Technology news

Skagen is coming out with a line of wearables, the first of which will be a smartish watch and activity tracker under the name Hagen. If that sounds familiar, Skagen has been selling a sleek analog watch under the name for some time, but this new line will be its first foray into the wearable world. If the actual product matches the render Skagen is showing off, the Hagen Connected may be one of the best looking wearable on the market, and it'll also be one of the few that doesn't

Last this month we previewed the Nura headphones, which customize their audio to listeners’ specific ear layout. Now, there’s another company promising to do the same thing, except with earbuds that cost nearly $200 less. The Evens reportedly rely on an "earprint," which users create by indicating when they can hear music playing. This demonstrates the frequencies at which their ears pick up on music, the creators claim.
The test is conducted manually on the earbuds by entering

Thanks to a new throwback livery, Ford has taken the GT, perhaps the sickest car the company has ever made, and made it even better.It's called the Ford GT '66 Heritage Edition and it's a limited edition color scheme for the new Ford GT supercar inspired by the Number 2 Le Mans-winning GT40 from 1966. The new GT has drawn a lot of comparisons with the old GT40, not least of which is winning Le Mans, which Ford repeated in the GTE Pro class at the famed 24-hour race last weekend.The black exterio

Spoiler warning: This piece mentions many specific plot points from Independence Day: Resurgence, including character death.One of the big plotlines — and deadlines — in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day: Resurgence involves a bunch of aliens drilling a hole through the Earth’s mantle to get at its molten core. This comes up a lot: Important Science Guy (Jeff Goldblum’s character, returning from the original 1996 Independence Day) shouts “they’re after

The team behind a "reimagined" version of classic cyberpunk shooter System Shock has launched a $900,000 crowdfunding campaign for the project. As we’ve heard before, Night Dive Studios — which re-released the original System Shock last year — has promised a totally revamped version of the game. A Kickstarter page now lays out its plan for updated art, music, controls, and a new voiceover from the original voice of iconic villain SHODAN, with a release date of December 201

Twitter recently hired former Apple designer Alessandro Sabatelli to run its fledgling efforts in augmented reality and virtual reality, the company confirmed to me today. As first noted by Upload VR, Sabatelli was previously the CEO of IXOMOXI, a small startup whose first product created visual filters for VR devices. As the company's LinkedIn page put it: "Targeting millennials at music festivals, our mission is to make fun more fun." If you've ever gone to Coachella and wished you c

If you're looking for a encrypted, portable OS that can be securely loaded on any computer, Secure-K may be the answer. Also if you're afraid of hackers wearing hoodies in darkened rooms and find joy in a British man repeatedly saying "privacy" in an excited tone, you'll enjoy this video.Brought to you by Mon-K — which is pronounced just like "monkey," to invoke that feeling of security that primates naturally give off — the Secure-K is an encrypted operating system enclosed in a USB

Donald Trump is currently standing in front of a wall of garbage. If you hadn’t heard already, I’ll assume you have a healthy distance from social media.
Donald Trump knows that good press and bad press, at least for him, are simply competing tributaries feeding into his river of self-promotion. When he stands between cable news cameras and a mound of trash, on a particularly slow Tuesday, he understands that the internet will do what it always does: entertain itself. For someon

So, you're reasonably wealthy, but your DINK days are behind you. You've got a kid or two. They have places to be.If you're looking at Porsches, you've been able to choose between a couple SUVs and the Panamera to meet your sporty-but-practical needs — but let's be honest, a Panamera is a whole lot sleeker than a Cayenne or a Macan. And now, it's brand new: Porsche just took the wraps off the redesigned sedan at an event in Berlin, taking visual cues from the recently refreshed 911 and the

Despite Facebook's best efforts, some internet content continues to be created and consumed outside of the company's walled garden. To address this misbehavior, the company today introduced new Chrome extensions for sharing and saving articles. "Sharing and saving great content are two things that people love to do when browsing the web," the company said in a blog post. "Improving this experience for people drives greater engagement and distribution of content for sites and keeps

Say you want to talk to a bot. It's a reasonable thing to want. You've heard they're cool and even though a lot of the early ones haven't been that good, you want to give it a shot. Cool. But in, say, six months to a year, I suspect things are going to be complicated, confusing, and weird. In fact, we just wrote a very long piece about the very issue that explains a lot of what’s going on here - go read it!
But now, I still have questions about what it's actually going to be like to live w

Starship — the company behind the adorable, six-wheeled delivery robot we met this year at Mobile World Congress — has received approval from the Washington, DC Department of Transportation to start testing a delivery program as early as this September. The Estonia-based company worked with the local government to develop the Personal Delivery Device Pilot Act of 2016, which was included in the 2017 budget amendment bill that was passed last week.The act defines “personal deliv

