Technology

On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a massive antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social media giant has harmed competition by buying up smaller companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to squash the threat they posed to its business. Forty-seven other state and regional attorneys general are joining the suit. The lawsuit centers on Facebook’s history of acquisitions starting, particularly its $1 billion purchase of Instagram in 2011. In addition to its acquisition strategy, the attorneys general allege that Facebook used the power and reach of its platform to stifle user growth for competing services. The Federal Trade Commission is expected to bring a lawsuit against Facebook on similar grounds later today. The FTC case goes even farther than the sta...

Detailed specs and images of the 2021 Moto G Stylus have leaked by way of an early Amazon listing, as spotted by Phone Arena. This iteration on the stylus-having, budget-friendly device looks to borrow features from this year’s Moto G9 Plus, including a 6.8-inch FHD+ display that’s slightly larger than its predecessor’s 6.4-inch screen. Amazon’s (now removed) page lists a price of $341, which is unlikely to be the final MSRP, but it’s a bit higher than the original G Stylus’ $299 introductory price. One of the things we liked best about the prior G Stylus was the image quality from its camera, and Motorola appears to have tweaked the hardware setup in the 2021 version. Aside from a 48-megapixel main rear camera, it adopts the quad-camera array from the Moto G9 Plus, including an 8-megapixe...

PixelJunk Eden was ahead of its time. The idea of a download-only indie game with arty, abstract 2D graphics and a pulsing techno soundtrack doesn’t sound remotely unusual in 2020, but there really wasn’t much like Eden when it dropped on the PS3 in 2008. Developed by Kyoto’s Q-Games, with music and visuals from local-artist-turned-creative-director Baiyon, Eden was a hypnotic triumph, if a little more challenging than its chill vibe might have led you to expect. Now we have a sequel, PixelJunk Eden 2, which is coming out today as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. Much of the content and music is repurposed from a 2018 mobile game, Eden Obscura. If it’s new to you, though, Eden 2 will feel like a true sequel — and one that can be friendlier to play than the original. The basic premise is identi...

Microsoft has confirmed its timeline for bringing its xCloud cloud gaming service to Apple’s iOS platform and to Windows PCs, with the company saying it will support iPhone, iPad, and PC starting in spring 2021. The Verge reported in October that Microsoft was looking to bring xCloud to iOS via a mobile web app some time in “early 2021,” but Microsoft has clarified the timing in a blog post published on Wednesday. The PC version of xCloud will be delivered through the Xbox app for Windows 10, the company says. “In Spring 2021, we will take the next step in our journey to reach more players around the world by making cloud gaming as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate available on Windows PCs through the Xbox app and browser, and iOS devices through mobile web browser,” writes Jerret West, Micr...

On Wednesday, YouTube announced that it will begin removing any content alleging widespread voter fraud influenced the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. In the immediate aftermath of the November 3rd election, YouTube came under fire for allowing channels to publish videos making false claims about election results. In one instance, One America News Network, a verified YouTube channel, published a video declaring that “Trump won” the election. At the time, YouTube defended its decision to let the video stand, saying in a statement, “Like other companies, we’re allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YouTube.” The company went on to say that content from “authoritative news organizations” were “the most popul...

If you’re struggling to think of a gift for someone in your life, it’s hard to fail with a good set of headphones. Thankfully, many of the best models currently available have seen sharp discounts in the lead-up to the holidays. Today’s standout deals are on the Apple AirPods Pro at Woot for $190 (around $220 everywhere else). Now that the $550 AirPods Max are a thing, the Pro is no longer the most expensive model. Also worth sharing today is a deal on Microsoft’s Surface Headphones, a noise-canceling over-ear model for $150 instead of its usual $200 asking price. We’ve also found some noteworthy deals on PS4 games that might be on a wish list you’re in charge of tackling. Headphones and earbuds Woot is offering the AirPods Pro for $190. They cost $250 from Apple directly, though most reta...

