Technology news

Hillary Clinton has called for Congress and Silicon Valley to counter an “epidemic” of fake online news, after a conspiracy theorist fired a gun inside a Washington, DC pizza parlor he believed was part of a child sex trafficking ring linked to Clinton. Clinton raised the subject of “malicious fake news and false propaganda” more generally, saying it had “flooded social media over the past year.” But “it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real

After four months of the Xbox One outselling Sony’s console, the PlayStation 4 is back on top.
The PS4 was the best-selling home gaming system in the United States in November, according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. Sony Interactive Entertainment’s box got a boost from the release of the PlayStation 4 Pro, which is a 4K-capable upgrade that launched November 10. This is the first time since June that the PS4 outsold the Xbox One. Sony, Microsoft, and NPD all dec

Sometimes Facebook comment threads can grow to be so long, they’re basically their own chat rooms. It turns out Facebook is testing a change to basically turn them into exactly that. Back in November, our Content Direct, Matt Navarra, noticed an odd change. Facebook had begun to notify him of comments on his posts in a chat-like window dubbed ‘Your post’ instead of the usual comments page. TechCrunch recently spotted the change too, to which a Facebook spokesperson r

Samsung appears to be planning to permanently disable Galaxy Note 7 units in the US with an update that would prevent the recalled phone from charging.
According to an image obtained by The Verge, an alert went out to at least one Note 7 owner on US Cellular today stating that, “As of December 15th, Samsung will modify the software to prevent the Galaxy Note 7 from charging. The phone will no longer work.”
Samsung declined to comment, and US Cellular did not respond to a request for

YouTube’s most popular channel, PewDiePie, hit a new milestone today, crossing 50 million subscribers. Earlier this week, in a rant about how changes to the service were costing him views, PewDiePie promised to delete his channel when he hit this milestone. In a tweet today, he said the end will arrive at 5PM tomorrow.
Promising to delete your channel, like announcing that you’ve decided to quit YouTube, or cancel your vlog, is not something most creators follow through on, at least

GUEST: Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades. With everything from Amazon Go’s cashierless stores to automated customer service to robo-advisors and driverless cars, we are moving toward a world with more productivity and fewer jobs.
As many have commented, this is very reminiscent of globalization and outsourcing. But, with outsourcing, we only did half the work  —  we struck tra

Spotify is no longer considering to buy SoundCloud, according to reports from the Financial Times and TechCrunch. Today's news comes after earlier reports in September that Spotify was in advanced talks to acquire SoundCloud in an effort to both boost its streaming catalog and eliminate a competitor from the streaming landscape.A source for the Financial Times claims that the deal was abandoned as Spotify prepares for an IPO sometime next year, something that the streaming company did not want e

I’m always on the lookout for companies doing amazing things that have a beneficial impact on others, and Shift.org appears to be one of them. The company launched on Thursday with an honorable mission: to help people successfully transition from their military careers to a civilian one.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the unemployment rate for veterans who served on active duty since September 2001 was 5.8 percent in 2015. One of the issues plaguing the men an

Web developers have Google Analytics. Mobile publishers have Flurry. There are analytics for servers, analytics for marketing, and analytics for sales.
Now we also have analytics for smart agents.Today as Google announced Actions, its version of Alexa skills, VoiceLabs is launching free analytics for the platform. VoiceLabs already offers analytics for Alexa skills, and now developers with feet in both Amazon and Google smart assistant camps can get data on usage and effectiveness of t

Obsidian Entertainment has laid off an undisclosed number of employees who were working on Armored Warfare, its free-to-play team shooter that features tanks, not soldiers.
According to studio chief executive officer Feargus Urquhart, Mail.ru subsidiary My.com has taken away some of the work from Obsidian and moved it back to its Moscow home base. Obsidian did not reveal how many people it laid off or if any of these employees were offered positions at My.com in Russia.
“This week we let s

Famed astronaut and former US Senator John Glenn has died at the age of 95, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Glenn had been hospitalized for the past week at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.
Glenn is known for his February 1962 Friendship 7 mission, during which he became the first American to orbit the Earth. Four other people had been to space before him, two of which were Americans who had already performed suborbital flights. But there’s something to be said

