns that their equipment would interfere with airplane equipment when the service started on Wednesday. AT&T said in a statement that it had “voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a …

NBC News reports: The aviation industry faces “catastrophic” disruption from the rollout of a new 5G service this week, airline leaders have warned. In a letter sent Monday to United States transportation and economic officials and obtained by NBC News, the CEOs of major carriers said that the launch could ground flights and leave “tens of thousands of Americans” stranded …

The New York Times reports: To legions of executives, journalists and politicians — even the leader of the free world — they were once-indispensable devices for staying connected when ordinary cellphones wouldn’t suffice. Anything else was for amateurs. The devices, with the quirky-sounding name BlackBerry and the QWERTY keyboard that conditioned many people to type with their thumbs, were more …

The New York Times reports: Combine Walmart, Disney, Netflix, Nike, Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Morgan Stanley, McDonald’s, AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, IBM and Ford. Apple is still worth more. Apple, the computer company that started in a California garage in 1976, is now worth $3 trillion. It became the first publicly traded company to ever reach the figure on Monday, …

The Data Center reports: Amazon Web Services is down again, in its third outage this month. There is a problem with AWS at its US-East-1 (Virginia) cloud region, impacting a number of customers and users. Among those impacted are Coinbase, Fortnite, Hulu, Instacart, Rocket League, Acadly, Peloton, Hinge, Quora, the Epic Games Store, Slack, GitHub rival Bitbucket, Samsung Smart Lights, …

The Verge reports: Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics has released a holiday video featuring its dog-like Spot robot, and it’s turned out as creepy as ever. The video, posted to Twitter, starts innocuously enough — there’s a large present of the type anyone would be happy to see under their tree, sitting in a courtyard. Then, the gift stands up and walks …

The Verge reports: TikTok is changing its For You Page algorithm to prevent users from seeing too many similar videos that could be harmful when viewed in clusters, the company said today. The goal is to steer users away from clusters of videos that might “reinforce a negative personal experience,” listing extreme dieting, sadness, and breakup content as examples. Read …

New Scientist reports: A region of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars, one of the biggest in the solar system, appears to contain large amounts of water locked just beneath the surface, making it potentially useful for future astronauts. This is far from the first time researchers have seen water on Mars, but previous discoveries have been concentrated at …

NBC News reports: Spies for hire are secretly targeting journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents on behalf of corporations and governments to an extent not previously understood, Facebook’s parent company says in a new report, while banning six companies and a Chinese network named in the report from its social media platforms. “The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across …

The Verge reports: Apple has released an app called Tracker Detect, which the company says will let Android users search for AirTags or other Find My-compatible trackers, such as the Chipolo One Spot tracking tag. Apple announced that this app was coming in June, promising that it would allow Android users to find potentially malicious trackers being used without their …

The New York Times reports: Not long after buying a Tesla Model 3 this summer, Vince Patton saw a YouTube clip highlighting a feature that took him by surprise: three video games that can be played on the large touch screen mounted in front of the dashboard — while driving down the road. “I thought surely that can’t be right,” …

The Associated Press reports: Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Tuesday, the company said, limiting service at many key and popular sites. The company provides cloud computing services to many governments, universities and companies, including The Associated Press. Amazon said in a post an hour after the outage began that it had identified the root cause and was “actively …

Global News reports: Robot engineers at Cornwall-based Engineered Arts have unveiled a remarkably human-like android, named “Ameca.” A short promo video released by the company shows Ameca seemingly “waking up,” looking at its hands and then towards the camera. The 40-second clip has racked up well over 10 million views online since Engineered Arts released it earlier this week. Ameca …

Polygon reports: The Roblox Corporation is suing controversial Roblox content creator Benjamin Robert Simon, better known online as Ruben Sim, for leading a “cybermob” that they say terrorizes the Roblox platform and its developers. Roblox lawyers filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a California court, alleging that Simon “commits and encourages unlawful acts designed to injure Roblox and its users.” Roblox …

The BBC reports: Adele has persuaded Spotify to take the shuffle button off all album pages so tracks play in the artist’s own order. The singer tweeted: “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason.” “Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank …

The Washington Post reports: Shattered screens and aging batteries in iPhones used to require a trip to the Apple Store — or a local repair shop — to fix. But starting in early 2022, iPhone owners in the United States who want to try repairing their ailing device can do so with some help from Apple itself. Apple surprised “Right …

Bloomberg News reports: Hackers compromised the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s external email system on Saturday. The hackers sent out tens of thousands of emails from an FBI email account warning about a possible cyberattack, according to the Spamhaus Project, which tracks spam and related cyber threats. The FBI said it, along with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is “aware …

CNBC reports: Facebook on Thursday announced that it will change its company name to Meta. The name change, which was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference, reflects the company’s growing ambitions beyond social media with the metaverse, a classic sci-fi term Facebook has adopted to describe its vision for working and playing in a virtual world. …

Market Watch reports: PayPal Holdings Inc.’s quest to become a “super-app” may be kicking into a new gear following reports that the company has held acquisition talks with Pinterest Inc. The financial-technology company has been expanding beyond payments and into other areas of financial services and commerce, driven by a revamp of its app to emphasize features like crypto purchasing …

Ars Technica reports: Amazon is rolling out (literally) a robot that can help monitor your home. Powered by Amazon Alexa and a bunch of artificial intelligence (AI) technology while patrolling about on a set of wheels, the Astro robot can handle numerous tasks, from providing a view of inside the home when you’re out to delivering a message to Mom. …