A Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them. “The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume…

Long ago, Google’s Android-powered wearables had hands-free navigation gestures. Those fell by the wayside as Google shredded its wearable strategy over and over, but gestures are back, baby. The Pixel Watch 4 is getting an update that adds several gestures, one of which is straight out of the Apple playbook. When the update hits devices, the Pixel Watch 4 will gain a double pinch gesture like the Apple Watch has….

Nearly a decade after Pebble’s nascent smartwatch empire crumbled, the brand is staging a comeback with new wearables. The Pebble Core Duo 2 and Core Time 2 are a natural evolution of the company’s low-power smartwatch designs, but its next wearable is something different. The Index 01 is a ring, but you probably shouldn’t call it a smart ring. The Index does just one thing—capture voice notes—but the firm says…

Netflix won the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD’s) streaming and movie studio businesses last week. But Paramount Skydance isn’t relenting on its dreams of owning WBD and is pushing forward with a hostile takeover bid. On Friday, Netflix announced that it had agreed to pay an equity value of $72 billion, or an approximate total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, for WBD’s streaming and film businesses, as well…

Meta has agreed to make changes to its “pay or consent” business model in the EU, seeking to agree to a deal that avoids further regulatory fines at a time when the bloc’s digital rule book is drawing anger from US authorities. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the social media giant had offered users an alternative choice of Facebook and Instagram services that would show them fewer personalized…

Somewhere, a pig is catching some sweet air. In a rare move for a streaming service, Fubo announced today that it’s lowering the prices for some of its subscription plans. Fubo is a sports-focused vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor, or a company that enables people to watch traditional TV channels live over the Internet). Disney closed its acquisition of Fubo in October. Read full article Comments Powered by WPeMatico

The bidding war is over, and Netflix has been declared the winner. After flirting with Paramount Skydance and Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has decided to sell its streaming and movie studios business to Netflix. If approved, the deal is set to overturn the media landscape and create ripples that will affect Hollywood for years. $72 billion acquisition Netflix will pay an equity value of $72 billion, or an approximate…

Two sibling contractors convicted a decade ago for hacking into US State Department systems have once again been charged, this time for a comically hamfisted attempt to steal and destroy government records just minutes after being fired from their contractor jobs. The Department of Justice on Thursday said that Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, both 34, of Alexandria, Virginia, deleted databases and documents maintained and belonging to three government agencies….

Kohler is facing backlash after an engineer pointed out that the company’s new smart toilet cameras may not be as private as it wants people to believe. The discussion raises questions about Kohler’s use of the term “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE) and the inherent privacy limitations of a device that films the goings-on of a toilet bowl. In October, Kohler announced its first “health” product, the Dekoda. Kohler’s announcement described the…

OnePlus is ready to sell its new flagship smartphone in the US weeks after it made the device official. Having now finally gotten Federal Communications Commission clearance, the OnePlus 15 is available for preorder. It’s currently only live on the OnePlus storefront, but the device will eventually come to Amazon and Best Buy as well. The OnePlus 15 launched in China earlier this year, and it was supposed to go…