GUEST: The recent Google Home launch has focused people’s attention once again on the consumer segment (B2C) of AI-driven voice assistants. Home, with its Alexa voice assistant, represents the first able competitor to Amazon’s Echo.
Because of all of the hype around Google, many people have overlooked a series of announcements from IBM, Microsoft, and DeepMind that were equally important from a business segment (B2B) perspective. IBM’s deals with Celgene, Pearson, and

As part of Microsoft’s finalized acquisition of LinkedIn, the Windows maker this morning outlined a series of goals it has for its new social network. One of those goals includes the implementation of LinkedIn notifications in the Windows 10 Action Center, so you will never again miss the note telling you that a complete and total stranger is trying to connect with you.LinkedIn notifications will haunt you to your grave
Of course, this feature will be easily to disable. But it sounds, like

Yik Yak has laid off a “significant” number of employees amid a downturn in the app’s growth prospects, The Verge has learned. The three-year-old anonymous social network has raised $73.5 million from top-tier investors on the promise that its young, college-age network of users could one day build a company to rival Facebook. But the challenge of growing its community while moving gradually away from anonymity has so far proven to be more than the company could muster.Employee

Yik Yak has laid off 60 percent of employees amid a downturn in the app’s growth prospects, The Verge has learned. The three-year-old anonymous social network has raised $73.5 million from top-tier investors on the promise that its young, college-age network of users could one day build a company to rival Facebook. But the challenge of growing its community while moving gradually away from anonymity has so far proven to be more than the company could muster.Employees who were affected were

Yahoo has officially launched a mobile app version of its Q&A product. Called Yahoo Answers Now, it’s available on iOS and Android devices for those in the U.S. and promises that users will receive “quality answers quickly” from others with relevant experiences and expertise.
If you’re not familiar with Yahoo Answers, it launched in 2005 and has remained a place for questions even with the rise of services like Reddit, Quora, and Jelly. Today more than 300 million peo

Blizzard’s MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) has a new man in charge.
Heroes of the Storm director Dustin Browder announced on Blizzard’s forums that he is leaving the development team for that game to work on a new, unknown project at the company. Alan Dabiri, a 20-year veteran at the studio, will take over as the new Heroes of the Storm director. We have no idea game Browder is working on now, but the idea of any new project at a company known for quality softwa

Raumfeld announced today that it's releasing an update for its wireless speakers to add Google Cast support. The Cast update is available today over Wi-Fi and is compatible with all current Raumfeld speakers.
The addition of Google Cast comes almost a year after its original announcement at CES 2016, where it was initially planned for a spring release. With today's update, Google Cast joins the existing Tidal, TuneIn, Last.fm, and Spotify Connect options already offered on Raumfeld's devices. Fu

Facebook is taking another page out of Snapchat’s book. As noted by TechCrunch, the company has started testing a feature that would let anyone make photo frames for profile pictures, although the test is currently limited to a few countries. Basically, you head on over to the new Camera Effects Platform webpage, upload transparent PNGs for each element, and wait for approval (so nothing too raunchy or offensive gets by). Approval “typically takes up to a week.” You&rsquo

Dashbot announced on Thursday that it has integrated itself with Google to provide the analytics backend for bot developers building on top of Google Assistant. This comes on the heels of Google launching conversational actions for its virtual assistant.
When implemented, Dashbot promises its bot analytics service will provide not only sentiment analysis, but also help developers better understand the conversations, the AI responsiveness, and more. What makes this significant is that since its l

As someone living in Brooklyn with a small amount of disposable income, I’ll admit to having at least a fleeting interest when I heard that Urban Outfitters would begin selling “designer” drones today. But then I looked at the drones and remembered all of the other tchotchkes Urban Outfitters sells and was immediately very disappointed in both the store and myself.
The drones come from a company called TRNDlabs. They include a 2-megapixel camera for recording footage and are av

When Facebook changed its stock structure earlier this year, the legal filings contained one very interesting clause. A line in the SEC filing, first spotted by Forbes, allowed Zuckerberg to retain control of the company without remaining as CEO, provided he left the company for public office. In a filing full of legal jargon, it raised eyebrows: was Zuckerberg getting ready to run for president?
The broad strokes of the agreement were simple enough: Zuckerberg wanted to sell massive quantities

