Popular Technology News this Week

Share all our code modifications with others? Think again, hippie Permissive open-source software licenses continue to gain popularity at the expense of copyleft licenses, according to a forthcoming... report from WhiteSource, a biz that makes software licensing management tools....

LightSail 2 deployed it solar sail five months ago, and it’s still orbiting Earth. It’s a successful demonstration of the potential of solar sail spacecraft. Now the LightSail 2 team at The... Planetary Society has released a paper outlining their findings from the mission so far. The solar sail concept has been around for a …

The US Interior Department's decision to halt a civilian drone program might not be so temporary. Financial Times sources claim the department plans to permanently end use of nearly 1,000 drones after... determining there was too high a risk of the Chi...

The unusual creatures were spotted in Western Australia 500 feet underwater instead of 9,800 feet like usual.

While Tesla first made a splash with the original Roadster, it was the 2012 release of the Model S that truly put the company on the map. The Model S proved that an electric car could also double as a... luxury sedan, and the vehicle would go on to win a seemingly endless number of awards. In fact, a number of publications last month championed the Model S as the "car of the decade." Since then, Tesla's product line has expanded rapidly in a relatively short period of time. Over the last few years, Tesla released the Model X and the Model 3, with the latter set to become the best-selling Tesla vehicle of all-time. Looking ahead, Tesla's vehicle pipeline is ambitious, to say the least. Aside from the forthcoming release of the Model Y -- which is essentially a crossover version of the Model 3...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration seeks to dramatically increase the supply of radio occultation soundings it feeds into weather forecast models. SpaceNews.com

Well, it seems we're starting 2020 off with a string of sketchy Android app news, with a new report identifying a set of so-called "fleeceware" apps to steer clear of. And this report follows the... group of apps we told you about only a day ago which bombard users with ads, drain their phone's battery, and more. Fleeceware apps are those caught abusing the trial period that Android apps can run before a user is hit with their first charge. A new report from UK-based cybersecurity firm Sophos says this new group of apps -- which ostensibly have racked up more than 600 million installs among them -- can hit users with big charges once a trial subscription period closes and the user hasn't formally canceled in time. These charges also ignore the fact that the user may have deleted the app from...

Sony has launched the GP-VPT28T, a new wireless shooting grip designed to work with a number of Sony cameras. The grip, which also serves as a tripod, uses Bluetooth connectivity to wirelessly control... the shutter, zoom and more on compatible cameras. Specifically, the grip can trigger both photo and video capture, control zoom on compatible cameras, and trigger a custom setting using the dedicated 'C' button on the face of the trigger. There's also a 'Lock' button to ensure you don't accidentally trigger the camera. The grip is dust-and-water-resistant and works with the following Sony cameras: a9 II, a9, a7R IV, a7R III, a7 III, a6600, a6400, a6100, and RX100 VII. The GP-VPT2BT Shooting Grip With Wireless Remote Commander is set to ship this month in North America for $140 ($180 CAD).

One of the big stories in the world of rewards credit cards in 2019 was Marriott's rebranding of its loyalty program, which took the disparate Marriott Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest and... Ritz-Carlton Rewards programs, and collected them under one unified banner. Marriott Bonvoy is the combined loyalty program's new umbrella branding, and it allows millions of customers to tap into its myriad benefits across thousands of hotels. You can do that by applying for one of the Marriott Bonvoy cards -- like the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless™ Credit Card. To entice you to sign-up, it's currently running an elevated limited-time offer: 100,000 welcome bonus points after you spend at least $5,000 with the card in your first three months. There's a very good chance this card might be for you. It...

In a Tweet on Saturday Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a new behind the scenes look at the making of "Little America."

The design was rolled out to mobile devices almost a year ago. What you need to know Google is making some changes to the way search results are shown on the desktop. Starting this week, search... results will be displayed alongside icons for the websites they link to. The redesign was propagated to mobile devices last year. Google is redesigning desktop search results to put greater emphasis on website branding. This, the company argues, can both help websites increase their exposure to users and also allow searchers to quickly identify exactly where the information they've found is coming from. With this new design, a website's branding can be front and center, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you're looking for. To that effect, the...

If SpaceX's in-flight abort test goes well, it could beat out Boeing to be the first private company to launch astronauts to the International Space Station.       

