TECHY TECH WORLD

 Maserati is planning to launch its first electric car in 2020, according to AutoCar. The luxury automaker, which is part of Fiat-Chrysler group, will make a battery-powered version of its Alfieri concept car by the end of the decade, according to the report. The Italian car manufacturer also said that it plans to launch a version with a V6 engine in 2019. Maserati first unveiled it Alfieri concept car in March 2014 at the Geneva Auto Show. The car was designed to pay tribute to Maserati's racing heritage, which is why it boasts form and design elements similar to Maserati's classic sports cars.  There's no word yet on what kind of range the vehicle will have, but considering other sports car makers like Porshe and Aston Martin plan to launch electric vehicles with ranges exceeding 200 miles per charge by 2020, it's likely the upcoming Alfieri will have a similar range. Maserati joins a long list of automakers planning to launch at least one fully-elect...

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has cultivated relationships with China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping. He has paid multiple visits to the country to meet its top internet executives. He has made an effort to learn Mandarin. Inside Facebook, the work to enter China runs far deeper. The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added. Facebook has restricted content in other countries before, such as Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, in keeping with the typical practice of American internet companies that generally comply with government requests to block certain content a...

 When Nintendo releases the NES Classic Edition on November 11th, it won't limit the nostalgia to the hardware you take home. The company is marking the launch by resurrecting its classic Power Line for that weekend. Call 425-885-7529 between 9AM and 10PM Eastern each day (until the night of the 13th) and you can get both hints for "several" games as well as stories from people who manned the phones on the original line back in the 1980s. The tips are pre-recorded, alas, but this could easily rekindle memories of a pre-web era when your best bets at help usually involved calling the Power Line or asking a friend. Our main question: will the phone line stick to the same tips you got as a kid, or offer a few juicy secrets?

Microsoft has just revealed arguably its biggest Windows 10 upgrade so far and the irony is it is all about making things smaller… Speaking on the official Windows blog, Windows program manager Bill Karagounis explained that Windows 10 is going to get much smarter about how it downloads updates: “We are announcing the next generation of our delivery technologies incorporated into our latest Insider builds called the Unified Update Platform (UUP). One of the biggest community and customer benefits of UUP is the reduction you’ll see in download size on PCs.” UUP uses differential download technology meaning it will download “only the changes that have been made since the last time you updated your device, rather than a full build”. Karagounis says this should reduce the size of major Windows 10 updates by “approximately 35%”. This is a big deal. UUP will become the universal system used by all versions of Windows 10 – including on smartphones and tablets – and it should mean users not...

A tweet posted shortly after Apple’s recent Macbook launch event underlined the absurdity: Apple now sells 17 different types of dongle. In its ever-escalating war against connectivity ports, Apple’s latest computers do away with the SD card port, a full-size USB port, and the HDMI port. Instead, you’ll need a dongle to convert those “legacy” connectors, as Apple put it on Friday, into the new, smaller USB-C port. "We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition,” the company said in a statement, without acknowledging that Apple’s newest iPhone, released just last month, is one such “legacy” device - without a dongle (or a different cable, sold separately), you can’t connect Apple’s new smartphone to Apple’s new laptop. “We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem." That help will be a decent discount on the price of t...

Mark Zuckerberg had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The Facebook founder suffered a $3 billion loss in the value of his Facebook stock on Thursday, one of the largest single-day losses ever for an individual investor. Facebook (FB, Tech30) shares plunged 5.5% after the chief financial officer warned investors that the company expects revenue growth from advertising to "come down meaningfully." Zuckerberg holds 418 million shares of Facebook stock -- still good for about $50.2 billion. Bloomberg estimates Zuckerberg's total net worth at $52.2 billion, ranking him as the fifth-richest man in the world, just behind Warren Buffett. And despite Thursday's plunge, Facebook shares are up nearly 15% for the year, lifting Zuckerberg's net worth by $6.4 billion.

