Rep. Schiff wants Google and Twitter to use COVID-19 misinformation warnings

One of the challenges to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is curbing the spread of misinformation. Google, YouTube and Twitter have each taken steps to provide accurate info and remove false content, but Congressman Adam Schiff says that’s not enough....

Homeland Security wants you to update your Firefox browser right now

The Department of Homeland Security is urging Firefox users to update their browsers. The rare warning was issued earlier this week, after Mozilla released two critical security updates. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agen...

Google adds spam detection and verified business SMS to Messages

Businesses often send one-time passwords, account alerts and appointment confirmations via text. But if you've ever received one of those, you know they tend to come from a random number, and bad actors can take advantage of that by disguising phishi...

800,000 Californians could be without power by the end of the day

By the end of the day, more than half of all California counties could be without power. In an attempt to prevent wildfires, the state's largest utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is rolling out a planned power outage. Once fully implement...

Tesla warns California customers to charge their EVs ahead of outages

With dry weather and windy conditions on the horizon, California's Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) utility is planning a mass power outage to prevent electricity lines from sparking wildfires. That could be bad news for electric vehicle owners,...

NTSB says Tesla Autopilot was partly to blame for 2018 crash

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) cited both driver error and Tesla's Autopilot design as the probable causes of a January 2018 crash, in which a Model S slammed into a parked fire truck at about 31 mph. According to the report, the dri...

Google’s internal community guidelines discourage political discussions

Today, Google released a new set of community guidelines that bans political discussions inside the company and reminds Googlers that they are responsible for their words and will be held accountable for them. The policy change appears to be an attem...

Instagram’s anti-bullying tool lets you ‘restrict’ problematic followers

Today, Instagram announced two new tools meant to combat bullying. The first will use AI to warn users if a comment they're about to post may be considered offensive. In theory, it will give users a chance to rethink their comments. The second will a...

Social media ads for vaping must include nicotine warnings, FTC says

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned a handful of "e-liquid," or vape, companies that they -- and their social media influencers -- must follow the same advertising rules as everyone else. Specifically,...