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Tech NewsStreaming ServicesBad News, Disney+ Users, Your Subscription Price Is Going Up
Disney+ is following Netflix’s lead and bumping up its monthly subscription cost in the U.S., raising it to $8 per month. The company announced the $1 price hike at its investor’s day presentation on Thursday after showing off a slew of new content headed to the streaming service. U.S. subscribers can expect their monthly fee … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogleGoogle Adds Knowledge Panels in Search Results for Covid-19 Vaccines to Counter Misinformation
Google plans to counter vaccine conspiracy theories and misinformation by tacking on new knowledge panels to search results when people look up information about covid-19 vaccines. The feature’s launching first in the UK, where health authorities began rolling out the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine—the first of its kind approved in the West—this week. Google intends to expand … Continued
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Tech NewsInternetHere’s Where SpaceX Has Promised to Provide Starlink Internet
The Federal Communications Commission recently announced the winning bidders of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase 1 auction, revealing SpaceX’s Starlink won a massive $885 million to provide high-speed internet to underserved and unserved rural areas of the U.S. The agency’s report provided information on how much money every ISP won and in what states, … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsParler’s Downloads Fell Off a Cliff
Parler, the social media platform where Ted Cruz is free to dance naked under the cursed moon in the realm of the possessed, may not be the right-wing free speech utopia of the future. Despite offering a perfectly fine refuge for conservatives bitching about Facebook and Twitter and YouTube’s moderation policies, downloads of the app … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogleGoogle Will Let You Limit the Alcohol and Gambling Ads You See
It’s not very often that Google shows care for anything besides its bottom line these days, but on Thursday, the company made a small step in the right direction by announcing a new setting that lets people limit the alcohol- and gambling-related ads they come across. Per the announcement, the feature will first roll out … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogleGoogle Is Now Calling on You to Help Develop Its Enigmatic Fuchsia OS
While it’s never been officially called a replacement for Android or Chrome OS, Fuchsia is an operating system Google has been working on for the last five years, and this week, Google announced that now it’s opening up Fuchsia to public contributions. In a post on the Google Open Source Blog, Fuchsia developer advocate Wayne … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsMastercard, Discover, and Visa Dump Pornhub [UPDATE]
Following an opinion piece in the New York Times which called out both Pornhub for hosting nonconsensual and often illegal material, and the credit card companies for enabling the site to profit from it, Mastercard has terminated its relationship with Pornhub. For now though, Mastercard will continue to do business with parent company Mindgeek, which … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsWe’re Finally Starting to See Some Great MagSafe Accessories, but They’re Not Coming from Apple
One of the more interesting features of the new iPhone 12 lineup is the return of the MagSafe power connector. It doesn’t only make wireless charging easier, as Apple demonstrated with a $60 wallet, it can also expand the usefulness of the device that’s always in your pocket. But MagSafe has even more potential than … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsI Feel Like $156,000 for a 110-Inch TV Is a Lot
Borrowing its microLED technology from “The Wall,” Samsung’s latest monster display was announced this week in Korea. Samsung announced its MicroLED-powered display system The Wall—yes, it’s really called that—back in 2018, describing it at the time as the “world’s first consumer modular MicroLED television.” Basically, the idea with The Wall is that its modular components … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsPrivacy and SecuritySentencing Nears for Gamer Who DDoS’d PlayStation Network as a Minor
A person behind a October 2016 cyberattack that temporarily crippled Sony’s Playstation Network and other online services has pleaded guilty to committing the act as a juvenile, Justice Department officials in New Hampshire said Thursday. Because the individual was a minor at the time, details about the incident, including the offender’s identity, remain sealed. For … Continued
By Dell Cameron -
Tech NewsFacebookEverybody Wants a Piece of Facebook
The day after the FTC and dozens of Attorneys General filed two separate suits against Facebook over it anticompetitive track record, the company’s being slammed with yet another antitrust probe—this time, from Germany’s antitrust regulator. Specifically, the country’s Federal Cartel Office (otherwise known as The Bundeskartellamt) announced plans to investigate the tie between Oculus’s virtual … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsLeaked Samsung Galaxy S21 Teasers Show Off Divisive Design
Rumors have been swirling around claiming the Galaxy S21 could get announced as early as January (possibly a month sooner than S20’s debut last year), and now it appears some official teasers have leaked out giving us a glimpse at the S21’s unique design. First discovered by Android Police, the Galaxy S21’s new signature colors … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsJohns Hopkins, Famous Philanthropist and Abolitionist, Actually Owned Slaves
Johns Hopkins, the 19th century philanthropist whose name graces some of the most prestigious scientific and academic institutions in America, was long thought to be a man who deplored slavery and fought to abolish the ownership of human beings in the U.S. But as it turns out, Hopkins actually owned other people over the course … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsStreaming ServicesCBS All Access Takes on Disney+ With New Features to Babysit Your Kids
Ahead of the launch of Paramount+ early next year, ViacomCBS has announced new kids-focused programming and features are arriving on CBS All Access. The features include the addition of up to six profiles per account, each of which can be managed by parents using “Kids Mode” to filter content by ratings for younger and older … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsGoogle to Investigate Shady Ouster of Black AI Ethicist Timnit Gebru
After more than 2,200 employees signed a letter on Monday condemning Google’s reported decision to terminate a Black artificial intelligence ethicist, the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, apologized on Wednesday for the way the departure had been handled and said that the incident was being investigated. In a series of tweets, Dr. Timnit Gebru, a staff … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsHyundai Motors Reportedly Bought Boston Dynamics For Almost $1 Billion (Updated: It’s a Done Deal)
Update 12/11/20 9:30am ET — Boston Dynamics has confirmed that Hyundai Motor Group has acquired an 80% controlling interest in the robotics maker, while a SoftBank affiliate will retain a 20% stake in the company that was valued at $1.1 billion. Hyundai believes the acquisition will help the company transition to becoming a “Smart Mobility Solution … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy and SecurityHackers Illegally Accessed Pfizer’s Preliminary Vaccine Data
A cyberattack on servers belonging to the European Medicines Agency—the EU regulatory body responsible COVID-19 vaccine approval—has resulted in the “unlawful access” of internal documents detailing the development of a potential COVID-19 vaccine. While the EMA’s own statementon the attacks doesn’t disclose much, simply confirming that the breach happened. However, pharma giant Pfizer and its … Continued
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Tech NewsInternetNew Report Suggests FCC Massively Overstated Gigabit Coverage in U.S.
A report released today by BroadbandNow reveals the FCC grossly overreported the availability of gigabit internet in the U.S. As of 2020, the FCC reported gigabit internet was available to 84% of Americans, up from just 4% in 2016. But according to BroadbandNow, those numbers are closer to 56% in 2020, up from 2.4% in … Continued
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Tech NewsPantone’s Colors of the Year, Ranked
Pantone has announced its Color of the Year for 2021. Typically, we only get one annual champion, but the purveyor of proprietary color spaces decided that 2021 deserves two colors because 2020 was the worst. Color of the Year is a relatively arbitrary award that has nonetheless been used in the past by designers to … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsNewsMicrosoft Is Bringing Its Cloud Gaming Platform to PCs and iOS Next Spring
Microsoft announced in a blog post this morning that its cloud gaming platform with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is coming to iOS and PC in spring 2021. The company previously announced in October that it was working on bringing Xbox cloud gaming to PC and iOS. It cut short its Project xCloud testing on iOS … Continued