British augmented reality startup Blippar has warned that it needs more cash to stay afloat. The company posted a loss of more than £34 million ($US45 million) for the year to 31 March 2017. Blippar blamed its losses on its technology investments – but has since shuttered its Silicon Valley […]

The New York FBI’s cyber division chief, Aristedes Mahairas, has voiced frustration with big tech companies for making it harder to investigate crime. He told Business Insider that every device the FBI is prevented from accessing represents “at least one victim.” Tech companies, like Apple and Facebook, have been extremely […]

Unlockd, an Australian advertising startup backed by Lachlan Murdoch, has gone into administration after a battle with Google about whether its app is allowed on the Play Store. Google tried to disable Unlockd’s ad content and ban its app, which lets users opt into ads and offers in exchange for […]

The man in charge of a $US100 billion (£75 billion) investment fund said he personally spent six months persuading Uber’s board and shareholders to take the offer of $US8 billion. Rajeev Misra, the chief executive of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, said he was pitching for a SoftBank-led consortium to buy Uber […]

Facebook acknowledged on Thursday that a bug resulted in some users’ status updates defaulting to public, even if they had been set to private. This is one of the few times Facebook has proactively disclosed a privacy issue affecting millions of people. It signals a change of approach following the […]

Google may be hit with a second major penalty from European regulators over antitrust. Google is accused of forcing smartphone makers to preinstall services such as Google Search on its Android operating system. The timing couldn’t be worse for Google given the growing global appetite to break up big tech […]

Microsoft has put a data centre in the sea in an experimental effort to see if it can provide internet services faster to coastal cities using renewable energy. As part of its bigger Project Natick “moonshot,” Microsoft has put the data centre on the seafloor close to Scotland’s Orkney Islands. […]

Apple introduced new tools to combat smartphone addiction at its annual developer conference on Monday. The tools will be baked into iOS 12 and will let people limit how much they use certain distracting apps, among other features. But third-party “wellness” app makers are complaining that Apple’s tight control over […]

“We’ve never been in the data business,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told NPR on Monday. Cook was responding to a New York Times report that Facebook had allowed 60 phone manufacturers access to people’s data, including Apple. It’s the latest shot Cook has fired at Facebook over its privacy practices. […]

A Canadian judge found a woman guilty of distracted driving for looking at her Apple Watch while at a traffic light. The judge said the Apple Watch was no less distracting than “a mobile phone taped to someone’s wrist.” It’s illegal in Canada to drive while using a hand-held communications […]

Sandy Parakilas is the former Facebook employee who blew the whistle on the firm’s internal security practices during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He will travel to Brussels on Monday to explain to European lawmakers how Facebook could have prevented Cambridge Analytica from obtaining 87 million user profiles. Parakilas said the […]

British driverless car startup FiveAI poached John Lusty, a former engineering manager at Facebook’s Oculus, to head up its simulation efforts. Lusty said he left Facebook in February because driverless cars are one of the few areas of technology more exciting than virtual reality right now. Lusty will draw on […]

Freedom of Information requests show that ambulances were called 600 times to Amazon warehouses in the UK over the past three years. The GMB union, which filed the requests, found that ambulances were called for pregnancy-related incidents, breathing problems, cardiac pain, electrocution, and even major trauma. The union said Amazon […]

James Williams, a former Googler who quit to become a philosopher, has written a new book about the way tech companies exploit our attention. He argued that tech distraction is much bigger than just looking at your phone constantly – cumulatively it stops people from achieving bigger goals and leads […]

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the way the firm banned musicians R Kelly and XXXTentacion from its playlists was badly handled. R Kelly and XXXTentacion were booted from Spotify’s playlists earlier this month, but XXXTentacion was reinstated while he awaits trial for charges of domestic abuse. Ek didn’t say if […]

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel addressed comments made by an ex-employee about the company’s “pervasive sexist vibe” and said her remarks had been a “wake-up call.” Former engineer Shannon Lubetich sent an email on her last day at Snap to 1,000 engineers complaining about bias and questioning the company’s diversity. Spiegel […]

Instagram tracks how you tap and scroll in the app. That’s unnerving, but the company has an explanation. Instagram has had a major problem with bots, accounts that automatically like posts and follow users. Tracking how humans behave on Instagram means the company is probably trying to use artificial intelligence […]