The Oscar-winning film Rocky is 40 years old, and Hollywood studio MGM is celebrating with the release of a new mobile game.
Developer Tapinator is releasing Rocky, a free-to-play app for iOS today. This game gives players the opportunity to live through the career of a championship boxer. To win the belt, however, players will have to collect and train fighters from the Rocky universe — such as Rocky and Rocky II’s Apollo Creed, Rocky III‘s Clubber Lang, an

YouTube keeps trying to show that it’s a friend to the music industry. Earlier this week it published a blog post highlighting the fact that, in the last year, it paid out more than $1 billion to the music industry from advertising alone. Today came an announcement that YouTube has reached a deal with the National Music Publishers’ Association to pay millions in royalties to songwriters.The settlement is reported to be between $30 and $40 million — about the same size as a deal

Public cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced that its new Canada region of data centers is now available for people to use. Computing, storage, database, and other services are online out of the region, which is known as Canada (Central) and located in Montreal, with two geographically separate availability zones.
Back in January, when AWS announced the coming of the Canada infrastructure, it said the region would become available within a year. And so the cloud

The New York Times has produced a special VR-based video package as part of its annual Great Performers series. In addition to showcasing stellar performances from the likes of Ruth Negga, Don Cheadle, and Trevante Rhodes, it has a greater gift to bear. You, too, can know what it feels like to be dumped by Natalie Portman.The collection, which includes nine film noir-themed shorts, is helmed by filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Secret Life of Bees, Love & Basketball). Filmed from the firs

Another year, another lame review video. I’ll admit it, I check my Facebook first thing in the morning. It usually leads to quite a few interesting tidbits I’ve missed while sleeping. Today however, I was greeted with a very sad year in review video. At first, I thought I was being too harsh – perhaps my life isn’t all that interesting. But it seems I’m not the only one disillusioned by the curated content: You’d think with all the information

The mystery of why “time flies when we’re having fun” is a little closer to being solved thanks to scientists who manipulated mice brains using light.In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers at Portugal’s Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown stimulated certain brain cells (or neurons) in mice to make them produce more of a much-hyped chemical called dopamine. Dopamine can play a role in everything from attention to reward, and previous work suggests t

VB LIVE: It’s said, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Oh really? In today’s mobile-marketing world, it’s more like, “The more things change, the more you need to be ready to change with them.” Join our panel featuring crack marketers from Match, Wayfair, Verison, and Chef to learn how to keep up with changes headed into 2017.
Register here for free.
To succeed in digital marketing, you need to find consistencies a

 Vida Health, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based subscription-based app that pairs patients with health coaches, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from Nokia Growth and earlier backers Aspect Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
What’s everyone investing in, exactly? Well, a big market for starters. The Centers for Disease Control and… Read More

 European startup studio eFounders is raising an additional $5.3 million (€5 million) from entrepreneurs and family offices. eFounders has been behind some very promising software-as-a-service startups, providing human and financial resources for the first year or so before the startups can go and do great things on their own. In exchange, the startup studio takes a significant portion of… Read More

Hulu announced today that users can now create multiple profiles through the company’s website. More devices will support profiles over the next couple of weeks, but for now, it’s limited to Hulu.com. Each account can maintain up to six individual profiles that will remember everyone’s viewing history and Watchlist. It’ll also, of course, make recommendations.There’s also a kids-oriented profile to wall off inappropriate content. Yes! Finally, you can stop getting a

Microsoft is finally bringing its popular diagramming and graphic application Visio to iOS and the web.
Visio was first brought to market in the early 1990s by a company called Shapeware, with the company changing its name to match the software in 1995. Visio was bought by Microsoft for $1.5 billion in stock in 2000, representing one of Microsoft’s top 5 acquisitions of all time in terms of valuation.
Almost 17 years on, Visio is still going strong as part of the Microsoft Office suite of