Chinese smartphone maker Nubia has announced the Z11, a smartphone with an edge-to-edge display and the sequel to last year's bezel-free flagship Z9. The Z11 comes with a 5.5-inch 1008p display, which isn't that great in 2016 but largely makes up for it with a strong lineup of specs:
Snapdragon 820 SoC
Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 with Nubia UI 4.0
16MP rear camera with OIS, PDAF, and f/2.0 aperture
8MP front camera with f/2.4 aperture and a wide-angle lense
dual SIM, VoLTE, fingerpr

Netflix's newest series, Baz Luhrmann's The Get Down, is getting split in two for its first season. Polygon reports that the streaming network will release the first six episodes of the show on August 12th, while the remaining six episodes will air at some point in 2017. While the reason for the split is currently unclear, it's a departure from the company's typical method of releasing a full season all at once.
The Get Down is a musical drama set in 1970s South Bronx, and will feature

The battle between Netflix and Amazon may go on for decades to come, but Amazon strikes a distinct blow this month as it wrestles control of a core film series away from Netflix: Star Trek — the old ones, I mean. Not the new ones you love to complain about.
But this month’s film and TV additions aren’t a total wash for Netflix. For one, it’s picking up all seasons of Gilmore Girls worldwide (they’ve already been available in the US) to prep viewers for the new

On Monday, hacking group OurMine gained access to the Quora account of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. But the damage didn’t stop there. Quora has the ability to connect with a user’s Twitter account — as do thousands of other platforms. Because Pichai had granted Quora permission to tweet from his Twitter account, the hackers were able to send messages from the handle of Google’s leader without actually hacking the account.
If you’ve used Twitter for a few years, yo

When the US privatized the National Helium Reserve in 1996, it began selling off the nation’s helium reserves cheaply, — which depleted the world’s largest supply of the gas. Now, researchers have claimed to have discovered a major new field in Tanzania, which could provide a much-needed boost to global reserves.
Researchers from Oxford and Durham Universities collaborated with with Helium One, a private Norwegian helium exploration company, to search for helium using an experi

Most charging hubs are the antithesis of style. They’re plastic, black, and usually relegated to a corner of the kitchen where no one will ever see them. An Italian company wants to change the fate of the poor charging hub with its new Woodie Hub. It's a place to charge devices that’s meant to be a more stylish alternative to what’s already on the market. The hubs come in wood, marble, or concrete. Do these make the hubs more en vogue? I'd argue yes, but who am I? I'm merely a

Facebook's like button, the familiar blue icon that is found on millions of pages around the web, is getting a new look. The company is introducing a redesigned version of the icon that ditches Facebook's company logo in favor of a thumbs-up icon. "Our hypothesis was that more people would recognize the thumbs-up icon on the like button, so we conducted qualitative and quantitative tests to measure them side by side," the company said in a blog post. "The results revealed a 6 percent increa

8.9 million people watched the Game of Thrones season six finale live on HBO on Sunday night. That's a wild number, topping the show's previous record of 8.1 million set by the season five finale.
That number doesn't even include on-demand or streaming data, nor audiences who watched encore broadcasts the next day. Last week, HBO told USA Today that the average weekly viewer total for season six was 23.3 million — about 15 percent higher than it was for season five.
23.3 million peopl

Jeremy Clarkson, noted bully and former host of popular BBC car show Top Gear, just tweeted out the logo for his new show The Grand Tour. The new show, which premieres on Amazon Prime Instant Video this fall, will feature him and his fellow former Top Gear hosts James May and Richard Hammond galavanting around the world, driving cars, and engaging in their special brand of wacky hijinks. (The latter of which, in the past, has had a tendency to skew pretty racist.)
Clarkson was forcibly Brexited

Western Digital's My Passport Ultra hard drives are now available with 4TB of storage, the company announced today. The new drive, which features USB 3.0 and comes with a three-year warranty, will cost you $140, which actually isn't too bad. Previously the drive was only available with up to 3TB of storage so it's a nice improvement for power users who eat up a ton of storage.
The company says it is also releasing 4TB versions of its My Passport Ultra Metal and My Passport for Mac drives before

I don't know what happened, but I blinked and suddenly we are left with only six guys trying to be JoJo's forever love (kind of like a forever home for puppies)! Their tanned faces are slowly becoming more and more distinguishable to me, like one of those misshapen Cheetos that happens to look like Jesus, if you squint hard enough.To kick things off, Wells gets his first one-on-one date card, and he reveals to the guys that he still hasn't kissed JoJo. This is interpreted by the squad as weaknes

