Technology

Disney has released the second trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon, giving the best look yet at the upcoming animated fantasy film, which is set to hit both theaters and Disney Plus’ Premier Access program on March 5th. The new trailer sees Raya (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran) putting together a crew of warriors and con artists (including a surprisingly nimble baby) to join her on a quest to find the titular “last dragon,” which legends promise can save her people. But, as the trailer reveals, the mythical dragon, Sisu (voiced by Awkwafina) turns out to be, in her own words “that one kid [in a group project] who doesn’t pitch in as much but still ends up with the same grade.” Plus, the movie looks absolutely stunning, as Disney Animation once again takes the change to show off just how good ...

The Xperia Pro, Sony’s first smartphone with 5G in the US, is launching today for $2,499.99. Sony is targeting the device at professional users, who it hopes will use its HDMI input to turn the phone into an external camera monitor and its 5G connectivity to quickly upload or live-stream footage. Sony says it currently has no plans to release the Xperia Pro in Europe. Outside of its HDMI input and US 5G support, the Xperia Pro’s hardware is very similar to last year’s Xperia 1 II (which shipped with 5G support in Europe but was limited to 4G LTE in the US). That means it’s powered by a Snapdragon 865 processor with a 4,000mAh battery, and around the back, there are the same 12-megapixel wide, telephoto, and ultrawide cameras. The Xperia Pro also includes a tall 6.5-inch 21:9 aspect ratio O...

Sony has today announced its most advanced mirrorless camera yet: the $6,500 Alpha 1 features a new 50.1-megapixel full-frame sensor, is capable of continuous photo shooting at 30 images per second, and can record 8K video at 30fps. It’ll ship beginning in March. The powerhouse camera is priced significantly above the highest-end mirrorless cameras from Canon and Nikon, but Sony promises that customers who buy in will be rewarded with “the most technologically advanced, innovative camera” it’s ever made. It sounds like a dream for sports and action photographers: even with its large sensor, Sony says the buffer lets you shoot “up to 155 full-frame compressed RAW images or 165 full-frame JPEG images at up to 30 frames per second with the electronic shutter while maintaining full AF and AE t...

Amnesty International has launched a new campaign against facial recognition titled Ban The Scan — and is launching with a demand for New York City to halt police and government use of the technology. Amnesty argues facial recognition is incompatible with basic privacy rights, and will exacerbate structural racism in policing tactics. “New Yorkers should be able to go out about their daily lives without being tracked by facial recognition,” said Matt Mahmoudi, an AI and human rights researcher with Amnesty. “Other major cities across the US have already banned facial recognition, and New York must do the same.” “The NYPD has used facial recognition to track tens of thousands of New Yorkers” Amnesty is joined in the New York portion of the campaign by a range of groups, including the Urban ...

Facebook’s News tab will go live in the UK on January 26th in its first launch outside the US. The company says the section will offer a mix of curated and personalized news stories, but for select publishers the bigger news is that it will see Facebook paying them to license their content. Although Facebook declined to give information on the amount it expects to pay publishers, a spokesperson said the company plans to invest “substantial” amounts over a number of years. These payments are expected to mainly go to publishers whose content isn’t already on Facebook — for instance, like content that’s normally paywalled. The Guardian previously reported that some publishers expect these payments to be worth millions of pounds a year. Alongside the news of the section’s launch, Facebook is a...

Grindr will be fined 100 million Norwegian kroner, or about $11.7 million, by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority for illegally sharing private information about Grindr users to advertisers, according to The New York Times. Last January, the Norwegian Consumer Council filed three complaints against Grindr for sharing personal information, including users’ locations and information about the device they were using, with advertisers. (One of those advertisers was MoPub, Twitter’s mobile ads company.) Associating that information with an individual could potentially indicate that person’s sexual orientation without their consent, and now, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority is taking action against Grindr for the practice. Grindr has until February 15th to comment on the Norwegian Dat...

Government-backed hackers based in North Korea are targeting individual security researchers through a number of means including a “novel social engineering method,” Google’s Threat Analysis Group is reporting. The campaign has reportedly been ongoing for several months, and worryingly appears to exploit unpatched Windows 10 and Chrome vulnerabilities. Although Google doesn’t say exactly what the aim of the hacking campaign is, it notes that the targets are working on “vulnerability research and development.” This suggests the attackers may be trying to learn more about non-public vulnerabilities that they can use in future state-sponsored attacks. Hackers set up a network of Twitter accounts and a cybersecurity blog According to Google, the hackers set up a cybersecurity blog and series o...

On January 6th, WhatsApp users around the world began seeing a pop-up message notifying them of upcoming changes to the service’s privacy policy. The changes were designed to enable businesses to send and store messages to WhatsApp’s 2 billion-plus users, but they came with an ultimatum: agree by February 8th, or you can no longer use the app. The resulting furor sparked a backlash that led Facebook-owned WhatsApp to delay the policy from taking effect until May. In the meantime, though, tens of millions of users began seeking alternatives to Facebook’s suite of products. Among the biggest beneficiaries has been Signal, the encrypted messaging app whose development is funded by a nonprofit organization. Last month, according to one research firm, the six-year-old app had about 20 million u...

It looks like Amazon is rolling a new app icon on iOS, and unlike countless other recent app redesigns, it isn’t just a logo dropped inside a white background! Rejoice! The new icon cleverly takes cues from perhaps Amazon’s most recognizable “product” — its shipping boxes and their bright blue tape. Here it is — in the app’s listing on Apple’s UK App Store. (There are a few other reports of others seeing the icon on their devices as well.) Whoever worked on this new app design, which will be instantly recognizable on your home screen, deserves a raise. Correction: We’ve updated the headline to clarify that the new design is an icon, not a logo. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back powe...

Someone has gotten their hands on a database full of Facebook users’ phone numbers, and is now selling that data using a Telegram bot, according to a report by Motherboard. The security researcher who found this vulnerability, Alon Gal, says that the person who runs the bot claims to have the information of 533 million users, which came from a Facebook vulnerability that was patched in 2019. With many databases, some amount of technical skill is required to find any useful data. And there often has to be an interaction between the person with the database and the person trying to get information out of it, as the database’s “owner” isn’t going to just give someone else all that valuable data. Making a Telegram bot, however, solves both of these issues. Few days ago a user created a Telegra...