Quick housekeeping note: We’re doing a little experimenting in the coming weeks, meaning you might see some bonus deals that appear as short, standalone posts. Today, for example, there’s a pretty sweet Parrot Swing deal, but you won’t find it below; it’ll appear separately on the Cheapskate page and in the newsletter. The idea is …

The future of Google VR needs to work better with my hands. But…maybe not just yet. Google’s next wave of VR just arrived a few days ago, in the form of a standalone headset called the Lenovo Mirage Solo. It’s an impressive demonstration of how VR will start to involve larger-scale tracking. But it doesn’t have a new, next-generation set …

The Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 net neutrality rules will officially be dead as of June 11, the agency said Thursday. Those rules, instituted during the Obama administration, were meant to keep broadband and wireless providers from slowing or blocking internet traffic. Then last December, the Republican-led FCC under President Donald Trump began the rollback of those rules, eliminating what Chairman …

Google I/O, the Big G’s annual developer conference, crammed in a mind-boggling number of demos and announcements to show off advancements in everything that the tech behemoth touches. These are the changes that’ll you’ll use every day on your phone, your work and your home. The most important updates come to Google Assistant, Android, Google Maps and AR.   Now …

Facebook has a problem with dick pics, but a leaked memo obtained by Motherboard shows what the social network might be doing about it. In the memo, Facebook’s team of moderators are told to stop punishing people who receive unsolicited nude photos, according to Motherboard. Sometimes Facebook will disable a user’s account after they complain about receiving dick pics. That’s …

Google is reportedly preparing its own smart watch that will bear the Pixel brand currently used on Google’s own phones. VentureBeat reporter and noted leaker Evan Blass tweeted this morning that a “reliable source tells me — with high confidence — that Google’s fall hardware event will also introduce a Pixel-branded watch”. Besides the Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, and second-gen …

Apple’s is betting on a new, greener aluminum technology. The company has invested 13 million Canadian dollars (about $10 million) in Elysis, a joint venture created by aluminum giants Alcoa and Rio Tinto. Elysis has discovered what it calls a breakthrough in how aluminum is created and the most significant innovation in the aluminum industry in over a century. Aluminum smelting, …

When installing a new app, you have to click “accept” to give the program access to your location, camera and microphone. That unlocks a lot of potential in your apps, but it also opens up the question of when exactly those apps are collecting your data.  Until now, it’s been hard to know the answer on phones use the Android …

Google’s Android P beta software brings radical change to the way that you’ll navigate an Android phone. As with the iPhone X, Android P is all about gestures. Case in point: You swipe up from the bottom to see an overview of all your apps and to open the app drawer, and swipe left and right to select apps. It’d …

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to impose a $120 million fine on a Florida man who allegedly made nearly 100 million robocalls to trick consumers into purchasing  “exclusive” vacation deals from well-known travel companies. The FCC proposed the fine in June 2017, alleging that Adrian Abramovich had made 96 million robocalls during a three-month period in 2016. The commission …