Technology news

If you’ve played Pokémon Go from the beginning, you’ve probably noticed that those little buggers are getting harder to catch in recent days. Well, it turns out that is a glitch.
Developer Niantic took to Twitter today to confirm to players that they aren’t all paranoid and that pocket monsters are harder to catch due to a bug in the game. The studio revealed that this glitch causes a number of problems. It makes your throws less accurate, it omits the XP bonus

This should go without saying, but please don't fly a drone while wearing a virtual reality headset and sitting on the edge of a cliff. I'd go further and say that you shouldn't wear a VR headset while on the edge of a cliff or even fly a drone while on the edge of a cliff period. It's simple, people: you could fall very easily. And, at a bare minimum, it would hurt. Not recommended, both for your safety and the promising future of virtual reality and / or drones.
I don't know that anyone has ac

15 million Overwatch players can’t be wrong.
Activision Blizzard generated $1.57 billion in revenues durings its second quarter. That is up from $1.04 billion during the same period in 2015, and it also bested the $1.43 billion that Activision predicted earlier this year. As is the trend for the gaming industry, the bulk of those sales were digital. The publisher generated more than $1 billion through its digital channels, which is a record for the company in the growing $99.6 billion gami

After a brief introduction at E3 earlier this summer, we just got another trailer for Prey, the 2017 sort-of reboot of the 2006 shooter. As we’ve mentioned before, Prey is a game about monsters in space, and the men (or women, since you can supposedly choose your character’s gender) who kill them. And we’ll be honest, that’s been done before! But this trailer’s weirdly squeaky-clean space station is still creepy, with its huge windows and art deco pavilions and spid

Netflix’s Stranger Things has captivated audiences with its sense of nostalgia, drawing from the works of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Stephen King. With the first season out and finished, we’ve been itching for our next hit of horror fiction that we can obsess over.
Books were a major influence for the show’s creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, who have spoken at length about what has influenced their show. Authors like Stephen King were a formative influence on

LinkedIn ($LNKD) announced its second quarter earnings today as it nears the end of its time as an independent company. It was revealed that the company generated $933 million in revenue, with an earnings per share (EPS) of $1.13. And while LinkedIn counts more than 450 million members, what’s telling is how many of those are actively visiting the professional social network each month: 25 percent.
For those keeping track at home, Wall Street analysts had been expecting LinkedIn

Making a chatbot is easy — there are multiple bot development platforms available, quite a few A.I. engines, and more messaging apps than anyone would ever manage on their phone at one time. Yet, as we’ve found out now that there are 11,000 chatbots on Facebook Messenger and countless more on other platforms like Kik and Telegram, it is really hard to make a good chatbot.
Fortunately, there’s a detail guide available. Mariya Yao, the founder and creative director of Xanadu, has

Online and digital is a booming business for Rockstar and 2K’s parent publisher.
Take-Two Interactive generated (GAAP) revenues of $311.6 million in its fiscal Q1 2017, which is up 13 percent year-over-year. The company lst 46 cents per share, which is a significant improvement over the 81 cents per share it lost during the same three-month period in 2015. The publisher continues to bring in massive revenues from Grand Theft Auto V and NBA 2K as well as connected components of those games.

In the latest twist in the ongoing feud between the Pokémon Go community and the app's creators, The Pokémon Company has sent out at least one cease and desist letter to an independent developer threatening persecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The letter, sent to GitHub user Mila432 and reposted online, contains a detailed breakdown of how the developer violated Pokémon Go's terms of service with a reverse-engineered application programming inte

Nerf this.
Publisher Activision Blizzard revealed today that it has more than 15 million people playing its Overwatch shooter across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The beloved team-based action game debuted in April, and it has quickly established itself as one of the most popular releases in the $99.6 billion gaming market.
Overwatch is also one of the driving forces behind Activision’s fast-growing digital business. While the game is available at retail as a physical disc for all

A new wristband promises to let you ride around on your motorcycle like a madman without getting caught in speed traps. This seems like an idea that totally won't backfire. Woolf is a wristband that will alert bikers of speed traps, red light cameras, and upcoming crosswalks using different levels of vibrations.Woolf utilizes a global speed camera database to keep you from getting tickets. As you approach a speed trap or crosswalk, the company says the wristband will vibrate faster to alert you

Bethesda isn’t afraid to make you afraid.
The publisher launched the first gameplay trailer for its sci-fi action adventure Prey today, and it gives a look at some guns, some exploration, and some space monsters. The game is due out in 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. You can see it all in action below:Prey is a reboot of the original Xbox shooter, and Bethesda announced this new version during its media event at the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show last month. It is from D

You may have heard by now that Apple has a reality TV show in the works. The show has a formula (app developers competing for mentorship and money), a meme-worthy name (Planet of the Apps), a successful Hollywood production group attached (Propagate Content), and casting calls in the works. Sounds like TV to me.
But Apple’s original TV show isn’t actually "TV" in the traditional sense. It’s using the form of a TV show for a much more Apple-centric goal. Specifically, Apple

Zynga generated $174.7 million in bookings during Q2 2016, which is about even from the same period in 2015. But that is better than the company’s high-end guidance, and chief executive officer Frank Gibeau explained to GamesBeat that its core hits are fueling its efforts to return to high profits.
“We’re continuing to make progress in our turnaround,” Gibeau told GamesBeat. “Our bookings and our [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization] were

