Technology news

Gasp! Mastercard has gone and messed with one of the most iconic logos in corporate history and, shockingly, the new one isn’t absolutely terrible. Far from it, in fact, as the old payments processing giant has done a fine job of modernizing its signature interlocking circles and integrating them into a modern, cohesive brand identity that keeps the logo looking great even at small sizes on mobile screens.A less obvious difference is the dropping of the camel case, so from here on out it&r

Vevo is determined to become the best destination for music videos on mobile. As its next big step since refocusing its energies around mobile last year, the company has refreshed its iOS app to better surface videos according to the user's taste, while also enlisting curators and hosts for its slate of shortform video content. It's a move that sets the service up to be something closer to MTV (the music video-focused version, anyway) for smartphone users, right as it prepares to launch a s

As if the surreal events surrounding the stratospheric spread of Pokémon Go could not get any more ludicrous, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is holding a campaign event at a Pokémon Go gym. The area is Madison Park in Lakewood, OH, and it doubles as a Pokéstop as well. "Join us as we go to the Pokéstop in Madison Park and put up a lure module, get free pokémon, and battle each other while you register voters and learn more

As you may have heard, people really like Star Wars — and ground zero for that hype is the annual Star Wars Celebration convention. This year’s event kicks off in London on Friday, July 15th with a murderer’s row of filmmakers, writers, actors, and behind-the-scenes personnel talking about the work creating the franchise. We're expecting plenty of news and some new footage along the way, and thankfully you’ll be able to watch almost the entire thing live-streamed on

Consumer Reports is calling on Tesla to make some serious changes to its ‘Autopilot’ program, including removing it from circulation. And really, Consumer Reports may be suggesting that Tesla make drastic changes to its hardware. It wants the company to remove Autopilot from cars until “it updates the program to verify that the driver’s hands are on the wheel.” How you’d do that to scale — safely — beyond retooling the steering wheel, we don&rsquo

T-Mobile has been a pioneer in giving special treatment to various apps and types of content used on its mobile network, and the carrier announced today that Pokémon Go will be joining its enclave of free data. Starting on July 19th, T-Mobile customers will have Pokémon Go data exempted from their high-speed data caps for a year. The company is also throwing in some other perks, like $15 in Lyft rides ("to get to a new pokestop or gym"), and a free Wendy's Frosty, making

If you didn’t think Pokemon Go was the biggest mobile game ever, brands are getting involved. T-Mobile’s Tuesday deals are going full-on Pokemon next week, including free data. In addition to a free Frosty and a Lyft Ride up to $15 (because you “gotta stay fueled up” to “explore new Gyms and Pokestops”), you’ll also be able to get accessories like battery packs at up to 50 percent off (“to keep playing for hours and hours”). The data, though

I hate to be one of those people, but summers in the city are the worst. New York City right now is basically a scientific experiment to see how much heat, humidity, garbage, and humans you can trap in a few square miles.
But it doesn't have to be this way. If only humans could let go of their innate desire to "look good" and "not be a total nerd with the way you dress all the time, Paul," I could have cool air blowing through my sparse armpit hair this very second.
Why do we do this to each oth

Orbital ATK’s newly redesigned Antares rocket is set to make its spaceflight debut on August 22nd. That’s when the vehicle is scheduled to take off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and carry the company’s Cygnus cargo capsule to the International Space Station. In May, Orbital said the flight would occur in July, but last month, the company said the launch had slipped to August. If all goes well, it will mark the first flight of the Antares i

Olly Moss, a graphic designer and illustrator and one of the artists for indie game Firewatch, has made a name for himself doing stylized and cherubic renderings of pop culture characters. He has them Giclée printed on high-quality 5 x 5-inch watercolor paper and sells them in limited time windows for a voracious community of fans. Now, Moss has gone ahead and released a set of six prints for the hugely popular Blizzard shooter Overwatch. They're available over at Moss' web stor

Remember that Space Black iPhone 7 concept we all fell in love with? Yeah, so, it might be DOA. Sorry. The latest iPhone 7 leak shows four casings, said to be for the iPhone 7. Unfortunately, they’re the same colors as the iPhone 6S: Space Grey, Silver, Rose Gold and Gold. A ‘Space Black’ option is not pictured. The rear shells are said to be dummy units that are sent to accessory manufacturers so they can design cases and other peripherals ahead of the device’s launch.

