Popular Technology News this Week

A bill proposed in Florida may bring DMA-like provisions to the United States, forcing Apple to allow alternative app stores, third-party payments, and side loading on iPhones. Alternative app stores... could come to US iPhones if a new Florida bill passes Apple has been wrestling for control over its platforms for years as regulators around the globe seek to open up the walled garden. The biggest effort to date, the EU Digital Markets Act, has inspired action in the United States before, but the latest bill may go full force.Even though the United States government has stated it won't tolerate foreign entities regulating and fining Apple, that hasn't stopped it from pursuing similar legislation. According to a report from The Verge, Florida Representative Cammack has introduced the App Store...

SpaceX is gearing up for the ninth test flight of its Starship megarocket. The spaceflight company released footage on Saturday showing the rocket's upper stage -- called the Starship -- being moved... toward the launchpad at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Following engine tests in the coming days, the Starship will be raised […]

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced Friday that her government is suing Google for relabeling the Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America" for US users, CBS News reports. The company had done so... in Google Maps after President Trump ordered the name change at the beginning of his Presidential term. The lawsuit makes good on […]

A Soviet-era spacecraft plunged to Earth on Saturday, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus.

The FTC has delayed the start of specific provisions in its Negative Option Rule until July 14.

The Texas attorney general brought the cases in 2022 under state laws.

For decades, Alzheimer's disease has been seen as a one-way road, a slow but inevitable decline in memory and thinking. But new research out of … The post New study suggests Alzheimer's may be... reversible appeared first on BGR.

Neutron, designed to lift up to 13,000 kg to low Earth orbit, remains on schedule for its inaugural launch in 2025 The post Rocket Lab’s Neutron tapped for U.S. military cargo test appeared... first on SpaceNews.

Apple and Amazon were accused of price fixing via a class action lawsuit filed in 2022, and after the plaintiff seemingly disappeared, the judge ordered legal fees to be returned to the companies.... Amazon and Apple price fixing class action lawsuit ran into some problems After Apple and Amazon made an agreement in 2018 that would bring more Apple products to the online store, the number of resellers took a nosedive. A class action lawsuit sprung up hoping to reimburse consumers for allegedly paying more money for Apple products thanks to this price fixing "scheme."As always, these lawsuits take time, and led to Apple and Amazon issuing a discovery order against the plaintiff in September 2023. According to a report from Reuters, the law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro failed to disclose...

After a pair of satellites failed to reach their desired orbit around the moon last year, China used a novel gravity "slingshot" tactic to get the satellites in the correct spot.

Newly completed substation will help bear the load Elon Musk's xAI is removing about half of the temporary gas-turbine generators powering its Colossus AI datacenter over the next two months,... according to the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, not due to environmental concerns, but because a new nearby substation now supplies the needed power....

A CCTV video purportedly originating from a Chinese factory shows a robot appearing to lash out at two men in an unexplained incident.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has refused one of Tesla's initial attempts to trademark the term "Robotaxi" because it believes the name is generic and already in use by other companies, according... to a filing spotted by TechCrunch. Tesla was hoping to trademark the term in connection to its planned self-driving car service, but now it'll have to reply with more evidence to change the office's mind. The main issue outlined in the USPTO decision is that "Robotaxi" is "merely descriptive," as in its an already commonly used term. A robotaxi typically refers to the self-driving cars used in services like Waymo. As long as Silicon Valley has believed money could be made selling autonomous vehicles (and the rides you can take in them), the term has been in use. That means Tesla can't...

The verdict is a major victory for opponents of exploit sellers.

It has cost Epic Games more than $100 million to challenge Apple's App Store rules in the ongoing Apple vs. ‌Epic Games‌ legal battle, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said today in an interview with... Business Insider. Sweeney said that ‌Epic Games‌ has paid "legal bills" in excess of $100 million, but that the dispute has cost the company a lot more. But if you look at lost revenue, that's another story. We can't predict exactly how much we would have made on iOS, but in the two years that we were on the platform, Fortnite had made about $300 million on iOS. So you could have projected hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue as a result of the fight. Sweeney went on to say that one could "easily imagine" that the total cost to ‌Epic Games‌ was a billion...

NSO Group, the Israeli spyware-maker behind Pegasus, must pay Meta $167.25 million for hacking 1,400 users across WhatsApp. A federal jury in California made the decision on Tuesday after the court... found the NSO Group liable for the attacks last year. Meta sued NSO Group in 2019 after Citizen Lab found a vulnerability that allowed […]

The incident came at the height of a rocket rivalry between SpaceX and ULA.

Modern conveniences aren’t often a top priority for Nintendo, but a few vital features that have become commonplace on portable devices in recent years are … The post Nintendo Switch 2... adds two great features the Switch was missing appeared first on BGR.

Samsung launches the Galaxy S25 Edge as a thin and light option with powerful flagship specs and a few compromises.

The ampersand seems to be a bit of a problem for the iOS Messages app, as the application can't transcribe voice and send messages of popular names containing the character. Apple's Messages app can't... process audio messages with an ampersand. There have been some interesting, and sometimes unfortunate, bugs with Apple's Messages and text-to-speech functions. The latest is a bit odd, but mostly affects names with a specific special character.Some users may face difficulties stating names of specific brands, such as Ben & Jerry's, Dolce & Gabbana, Tiffany & Co., and so on, via Messages. Users who've tried to send voice messages with such brand names and phrases say their messages won't go through at all. The voice message will appear on the sender's phone, but not on the recipient's device.

Over the past few days, eagle-eyed Google users may have noticed that in some instances, the capital G logo for the company now sports a gradient softening the transitions between the four solid-color... sections. The branding has been changed for the Google app on both Android and iOS devices as of this writing. However, there are still several places that continue to sport the classic color block look, including browser favicons. It's also not included in Google's official collection of images for press; the classic version is still being used as the entry for the Google app logo. None of the logos for other Google smartphone apps appear to have adopted a new gradient look. But perhaps notably, the branding for Google's Gemini AI assistant does have a slight gradient on its star symbol....

Artificial intelligence could be affecting the scientific rigor of new research, according to a study from the University of Surrey.

Apple might be readying itself for a price hike, and it could come sooner than you think -- and the reasons aren't as obvious as they seem.

A new study reveals that people with developmental prosopagnosia, or face blindness, struggle daily to recognize even close friends and family, despite having normal vision and memory. Many... participants described coping strategies like keeping spreadsheets or using voices and clothing to identify others, but these are often exhausting and unreliable.

"My contention is that Earth may, if we are lucky and diligent and clever enough, grow an emergent superconsciousness."