Day: December 20, 2018

Knowledge base is one of the departments where Alexa has lagged Assistant. After all, it’s pretty tough to compete with Google when comes to a sheer breadth of knowledge. Wolfram Alpha is a pretty good place to start. The answer engine offers a wide cross section of curated data, with a heavy focus on math […]

Last month, we broke the news that Corel was buying Parallels, a pioneer in virtualization, to expand its footprint in the world of business software. Now that deal is official: today Canada-based Corel confirmed that it has acquired the company. Now products like CorelDraw and productivity apps like WordPerfect will sit alongside Parallels Desktop for Mac, Parallels […]

The Justice Department has unsealed a damning indictment that links to spies working for the Chinese government an aggressive campaign to hack into U.S. tech and industry giants. The indictment, out Thursday, accuses China’s main intelligence agency — the Ministry of State Security — of hacking into dozens of tech companies and government departments, largely […]

Mystery drone operator/s have grounded flights at the U.K.’s second largest airport, disrupting the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people hoping to get away over the festive period. The BBC reports that Gatwick Airport’s runway has been shut since Wednesday night on safety grounds, after drones were spotted being flown repeatedly over the […]

A fourth Thor film may never happen (contracts and Infinity Stones depending), but the leads of the wonderfully bent Ragnarok are back to save a different beloved franchise. The first trailer for Men in Black International reunites Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as Agents H & M (the discount department store jokes write themselves), two […]

Apple will allow iOS users to gift in-app purchases, not just paid apps, according to a change to the company’s App Store Review Guidelines spotted this week. This means developers may soon have the tools to allow users to purchase virtual goods or even subscriptions through their app, which can then be gifted to others. […]

After attempting to access his own voice history per GDPR rules, an Alexa user in Germany suddenly found he was able to listen to some 1,700 voice recordings from a stranger via a link sent by Amazon. The company is chalking up the security snafu to human error. “This was an unfortunate case of human […]

Autodesk announced this morning that it intends to buy construction software platform BuildingConnected for $275 million (net of the startup’s cash on hand). It comes on the heels of the company’s PlanGrid purchase for $875 million just last month. With BuildingConnected, the company gets a network of 700,000 construction-related professionals that help real estate companies and […]

Twitter and Facebook announced this morning they’ve removed a combined total of 30 accounts that were working to spread misinformation in Bangladesh, ten days before the country’s general elections. According to Facebook, the company removed nine Facebook Pages and six Facebook accounts that were engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Twitter said it removed 15 accounts that […]