April, 2017

• 27 April

  Google and Facebook were scammed out of $100M

  

  Over the course of two years, Google and Facebook wired $100 million to an imposter as victims of a long-con phishing attack, Fortune found. In March, the US Department of Justice published an indictment against a Lithuanian man, Evaldas Rimasauskas, for “orchestrating a fraudulent business email compromise scheme that induced two U.S.-based internet companies” to …

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• 27 April

  Will Amazon’s Prime Video spending binge pay off?

  

  Amazon is shelling out $50 million to stream National Football League games, and that’s just the start. This year, the e-commerce titan is expected to spend $4.5 billion on video-streaming content, nearly double last year and not too far from Netflix’s $6 billion video budget. And video is the only thing Netflix does; Amazon also sells shampoo and cloud services …

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• 27 April

  How to plug in your iPhone without it chiming or buzzing

  

  There are times when you don’t want your iPhone to make a sound when you plug it in to charge. You could be sitting in a silent library. You could be in class listening to to a lecture. You could be slipping into bed next to your slumbering significant other. The last thing you want is for it to chime …

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• 26 April

  Google Trips travels farther into Features Land

  

  Google Trips just got a little trippier. The Android and iOS app — a kind of personal assistant for traveling and vacations — has three new features, Google said Wednesday. Unveiled in September, Trips pulls from your Gmail inbox to organize information about your plane tickets and lodging reservations. It also provides suggestions on nearby sights and restaurants and lets …

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• 26 April

  FCC chairman begins assault on net neutrality rules

  

  Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai has started to roll back Obama-era net neutrality regulation, setting up a showdown between tech companies and broadband providers. In a speech in Washington on Wednesday, Pai outlined his plan for eliminating the utility style regulatory framework the FCC adopted in 2015, while still keeping principles to prevent broadband and wireless providers from favoring their …

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• 26 April

  Instagram users top 700 million

  

  Just think of all the brunch pics 700 million Instagram users can generate. The photo-sharing app hit just that milestone of monthly active users, according to a blog post Wednesday. Since December, Instagram has racked up 100 million new users, a growth of 16.7 percent in a single quarter. The company, founded in 2010 and bought by Facebook in 2012, …

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• 26 April

  Will future iPhone and Galaxy phones have more than two cameras?

  

  Dual-cameras are quickly becoming a regular feature on smartphones. Last fall, Apple released the iPhone 7 Plus which notably had not one but two rear cameras. Other phone makers like LG, Huawei, Asus and ZTE also have phones with dual-cameras, and this makes me wonder: Will phone makers stop at two? Just the 2 of us I rolled my eyes …

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• 26 April

  Sci

  

  Now playing: Watch this: Micro drones race through a former ‘Firefly’ spaceship 2:38 There’s nothing quite like stepping onto a set from one of your favorite TV shows — so when I walked onto a fully lit spaceship set from the show “Firefly” to check out DR1 Racing’s Micro Series, I had to contain my geek glee a little bit. …

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• 26 April

  Why your 4K TV is probably the only 4K converter you need

  

  OK, so you’ve got your spankin’ new 4K TV. Do you also need a spankin’ new Blu-ray player and/or an AV receiver that upconverts high-definition sources to 4K? The truth is, no, you don’t. Your TV will convert every signal you send it to 4K resolution. That means all your current gear will play on a 4K TV, assuming you …

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• 26 April

  Overcast shows how the Apple Watch could be a better music (and podcast) player

  

  I love the Overcast app. It’s the best podcast app I’ve used on the iPhone, and it’s better than Apple‘s Podcasts app. And a few days ago, Overcast added a really fascinating feature for Apple Watch owners: it stores podcasts onto the Apple Watch to listen to away from the iPhone. Turning the Apple Watch into a little podcast repository …

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