SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook Inc.'s Instagram plans to remove the number of "likes" visible on posts for some users in the U.S. to decrease competitive pressure among people on the photo-sharing service.

Instagram has been hiding like counts in some markets since April, beginning in Canada, and later expanding to Japan and Brazil. The U.S. is one ...Read more

Comedian and car enthusiast Jay Leno is teaming up with Stratasys' latest 3-D printers to craft custom-made parts for one-of-a-kind, oddball and vintage cars featured on his cable TV show, "Jay Leno's Garage."

Leno is known for his car obsession and owns more than 150. His CNBC show explores the stories behind the cars he finds, from celebrity ...Read more

At the end of October 2018, Claire Stapleton, then a YouTube employee, sent an email to an internal listserv where women discussed their experiences at Google. Employees had just learned that the company's board of directors had approved a $90-million payout to Andy Rubin, a former Google executive, despite finding that a subordinate's sexual ...Read more

ATLANTA -- UPS has completed its first commercial drone deliveries of CVS prescriptions to consumers' homes, as part of a partnership between the shipping giant and the drugstore chain to develop plans for drone delivery service.

UPS said the two flights by its drone subsidiary UPS Flight Forward were the first commercial drone deliveries of a ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- The robot looks like a stout, little filing cabinet with one long arm, a simple-looking contraption that belies the precision of the brain, ear and throat microsurgeries it is designed to improve.

The company formed to develop and market the machine, Galen Robotics, recently moved to Baltimore from Silicon Valley and might ...Read more

Q: I read in your column that PC users with Windows 7 need to upgrade to Windows 10 by January (see tinyurl.com/y29u24sa). I have a MacBook Pro rather than a PC, but I use VMware software to run Windows as a secondary operating system. (I prefer the Windows versions of some financial programs.) How can I upgrade my Mac to Windows 10?

--Marc ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Oracle Corp. opened its appeal in a legal challenge of a Pentagon cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion with a familiar argument: the procurement was unfairly tailored for Amazon.com Inc.

In in its opening brief, which was filed on Friday, Oracle said the cloud project violated federal procurement law and was ...Read more

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. -- As seabirds swooped and Atlantic waves lapped under a crisp blue sky, an Antares rocket roared to life Saturday morning and blasted off from Virginia's Eastern Shore without a hitch.

"Liftoff Antares!" said NASA spokeswoman Leah Cheshier as the booster shot skyward bearing a Cygnus spacecraft packed with more than 8,200 ...Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. government has launched a national security review of the popular music-video app TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance Inc., according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Beijing-based ByteDance bought Musical.ly two years ago for almost $1 billion to merge it with TikTok. Musical.ly, based in Shanghai ...Read more

Google is buying Fitbit for about $2.1 billion, diving into the world of wearables already occupied by rivals such as Apple.

The maker of wearable fitness trackers agreed to a deal worth $7.35 a share in cash, it announced Friday. Fitbit shares closed Thursday at $6.18, a 43% increase from their closing price Monday, when Reuters reported that ...Read more

To the 544 trick-or-treaters who walked up to Joshua Tasoff's porch in Monrovia, Calif., it was just a stormy Halloween night replete with costumes and candy.

To Tasoff, it was the perfect setting for a science experiment.

A behavioral economist at Claremont Graduate University, Tasoff was curious about the ways in which costumes might affect ...Read more

Q: When I retired six months ago, I was allowed to keep my company laptop that runs Windows 10 Enterprise, a corporate version of the operating system. But now I get a message urging me to "activate Windows," even though the laptop has been running Windows 10 for years. When I try to do that, I get the message: "We can't activate Windows on this...Read more

San Diego has a new startup event that's making a splash in the local tech scene, generating notable cash for entrepreneurs after only one year in business.

The San Diego Angel Conference debuted last year as a way to connect entrepreneurs with individuals who could help fund their business ideas. The conference culminates in a pitch event ...Read more

St. Paul, Minn., Madison, Wis., and Plano, Texas, are the best three "untapped cities" in the United States for startup businesses, according to a survey by Fundera, the small-business adviser.

Startup culture is centered in a few regions in the country.

The Silicon Valley Bay Area accounts for 45% of total venture capital investment in the U....Read more