President-elect Donald Trump will be able to send unblockable texts to all U.S. mobile phones after he takes office in January. But doing so isn't as easy as sending a Tweet, according to New York Magazine. That's because all so-called Wireless Emergency Alerts must be issued through FEMA. Also, most people who can access the system take at least two courses to learn how to do so.

Uber's updated app now asks customers for permission to collect location data even when they're not using the ride-sharing service. The company says it will track people for five minutes after their trip ends, in order to improve its service. “We’re always thinking about ways we can improve the rider experience from sharpening our ETA estimates to identifying the best pick up location on any given street,” the company told The Verge. “Location is at the heart of the Uber experience, and we’re asking riders to provide …

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive, a nonprofit that digitally stores old versions of Web pages, is collecting donations to create an archive in Canada, due to Donald Trump's election. “On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change,” founder Brewster Kahle writes. “It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible."

In the last 12 months, copyright holders have asked Google to take down more than a billion links, according to TorrentFreak's analysis of Google's most recent Transparency Report. Google removed more than 90% of the links.  

Comcast's 1 TB per month data cap, which are now rolling out in many markets, won't be enough for many consumers, according to Jeff Binder, CEO of over-the-top startup Layer3 TV. Binder says that 1 TB will only enable consumers to stream 15-20 hours of 4K Ultra high-def video.  

Federal safety regulators are asking phone manufacturers to voluntarily include a "driver mode" setting in devices. That setting, similar to "airplane mode," would limit people's ability to use certain features and apps while driving.

Monitoring company Geofeedia laid off 31 of its 60 employees after Facebook, Instagram and Twitter blocked access to their APIs. The social media companies did so following an ACLU report that Geofeedia provided law enforcement officials with data drawn from users' posts, tweets and public comments.

Silicon Valley is pressing President-elect Donald Trump to uphold the Communications Decency Act and other laws that shield Web companies from liability based on users' activities. “Threats of excessive liability can transform internet service providers and companies, which often lack the knowledge necessary to make legal decisions about the nature of content, into enforcement agents that block user content and make the web less free, innovative, and collaborative,” the trade group Internet Association writes in an open letter to Trump.

The FTC issued a 100-page study about the "sharing economy" -- meaning businesses like Uber and Airbnb -- but declined to recommend any new rules or polices. The FTC said in the report that any new rules should balance innovation with the need to protect people.

The price of broadband service decreases in metro areas where Gigabit service is available, according to a new study. The study found that prices for service at speeds ranging from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps were $27 a month cheaper on average in areas where Gbps service was available. "This research also found -- to no one’s surprise -- that having more ISPs in a particular region drives prices down and that the presence of fast speeds encourages other ISPs to offer higher-speed plans to match their competitors," …