From The Verge: If you were thinking of booking an Airbnb to host a rowdy New Year’s Eve shindig, the company is already one step ahead of you. Airbnb says it’s rolling out anti-party technology worldwide to help prevent “unauthorized and disruptive” get togethers over the holiday.

Airbnb describes...

From PC Mag: If you still use Skype, the service is phasing out one of its most useful features: Pay-as-you-go phone calls.

Last week, users began noticing the discontinuation of Skype Credits, which let consumers pay to call standard telephones, making it a convenient way to reach people still on...

From PC World: Pour one out. Windows Report reports that Mozilla has removed the tracking blocker in its Firefox browser. Starting with version 135 of Firefox, the “Do Not Track” setting will no longer be present in the browser.

Mozilla writes on its support page that the setting has been removed...

From PC Mag: LG is setting the stage to exit the Blu-ray player market.

As FlatpanelsHD reports, LG has discontinued Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray players, including the UBK80 and UBK90. Its website also no longer features a dedicated Blu-ray players page. Instead, it redirects users to its catalog of 4K...

From PC World: Over the past couple months, Microsoft blocked delivery of the Windows 11 24H2 update to all kinds of PCs that were incompatible or susceptible to crashes for one reason or another.

In late November, we reported that various USB scanners and other devices with scanning functionality...

From CNET: YouTube TV is getting more expensive once again. On Thursday, Google's streaming service began notifying existing customers that, starting in January, the monthly price for its base plan will jump from $73 to $83.

"To keep up with the rising cost of content and the investments we make...

From PC Mag: OpenAI's systems failed to handle the "unexpected demand" for Sora following its debut, says CEO Sam Altman. The company temporarily disabled the ability for new users to sign up, so it's likely many ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers do not yet have access.

"It is going to take awhile...

From PC World: Yesterday was the last Patch Tuesday of 2024, and with it Microsoft has provided a number of security updates, eliminating 71 security vulnerabilities across various Microsoft apps and services.

Microsoft categorizes 16 of these vulnerabilities as “critical” and classifies all but...

From CNET: Google is entering its AI agents era with the introduction of Gemini 2.0 -- the company's next generation AI chatbot -- and a limited release of Project Astra, a computer vision-assisted AI agent that can see and analyze the world around you, the company said in a press release on...

From PC Mag: Google's quantum computing division unveiled a new chip, dubbed Willow, that the tech giant says makes it infinitely faster and better than existing supercomputers.

The chip addresses two major problems with quantum computers as we know them today. First, Google claims Willow can...