Google’s Pixel 5 flagship smartphone was unveiled earlier this week at its virtual “Launch Night In” event, which also introduced the Pixel 4A 5G, a new Chromecast and Nest Audio, a new smart speaker that will replace the Google Home. Among the new flagship phone’s specs and features announced at the event are some pretty big …

Thunderbolt, the chief competitor to USB-C, is being used to fix one of the standard’s biggest problems: the absence of hubs and docks. Before the end of the year, Other World Computing will begin shipping its $150 OWC Thunderbolt Hub, the company said on Wednesday. The products, which take advantage of the new Thunderbolt 4 standard, will turn one port …

Adobe’s PDF technology can’t match quantum computing’s revolutionary potential. But a lot more of the digital world revolves around the lowly Portable Document Format than the newfangled machines, which is why you should take note that Adobe is modernizing it for the smartphone era.  The company is adding a new AI technology, Liquid mode, to its Acrobat software to reformat …

A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Instagram of using iPhone cameras to spy on people. The issue appears to be related to a bug discovered in July, when Facebook said the app didn’t actually use the camera, even though Apple’s iOS 14 software indicated it did. “Instagram is constantly accessing users’ smartphone camera feature while the app is open and monitors …

Mozilla permanently shut down its Firefox Send service for transferring files after people used it to launch online attacks, the nonprofit announced Thursday. “Firefox Send was a promising tool for encrypted file sharing,” Mozilla said in a statement. “Unfortunately, some abusive users were beginning to use Send to ship malware and conduct spear phishing attacks.” Spear phishing is a personalized …

Qubits, the fundamental data storage and processing elements in a quantum computer, are essential to making these revolutionary machines practical. Now IBM plans to pack a whole lot more into models coming this decade. Big Blue plans for its Condor quantum processor, coming in 2023, to have 1,121 qubits, an enormous increase over the 27 and 53 qubits, respectively, in …

Apple’s iPad Air tablets will get a major performance boost with the company’s new A14 Bionic processor, a chip that likely previews what’s to come with Apple’s upcoming Macs. Compared with last year’s midrange iPad Air models, the new tablets are 40% faster at ordinary processing tasks and 30% faster at graphics, Apple said at an online launch event Tuesday. …

Yubico on Wednesday released a new hardware security key, the $55 YubiKey 5C NFC, that brings new logon abilities to people who want a single key that works with their laptops and phones. It can plug into a USB-C port or link wirelessly with NFC (near-field communications) for what’s considered one of the strongest forms of authentication today. Sweden-based Yubico …

We knew Intel’s Tiger Lake laptop chips were going to be better than last year’s Ice Lake models. Now we know how much better. At a launch event Wednesday for the chips, formally called the 11th generation Core processors, Intel showed speedups that indicate it’s got some of its mojo back after years of sluggish progress. For productivity chores like …

When big technologies like mobile phones, 5G networks and e-commerce arrive, it’s important to get in on the ground floor. That’s why the US government is establishing 12 new research centers, funded with hundreds of millions of dollars, to boost artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Congress already has appropriated most of the funds for the projects. But the White House …