Everyone, at some point or another, has wished that they could have a longer USB cable: whether it's a few more inches to reach the plug under your desk, a 5-foot long cord to plug a phone in on your nightstand, or a 65-foot long USB cable that stretches across your implausibly-large-yet-poorly-wired house. Or, far more realistically, you’re a professional photographer who needs to tether a camera with a fast USB 3.0 connection to a distant workstation for a shoot. Continue reading…

Everyone, at some point or another, has wished that they could have a longer USB cable: whether it's a few more inches to reach the plug under your desk, a 5-foot long cord to plug a phone in on your nightstand, or a 65-foot long USB cable that stretches across your implausibly-large-yet-poorly-wired house. Or, far more realistically, you’re a professional photographer who needs to tether a camera with a fast USB 3.0 connection to a distant workstation for a shoot. Continue reading…

Drones flying over a war zone are nothing new, and as they've proliferated, there have been more efforts to make them harder to see from the ground.
Case in point? A drone that was recently downed in Mogadishu, Somalia looks less like a drone and more like a large bird.
Local reports associate this drone, which came down on May 1st, with Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA). It's unclear exactly how it was downed, or if similar drones have been used in the country bef

YouTube is again livestreaming the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this year, but this time there’s a twist: 360 degree video. Time to pull out that Cardboard headset. I’m not exactly sure how well that will contribute to the experience, but I suppose it would be fun to watch thousands of republicans likely cringing to their own candidate. It’s also not immediately clear if 360 video will be the only view or if it’s an optional perspective, but we imagine

BP Global plans to announce in its upcoming second-quarter earnings report that it will pay an additional $2.5 billion in fines for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, according to The Guardian. The additional charges bring BP's total pre-tax fines to date to $61.6 billion, or $44 billion post-taxes.
BP will pay an additional $2.5 billion
The company's chief financial officer has assured investors that any other outstanding claims related to the spill would not have material impact on

Remember when Napster said it was coming back? No, you didn’t dream that – it’s very real and it’s available today for a 30-day trial. Napster, rebranded from Rhapsody which acquired the former company in 2011, finally has more details about what’s in store: there’s an updated app with a new homescreen, a global network for you to check out other users’ playlists, and a dashboard for your most played tracks, artists, and playlists. You can sea

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced late yesterday that it has rejected Volkswagen Group's plan to fix thousands of cars with 3-liter engines that were affected by the company's global emissions cheating scandal. The plan was submitted for approval earlier this year.
CARB says there are about 16,000 Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi cars with affected 3-liter engines in California. (Volkswagen Group sells Porsche and Audi cars around the world.) There is an estimated 85,000 on the ro

In the spring of 2012, an app named Highlight seemed poised to break out. In 2009, Foursquare had captivated early adopters with the idea of location-based social networking. But where Foursquare focused on places, Highlight founder Paul Davison was focused on people. His app let you passively share your personal information with the people around you, in the hopes that it would enable all sorts of serendipitous interactions. But the app never found its footing, and Highlight officially mee

The tricky part about being Cadillac is that it’s awfully easy to get tripped up in a 114-year-old history of glamour, glitz, and glorious fins.
After World War II, Americans began to drive in droves, and Cadillac became a metaphor for the best of the best. Even the names of its finest saloons — El Dorado, Coupe de Ville — had a certain flair. Cadillac was larger in stature than the luxury marques of the time: the clients of fitness guru Joseph Pilates named the popular six-foo

Racing drones can be difficult to operate if you've never flown them before, and at high speeds, a crash can be very costly. To address that issue, Aerix is releasing a racing drone for beginners, called the Black Talon Micro FPV Racing Drone.The Black Talon comes with novice-friendly features like interchangeable batteries and an altitude hold function (thanks to a built-in barometer) to allow the pilot to focus more on the general direction of the drone. The Black Talon can stream in 720p

In an open letter published to Medium, 140 of tech’s largest names conclude Donald Trump is basically just an idiot. Penned by former Twitter VP Katie Stanton, luminaries in the tech world say Trump “would be a disaster for innovation” and “he campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline.” If that weren’t enough for you, try this passage out: Donald Trump articulates few policies b

