Geek News

As the president sets the stage for a showdown with the video game industry over school safety (since it's the games that are the real problem, not the guns, nope nope nope), small scale skirmishes and outright battles have been springing up all over the internet this week. GitHub somehow survived the biggest DDoS attack in history, Equifax revealed that another 2.4 million people were affected by its latest security breach and The Woz himself lost seventy grand in a bitcoin scam. Numbers, because how else will you know if you're mature enough to play this game? 10 minutes : Despite being utterly hammered with 1.3 Tbps traffic spikes during what is thought to be the most severe DDoS attack in internet history , GitHub managed to remain largely online. The site was knocked offline for less than a quarter of an hour. 1 hour : The European Commission had previously issued guidelines to social media networks regarding how quickly they're expected to remove hate speech fr...

It's been a volatile week for us all, what with the stock market's unpredictable undulations, the US Senate's DACA drama, the Olympics hacking and whatever other craziness that's sure to happen between the time I file this post and Sunday morning. It was pretty wild for the tech industry as well. Turns out that Apple's HomePod seemingly secretes wood-marking oils, Sony announced it'll cut the price of its VR headset by a third, and Netflix continued its spending spree, blowing $300 million on the guy who brought us "Glee." Numbers, because how else are you going to count stuff? $40 : YouTube TV is already a solid option for people looking to cut ties with their cable company and it's only getting better. Google announced this week that it's expanding its channel lineup with stations from Turner Broadcasting, NBA TV, MLB TV, and a few others. Only problem is that the $35 service is bumping up $5 come March 13th , but only for new customers s...

The 2018 Winter Olympics are starting up but Pyeongchang won't be the only place crowning champions. This week we've already seen Waymo win out over Uber in court; Sasha 'Scarlett' Hostyn, the most successful woman in eSports, was victorious in an Olympic-backed Starcraft 2 tournament; and Amazon came up with yet another way to dominate the delivery market -- 2-hour Whole Foods deliveries. Numbers, because how else will you count the scorecards? 1,218 : That's how many UAVs lit up the night sky over the Olympic opening ceremony -- or at least a projection of their aerial display did anyway. Turns out that Pyeongchang's high winds and low temperatures aren't ideal conditions for coordinated drone performances. $50,000 : That's how much Sasha 'Scarlett' Hostyn won in the Intel Extreme Masters StarCraft 2 tournament hosted in Pyeongchang ahead of this weekend's Winter Olympics. 0.34 percent : That's how much of a stake in Uber Wa...

It was a week of taking stock as the President meandered his way through the State of the Union address and a number of tech firms reviewed their Q4 earnings. Alphabet and Amazon both had something to crow about, while Apple and GoPro both posted less than stellar holiday sales. Numbers, because how else would we realized that, at this point, the rules are made up and the points don't matter? 77.3 million : That's how many iPhones Apple sold during the 2017 holiday season , down from 78.3 million a year ago. Sure, that's only a 1.3 percent drop but its evidence that Apple's stranglehold on the smartphone market might be slipping. $1.8 billion : That's how much GoPro earned in 2017 , roughly the same as what it did the year before. However, the company did also post a net loss for the year of approximately $183 million and does not expect to return to profitability before the end of summer. $1.9 billion : And that's how much Amazon made -- last quarter -...

It was a week of lost and found fortunes in the tech world. The Feds charged My Big Coin Pay over its $6 million cryptocurrency scam, Netflix is poised to take home as many a four golden statues for Mudbound , Bungie's in hot water again over tweaking its Faction token payouts and Google will be holding onto its $20 million XPrize payout thankyouverymuch. Numbers, because how else would you evenly divvy up the spoils? $6 million : That's how much real money the Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleges that My Big Coin Pay, purveyors of the My Big Coin cryptocurrency, managed to bilk from its victims in a brazen Ponzi scheme before getting caught by the Feds. $0 : That's how much cryptocurrency trading site Robinhood will charge its users to trade bitcoin and etherium between themselves. What's more, the service will enable users to transfer up to $1000 from their bank accounts to buy new units of their preferred cryptocurrency. 2 : That's how many clone...

It was a week of firsts for the tech industry. Facebook finally got around to adding its first African American board member (because it's not like it's already 2018 or anything), a lifeguard drone made its first Hasselhoffian beach rescue, Ferrari announced that it is indeed working on its first electric supercar, and Kodak took a break from slapping its brand on cryptocurrency mining rigs to release the first footage from its upcoming hybrid Super 8 camera. Numbers, because how else will you put entrants in order? $70 : That's how much Nintendo's first cardboard-based Switch accessory , the Labo, will set your parents back once you finally wear them down and convince them to buy it for you. 18 : That's how many patients will participate in the first human CRISPR trials held in the US . The trial, put on by the University of Pennsylvania, seeks to replace two faulty genes as a means of combating multiple myeloma, melanoma and two types of sarcoma cancers. 2...