Technology category, Page 30
Epic Games will put Fortnite on Google’s Play Store after months of holding out
Epic Games has backed down from its protest of tech giant Google. After 18 months of protesting Google’s terms — and its 30% store fee — the video game maker is putting Fortnite on the Google Play Store, the official channel for adding apps to Android phones and devices. In...
Comcast launches preview of new streaming service
Comcast began offering a preview of the premium tier of NBCUniversal’s new streaming service Peacock to some customers on Wednesday. With most people under stay-at-home restrictions because of the coronavirus pandemic, Comcast said it has seen a 50% increase in on-demand consumption year-over-year. Voice remote searches for free content are...
Carnegie Mellon partners with Facebook to gather coronavirus data from residents
Carnegie Mellon University is partnering with Facebook to gather data from U.S. residents who are experiencing symptoms of covid-19. Researchers at the university hope to use the data to forecast the spread of the pandemic and its potential weight on hospital systems. Some Facebook users will soon see a link...
Venezuela’s only telecoms satellite is lost in spaceVideo
BOGOTA, Colombia — Venezuela’s only telecommunications satellite has veered off its orbit and stopped working, creating a logistical headache for the cash-strapped South American nation. The Chinese-built satellite was launched among much fanfare in 2008 under the watch of former President Hugo Chavez, who said that the six-ton machine would...
Home internet jammed up? Try these steps before upgrading
With so much of the U.S. workforce — and its families — now cooped up at home to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, it’s not a huge surprise that home internet is showing the strain. If you’ve had a business videoconference stutter while your teenagers play Call of...
Dave Matthews to livestream set from home, kick off weekly seriesVideo
Dave Matthews is playing live from his home tonight for a good cause. The singer-songwriter will play a 30-minute set starting at 8 p.m. that will be shown via Verizon’s Twitter account and also on Yahoo. The streamed set is the first from Pay it Forward Live, a weekly eight-part...
YouTube to limit video quality around the world for a month
YouTube will reduce the quality of videos around the world starting Tuesday, an effort by the world’s most popular video site to ease internet traffic during the coronavirus outbreak. Over the coming days, viewers will at first see YouTube videos in standard definition, the company said. Users will still be...
Apple brings PC-like trackpad to iPad tablets
Apple’s new iPad brings PC-like trackpad capabilities for the first time, as the company seeks to make its tablet even more like a laptop computer. Apple says the trackpad will offer more precision than fingers in selecting text and switching between apps. Older iPads will also be able to get...
U.S. revises passenger safety rules for autonomous vehicles
DETROIT — The U.S. government is coming out with new regulations aimed at changing automotive passenger safety standards that could be barriers to autonomous vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it’s seeking comment on proposed updated standards to account for vehicles that don’t have manual controls such as...
Potential Amazon site in Churchill faces uncertain future
One of the largest underdeveloped parcels of land in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs has caught the eye of retail giant Amazon for the purposes of a high-tech distribution facility, though the future of that project is uncertain, according to Churchill and Allegheny County officials. A recent change to zoning of the...
AGs for crackdown on chemical used to sterilize medical devices
Half of all medical devices used in the United States — from bandages to implantable computers — are sterilized with a toxic gas that has come under critical scrutiny over concerns about air pollution that could cause cancer. Now Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has joined a coalition of 11...
Twitter preps ephemeral tweets, starts testing in Brazil
Twitter is starting to test tweets that disappear after 24 hours, although initially only in Brazil. The company says the ephemeral tweets, which it calls “fleets” because of their fleeting nature, are designed to allay the concerns of new users who might be turned off by the public and permanent...
Teens love the video app TikTok. Do they love it too much?
From the perspective of teens, TikTok is a major new outlet for self-expression, one proudly home to the silly, the loud and the weird. To others, the Chinese-owned online video service is an unnerving black box that could be sharing information with the Chinese government, facilitating espionage or just promoting...
FCC proposes fines for phone companies that shared user data
NEW YORK — The Federal Communications Commission has proposed roughly $200 million in fines combined for the four major U.S. phone companies for improperly disclosing customers’ real-time location. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said during a news conference Friday that the fines amounted to $91 million for T-Mobile, $57 million for...
Order online or drive to the store? The climate savvy pick ‘clicks and bricks’
NEW YORK — Consumers could be forgiven for assuming that shopping online has a lower carbon footprint than buying in-store. For many, the online option saves them a trip in the car, and it stands to reason that logistics companies would be good at generating efficient delivery routes. There’s some...
Pittsburgh man recognized for inspiring youths at teen tech centerVideo
Aaron McKinnon remembers helping his father and uncles work on cars as a child. One day McKinnon accidentally knocked over a box of nuts and bolts on the hood of the vehicle, scattering them throughout the engine. “I got yelled at, so that killed my creativity right there,” said McKinnon,...
Facebook reverses on paid influencers after Bloomberg memes
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has decided to let political campaigns pay online influencers to spread their messages, a practice that had sidestepped many of the social network’s rules governing political ads. Friday’s policy reversal highlights difficulties tech companies and regulators have in keeping up with the changing nature of paid...
Zuckerberg accepts that Facebook may have to pay more tax
LONDON — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to throw his support behind international reforms that would require Silicon Valley tech giants to pay more tax in Europe. The billionaire social network founder is due to meet members of the European Union’s executive Commission in Brussels and speak at the Munich...
U.S. brings new charges against Chinese tech giant Huawei
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has added new criminal charges against Chinese tech giant Huawei and two of its U.S. subsidiaries, accusing the company in a plot to steal trade secrets from competitors in America, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. The case comes as the Trump administration is raising national security...
Unique Illinois privacy law leads to $550M Facebook deal
CHICAGO — Adam Pezen, Carlo Licata and Nimesh Patel are among millions of people who have been tagged in Facebook photos at some point in the past decade, sometimes at the suggestion of an automated tagging feature powered by facial recognition technology. It was their Illinois addresses, though, that put...
Defective software could have doomed Boeing’s crew capsule
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Defective software could have doomed Boeing’s crew capsule during its first test flight, a botched trip that was cut short and never made it to the International Space Station, NASA and company officials said Friday. The Starliner capsule launched without astronauts in December, but its automatic...
YouTube, Venmo: Artificial intelligence firm must stop scraping faces from sitesVideo
Payment service Venmo joined YouTube and Twitter on Wednesday in demanding that a facial recognition company stop harvesting user images to identify the people in them, which the startup does as part of its work with police. Venmo said Wednesday it is sending a cease-and-desist letter to New York-based Clearview...
YouTube: No ‘deepfakes’ or ‘birther’ videos in 2020 election
YouTube is making clear there will be no “birtherism” on its platform during this year’s U.S. presidential election — a belated response to a type of conspiracy theory more prevalent in the 2012 race. The Google-owned video service is also reiterating that it won’t allow election-related “deepfake” videos and anything...
Dating apps face U.S. inquiry over underage use, sex offenders
SAN FRANCISCO — A House subcommittee is investigating popular dating services such as Tinder and Bumble for allegedly allowing minors and sex offenders to use their services. Bumble, Grindr, The Meet Group and the Match Group, which owns such popular services as Tinder, Match.com and OkCupid, are the current targets...
The big lesson from the Bezos hack: Anyone can be a target
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — You may not think you’re in the same league as Jeff Bezos when it comes to being a hacking target. Probably not, but you — and just about anyone else, potentially including senior U.S. government figures — could still be vulnerable to an attack similar to...