Have you ever wanted a surround sound system for your home? The cost of doing this with a Bose system or any other provider can be prohibitive, but what if it was possible to do it just with Bluetooth speakers and a single app? Tempow is a startup that wants to create a new audio experience accessible to anyone, not just those that can afford to pay thousands of dollars.
Based in France, this team of 7 set out to find a way to create a premium audio experience that was inexpensive, portable

This week, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter announced a new database for images and videos that promote terrorism. The database, which is hosted by Facebook, is designed as a defense against propaganda videos and imagery by terrorist groups — a tactic ISIS has aggressively embraced. Flag a single image on a single service, and any of the participating companies will be able to find and remove copies, potentially erasing it from the most popular places on the web in a single stroke.

Due to scheduling delays, one of SpaceX’s customers has decided to go with a different rocket. British satellite maker Inmarsat announced today that it will launch one of its satellites on a European Ariane 5 rocket, instead of on one of SpaceX’s vehicles like it had originally planned. On short notice, Inmarsat was able to secure a mid-2017 launch for the spacecraft — a communication satellite for the European Aviation Network (EAN).
“We are delighted with [the] flexibil

If you buy into the current hype around this year’s Academy Awards, Casey Affleck is the current front-runner for Best Actor. He’s already won preliminary accolades from critics’ associations and major film festivals, and his publicity firm, ID PR, is doing a full-court-press campaigning on his behalf. The attention is for his role in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, in which he plays a Boston janitor navigating several different kinds of grief, and coming to ter

EXCLUSIVE: Gupshup today announced that it has partnered with Google to help build the first voice-activated Actions for Google Assistant on Google Home. Bot builders can now use Gupshup’s tools to create voice-activated bots — called Actions. Among the initial Google Actions from Gupshup will be a bot for VentureBeat, which will be one of the first news organizations to make itself accessible on Google Home. The VentureBeat offering will be available later this month.
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Osmo has made its mark with award-winning augmented reality iPad games for children, and now it is teaming up with some big kids brands and announcing it has raised $24 million in a new round of funding. It’s a big validation for a new kind of game and toy company that grew up in Silicon Valley.
The funding for Palo Alto, Calif.-based comes from Mattel, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Collab+Sesame (maker of Sesame Street), Calibrate Partners, and existing investors Accel, Upfront Ventures

Google is announcing today that it’s ready to let developers create “conversation actions,” little bots that you’ll be able to interact with using the Google Home speaker. Though the company wouldn’t say when Home and the Google Assistant would be fully open to third-party developers beyond “early next year,” some partners that have already been working with the company could announce new actions in the coming weeks.
The actions will let you ask the spea

Developers can now create Actions for Google Home using the Actions on Google platform, the company announced today.
Like an Alexa Skill, Actions are the controls that power a voice-enabled Google Assistant. There are two kinds of interactions with Google Assistant: Conversation Actions and Direct Actions.
With early access to the platform, bot makers can build Conversation Actions for Google Home and ask to become an early access partner for upcoming platform features.
Actio

Recently, I purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. I’d been looking for a lightweight, powerful computer that could go with me everywhere, and despite its year-old age and lack of current processors or forward-looking things like USB Type-C, the Surface Pro 4 beat out the other options that have come out this year for my needs. A killer Black Friday deal pushed me over the edge and here I am typing on the Surface Pro 4 right now.
The Surface Pro is a very good mobile computer: it’s lig

The recently-passed Investigatory Powers Bill will become law in the UK in early 2017, and it’s got xHamster moaning, groaning, and sweating profusely in anger. At least, I think it’s anger. The bill (also known as the IP Bill, or the more apt Snooper’s Charter) is a particularly dangerous piece of legislation. It gives the UK’s security services (and a whole host of other government bodies) unprecedented powers to surveil and monitor the British public. Buried in the pa

The literary world of gaming tie-ins is wide and varied. There’s some spectacular books out there, written by hugely notable authors. There are also some that aren’t, written for to fill a certain story gap or to otherwise keep fans engaged. The Mass Effect universe has had its share of duds, but a forthcoming trilogy of novels has the potential to be something really special.Titan Books has announced that it’s signed four high-profile speculative fiction authors to pen a new t