Tech NewsMicrosoft

Microsoft Is Reportedly in Talks to Scoop Up AI Firm Nuance Communications for $16 Billion

Microsoft is in advanced talks to acquire Nuance Communications, an artificial intelligence firm whose speech recognition tech helped develop Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, for as much as $16 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The deal price being negotiated could value Nuance at around $56 per share, the source said, a roughly … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Flappy Bird Has Been Revived as an Interactive MacOS Notification

Flappy Bird hasn’t graced the Apple App Store in years, not since its meteoric rise in popularity back in 2014 before its creator just as swiftly took it offline. Now the furiously addictive mobile game has been reincarnated in a form no one expected: an interactive macOS notification. Using the new suite of customization tools added … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Security Researchers Find Zoom Vulnerabilities That Would Have Let Bad Actors Take Over Your Computer

A pair of security researchers revealed several zero-day vulnerabilities in Zoom in recent days that would have let hackers take over someone’s computer even if the victim hadn’t clicked anything. Zoom confirmed to Gizmodo that it released a server-side update to address the vulnerabilities on Friday and that users did not need to take additional … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Reddit’s Reportedly Cooking Up Its Own Clubhouse-Like Voice Chat Feature

Rumor has it the front page of the internet may be the latest online platform cooking up a social audio feature a la the voice-only chat app Clubhouse. Reddit is quietly working on incorporating moderator-run voice chats onto the platform, a person familiar with the matter said in a Friday Mashable report. In an interview … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Cybercriminals Bought Facebook Ads for a Fake Clubhouse App That Was Riddled With Malware

Cybercriminals have been pushing Facebook users to download a Clubhouse app “for PC,” something that doesn’t exist. The app is actually a trojan designed to inject malware into your computer. The popular new invite-only chat app is only available on iPhone but worldwide interest in the platform has risen and users are clamoring for Android … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Don’t Blame the ACLU for Facebook’s Ills

Earlier this week, folks in tech-savvy onlookers were utterly scandalized when a tweet thread from former Federal Trade Commission CTO Ashkan Soltani began being passed around. In it, Soltani calls out the American Civil Liberties Union for committing one of the cardinal sins of the tech privacy sphere: sharing data with Facebook. Soltani’s lengthy thread … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Apple Never Made iMessage for Android to Lock-In iOS Users, Epic Court Docs Show

As part of the ongoing legal battle between Fortnite maker Epic and Apple, some new information has come to light confirming the most annoying thing about Apple’s iMessage app: that Apple could make a cross-platform version of iMessage for Android phones, but it won’t because it would be bad for business. This info comes from … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Spotify Will Use Your Voice to Pummel You With Ads

For just under a year now, we’ve been seeing Spotify make acquisition after acquisition and product update after product update in order to establish a foothold in the ad-targeting space. Now, the company’s embarking on a new dataset for this purpose: your voice. This update was a bit of a footnote to the new Spotify … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Twitter Launches Pro-Democracy Emoji for ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ in Asia

Twitter launched a new emoji early Thursday that will appear anytime a user tweets the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance. The so-called Milk Tea Alliance refers to the pro-democracy movement in Asia that has been organized, at least in part, through actions online. “To celebrate the first anniversary of the #MilkTeaAlliance we designed an emoji featuring 3 different … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Facebook Is Officially Beta Testing Hotline, a Clubhouse-Inspired Audio Q&A Feature

Facebook on Wednesday ran its first public beta test of Hotline — a web-based Q&A platform that seems like it was dreamed up as the platform’s answer to the current voice chat app craze. More specifically, Hotline is designed to function as a sort of love child between Instagram Live and Clubhouse, TechCrunch reports: Creators … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Apple Tightens Its Rules Around Its New Anti-Tracking Tech

Apple’s offering a bit more clarity surrounding the anti-tracking tech that’s going to debut this spring. On Wednesday, a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that Apple’s so-called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) protocol will crack down on all identifiers an app might use to track you—not just identifiers that Apple owns. A quick reminder for folks … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Android App That Promised Free Netflix Shockingly Just Highly Annoying Malware

So-called pirating apps have been around for years—and they have only gained popularity since covid-19 put us all indefinitely on the couch, phone in hand, awaiting a reason (that never comes) to stop streaming. Well, not all pirating apps have your content-viewing interests in mind. Enter “FlixOnline.” Until recently, this app sat in Google’s Play … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Clubhouse Reportedly Thinks It’s Worth $4 Billion Now

Clubhouse, which led a round of investment in January at a reported valuation of around $1 billion, now believes it is worth four times that, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. A new round of funding the audio chat app is negotiating with investors may value the company at around $4 billion, sources told the news agency, … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Facebook Sure Seems Desperate To Pass This Latest Data Breach Off As Old News For Some Reason

In the aftermath of bombshell reports of a massive data breach that may have compromised the personal information of as many as 533 million users, Facebook has committed absolutely to trying to spin the leak as old news, no big deal, definitely nothing to see here, no need to even think about this too much … Continued

Tech NewsNews

TikTok Ups Its Accessibility With Auto-Captions

TikTok’s giving creators a new tool to make their awful, awful memes a bit more accessible. On Tuesday, the company announced that creators could now turn on auto-captions for their clips in a push to help folks with hearing loss enjoy the app more. “Inclusivity is important because when people feel included, they’re more comfortable … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

eBay’s App Can Now Recognize and Automatically Make Listings for Trading Cards You Want to Sell

Who’d have thought that over 150 years after the first baseball cards were printed in the late 1860s that trading cards would still be a hot commodity? Every minute, almost 100 of them are sold on eBay, according to the company. So, to make the process smoother, it’s updating its app with image recognition capabilities … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Clubhouse Is Partnering With Stripe to Offer Direct Payments, and Creators Will Get 100% of the Profits

The invite-only audio chat app Clubhouse is sweetening the deal for creators by offering a direct payment option that would allow them to reap 100% of the rewards. In a Monday blog post, Clubhouse announced that it would partner with the payment processing startup Stripe to offer direct payments on the app for the first … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Is Yahoo Answers Dying? Yes, Son, Yes It Is

Yahoo announced on Monday that it will soon send its Answers service to that great trash bin in the sky, bringing about 15 years’ worth of absurd, typo-ridden questioning and equally irreverent answering to an end. Yahoo Answers will be read-only as of April 20, and fully defunct by May 4, the company said. After … Continued

Tech NewsNews

‘Deep Nostalgia’ Can Now Make Old Photos of Your Relatives Dance and Blow Kisses

According to MyHeritage, since the launch of its Deep Nostalgia tool five weeks ago, over 72 million photo animations have been created through its site—and that was with just 10 different options available. Today, the company is doubling the number of unique movements that can be applied to still photos in Deep Nostalgia, including one … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Google Is Cracking Down on Apps That Can See Every Other App You Have Installed

As Google continues to upgrade its privacy and security policies, it’s now making an important change in Android that will significantly limit the ability of Android apps to see all the other apps you have installed on your device. In a recent announcement for developers, Google outlined an update to its policies that will restrict … Continued