Tech

Own an Echo? Amazon may be helping itself to your bandwidth

Do you own an Amazon smart device? If so, odds are good that the company is already sharing your internet connection with your neighbors unless you’ve specifically told it not to. On Tuesday, the company launched a program that forces users of many Echo smart speakers and Ring security cameras to automatically share a small […]

Agricultural biotechnology and future food security

Food security is the one thing at the center of societal stability. Our entire species would not be where it is now if not for past advancements in food production that allowed societies to shift their attention to other aspects of life like art, technology, and education. In our world with a population of around […]

EXPLAINER: Just how vulnerable is the internet?

An outage at a little-known firm that speeds up access to websites knocked a lot of top internet destinations offline on Tuesday, disrupting business and leisure for untold millions globally. The problem was quickly resolved. The company, Fastly, blamed a configuration error in its technology. But the incident — Fastly’s traffic dropped 75% for about […]

Man and machine: What AI is and what it is not

Intelligence is a hard thing to define. You have street smarts, book smarts, and the ever-present colloquial term emotional intelligence, and of course the dreaded intelligence quotient or IQ. However, we must place a marker somewhere to establish what we are talking about. For the sake of not exceeding a word count of ten thousand […]

Apple previews new software for iPhone, other gadgets

Apple kicked off its second annual all-virtual developer conference with a keynote that outlined new updates to its software for iPhones and other devices. The presentation highlighted more privacy options for paid iCloud accounts and a “Find My” service that helps find errant AirPods, but included no major product announcements. The latest renovations in Apple’s […]

Facebook suspends Trump for 2 years, then will reassess

Facebook announced Friday that former President Donald Trump’s accounts will be suspended for two years, freezing his presence on the social network until early 2023, following a finding that Trump stoked violence ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. At the end of the suspension, the company will assess whether Trump’s “risk […]

Twitter starts subscription service in Canada, Australia

Twitter is rolling out a subscription service, starting in Canada and Australia, that offers perks like an undo button for subscribers. The “Twitter Blue” subscription service will offer features that users have long asked for — but still no edit button. It includes bookmark folders for organizing saved content; an “Undo tweet” feature that gives […]

EU plans digital ID wallet for bloc's post-pandemic life

The European Union unveiled plans Thursday for a digital ID wallet that residents could use to access services across the 27-nation bloc, part of a post-pandemic recovery strategy that involves accelerating the shift to an online world. The European Digital Identity Wallet proposed by the EU’s executive commission is a smartphone app that would let […]

HBO Max movies lead the charge, a year after platform launch

The youngest contender in the ongoing streaming wars, HBO Max, has had a bumpy year since its launch back in May of last year; a pandemic, branding troubles, world economic downturn, legal battles galore, all while facing off against streaming powerhouses such as Disney+ and Netflix gripping the streaming service market by the belt. Arguably, […]