A new TV show in the UK is bringing drone warfare to children. The game show, Airmageddon, debuted this month on CBBC, the BBC kid's network. It pits children aged nine to 14 against one another in a series of drone-related challenges, including obstacle courses, aerial challenge … | Continue reading
In addition to the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, the US government is pursuing court orders to force Apple to help bypass the security passcodes of "about a dozen" other iPhones, the Wall Street Journal reports. The other cases don't involve terror charges, t … | Continue reading
Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood is only the fictional president in Netflix's House of Cards, but it increasingly feels like the pretend politician is bleeding through into the real world. Spacey appeared in character during the Golden Globes in January, and now the Machiavellian m … | Continue reading
The tech industry has been generally supportive of Apple in its fight against the FBI's demand to unlock an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino shootings, but one big name is on the FBI's side: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who seems unswayed by fears of compromised security a … | Continue reading
Microsoft is giving up on Skype Qik, the video chat app it launched just 18 months ago, because its features are already available in the full-fledged Skype app. In a post on the Skype official blog, the company confirmed that March 24th would be the last day Skype Qik would be a … | Continue reading
Nikon is launching a line of compact 4K cameras outfitted with 1-inch sensors, the company announced today. The brand-new DL Series consists of three "premium compact" cameras that all seem aimed at competing with the likes of Sony and its popular RX100 line. The new cameras cont … | Continue reading
Fitbit released its fourth quarter earnings report on Monday afternoon, beating analysts' expectations in terms of revenue, and nearly doubling its full-year unit sales from 2014.The San Francisco-based maker of digital health and fitness products raked in $712 million in revenue … | Continue reading
This may come as a surprise to some, but there are just some things that don't need to be connected to the internet. Like a toothbrush. But don't tell that to Oral-B, which debuted its latest toothbrush — the Genius — at Mobile World Congress.Unlike other electric toothbrushes th … | Continue reading
Jason Dalton, the Uber driver who shot and killed six people and injured two in Kalamazoo, Michigan Saturday had a 4.73 driver rating and had completed over 100 trips since being cleared by the ride-hail company's screening process less than a month ago, Uber said Monday.Dalton, … | Continue reading
Only a little more than a week after suing in-flight internet provider Gogo over service speeds, American Airlines has dropped the suit, according to a statement released today by Gogo. An American Airlines spokesperson confirmed that it had dismissed the suit without prejudice.A … | Continue reading
Planet Earth is returning to TV later this year, and this time, it'll be in 4K. The original 11-part series debuted in 2006 and was the first BBC nature documentary to be filmed in high definition. It helped propel HDTV's popularity, and this new season will take those stunning n … | Continue reading
Sometimes, it seems like the tech world is inexorably bending towards a future full of curved devices. At MWC in Barcelona, we saw yet another prototype display, this time from English firm FlexEnable. Now, this isn't a working device of any kind — it's essentially just a screen … | Continue reading
After Mashable reported on Saturday that Swagway advised its customers to take a break from hoverboarding, the company now says that direction was the result of a "miscommunication" and its products are safe to use. "Due to an apparent miscommunication, there have been inaccurate … | Continue reading
A vaginal ring that dispenses an HIV-preventative drug blocked about a quarter of HIV infections in a trial involving 2,600 women in Africa, according to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine. When the numbers were broken down by age, researchers found that th … | Continue reading
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg echoed Google CEO Sundar Pichai and WhatsApp founder Jan Koum today in stating his personal support for Apple in its encryption fight with the FBI. "We’re sympathetic with Apple on this one," Zuckerberg said today at the Mobile World Congress in Barce … | Continue reading
Google is trying to give the text message an overhaul. It's partnering with major phone carriers including Sprint, T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and Vodafone to succeed SMS and MMS — the standards used to send text and picture messages — with a newer communications sta … | Continue reading
Facebook's plan to turn the News Feed into a personalized video channel faces a roadblock in the form of "happy birthday" messages, which until today have almost entirely taken the ancient form of text. Lol! That begins to change today with the launch of birthday video cam, a fea … | Continue reading
Facebook today announced the launch of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which is bringing together a coalition of internet service providers and tech companies to focus on the engineering challenges of delivering high-res video and virtual reality. The group has 30 initial member … | Continue reading
Apple may not have the public's support in its legal fight with the FBI, according to a recently published Pew report. In a survey that reached 1000 respondents by phone over the weekend, Pew researchers found 51 percent of respondents believed Apple should comply with FBI demand … | Continue reading
The number of teenage girls with HPV infections has dropped by nearly two-thirds since the introduction of a vaccine in 2006, according to a new study. The drop occurred even though immunization is what the CDC calls "unacceptably low." Today’s results suggest the vaccine has had … | Continue reading
Earlier this year at CES we were introduced to Remix OS — an Android variant from Jide that turns Google's mobile operating system into a desktop OS. Remix takes basic Android and adds all the elements you'd expect on a PC or Mac: there's support for mice and keyboards, a windowe … | Continue reading
For the last six days, Apple has been waging the legal fight of its life over a phone used by alleged San Bernardino attacker Syed Farook. The case centers on whether the government can compel Apple to rewrite the phone’s security protections to allow the FBI access to the data i … | Continue reading
Twitter has brought on Natalie Kerris, the former Apple PR exec who helped launch products from the iPod to the Apple Watch, as its new vice president of global communications. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out the news this morning, following speculation that Kerris was in the … | Continue reading
It was approaching 10:00 pm on a Wednesday, but dozens of people were crowded around several long wooden tables in the center of a cluttered workshop in Chelsea. Some stared intently at lines of code, others hunched over a soldering iron or sewing machine. One evening a month, th … | Continue reading
