Tech News

SAN FRANCISCO—Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday March 22 for mistakes his company made in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users and promised tougher steps to restrict developers’ access to such information. The world’s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States […]

SAN FRANCISCO/ FRANKFURT—Facebook faces substantial business risks from new European Union privacy rules set to take effect in May, a looming reality that came into stark relief over the weekend with revelations that a controversial political consulting firm had improperly obtained personal data on 50 million Facebook users. Privacy experts said the disclosure that a […]

Software engineer Tal Goldfus was creeped out by his Amazon Alexa device when it started laughing unprompted while he was having a conversation. Goldfus then asked Alexa to replay the sound and captured it on video. Goldfus shared the video on Twitter on Feb. 23, and said, “My Alexa just laughed out of the blue […]

Recent reports reveal how the Iranian regime has been using malicious apps to spy on users’ smartphones. The report was issued in one of the most recent publications of the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), widely held as the most influential Iranian opposition party. In the report, NCRI exposes the attempts of […]

Amazon Echo users say the technology has taken a “bone-chilling” turn, with Alexa, the voice on the device, emitting random laughs and sometimes ignoring their commands entirely. The Echo is alleged to be a time-saving device, with users able to give Alexa commands such as telling it to give them the current weather, play a […]

China’s dominant messaging app WeChat now has one billion accounts worldwide. The popularity of the platform, however, has not diminished concerns over how the app acts hand-in-glove with the Chinese regime, sharing private user data with it and helping to implement censorship. Pony Ma, chief executive of WeChat’s parent company Tencent, said on March 5 […]

Did you know it’s possible to make an iPhone to lock itself for years, even decades? And it’s so simple a toddler can do it. In fact, one already did. A 2-year-old boy got his hands on his mother’s iPhone after she stepped out to run an errand and left the phone at home. When […]

FRANKFURT—Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are raising risks that malicious users will soon exploit the technology to mount automated hacking attacks, cause driverless car crashes or turn commercial drones into targeted weapons, a new report warns. The study, published on Wednesday by 25 technical and public policy researchers from Cambridge, Oxford and Yale universities along […]

As an increasing number of international companies in China cave in to the Chinese regime’s pressure and surrender their private user data, Asus, a Taiwan-based, multinational computer hardware and consumer electronics company has announced a complete withdrawal from China’s cloud storage market to avoid having to comply with the regime’s intrusive legal requirements. China ratified […]

A robotics firm has unveiled footage of a dog-inspired robot that can open doors, which has left many pondering scenes of a sci-fi apocalypse rather than a man’s best friend. Boston Dynamics revealed the “terrifying” video showcasing SpotMini, a robot with four legs, a body, and an extendable claw as a head, on Monday, Feb.12. […]

Jet ski champion Franky Zapata is pushing out his new invention—a watercraft that allows flying above the water, “Flyride.” The rig gets hooked to a jet ski with a hose and allows up to two riders to take off above the water’s surface. The rig itself helps the rider with take-off, balance, and throttle, and elevation […]

Users of Apple devices in China may have once had the expectation that they could store their data with the cloud storage offered by this Western company outside of the Chinese regime’s surveillance. In fact, their private data will soon be hosted by a company owned by the Chinese state, with intimate links to the […]

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that users of older iPhone models will soon be able to undo the controversial performance slowdowns that the company imposed without notifying customers, in an incident that became known as “batterygate.” Cook again apologized to customers and said a fix is on the way to reverse the intentional battery […]

Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday that software patches released to guard against microchip security threats slowed down some personal computers and servers, with systems running on older Intel Corp processors seeing a noticeable decrease in performance. The comments in a blog post were the clearest signal from Microsoft that fixes for flaws in microchips from […]

Facing mounting public pressure, Apple has apologized for slowing down its iPhones as their batteries aged. The tech giant posted an apology on its website on Thursday, a week after it confirmed that it had been slowing down iPhones with lower-capacity batteries, in a bid to avoid accidental shutdowns. “We’ve been hearing feedback from our […]

AOL laid to rest its instant messaging service Friday, Dec. 15, some 20 years after it started. While the shutdown is new, the news is not. Back in October, Oath, the company that owns Yahoo and AOL, announced the service’s planned demise. “We know there are so many loyal fans who have used AIM for […]

The man who set the wheels in motion to briefly deactivate President Donald Trump’s Twitter account early this month spoke out for the first time on Wednesday. Trump’s Twitter account was deactivated for 11 minutes at around 7 p.m. on Nov. 2. With more than 30 million followers, the disappearance of the account triggered a […]

A healthcare company is trying its hand at playing the human versus artificial intelligence (AI) contest—and wants us to play along. Health services company AXA PPP Healthcare commissioned two pieces of music—one composed by a human and another by AI—and has challenged the public to decide which makes you more sleepy, reports the Mirror. The […]

A video on killer drones called “Slaughterbots” is going viral with a look at the dire reality of automated warfare based on artificial intelligence (AI), Fox News reported. The video shows killer drones armed with explosives attacking civilians. It also shows the dark future of a world full of killer robots that use AI to […]

Uber paid hackers $100,000 to keep secret a massive breach last year that exposed the personal information of about 57 million accounts of the ride-service provider, the company said on Tuesday. Discovery of the U.S. company’s cover-up of the incident resulted in the firing of two employees responsible for its response to the hack, said […]