 AT&T has reached a deal to buy Time Warner for between $105 and $110 per share, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. That puts the deal's value at more than $80 billion. A formal announcement from the two companies is expected as soon as Saturday night. The deal will allow AT&T to expand into the television business, picking up channels like HBO and CNN. Time Warner shares surged about 2.76% during after-hours trading. Former Fox executive Peter Chernin will likely oversee Time Warner's operations, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Chernin declined a comment to The Hollywood Reporter. The Time Warner deal will likely face intense scrutiny as it goes through the regulatory process. However, there is some precedent. Comcast, another operator, was allowed to acquire NBC Universal in 2013. If the acquisition happens, AT&T would own a host of content from major networks like HBO, CNN, and TNT. It also signals an attempt by the operator to verticall...

If you’re reading this story on your phone, you may be confused about just where on the web you’ve gone. The banner at the top of the page reads “Yahoo Finance”—but the address above it probably starts with “google.com.” Google has not, in fact, taken over Yahoo. But it is trying to fix a basic problem with the mobile web: sluggish performance — at the cost of some confusion and concern among readers as well as writers. Article, meet AMP Last year, Google set out to craft a faster, lighter way to publish stories on the mobile web. The answer, developed with the help of news publishers and advertisers, was a stripped-down, open-source format called AMP, short for Accelerated Mobile Pages . AMP sweeps many of the traditional components of a web page off the table, dumping things like media embeds, interactive scripts and ad-tracking code for the sake of speed. AMP pages load content selectively, skipping bits that aren’t visible or about to become visibl...

Xiaomi’s sequel to its successful  Mi Note , the Mi Note 2, is expected for release later this year, but leaked specs and images of the device have been relatively sparse. But yesterday,  GizChina   released information on the device that would suggest it’s a followup worth waiting for. Coming this summer, the company’s newest flagship will feature three variants — a standard version with a 1080p display and a premium version with a 2K curved display, the latter coming with 64GB or 128GB options. The higher end models will feature a 5.7-inch curved display and a rear dual-camera at 12 megapixels each. The lower end version with 4GB RAM will have one 16MP camera on the back — that means no dual-camera, but the resolution will be a bit higher. Here’s a better breakdown of the varying specs on the three device options: 4GB RAM with 32GB storage, 1080p display6GB RAM with 64GB storage, 2K curved display6GB RAM with 128GB storage, 2K cur...

An American woman was arrested this week for flooding Stephen Hawking’s email with death threats, then stalking him at an astronomy festival in the Canary Islands. The woman, a US citizen who lives in Norway, sent emails to Hawking telling him she would kill him at the Starmus Festival, a legendary astronomy conference that’s happening this week in Tenerife. According to El Pais, there were over 100 emails and tweets which threatened things like “I am very close to you. I am going to kill you.” The tweets appear to have been deleted, and it’s unclear how the messages were directed at Hawking since he doesn’t have an account. Hawking’s daughter alerted Spanish police, who provided extra security during the festival, including escorting him onstage. Police arrested the woman on Wednesday at a hotel in Tenerife not far from where Hawking was speaking. She had an itinerary showing where Hawking would be each day, as well as detailed notes on his home and office and how she planned to ...

The driver of a Tesla Model S electric car was killed in a crash that occurred while the vehicle was driving itself in “autopilot” mode, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration, which has opened a formal investigation. The accident, on May 7, is thought to be the first death resulting from a crash involving a self-driving car. Automakers and Silicon Valley companies like Tesla and Google are pushing to perfect automated vehicles and speed their introduction, but the big question has been whether the technology is reliable in a life-or-death situation. In a statement, the safety agency said it learned of the fatality from Tesla, and has sent an investigative team to examine the vehicle and the crash site in Williston, Fla., about 100 miles northwest of Orlando. The team is looking at the car’s automated driving system and whether it played a role in the crash. The safety agency did not identify the Tesla driver who was killed when a tractor-trailer turned in f...