Technology category, Page 34

LE MARS, Iowa — It’s a common sight in most every public setting anymore. Look around and you’ll see people with their heads bent over their smartphones, fingers swiping at the screens and thumbs punching out messages. It shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone that information nowadays is just a...

ATLANTA — The sky above the stadium that will host Sunday’s Super Bowl is being “inundated” with an alarming number of drones, raising the specter of injuries to tourists or others — or a possible collision with aircraft, the FBI said Friday. That’s despite an ongoing restriction that bans the...

NEW YORK — Apple says Facebook can no longer distribute an app that paid users, including teenagers, to extensively track their phone and web use. The tech blog TechCrunch reports that Facebook paid about $20 a month. While Facebook says this was done with permission, the company has a history...

BEDFORD, Mass. — Robot vacuums have now been around long enough that you might watch one bump around a living room and think, why isn’t there a robot that could mow my lawn? Turns out, it’s not for lack of trying. For more than a decade, iRobot, the company behind...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island has been named the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Google’s parent company. State Treasurer Seth Magaziner said Tuesday a federal court in California approved his motion to make Rhode Island’s public employee retirement system the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Alphabet...

Apple has disabled a group-chat function in FaceTime after users said a software bug could let callers activate another person’s microphone remotely. With the bug, a FaceTime user calling another iPhone, iPad or Mac computer could hear audio — even if the receiver did not accept the call. The bug...

SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube said Friday it is retooling its recommendation algorithm that suggests new videos to users in order to prevent promoting conspiracies and false information, reflecting a growing willingness to quell misinformation on the world’s largest video platform after several public missteps. In a blog post that YouTube...

NEW YORK — Amazon is bringing delivery robots to the streets of a Seattle suburb. The online shopping giant says it started to test self-driving robots that can bring Amazon packages to shoppers’ doorsteps Wednesday in Snohomish County, Washington. The robots are light blue, are about the size of a...

A Boeing flying car designed to whisk passengers over congested city streets and dodge skyscrapers completed its first test flight on Tuesday, offering a peek into the future of urban transportation the aerospace giant and others are seeking to reshape. A prototype of its autonomous passenger air vehicle completed a...

When Daniel Bogre Udell turned 13, the small world he knew in the Poconos expanded into a much larger one in the kitchen of a local restaurant. It was the first time Bogre Udell, now 27, heard people speaking to one another in Spanish. That job as a busboy in...

I’ve tried a mattress with water cooling and another that sways like a boat. I’ve worn brainwave-measuring helmets and rested on pillows that nudge you when you snore. In the hunt for better sleep, I’ve even snuggled up with a robot. For the gadget industry, sleep is the new exercise...

LONDON — Facebook says it has removed hundreds of Russia-linked pages, groups and accounts that it says were part of two big disinformation operations, in its latest effort to fight fake news. The social media company said Thursday it took action after finding two networks “that engaged in coordinated inauthentic...

YouTube is bringing down the hammer on “harmful or dangerous content” in the wake of viral challenges that place content creators in potentially serious danger. The company recently announced the content crack-down, and singled out videos that present an apparent risk of death, videos that cause children to experience emotional...

Younger drivers can identify emojis, but a common car dashboard alert throws them, according to a new survey. Millennials and Gen Zers are 1.5 times more likely to identify popular emojis correctly than the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) warning symbol, according to the survey commissioned by Goodyear Auto Service...

Razor company Gillette is making a statement with its new commercial. The company posted “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” to its Twitter account and YouTube channel this week, calling attention to the #MeToo movement and depicting men acting in stereotypical ways. The video has more than 10.7 million...

Federal officials plan to ease restrictions on flying small drones over crowds and at night, which would give a boost to the commercial use of unmanned aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration outlined draft rules Monday that would let drone operators do those things without a special waiver from current rules....

A photo of an egg, just an ordinary egg, became the most-liked photo on Instagram Sunday night, toppling the previous mark set by a photo posted by reality television personality and model Kylie Jenner. “Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram,” the post,...

LAS VEGAS — Robots that walk, talk, pour beer and play pingpong have taken over the CES gadget show in Las Vegas again. Just don’t expect to find one in your home any time soon. Most home robot ventures have failed, in part because they’re so difficult and expensive to...

WASHINGTON — Sharing false information on Facebook is old. People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on the social media site than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, a new study finds. The first major study...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Hubble Space Telescope’s premier camera has shut down because of a hardware problem. NASA said the camera stopped working Tuesday. Hubble’s three other science instruments are still working fine, with celestial observations continuing. This third incarnation of the wide field camera was installed by spacewalking...

LAS VEGAS — The CES 2019 gadget show opened its doors Tuesday, with tech companies from giants to tiny startups showing off their latest products and services. In recent years, CES’s influence has declined as Apple, Google and other major companies throw their own events to launch new wares. Still,...

MOSCOW — The head of the Russian Orthodox Church says the data-gathering capacity of devices such as smartphones risks bringing humanity closer to the arrival of the Antichrist. In an interview shown Monday on state TV, Patriarch Kirill said the church does not oppose technological progress but is concerned that...

A tech company launched an app Monday that offers public and private options to help people get around, including subway, buses, bike-share, ride-hailing companies and even temporary carpooling arrangements using a person’s social network. The SoMo app – short for social mobility – is the work of HERE Technologies, a...

NEW YORK — One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you change channels. Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday...

Last year, Microsoft Corp.’s Azure security team detected suspicious activity in the cloud computing usage of a large retailer: One of the company’s administrators, who usually logs on from New York, was trying to gain entry from Romania. And no, the admin wasn’t on vacation. A hacker had broken in....