Technology category, Page 22
Musk: People banned from Twitter won’t be restored for weeks
NEW YORK — Elon Musk said Wednesday that Twitter will not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that, a process that will take at least a few weeks. That would mean people banned from the site...
Amazon Music expands catalog to 100M songs for members
LOS ANGELES — Amazon Music is gearing up for a massive content expansion: The streaming giant will offer a full catalog of music with more than 100 million songs for members. The streaming service told The Associated Press that members will gain hundreds of millions of songs — a huge...
Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, ousts top executives
Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted the CEO, chief financial officer and the company’s general counsel, two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night. The people wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or if the...
Argo AI, a Pittsburgh driverless car pioneer, goes out of business
One of Pittsburgh’s autonomous vehicle companies announced Wednesday that it is shutting down. It’s unclear how many Pittsburgh workers will be laid off, as some Argo AI employees at the Strip District-based company will be absorbed into two of Argo’s investors: Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG. In addition to...
Report: TikTok bad at culling U.S. election misinformation ads
TikTok’s algorithms are very good at finding videos to keep people glued to their phone screens for hours on end. What they are not so good at, a new report has found, is detecting ads that contain blatant misinformation about U.S. elections. That’s despite TikTok having banned all political advertisements...
Poor, less white U.S. neighborhoods get worst internet deals
A couple of years into the pandemic, Shirley Neville had finally had enough of her shoddy internet service. “It was just a headache,” said Neville, who lives in a middle-class neighborhood in New Orleans whose residents are almost all Black or Latino. “When I was getting ready to use my...
11 more crash deaths are linked to automated-tech vehicles
DETROIT — Eleven additional people were killed in U.S. crashes involving vehicles that were using automated driving systems during a four-month period earlier this year, according to newly released government data, part of an alarming pattern of incidents linked to the technology. Ten of the deaths involved vehicles made by...
Semafor news site makes debut, intent on reinventing news
NEW YORK — The media organization Semafor launched on Tuesday with no less an ambition than reinventing the news story. Semafor is the brainchild of Ben Smith — former media reporter for The New York Times and, before that, former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed — and Justin Smith, ex-CEO of Bloomberg...
Workforce training seen as a key to maximizing $63 million grant to boost region’s robotics, AI industries
While Southwestern Pennsylvania’s robotics industry has the potential to grow with a targeted federal grant of almost $63 million, officials Monday stressed the need for a skilled workforce to make that potential for growth a reality. “This is about our economic future,” said Craig Buerstatte, the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s...
Pa. plan for electric vehicle supercharger stations becoming reality
Davie Huddleston wasn’t looking for an electric vehicle. He loves his gas-powered Nissan Murano convertible. But his two daughters kept insisting, and he finally bought one. “They should sell electric vehicles,” he said of his daughters. “It was constant. And they had a point for my every objection. But it...
Tesla robot walks, waves, but doesn’t show off complex tasks
DETROIT — An early prototype of Tesla Inc.’s proposed Optimus humanoid robot slowly and awkwardly walked onto a stage, turned, and waved to a cheering crowd at the company’s artificial intelligence event Friday. But the basic tasks by the robot with exposed wires and electronics — as well as a...
Giorgio Coraluppi, Pittsburgh inventor of tech for video calls, lauded as pioneer
People who rely on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, WhatsApp and other instant messaging platforms have Giorgio Coraluppi to thank. The longtime Pittsburgh resident and businessman, known as “Dr. C,” invented the technology for the digital teleconference call from which those apps were derived. Following his death Wednesday, Sept. 28, at...
Meta disables Russian propaganda network targeting Europe
A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Meta revealed Tuesday. The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before...
As TikTok eats the world, YouTube makes a bid for creators’ hearts — and wallets
PLAYA VISTA, Calif. — Gathered in the company’s historic Spruce Goose hangar Tuesday morning, a host of YouTube leaders laid out a roadmap for the platform’s evolving relationship with both video creators and the music industry, announcing new monetization tools and industry partnerships in the cavernous event space where Howard...
Serious breach at Uber spotlights hacker social deception
The ride-hailing service Uber said Friday that all its services were operational following what security professionals are calling a major data breach, claiming there was no evidence the hacker got access to sensitive user data. But the breach, apparently by a lone hacker, put the spotlight on an increasingly effective...
As data centers proliferate, neighbors knock the noise
MANASSAS, Va. — In a universe of cloud computing, northern Virginia might be in a perpetual fog. More of the data centers that feed the cloud are clustered in the region outside the nation’s capital than anywhere else in the world. As cloud computing — which enables data storage and...
Cheaper electric vehicles coming despite high battery costs
WARREN, Mich. — Even though battery costs are rising, auto companies are rolling out more affordable electric vehicles that should widen their appeal to a larger group of buyers. The latest came Thursday from General Motors, a Chevrolet Equinox small SUV with a starting price somewhere around $30,000 and a...
Apple maintains prices on new iPhones despite inflation
CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple’s latest lineup of iPhones will boast better cameras, faster processors and a longer lasting battery at the same prices as last year’s model, despite the inflationary pressure that has driven up the cost of many other everyday items. That decision, revealed Wednesday during Apple’s first in-person...
KeyBank: Hackers of third-party provider stole customer data
BOSTON — Hackers stole personal data including Social Security numbers, addresses and account numbers of home mortgage holders at KeyBank, the bank reports, in the breach of a third-party vendor that serves multiple corporate clients. The hackers obtained the information on July 5 after breaking into computers at the insurance...
FTC investigating Amazon’s $3.9B purchase of One Medical
NEW YORK — The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazon’s $3.9 billion acquisition of the primary health organization One Medical, a move that could delay the completion of the deal. Both One Medical and Amazon received a request for additional information Friday in connection with an FTC review of the...
Southwestern Pa. awarded $63M to boost robotics and AI industries in region
Southwestern Pennsylvania has secured a $62.7 million federal grant that local officials hope will boost the region’s robotics and artificial intelligence industries and allow small businesses to take advantage of that growth. The White House announced Thursday the newly formed Southwestern Pennsylvania New Economy Collaborative will receive its funding through...
Musk cites whistleblower as new reason to exit Twitter deal
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter lobbed more accusations at each other Tuesday in the latest round of legal filings over Musk’s efforts to rescind his offer to buy the social media platform. Musk filed more paperwork in his bid to terminate the deal, this time based on information in...
Tesla hopes new investors go for the ride after stock split
NEW YORK — Unlike its cars, Tesla shares are about to get less expensive. Tesla is splitting its stock 3 for 1, so after the close of trading Tuesday, investors will receive two additional Tesla shares for every one they owned as of Aug. 17. In theory, that should drop...
Meta reveals future of realistic avatars at offices in Pittsburgh
The future of ultra-realistic human avatars has started, and technology for it is being developed in Pittsburgh. Meta, the Menlo Park, Calif.- based global tech company that operates Facebook, Oculus and other tech firms, provided a media tour of its Strip District offices on Tuesday. The company moved into the...
Don’t dawdle with latest iPhone update. Here’s why and how
Apple regularly issues updates to the software powering the iPhone, and sometimes it’s OK to dawdle when it comes to installing them. But that’s not the case with its latest — an upgrade that Apple released Wednesday to close a security hole that could allow hackers to seize control of...
