Technology News and More

Directors at Uber Technologies Inc. [UBER.UL] plan to vote on board reforms and whether to pursue a major stock deal with SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Amazon has unveiled new versions of its Echo smart speakers boosted by improved sound and voice recognition features.

Amazon and Google have clashed publicly after access to YouTube was pulled from one of the online retailer's devices.

Russia says it will ban Facebook in 2018 if the social network fails to comply with local data storage laws.

The company announced on Tuesday that Microsoft Office 2019 will be available in the second half of 2018.

Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group (BABA.N) has taken control of logistics unit Cainiao and pledged to spend 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) over five years to build out a global logistics network, underscoring aggressive expansion plans overseas.

The messaging service WhatsApp has been disrupted in China as the government steps up security ahead of a Communist Party meeting next month.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has asked the city's transport regulator to be available to meet Uber's boss after the firm apologized.

Russia has dismissed claims that it used adverts on Facebook Inc in an effort to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Google has announced a deal to acquire part of Taiwanese firm HTC Corp’s smartphone operations for about $1bn.

A new age of currency is upon us and you may have seen or heard snippets of news on crypto currency. Bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, dash and a lot more are all different types of crypto currencies. 

The iPhone 8 is available to pre-order from today, but don’t be distracted by flashy offers with low upfront costs and a high monthly fee: the cheapest way to get one is still simply buying it outright from Apple or another retailer, and taking out a low cost sim-only contract.

Tesla is set to launch its first electric lorry, which is expected to be able to drive itself, in late October as the company attempts to break into the commercial market.

Three women who used to work at Google have filed a lawsuit against the technology giant, alleging it pays women less than men for comparable work.

Apple has explained why its new facial recognition feature failed to unlock a handset at an on-stage demo at the iPhone X's launch on Tuesday.

Apple has unveiled the £1,000 iPhone X, the latest generation of its flagship device. The all-glass device has an edge-to-edge display and no home button. It unlocks using facial recognition software and features wireless charging. 

After a decade since its founding CEO, Steve Jobs gave a masterful presentation of what was obviously a revolution to mobile technology, Apple has launched its latest product - the iPhone X or iPhone 10.

The hacker group known as "Dragonfly" is behind sophisticated wave of recent cyberattacks on the energy sectors of Europe and North America, Symantec reported Wednesday.

The world's second largest economy is on the fast track to ditching cash.

More than 10 years after Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone in San Francisco, Apple is preparing for another landmark event.

A month ago, the Diaspora Homecoming Summit was held in Accra with the aim of mobilising Ghanaians living abroad to invest in the country and contribute to national development.  This is a clear indication that Ghana recognises the benefits diasporans offer in our quest for development. 

Facebook says it has discovered a Russian-funded campaign to promote divisive social and political messages on its network.

LG Electronics last week unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the LG V30, at IFA 2017 in Berlin.

It’s a tricky life, being an emoji designer. Unicode, the consortium that controls the key standard used to digitally encode writing, picks which emojis need to be included, but until recently offered little guidance beyond a name and a black and white illustration.

Tech billionaire and Houston native Michael Dell has committed $36 million to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

Uber will stop its controversial practice of tracking users for up to five minutes after a trip has ended, as it attempts to turn around its mired public image.

Thousands of owners of high-end Samsung TVs have complained after a software update left their recently acquired £1,400 sets with blank, unusable screens.

Samsung has unveiled its Galaxy Note 8 in a return for the high-end smartphone brand, which was recalled last year in a worldwide debacle that cost billions of dollars.

China's fleet of high-speed trains is set once again to become the world's fastest.

The hackers who compromised HBO’s network systems in July have threatened to leak the final two episodes of Game of Thrones.

The “Mr Smith group” of hackers told tech site Mashable that it has access to “many HBO platforms” and that HBO should be “ready” for the leak of episode six, which aired on Sunday, and episode seven of its biggest hit immediately ahead of the show’s finale at the end of the week.

The hackers also gave Mashable a list of the usernames and passwords for a number of HBO’s social media accounts, including its primary @HBO Twitter account. Last week the OurMine hacking group took control of HBO’s social media, including the Game of Thrones Twitter account.

The US TV network has refused to pay a multimillion dollar ransom demand to the hackers, who compromised the network’s systems in July and have since leaked a series of embarrassing documents, emails and unaired shows, including Game of Thrones and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Game of Thrones is already one of the most pirated TV shows of all time. Experts have argued that due to the prevalence of TV show piracy, threats of releasing unaired episodes were not enough to coerce payment.

Alex Heid, chief research officer at risk management firm SecurityScorecard said: “Pirated content ends up on Pirate Bay within 24 hours of airing. Any show on HBO, any movie, the moment it’s released, on the first day, you see it on pirated internet streams.”

Analysts agree that HBO was aided by the fact that the hackers only released a few shows and that an entire season wasn’t released in one go, forcing viewers who wanted to watch it as soon as possible to subscribe to the TV network.

More potentially damaging to HBO could be the release of further sensitive information. Previous dumps listing actors’ personal details, scripts, shooting plans and a trove of emails. Up to now the damage caused to HBO by the leaks has paled in comparison to the chaos caused by the hacks on Sony Pictures in 2014.

A person familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to speak publicly, said HBO was proactive in communicating with the Game of Thrones actors ahead of their personal information being released to the public, which may have helped mitigate the impact of confidential data leaks.

Richard Levick, the head of crisis-management firm Levick, said that being upfront with employees, customers and third parties about cyberattacks is essential. He said: “You can’t sweep it under the rug. You can’t be opaque about it.”