Technology

Ransomware — and particularly the Conti ransomware gang — has become a geopolitical force in Costa Rica. On Monday, the new Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chaves – who began his four-year term only ten days ago – declared that the country was ”at war” with the Conti cybercriminal gang, whose ransomware attack has disabled agencies across the government since April. In a forceful statement made to press on May 16th, President Chaves also said that Conti was receiving help from collaborators within the country, and called on international allies to help. “We’re at war and this is not an exaggeration,” Chaves told local media. “The war is against an international terrorist group, which apparently has operatives in Costa Rica. There are very clear indications that people inside the country are ...

Tesla is expanding its open Supercharger pilot program in Europe that lets owners of non-Tesla EVs take advantage of the company’s extensive charging network. Previously, the pilot consisted of select stations in The Netherlands, Norway, and France, but now it’s also available in the UK, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Austria. Non-Tesla owners in both Belgium and Germany originally could only take advantage of Tesla’s network if traveling to a country that has the open Superchargers. With Belgium now added to the program, German residents remain the only oddity that can use them outside of its borders, but not domestically. Non-Tesla vehicles can now charge at select Superchargers in Austria, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and the UK via the Tesla app. Learn more at https://t.co/HZePe24Kbl — Tesla Ch...

More long-term Netflix subscribers are canceling their subscriptions, according to a report from The Information. Survey data viewed by the outlet revealed that subscribers who have been with the service for more than three years accounted for 13 percent of cancellations in the first quarter of 2022. The Information says it got its data from Antenna, an analytics firm that gathers data from 5 million Americans who share their streaming subscriptions anonymously. The data showed that overall cancellations hit 3.6 million people last quarter, an increase from the 2.5 million cancellations in the past five quarters. As the number of cancellations overall has grown, The Information reports that new users are accounting for a smaller share of them — another indicator that Netflix is struggling ...

Meta is pulling back its investments in a number of products, including the teams it spun up early in the pandemic to compete with Zoom and build shopping features, The Verge has learned. In addition to a hiring freeze for certain engineering roles, the company also recently paused the hiring of recruiters and low-level data scientists. While the hiring freezes have caused employees to fear that layoffs are around the corner, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an internal all-hands meeting last Thursday that job cuts are not being planned. “I can’t sit here and make a permanent ongoing promise that as things shift that we won’t have to reconsider that,” Zuckerberg said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “But what I can tell you is that as of where we sit today, our ex...

Even tech companies that have promised to slash their greenhouse gas emissions have a big climate-related blind spot, according to a new report published by three environmental groups. With their cash and investments, Google, Apple, Meta, and other tech giants are indirectly financing fossil fuel companies. While these companies might have taken steps to cut down on pollution within their own operations and supply chains, the financial institutions they bank with still funnel Big Tech’s profits into heavily polluting industries. Emissions associated with that financial activity are so significant that they actually far exceed emissions from each company’s operations, the report finds. Financial institutions they bank with still funnel Big Tech’s profits into heavily polluting industries Th...

How people feel about Big Tech has changed since last year. A new study from the Pew Research Center found that fewer people in the US want more regulations for Big Tech companies. This decline, which spans across the political spectrum, showed that 44 percent of Americans are in favor of more government regulation compared to 56 percent of those surveyed last year. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all in favor of less regulation; for example, 32 percent of liberal Democrats surveyed say that the current amount of regulation is just right compared to the 23 percent who thought so in 2021. However, 27 percent of moderate or liberal Republicans do support less regulation, up from 13 percent, and 36 percent of conservative Republicans do, too, up from 11 percent. Only 35 percent of those...

Even though Stan Lee has been dead since 2018, a new deal between Marvel Studios and POW! Entertainment may be a sign that the legendary comics creator’s going to be appearing in more than a few Marvel-branded projects in the near future. POW! Entertainment, the production house Stan Lee co-founded in 2001 and subsequently sued in 2018 for allegedly forging his signature on legal documents, has entered a licensing agreement with Genius Brands and Marvel Studios granting the Hollywood giant the right to use Lee’s likeness in its upcoming projects. In a press release about the 20-year deal, Genius Brands CEO and chairman Andy Heyward expressed feelings of pride and stewardship for “the incredibly valuable rights to Stan Lee’s name, likeness, merchandise, and intellectual property brand.” “Th...

Microsoft has announced the beta for the new Outlook for Windows, which will make the desktop email client a lot more like the web version. While screenshots and an entire build of the app were recently leaked, Microsoft’s announcement gives us a good look at what kind of features we can expect to see coming to our inboxes. According to Microsoft’s Tuesday post, Outlook will be getting quite a few new features in addition to an updated design. For starters, it’ll integrate with Loop, Microsoft’s system for collaborating on things like polls, task lists, and more throughout Office. There’s also a new system for attaching files. If you’ve got something stored in the cloud, you can type the “@” symbol and then the filename, and you’ll get a list of matching files ready to add to an email. You...