As you may have noticed in the last couple of days, Google has introduced icons within its Search results on desktop. These icons were launched in Google Search on mobile devices, helping users... distinguish between results so that they could better tell which site they were going to click. The new desktop design tweak also adds in bolded ‘Ad’ icons …

Facebook can't keep it all a secret forever.  The social media giant lost a major court battle today that has the potential to pull back the curtain on thousands of as yet unknown privacy scandals.... According to The Washington Post, a Massachusetts judge ordered Facebook to hand over data regarding scores of third-party apps suspended from the platform following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  Facebook has 90 days to deliver on the order.  Up until now, Facebook has fought efforts to publicly reveal many of the apps it suspended — or why it suspended them — after it publicly bragged about doing so. When Facebook made the announcement this past September, the company's vice president of product partnerships, Ime Archibong, name dropped only a few specific offenders. 

According to court docs, an undercover officer drove two of the men to the house to help them plan a strategy for the killings.

Scientists studying data from the Alpha Centauri star system on Wednesday announced what they believe is a second Earth-like planet orbiting the star closest to the sun. The finding, announced via a... study in the journal Science Advances, is built from the analysis of 17 years of data focused on light signals that appear to be coming from the direction of this newly identified planet. And it's a planet that offers scientists a rich bounty of opportunity to study another star system -- and which might be hospitable to life of some kind. About that last part, though, put an asterisk beside it for now. Nobody will be thinking about moving to this new planet (called Proxima c) anytime soon, thanks to the fact that the orbital pattern around its star means the planet might be frozen. Also,...

While we thought we'd get just the Pixel 4a in 2020 (with no XL variant), Google may be looking to drown us in a sea of mid-range Pixel phones instead. That's just as well, given the company's... penchant for using fish names to describe its phones internally. And also because those fishy code names are behind these latest musings about Google's plans for Pixel this year by XDA Developers. Buried within the open-source code for Android -- called AOSP -- XDA's Mishaal Rahman found codenames for possibly three new Pixel devices: sunfish, redfin, and bramble. Sunfish is the candidate most likely to be the regular Pixel 4a. The code revealed the device is using Qualcomm's Snapdragon 730, which means it can only connect to 4G networks. Not much else is known about the phone, but if it really is...

The advertising trade groups asked Google to not commit to its moratorium until 'meaningful alternatives' are found. What you need to know Google recently announced its intention to phase out support... for third-party cookies in Chrome. Within days, major trade organizations involved in advertisement have come out against the move. They cite the potential loss of revenues for startups that depend on advertising and ask Google to walk back on its plans until alternatives can be found. Google this week announced its plans to develop new web standards that would make third-party cookies 'obsolete'. The Mountain View hopes to do so within two years, at which point it will stop supporting them on its browser, which currently holds a 69% share of the desktop browser market. It's only been two days...

Facebook still owes the U.S. government $5 billion.  The social media giant has yet to make good on its debt to the American people following a record fine levied by the Federal Trade Commission in... July. While the specifics of the settlement are still being challenged, it's worth asking what happens next with all that money — assuming this all eventually gets worked out.  I mean, it's not like Mark Zuckerberg can just walk one of those giant novelty-sized checks over to the the While House. However, don't think for a second that the exact manner and timing of the payment hasn't been precisely dialed in.

The UK government is funding a trial to charge electric taxis wirelessly at ranks, rather than needing to be plugged in at charging stations.Electric taxis

Alphabet, parent company of Google, Verily, Waymo and other firms, became the fourth U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization on Thursday, just over a month after former Google CEO... Sundar Pichai took the reins.

Over 70,000 Tinder photos of women have been dumped in an online forum for cybercrime. Contextual clues, including particular phone models like the iPhone X seen in the photographs, as well as limited... metadata, suggest that many of the (mostly) selfies were taken in recent years. Some of the photos, in fact, contain timestamps dated as recent as October 2019. Tinder also noted that all of the photos are public and can be viewed by others through regular use of the app; although, obviously, the app is not designed to help a single person amass such a massive quantity of images. The app can also only be used to view the profiles of other users within 100 miles. Emphasis mine.

Tiny-but-tough tardigrades aren't as indestructible as previously believed.

A major electronics manufacturing facility in East London, which until recently made decoders for MultiChoice, faces possible liquidation after it reportedly failed to make repayments on a... R200-million loan.

Cyral, an early stage startup that helps protect data stored in cloud repositories, announced an $11 million Series A today. The company also revealed a previous undisclosed $4.1 million angel... investment, making the total $15.1 million. The Series A was led by Redpoint Ventures. A.Capital Ventures, Costanoa VC, Firebolt, SV Angel and Trifecta Capital also […]