Technology

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham asks people in line at a Los Angeles Apple Store the first thing they want to do with their new iPhone X's. USA TODAY LOS ANGELES â€" Consumers turned out in droves over the weekend to buy Apple's most expensive iPhone ever, the iPhone X, and by Sunday it was as good as sold out.  Apple's website reported that the new phone, which starts at $999, was unavailable for pickup in the top cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Washington, DC, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina.  A handful of units were available for pickup in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Scottsdale, Tucson, El Paso, Santa Monica and Northridge, California.  Delivery times for online orders is 3-4 weeks, according to Apple. An Apple representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment...

(Reuters) — Communications chipmaker Broadcom Ltd is planning to unveil a bid for smartphone chip supplier Qualcomm Inc by Monday, three sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, an attempt to create a roughly $200-billion company through the biggest technology acquisition ever. A tie-up would combine two of the largest makers of wireless communications chips for mobile phones and raises the stakes for Intel Corp (INTC.O), which has been diversifying into smartphone technology from its stronghold in computers. The value of Broadcom's bid has not been decided, though an offer in the range of around $70 to $80 per share is being contemplated, one of the sources said. At $70 a share, an offer would value Qualcomm at $103 billion. Qualcomm is not aware of the details of Broadcom's bid, and it is far from certain whether it will entertain this deal, the sources said. "It's a smart move that would make Broadcom into a tech juggernaut," said GBH Insights analy...

SHARON â€" Isis Chapman couldn’t wait to compete in her first-ever robotics tournament. The sixth-grader and the members of the C.M. Musser Elementary Tiger Techs team were among more than 100 students who participated in the FIRST LEGO Robotics Tournament held at Case Avenue Elementary School on Saturday. This is also Isis’s first year as a member of Musser’s team. “What made me want to be on the team is because it’s about coding and math, and I really like math,” she said. “After Mr. (Rick) Samoros (Musser’s advisor) gave me the signup sheet, I was really happy.” Having fun while learning is what Dave Tomko strives for as the coordinator of the Robotics Program for the Sharon City School District. “This incorporates STEM education and promotes robotics to the students,” Tomko said. “Hopefully will promote it to the surrounding community to spark an interest in students who might not have had this experience before.” Twelve teams from as far away a...

Authorities say 45% of Americans may have seen fake ads and posts from a propaganda agency tied to the Kremlin on Facebook and Instagram. USA TODAY Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., left, with Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., right, questions Facebook's General Counsel Colin Stretch on the role the company's lack of diversity played in the spread of racist messages by fake Russian accounts.(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP) SAN FRANCISCO â€" In a heated moment during this week's hearings on Russian social media ads, Rep. Terri Sewell questioned whether the dearth of African Americans in Facebook's workforce contributed to the company's failure to catch Russian operatives using fake accounts to stoke racial tensions ahead of last year's presidential election. Displayed behind Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, was one of the Russian-backed ads sharing a famous black-and-white photograph of the Black Panthers from 1968. The message: “Black Panthers were disman...

More Charts   A lot of Apple investors are betting the new iPhone X will trigger a massive consumer buying spree and boost the company's revenues. But even before the iPhone X hit store shelves on Friday, Apple's smartphone business was on the upswing. As we can see in this chart from Statista, shipments of Apple's iPhones increased in the company's recently ended 2017 fiscal year. That's important because in the company's prior fiscal year, the iPhone business experienced its first-ever drop in shipments. At the time, many observers were quick to declare the end of the iPhone phenomenon, citing increasing competition and falling prices. Apple proved the naysayers wrong. Now the company hopes to keep the streak alive with the iPhone X.   BI Graphics Visit Markets Insider for constantly updated market quotes for individual stocks, ETFs, indices, commodities and currencies traded ar...

Networking chip design company Aquantia went public on Friday and raised $61 million in its initial public offering. The stock is trading up for the San Jose, California-based maker of network interface cards (NICs) that can transfer data on home and enterprise networks at multiple gigabits per second. The company looks to remove bottlenecks for hyperscale data centers that help companies deal with the tsunami of data generated by computers, smartphones, and the Internet of Things. The IPO is a big milestone for the company, which was founded in 2004. Aquantia issued 6.82 million shares of common stock at $9 a share, and the stock closed trading at $9.54 a share, up 6 percent on its first day. Faraj Aalaei, CEO of Aquantia, rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. "The cost of doing semiconductors has skyrocketed over the last several years, and venture capital funding has gone down in the last nine years for chips," he said in an interview with VentureBeat. ...

Despite what you may have read, Twitter has not rolled out new rules banning porn or pictures of lingerie across its platform. "These Are Twitter's New Rules For Preventing Abuse And Harassment," BuzzFeed News reported Friday morning, spurring a shitstorm as its readers perused the fine print. The "adult or sexual products and services" section caused perhaps the biggest commotion; the ban on "lingerie" seeming especially outrageous. But there are no "new" Twitter rules and the ones outlined by BuzzFeed have existed since at least 2013; basically ab aeterno in internet years. Word that Twitter had banned porn—particularly amid more exigent concerns about literal Nazis with Twitter accounts, as well as the company's role in spreading Russian-bought election propaganda—caused an immediate visceral reaction: "To clarify, none of these rules are new," a Twitter spokesperson told Gizmodo (emphasis theirs). "These are our exi...