Jeff Bezos announced today that his private spaceflight venture, Blue Origin, has begun construction on the new rocket manufacturing facility the company is building in Florida. The facility, which will span 750,000 square feet, will be used to build the company’s future orbital rocket, according to an email Bezos sent out today. Currently, Blue Origin’s only working vehicle, the New Shepard, can travel to and from suborbital space but cannot achieve orbit. Continue reading&hell

Ray Parker Jr.'s Ghostbusters theme song might've been mortally wounded by the Fall Out Boy version released last week, but it was only a matter of time before someone brought it back to life. Four Japanese comedians — Tomochika, Oniyakko Tsubaki, Naomi Watanabe, and Shizuyo Yamasaki — recorded their own take on the 1984 classic for Sony Pictures Japan's own Ghostbusters campaign, and it restores all of the goofy joy that made the original sparkle. Goodbye, aggro riffs! Fare the

Evernote today announced a new suite of pricing for its paid plans and new limitations for its free service. The new plans, which are still labeled Basic, Plus, and Premium, will have the new prices and limits starting today.
The biggest change, which will affect the most users, is coming to the Basic plan. Evernote Basic remains a free-to-use service, but it is now limited to two devices per account. Prior to this, Basic users could sync their notes with an unlimited number of devices. Eve

Today, the Hillary Clinton campaign unveiled a new technology initiative, laying out the presumptive democratic presidential nominee’s proposals on a range of tech issues. In most cases, the plan continues policies put in place by President Obama and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, but also puts forward a number of unexpected immigration and student debt programs aimed at spurring entrepreneurship within the US.
Clinton’s immigration proposal is particularly notable, offering a "startup vi

VR film company Jaunt is opening a rental program for its all-seeing, camera-studded eye of a virtual reality film rig. In what’s described as a pilot program with rental house Radiant Images, Jaunt will offer both the Jaunt One hardware and access to its software tools, which filmmakers will need for the elaborate stitching and editing process involved in 360-degree video. From there, creators can either upload the videos to Jaunt’s catalog or release them on platforms like You

"Is The Bachelor tech?" You might ask this question while listening to this week’s episode of What’s Tech, a podcast that provides introductory explainers into the many pockets of technology and the culture around them. I believe the answer is yes.
The Bachelor series has aired for over 14 years and spun-off numerous programs, totaling over 35 seasons, but its most recent surge of critical significance stems from the rise of social media. Who watches The Bachelor and how they watch i

Forgot to buy a Father’s Day present? Why not give the old man a floating poop emoji?
One of many emoji floats, this buoyant rubber poo will inspire dads around the pool to endlessly reference the 1980 comedy Caddyshack. "Baby Ruth," they’ll chortle before slurping the dregs of a Miller Light.
Just imagine your dad, or any dad you know, supine on this smiling turd as the two are cooked by the summer sun. Imagine it!
Truly, there’s an emoji float for everyone: the sunglasses fac

Scientists have found two potential vaccine candidates that may help combat the Zika virus. A single shot of each vaccine was shown to completely protect mice against two strains of the mosquito-borne disease, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. These shots still need to be tested on humans, but the researchers are hopeful that either could eventually prove to be a safe and effective Zika vaccine. Continue reading…

Bose has released a new product called the Speaker Cube, a build-it-yourself Bluetooth speaker targeted at kids. It's the first product from the company's new kid-friendly category BOSEbuild, which will offer products that can be easily assembled to help promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.The BOSEbuild Speaker Cube comes with step-by-step directions via a companion app (which is only available on iOS), and can be customized with colored lights and silhouette cover

Car-sharing service Zipcar has started offering a new pay-per-mile plan in some US cities, a departure from the per-hour system that the company is known for. A Zipcar spokesperson tells The Verge that it is "testing this new pricing in select cities throughout the US," which suggests that it's still a pilot program and won't necessarily roll out widely.
Technically, the pilot is a combination of pay-per-mile and pay-per-hour: in Chicago, for instance, where the new plan is being offered, a flee

The film adaptation of J.K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them doesn't hit theaters for months, but in the meantime, Rowling is working on a new short story series called Magic in North America, which is exactly what it sounds like. Today, the second installment in that series is available to read online. It's called Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, named after a North American version of Hogwarts. The story's main character is a girl named Isolt Sayre whose

A few former Nokia employees got together and created some new gadgets, including a wellness ring, sound-cancelling earplugs, and a GPS. Now, the team is working together to create a GPS tracker for kids. The Snowfox notifies parents of their kids' whereabouts while also letting them call their kids if they stray too far from a particular route. The device pairs with a companion iOS / Android app that lets parents set up a geo-fence, so they'll receive a notification when their kid ent