Google has released its list of the top trending searches in the US for 2020, and as one might expect, “coronavirus,” “election results,” and “Zoom” led the way. To be clear: these aren’t top searches or most-searched topics. Rather, they’re “searches that had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2020 as compared to 2019,” Google said. As year-in-review content goes, it’s pretty depressing; also among the top trending searches were Kobe Bryant, Naya Rivera, and Chadwick Boseman, all of whom died in 2020. Google’s top trending searches in news included “stimulus checks,” as the government’s distribution of $1,200 payments didn’t exactly go smoothly; “unemployment,” as millions lost their jobs due to pandemic lockdowns; “Australia fires” which, I have to be honest, I forgot was...

One of the US’s leading cybersecurity firms, FireEye, says it’s been hacked by a state-sponsored attacker. Hackers targeted and accessed the firm’s so-called Red Team tools, which it uses to test customer security and find vulnerabilities. Now there’s concern that the hackers could release these tools publicly or use them to attack others, though there is no evidence that this has happened yet. FireEye says that it does not believe any customer information was taken. Although the blog post, authored by FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia, does not say who is responsible, it says that the attacking nation has “top-tier offensive capabilities.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Russia is a suspect, specifically its foreign-intelligence service known as the SVR. However, the investigation into who is...

On Tuesday, the Senate voted to confirm the controversial nomination of Republican Nathan Simington to the Federal Communications Commission, despite pleas from Democrats and advocacy groups to hold off on a vote until next year. By confirming Simington, the Republican-led Senate will be handing the incoming Joe Biden administration a deadlocked FCC. In November, current FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced that he would be stepping down from the agency once Biden is inaugurated, leaving the incoming administration with two Republicans, two Democrats, and no voting majority. If a Republican-led Senate refuses to confirm Biden’s choice for a replacement, it could bring the commission to a standstill. “Nathan Simington is a deeply dangerous nominee to the FCC.” This threat of gridlock paired with...

The 2020 holiday shopping season has been defined by how difficult it is to purchase consoles like the PS5 and GPUs like the GeForce RTX 3090, prompting some people to use other, less legal methods to get both products. Bots account for some of the consoles up for resale, but theft is apparently another source. Around $340,000 worth of GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs were stolen from MSI, according to Tom’s Hardware. That amounts to 40 containers of the popular cards, based off the translation of an internal document from MSI embedded in the tweet below. MSI Chinese mainland factory was stolen, stolen 40 boxes RTX3090, the total value of 2200000RMB …… MSI has been officially announced and informed to the police ,Reward of 100000 RMB for reporting effective information. pic.twitter.com/JW...

After many months of rumors, Apple officially announced the AirPods Max, its own over-the-ear, wireless, noise-canceling headphones. This is the first pair of noise-canceling headphones to feature the Apple logo. They cost $549 and are available for preorder now with shipping slated for December 15th. Unlike the AirPods and AirPods Pro, the AirPods Max come in multiple colors (dark gray, silver, blue, green, and pink). They feature high-fidelity audio, adaptive EQ, active noise cancellation, and spatial audio. Apple says the headphones offer a 20-hour battery life with charging done through Apple’s Lightning connector and not through a USB-C cable. (No, a charging brick does not come in the box.) We’ll be reviewing the new wireless headphones soon, but if you are interested in placing an o...

American Airlines is about to start offering at-home COVID-19 tests to domestic fliers in order to help them meet various state travel restriction requirements, the company announced Tuesday. The airline is partnering with direct-to-consumer home testing company LetsGetChecked, which will sell the tests for $129 on top of the cost of travel. The at-home tests help travelers check off one of the most common travel restrictions that states have implemented, which is a negative test result either before departure or upon arrival. It will also help customers get reliable access to testing, which is still hit-or-miss in many parts of the United States. But there are still holes in the process; it is still possible to get infected on the way to or at the airport, for example. Different states al...