Articles by Richard Adhikari

At least 250 Facebook employees signed a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticizing the company's hands-off policy against fact-checking ads posted by politicians "We don't believe that it's an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scr...

Microsoft has launched a slew of new devices designed to reshape the world: the Surface Laptop 3, the Surface Pro 7, the Surface Pro X, Surface Earbuds, and the upcoming Surface Neo and Surface Duo "The next decade will be about creation, and amplifying what we can do as humans," CEO Satya Nadella said Wednesday at Microsoft Surface 2019 in New Yor...

Two eGobbler malvertising exploits impacted 1.16 billion programmatic ads between Aug. 1 and Sept. 23, according to Confiant, which has been tracking the threat for about a year The first targeted versions of Chrome prior to Chrome 75 on iOS. The flaw was fixed in the Chrome 75 rollout June 4....

Amazon on Tuesday announced that dozens of partners have joined it in a Voice Interoperability Initiative. The aim is to support multiple, interoperable voice services on a single device so customers can access the one they want by saying the appropriate wake word Partners include Baidu, Tencent, BMW, Microsoft, Salesforce, Sonos, Spotify, Harman K...

Google need not comply with the right to be forgotten outside of the European Union, according to a European Court of Justice ruling released Tuesday A global de-referencing would meet the EU's data protection objectives, the court said, but it found that numerous third states do not recognize the right to de-referencing or have a different approac...

Facebook on Wednesday announced three additions to the Portal family: a new Portal, Portal Mini and Portal TV The devices let users make calls using Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp....

Amazon on Tuesday announced Amazon Music HD, which offers 50 million CD-quality songs -- 16 bits at 44.1 kHz. Customers also can stream millions more songs in Ultra HD -- better than CD quality -- with a bit depth of 24 bits and a sample rate up to 192 kHz Amazon Music HD will play the highest quality audio on customers' devices, and network condit...

California Assembly Bill 5, which would require many businesses to hire workers as employees rather than independent contractors -- and reclassify their existing workforces accordingly -- has passed its second reading The State Assembly will vote on amendments in a third reading and then send it to Governor Gavin Newsom, who has indicated he will s...

The attorneys general of 48 states, plus those from United States territory Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., have joined in an investigation into whether Google stifled online advertising and search competition The only holdouts are the attorneys general of Alabama, where Google is building a US$600 million data center, and California, where Googl...

Amazon reportedly is testing scanners that can identify a human hand to use as a payment method for in-store purchases The company plans to introduce "Orville," as the system has been dubbed, to some Whole Foods stores by the beginning of 2020, and later expand it to all locations in the United States, according to the report....

Apple has been developing sleep tracking functionality for the Apple Watch, according to 9to5 Mac. The report has been confirmed by MacRumors, which received an internal build of iOS 13 from a source....

Apple on Wednesday said it has suspended audits of consumer interactions with Siri, and undertaken a review of practices and policies related to the voice assistant Before suspending grading, the process involved reviewing a small sample of audio and computer-generated transcripts from Siri requests -- less than 0.2 percent -- to measure how well S...

Google's recent announcement of Privacy Sandbox -- an initiative to develop a set of open standards geared toward fundamental enhancements of privacy on the Web -- has stirred up a controversy Blocking cookies is not a good idea for a number of reasons, and standardization of such efforts is needed, argued Justin Schuh, director, Chrome Engineering...

Google, Mozilla and Apple on Wednesday blocked a fake root certificate issued by Kazakhstan's government to spy on its citizens' online activities The government instructed citizens to install the certificate on all of their devices, and it provided separate instructions for Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer Web browsers, accordi...

Facebook on Tuesday announced the release of Off-Facebook Activity, a tool that will let members see which apps and websites supply information about their online activity, and clear that information from their Facebook accounts if they wish It will roll out initially to members in Ireland, South Korea and Spain....

Researchers associated with vpnMentor, which provides virtual private network reviews, on Wednesday reported a data breach involving nearly 28 million records in a BioStar 2 biometric security database belonging to Suprema "BioStar 2's database was left open, unprotected and unencrypted," vpnMentor said in an email provided to TechNewsWorld by a co...

Spotify on Tuesday launched Spotify for Podcasters following a year-long beta involving more than 100,000 podcasts from 167 countries Spotify for Podcasters is a discovery and analytics dashboard designed to let podcasters track performance through data such as episode retention charts, aggregate demographics about listeners, and details on followe...

Apple sent emails to a small number of customers last week, inviting them to apply for the company's new Apple Card, and a privileged few have become the first to enroll in the program. The rollout is limited to qualifying applicants in the United States....

Samsung on Wednesday announced new devices and a deepening of its relationship with Microsoft at Samsung Unpacked, which showcased innovative new mobile experiences that work seamlessly and continuously anywhere and anywhen "The line between work and play has pretty much disappeared, and that means we need technology that can seamlessly flow betwee...

Researchers led by speech neuroscientist Edward Chang at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) on Tuesday reported their success at decoding speech attempts in real time by reading the activity in the speech centers of test subjects' brains Three persons capable of normal speech, who were being treated for epilepsy at the UCSF Medical C...