On June 6, 2013, Edward Snowden — holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room with two Guardian reporters and a filmmaker — told the world about a secret surveillance program that let the US National Security Agency grab people’s emails, video chats, photos and documents through some of the world’s biggest tech companies. That …

If you want your food that much faster, you can now use Apple Pay to order takeout via the Grubhub and Seamless apps. Equipped with an iOS device with Apple’s mobile payment system, you can simply select the Apple Pay option at checkout to automatically use whatever credit card you’ve loaded in your settings. Apple Pay is the NFC payment …

Remember those Sprint ads where customers would take chainsaws and swords to their cell phone bills? You won’t be seeing those anymore. Sprint’s ads enticed you to switch from your current cell phone carrier with the promise of a similar plan for half the cost. T-Mobile, the nation’s third-largest wireless carrier, challenged Sprint’s claim to cut your phone bill in …

Apple’s services are functioning as normal, after an outage that saw the App Store, Game Centre and plenty of iCloud features knocked for six. Apple’s status page says that all its services are running as normal after the glitches that appear to have taken hold across the globe yesterday evening UK time. The App Store, Photos and iTunes in the …

Consumers have had their fill of tablets. The lack of urgency to buy new ones means that in 2016 global sales of tablets will fall for the second straight year, market researcher IDC said Thursday. Tablet shipments are likely to sag by 9.6 percent this year from 2015, a near perfect echo of the 10 percent drop registered in 2015 …

Xiaomi will soon launch another super cheap activity tracker. Due to reach Chinese consumers on June 7, the new $23 Mi Band 2 fitness tracker comes with an OLED display, which Xiaomi touts as resistant to scratches and fingerprints and bright enough to be seen under direct sunlight. The display shows you the time, your heart rate, calories burned, number …

School’s out for the summer…which means it’s already time to start thinking about back-to-school shopping. At least there’s a good chance you’ll net some headphones if you’re buying something from Apple. Apple’s new back-to-school offers have gone live, and like always, students can get some modest savings on MacBooks, iPads and iPhones. Apple’s also giving away Beats headphones with certain …

Silicon Valley billionaires with unprecedented power need to get used to the discomfort of press scrutiny, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton said Thursday. Gawker, a digital news organization, is fighting a devastating $140 million verdict in a case that was secretly funded by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. “A Silicon Valley billionaire is a hundred times, a thousand times more …

Virtual reality was the talk of the show floor at Computex in Taiwan this year. HTC was showing off three slick new VR experiences for its Vive headset, Microsoft was talking up the future of Windows Holographic, and we saw plenty of new VR headsets and even VR-friendly backpacks. But it wouldn’t be a trade show smack bang in the …

The years-long Apple-Samsung patent battle just keeps on going. With Samsung filing its opening briefs in the tech titans’ case before the US Supreme Court, we weigh whether the justices will finally help bring some resolution to this patent dispute. The Supreme Court in March agreed to review the case, marking the first time it has looked at a design …