Our planet is losing so many species that we might be putting ourselves at risk. New research shows that across half of the Earth’s land surface, biodiversity — all the different animals, plants, and other species that make up an ecosystem — has dropped below a threshold that some scientists consider "safe."
Understanding how much biodiversity we’re losing is key to our own survival. We depend on biodiversity to live. Natural processes like crop pollination, waste decompo

After years of arguments, Microsoft has won a major victory in its legal fight over US access to information stored in a company data center in Ireland. In a decision filed today by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, judges ruled that US investigators can’t use the Stored Communications Act to compel access to the data, as it is physically located outside of US borders. As a result, the court found that Microsoft has "no remaining lawful obligation to produce materials to the government.

Google Glass, the company's augmented reality eyewear, may have been a huge consumer flop, but it's still finding its way into the workflows of professionals. In a report from CIO.com, members of Boeing's research and technology division say they've used the original Google Glass to construct aircraft wire harnesses. Because planes contain hugely messy and complex webs of wires to connect electrical systems, technicians have to manually build them out, a painstaking process based on PDF ass

Facebook is making reading links your friends share on Messenger much faster. The company today announced its integrating its Instant Articles technology right into the app, meaning that you don’t need to open a browser to quickly read breaking news or the viral listicle of the day. Facebook says the articles will load up to 10 times faster than traditional links. It’s also particularly handy for people who are on slow or capped data connections, as Instant Articles reduce the

The Australian Centre for Field Robotics called Otto Tag on a Wednesday afternoon. Tag was a farmer living in Australia. The Centre for Field Robotics was looking for a person with just those qualifications. The phone rang and Tag asked who was on the line.
"Hi, yes, this is the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. And we’re calling to find out if you’d be interested in trying out one of our new robots for a week."
"Uh, what," Tag replied.
"It’s called SwagBot. Basically, it&r

When Facebook announced its platform for bots at the F8 developer conference this year, publishers raced to push news into Facebook Messenger. But until now, their stories have loaded in slower-loading web views inside Messenger, rather than the faster Instant Articles format that Facebook introduced last year. But not any more — starting today, Facebook Messenger supports Instant Articles just as the flagship Facebook app does. Continue reading…

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Samsung Electronics v. Apple on October 11th, it announced this week as it posted its schedule for the October 2016 term. It was announced back in March that the court would hear the case.
The Supreme Court will be the last stop for this particular patent dispute, with justices deciding how damage awards should be applied to products that infringe a patent. In this case, they will be looking to answer whether an award of the infringer’s prof

Back in May, Google proposed 13 new emoji meant to better represent women in professional fields, and now 11 of those emoji have been approved by the Unicode Consortium. The new emoji, including a chef, a graduate, and a David Bowie-like rockstar, will be available in both male and female versions, with all skin tones. The two emoji not approved from Google's proposal appear to be an assembly line worker and a dentist.
In addition to the 11 new emoji (above) Unicode is also adding both

Kristen Wiig has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon as Harry Styles, Daenerys Targaryen, Peyton Manning, Michael Jordan, and now, JoJo Fletcher from ABC's The Bachelorette. It's one of the show's odder running jokes, which is notable because the host regularly has to make fun of himself for slicing off parts of his hand.
Central to the gag is the fact that Wiig knows next to nothing about any of the people she impersonates. Her impression of JoJo gets the omnipresent champagne-c

Usually knockoff products are cheaper than the original, but if the original is a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, well the knockoffs just can't afford to slash prices. Enter the NanoPi NEO, an $8 Chinese version of the Pi Zero built by FriendlyARM— that you can actually buy. It's easier to get Hamilton tickets than to get your hands on the perpetually sold out Raspberry Pi Zero these days, which could potentially give the NanoPi NEO an actual audience.The NanoPi NEO is a 40mm square featuring a

Phone mounts for bikes have been around for a few years, but a new one that just hit Kickstarter puts a few twists on the idea. It’s called Bycle, and it’s a clever little mount with an equally clever app that can be used for both navigation and recording (and sharing) your bike rides.
What you’re really paying for with Bycle is the hardware. The mount is water-resistant and works with all iPhone 6 and 6S phones. You can still use your phone’s touchscreen through the clea