Rihanna released the music video for her Drake-featuring single "Work" this afternoon, and the clip's one-two visual punch could give the song the boost it needs to climb to the top of the pop charts around the world. It was filmed across North America — Rihanna and Drake were sp … | Continue reading
The Zuckerberg photo — you know the one — is so loaded with existential dread and techno-anxiety that my good friend and colleague Rich McCormick penned an entire item on why we can't look away from it. The businessmen in button-ups unknowingly being passed by a billionaire in a … | Continue reading
Snapchat users feeling limited by the app’s geofilter overlays can now make their own and define areas in which they’ll show up. Users can choose spaces that are a minimum of 20,000 square feet — about the size of an office — to a maximum of 5,000,000 square feet — roughly a few … | Continue reading
It’s easy to remember a time before Girls. It was a more innocent time, when the internet was not yet overrun with discussions about whether or not Lena Dunham should be naked onscreen, or if the way young women are spending their lives today is substantially different from the w … | Continue reading
The Zica compact hatchback will now be known as the Tiago, Indian automaker Tata Motors has announced. Tata had previously announced its intention to rebrand the car in the wake of the global Zika health crisis, a mosquito-borne virus that is widely thought to be causing serious … | Continue reading
Over the last three months, more than 100 million US voters have had their data exposed online. These data breaches weren’t caused by a sophisticated hack or malware. Instead, political campaigns' abysmal cybersecurity practices are to blame. Although modern campaigns constantly … | Continue reading
It's hard to believe that when Disney announced plans this past summer to build Star Wars-themed expansions in both Disneyland and the Disney World Resorts, The Force Unleashed was still a giant question mark looming over the future of the brand. Last night, with the critical su … | Continue reading
Birmingham, Alabama-born jazz musician Herman Sonny Blount stood out quite a bit from the other Southern, African-American musicians who immigrated to Chicago in the middle of the 20th century. Then again, any saxophonist claiming he was a robed mystic born on Saturn would probab … | Continue reading
No show likes to troll its audience quite like The Walking Dead. Game of Thrones may kill off people you love, and Homeland may test your patience, but there’s something unique about The Walking Dead’s ability to get you invested, hold your hand through long stretches of dialogue … | Continue reading
The Internet of Things has infected another formerly benign product that we use every day: shoes. Iofit, a company that was recently spun out of Samsung's new startup accelerator, is here at Mobile World Congress to show off their soon-to-be-crowdfunded smart fitness sneakers.Whi … | Continue reading
Amazon revealed this morning that it's raising its free shipping minimum to $49 for non-Prime members. That's a $14 bump up from the previous minimum of $35 it set when it last raised prices in 2013. Customers looking to buy $25 worth of books will still get free shipping, though … | Continue reading
A reported 20 million people interrupted their work day to watch the Yeezy fashion show — and nobody complained.For all the technical issues in the lead-up to The Life of Pablo release, Kanye West and his advisors were brilliant to host the biggest listening party / fashion revea … | Continue reading
Lightroom for Android is getting a big update today that adds in features like split toning and haze removal that were added to iOS last year. The real purpose of this update is bringing Lightroom's Android app up to date with its iOS app — Adobe say that for the most part, every … | Continue reading
Volvo will natively integrate Spotify into its cars, beginning with the XC90, S90, and V90 this spring, the Swedish automaker announced during Mobile World Congress. Volvo says it worked closely with the streaming service to build the app, which includes handwriting recognition, … | Continue reading
Microsoft’s Lumia 950 was bland, uninspired, plasticky, and looked like any other low-end Lumia that Microsoft has been churning out over the past year. The problem was that it wasn’t low-end Lumia, and for its $650 price tag we expected a lot more. Microsoft might not be putting … | Continue reading
Microsoft announced a deal to bundle its Android apps on Cyanogen OS last year. The deal includes deep integration of Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant, allowing it to replace Google Now functionality. We’ve heard a lot about this partnership, but Cyanogen is now demonstratin … | Continue reading
Even with The Life of Pablo still unfinished, Kanye West still saw fit to release a music video to the masses. The Steve McQueen-directed "All Day" / "I Feel Like That" is now online courtesy of London production house Unit Media. You can watch it in full here.The video was origi … | Continue reading
Google's "smart city" spin-off Sidewalk Labs just hired a team experts whose goal will be to create a new line of technology products that can fix the many problems of city life. Last year, Sidewalk Labs acquired a company called Intersection, which is now in the process of insta … | Continue reading
Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out a memo to Apple employees this morning, thanking them for their support in the company's ongoing standoff with the FBI and reiterating its stance against granting backdoor access to an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. In the memo, o … | Continue reading
HSBC plans to use Touch ID and voice recognition software to verify the identity of its customers in the UK, as the bank looks to replace passwords and security questions with biometric technology. As the BBC reports, the services will launch in the next few weeks at First Direct … | Continue reading
Apple CEO Tim Cook has called on the FBI to withdraw its demand for backdoor access to an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, saying that the debate over encryption, privacy, and national security should instead be settled by a commission of experts. The company … | Continue reading
So, what did you do with your Sunday? We spent it in Barcelona covering the day 1 kickoff of the big Mobile World Congress show. MWC is already shaping up to be a gadget lovers paradise with the launch of the lovely 2-in-1 laptop from Huawei, and the 360-degree cameras and flagsh … | Continue reading
Taylor Swift has donated $250,000 to Kesha, after a New York judge rejected an injunction that would have allowed the singer to record music without Sony Music and longtime producer Dr. Luke. In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for Swift said the money would help Kesh … | Continue reading
LG's G5 was only introduced yesterday, but I'm already convinced it is the most polished and complete smartphone that the Korean company has yet built. Unlike its forebears, the G5 grew smaller rather than larger, and LG added features judiciously rather than gratuitously. This c … | Continue reading