Enlarge / An artist’s rendering of Archer’s first aircraft, due out in 2024. (credit: Archer) The success of uncrewed electric drones in the last couple of decades has caused some people to wonder if similar construction techniques to those used in drones could be employed to create small electric aircraft to carry people. Not only […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andrzej Wojcicki) Large numbers of US Internet subscribers are using over 1TB a month for the first time as the pandemic continues to boost home-Internet usage, according to research released today by the vendor OpenVault. “The power user category continue[d] to accelerate [in Q4 2020], with 14.1 percent of weighted […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Aurich Lawson) Suing technology firms when they mess up is already hard, especially over privacy violations. Now, Facebook, Google, and the trade groups representing all the big tech firms are asking the Supreme Court to make it even harder for class actions to pursue cases against them. Facebook, Google, and […]
Enlarge / SIM card. SIM card replacement. close-up (credit: Getty Images) Ten people have been arrested in connection with a series of SIM-swapping attacks that reaped more than $100 million by taking over the mobile phone accounts of high-profile individuals, authorities said on Wednesday. SIM-swapping is a crime that involves replacing a target’s legitimate SIM […]
Enlarge / ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images) The weird deal Oracle arranged at the behest of the Trump administration to buy TikTok without actually acquiring it has been permanently back-burnered, according to a new report. The transaction, which has gone effectively nowhere since it was first announced, is now “shelved,” the ever-popular “people […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | imaginima) More broadband-industry groups are lining up against SpaceX’s bid to get nearly $900 million in Federal Communications Commission funding. Two groups representing fiber and rural Internet providers yesterday submitted a report to the FCC claiming that Starlink will hit a capacity shortfall in 2028, when the satellite service may […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Rafe Swan) The Biden administration has abandoned a Trump-era lawsuit that sought to block California’s net neutrality law. In a court filing today, the US Department of Justice said it “hereby gives notice of its voluntary dismissal of this case.” Shortly after, the court announced that the case is “dismissed […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Someone broke into the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida and tried to poison drinking water for a municipality’s more than 13,000 residents, officials said on Monday. The intrusion occurred on Friday evening, when an unknown person remotely accessed the computer interface used to adjust the chemicals that […]
Enlarge / Parler’s logo. (credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado) A congressional oversight committee is investigating whether Parler has financial ties to Russian entities, citing reports that the right-wing social network “allowed Russian disinformation to flourish” before the election and hosted calls for violence before a Trump-incited mob stormed the Capitol on January 6. The […]
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg via Getty Images) The price of bitcoin rose to a new record above $43,000 on Monday after Tesla reported that it had purchased $1.5 billion of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency. In a regulatory filing, Tesla also announced that it expected to “begin accepting bitcoin as a form […]