Technology

Salesforce has “taken action” to stop the Republication National Committee (RNC) from sending emails that could incite violence, though the company won’t say what that action is. The RNC is using ExactTarget, a Salesforce tool, for campaign emails. The move, first reported by Motherboard, comes after the Trump campaign sent an email urging supporters to “step up RIGHT NOW” and “defend the integrity of this Election” shortly before the breach of the US Capitol on January 6th. The enterprise software company declined to elaborate on what action it has taken Salesforce confirmed to The Verge that it hasn’t dropped the RNC as a client. “The Republican National Committee has been a long-standing customer, predating the current Administration,” a spokesperson said. “We have taken action to preve...

Ubiquiti, the company I bought networking gear from because I wanted Wi-Fi that’s totally under my control, now tells me something may not have been under my control after all: my basic account information. According to an email it’s sending out to users today, a “third party cloud provider” was accessed by an unauthorized user, and that provider might possibly have some of our data. While the company says it isn’t hasn’t found any evidence that our user data has been accessed, it also “cannot be certain that user data has not been exposed”. The potential data at risk will be familiar if you’ve received these kinds of emails before: names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, and (encrypted, hopefully unreadable) passwords. You’ll want to change your password now. It doesn’t sound like that b...

Facebook is cracking down on potentially violent sedition ahead of the January 20th inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, including a widespread temporary ban on phrases associated with the mob that attacked the Capitol building on January 6th. The policy, detailed in a post published Monday by Facebook vice presidents Guy Rosen and Monika Bickert, includes any content containing the words “stop the steal,” an unusually aggressive policy that appears to still be rolling out across the network. “We are treating the next two weeks as a major civic event,” the post reads. “We are now removing content containing the phrase ‘stop the steal’ under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram… With continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the US presiden...

Wearable tech and augmented reality provider Vuzix is back at CES 2021 with another pair of its smart glasses, this time with a new advancement. The latest pair is powered by microLED technology, thanks to a partnership with the Chinese firm Jade Bird Display. MicroLED displays have emerged in recent years as viable alternatives to OLED screens, driving advancements mostly in the television space. Yet, the tech in this context allows for ultra small but powerful display projectors to be fitted into both sides of the smart glasses, which, to Vuzix’s credit, look pretty close to something you’d be comfortable wearing out in public on a daily basis. Combined with Vuzix’s waveguide tech and its display engine optics for mapping the image onto the inside of the glass, the result is an impressiv...

iBuyPower announced a new 18.34-liter small form factor PC case at CES 2021 called the Revolt 3 MK3. I’m not sure what I find so enthralling about it, but it’s the kind of case I’d find myself staring at for an embarrassing amount of time if I were in the market to upgrade my build. (Maybe I am, after all.) If you’re a fan of minimalist cases like me, with next to no added LEDs, you might find yourself under the spell of this case, too. Okay, I also really like its top-mounted handle. It’s not like I move my PC around a lot, though it would make it far easier and safer to carry this around when I need to give it a deep cleaning or swap some of the tech inside. Beyond the handle’s utility, it reminds me of the Nintendo GameCube — if the handle were attached to a chassis that’s far more refi...

Sony is getting into the drone business, with the company showing off a brief first look at its new Airpeak drone at CES 2021. The new drone is said to be the smallest drone capable of carrying an Alpha camera and is designed for video content creation and professional photography. There are very few concrete details about the new drone system right now, although Sony mentioned that it’s been exploring using the drones to film landscape and city shots. It showcased the Airpeak working as a chase camera for footage of its Vision-S concept car from last CES. The model shown off at CES 2021 is a quadcopter design and features two landing gear extensions that retract upward during flight (so as not to spoil your footage). While Sony hasn’t dabbled in drones before, its cameras are among the be...

Unlike indoor smart home gadgets, connected outdoor appliances have an extra problem to deal with in the form of unpredictable weather. Lutron aims to address that with its new Caséta Outdoor Smart Plug, which is designed to withstand the elements through every season and lets you toggle your outdoor electronics on and off even when it looks too miserable to step outside yourself. The Caséta Outdoor Smart Plug is an addition to Lutron’s larger Caséta smart lighting system. It’s IP65 rating means it should stand up to rain and snow, but Lutron also claims the device is essentially “dustproof” and “sunproof” as well. The plug can also survive temperatures from -4 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Engadget. [embedded content] Like an indoor smart plug, this outdoor on...

The creators of social network Parler have sued Amazon for ending a web hosting agreement after last week’s riot at the US Capitol. Parler claims Amazon Web Services severed ties to stop Parler from competing with the larger social platform Twitter, and it’s asking a court to stop Amazon from shutting down its account — arguing that an extended shutdown would be like “pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support.” Parler bills itself as a more permissive alternative to Facebook and Twitter, particularly as those sites have cracked down on President Donald Trump and his supporters for seeking to violently overturn the US election results. That stance has earned backlash from digital infrastructure companies. Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their stores, limiting its r...

Peloton, a company known for its internet-connected bikes and treadmills, is wading into the Stop The Steal mess. The company is now preventing users from creating a #StopTheSteal tag from within the app, saying the tag does not “meet our guidelines” when a user goes to create it. Peloton’s community guidelines specifically ban “hate, offensive, and obscene speech” as well as “bullying, harassment, and other offensive behavior.” We’ve reached out for additional clarification about when Peloton began blocking this hashtag and why. Tags on Peloton function as community identifiers. When people join a tag, it appears under their name on the company’s leaderboard during workouts, and they can socialize with other members of that tag. Anyone can create a tag, and new tags are popping up in resp...

D-Link is trying to make it simple to give your computer a Wi-Fi upgrade. The networking company has announced what it’s calling an “industry-first” Wi-Fi 6 adapter built into a USB stick. Plug it into your laptop or desktop computer, and you may be able to get better performance than from your older Wi-Fi chip. The adapter advertises speeds up to 1,200Mbps. It’s not entirely clear who the target audience is for this upgrade. You’ll need to be connected to a Wi-Fi 6 router to get the biggest benefits, and most people still don’t own one of those (the Wi-Fi 6 standard only started rolling out two years ago). And if the laptop or desktop you’re using was bought any time in recent memory, chances are it supports Wi-Fi 5, which isn’t a huge step down from Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6 does come with some b...

Microsoft is updating its Surface Pro line today with a refreshed Surface Pro 7 Plus model that is only available to businesses and schools. While the design and screen on the outside remain the same as the Surface Pro 7, Microsoft has overhauled the internals of the device to make way for Intel’s latest 11th Gen processors, a bigger battery, removable SSD, and LTE connectivity. This marks the return of LTE to the main Surface Pro line for the first time since 2015, but unfortunately there’s no 5G connectivity as Microsoft is using Qualcomm’s older Snapdragon X20 LTE modem inside the Surface Pro 7 Plus. The Surface Pro 7 Plus has no external design changes.Image: Microsoft A variety of models will be available, starting with the Intel Core i3 (1115G4) and ending with the Intel Core i7 (116...