Election Day is coming up next week. Do you know when are the polls open? Amazon’s Alexa is fueled up with knowledge regarding the midterm elections on Nov. 6, the company says. You can ask her questions like, “Alexa, who’s running for Senate in California?” or “Alexa, how many seats did Republicans gain?” Whether it’s …

Don’t get too excited, Uber’s pass doesn’t cover the cost of fares — it just helps keep them low. Uber on Tuesday introduced Ride Pass, a monthly subscription service starting at $14.99, which makes sure your fare stays low whether it’s peak hour or bad weather. It’s available to all riders in five US cities: Los Angeles ($24.99 per month); …

Ever noticed your kids clicking on ads when they’re playing mobile games? Turns out many kids’ apps are full of ads, according to a new study, and some children might not be able to tell the ads apart from the games. Researchers led by the University of Michigan Medical School studied 135 popular apps marketed to and used by kids …

Tinkerers will now have an easier time modifying and repairing electronic devices. On Thursday, the US Copyright Office made some big changes to the legal exemptions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The changes will enable the repair community to legally fix, hack or modify people’s electronic devices. The new rules go into effect Sunday. The Library of Congress …

Be careful, online shoppers. The number of fake retail websites designed to phish for customer information is on the rise, according to a joint report published Wednesday by e-commerce fraud prevention company Riskified and cyber intelligence company IntSights.  Analyzing data from the third quarter of last year to Q3 2018, Riskified and IntSights found a 297 percent increase in retail …

Apple and Samsung were fined Wednesday for software updates that Italy’s antitrust watchdog said slowed down users’ phones. The Italian Competition Authority, or AGCM, fined Apple and Samsung 5 million euros (about $5.7 million) each for releasing software updates that “significantly reduced” the performance of phones, the AGCM said in a statement.  Both companies urged people to install updates that weren’t “adequately supported by their …

Snapchat’s tool to help people register to vote has apparently been a success. Snap, the popular app’s parent company, on Tuesday said that Snapchat has helped more than 400,000 users register to vote over the past two weeks.  Snapchat introduced a tool on Sept. 25, National Voter Registration Day, that lets users click a link on their User Profile page …

More pages and accounts got kicked off of Facebook. The social network on Tuesday said it has removed 68 pages and 43 accounts linked to Brazilian marketing group Raposo Fernandes Associados for violating the company’s misrepresentation and spam policies. RFA used fake accounts and pages to post huge amounts of clickbait, much of it sensational political content, that directed users …

Chinese telecom giant Huawei and a Silicon Valley startup are battling it out in a Texas federal court.   Earlier this week, CNEX Labs, a semiconductor and software company headquartered in San Jose, California, and its co-founder Yiren Ronnie Huang accused Huawei and its subsidiary Futurewei of stealing CNEX’s technology, according to the Wall Street Journal. A Huawei lawyer reportedly …

Untraceable 3D-printed guns may soon be traceable. In a paper published earlier this week, a team of researchers said they had discovered a way to trace 3D-printed objects back to the 3D printers that made them. The team’s identification system, dubbed “PrinTracker,” uses patterns that are etched onto the surface of a 3D-printed object to identify the printer that made …