A levitating charger for the Apple Watch and Pebble came up on Kickstarter today. It's called Lift, the Anti-Gravity Levitating Smartwatch Charger and Lamp. We already have floating lightbulbs, floating cups, floating phone chargers. Pretty much everything levitates now, except for humans and hoverboards. It’s a great time to be a levitation enthusiast.
Feel free to check out the whole levitating charger experience over on Lift’s Kickstarter page. Here’s wha

The International Olympics Committee has officially approved 271 Russian athletes to compete in the Rio Olympics, according to Reuters, which cites the head of Russia's Olympic committee as its source. The decision comes after the IOC had commissioned a three-member independent panel to make a final review of Russian athletes set to compete in this summer's Rio Games. Originally, Russia had planned to send 387 athletes to the games, but following recent revelations of widespread doping, and

VB LIVE: Kik’s director of platform services joins our latest VB Live Event to reveal how their 300 million bot users prove the industry is well and fully disrupted—but companies considering bots need to ensure they’re focused on the right things. 
Missed it? Catch this free VB Live event on demand right here.
“It’s funny that 2016 is heralded as the year of the bot,” says Paul Gray, director of platform services at messaging platform and bot powerhouse K

Listen up, you media rapscallions. The Olympics is about to start, and I must remind you there will be no GIF-making. None at all. Especially not if you agreed to the IOC’s access terms.
You want to turn a historical moment into a shareable, looping clip that brings joy to the world by celebrating the human race’s determination to continually reach further than its own grasp? Well don’t!Excited for Olympic GIFs? Don't get your hopes up. Note to press: Use of Olympic material tr

Zhang Yimou, the legendary director of House of Flying Daggers and Raise the Red Lantern, has responded to the backlash against the trailer for his upcoming monster movie The Great Wall. The trailer featured Matt Damon (and Game of Thrones' Pedro Pascal) going to battle with some screaming monster things atop the Great Wall. Because the film is set 1,000 years ago in China, many viewers wondered why on earth it would have a white protagonist.
yimou says most of the film's heroes are Chinese

I want to say that this smartphone necklace is a ridiculous product that no one will ever buy, because who would want to be seen using a smartphone like this? And how convenient is it really? And can you even control it properly this way? But I also would have said those things about selfie sticks, and clearly I was wrong there. So very possibly smartphone necklaces are going to be the biggest thing ever by the end of the year.
This product is called the Povie, and it's basically a weird co

A new Valve program will let companies use the HTC Vive virtual reality tracking system for their own hardware. Under the SteamVR Tracking license, product designers can buy sensors like those on the Vive headset and controllers, attach them to their own products, and then track them with the Vive’s base stations. This means that developers could make their own custom motion controllers for the Vive — or, in the long run, that Valve could establish a motion tracking standard for all

President Obama turns 55 today, and to celebrate, his BFF / BFFL / VPJoe Biden sent a sweet tribute tweet. In it, he shares a photo of the Joe and Barack friendship bracelets that Obama made for a BuzzFeed video about registering to vote.
This video is over a month old and therefore the fact that Biden still has these bracelets defies the laws of summer camp friendship bracelet physics — you were supposed to have accidentally torn yours on a pool filter weeks ago, Joe! Truly, a better

Roomba today announced the latest member of its high-end 900 series of robotic vacuum cleaners, joining the top-of-the-line Roomba 980: the slightly less expensive Roomba 960.
Like it’s numerically superior sibling and the recently updated Roomba Braava mop, the Roomba 960 is able to connect to Wi-Fi, allowing you to remotely schedule cleaning times and control your vacuum through a smartphone app.
The cheaper price of the 960 comes at a cost
The cheaper price of the 960 comes at

Roborace — the autonomous racing series that is supposed to run alongside Formula E sometime this upcoming season — has released a new image of its outrageous-looking "Robocar." The new photo shows a "production version" of the car that’s more final than the first renderings we saw back in March, and it details all the bits of tech that will help guide the vehicle around the track. You can see a full-resolution version here.
The Robocar will use a number of lidar and radar

Two years ago, Facebook made an initial effort to eliminate the News Feed's surplus of "clickbait" — a hard to define but almost universally despised form of online content that leaves readers feel tricked, cheated, or otherwise dissatisfied. But people have continued to complain about many of the articles they see in the News Feed, Facebook says, and so today it's adjusting the feed again. Over the next few weeks, Facebook will implement of changes meant to reduce the distribution of

Let's get the facts out of the way: Netflix is releasing a new original movie called XOXO on August 26th, and this is the trailer. It's an ensemble comedy about six strangers who all attend the "biggest EDM festival in America," the titular XOXO; I'd bet my life that these strangers are going to run into each other and change each other's lives in meaningful, unexpected ways. Legendary British DJ Pete Tong is the music supervisor, so it's probably chock-full of bangers and slappers.
Now that you

Selma director Ava DuVernay is set to break a major milestone: she will become the first woman of color to direct blockbuster movie with a budget of at least $100 million when she gets behind the camera for her upcoming film, A Wrinkle in Time.
DuVernay is now part of a select group of filmmakers
DuVernay joined the production earlier this year, and in doing so, became one of a select group of filmmakers, ones who directed a major movie with a budget in excess of nine figures. According to the L

A robot tattooist might have steadier 'hands' than its human counterpart, but how do you know it's not going to accidentally tattoo you all the way down to the bone? That's all I could think of watching this video of what's been billed as the "world's first tattoo by an industrial robot." At around two and a half minutes in you can see how tightly the tattoo's recipient has been strapped to a chair and you think: "Ah, if he moves, then things are going to get nasty."
That aside, it's wonderful t

Apple is bringing on three big names for Planet of the Apps: Will.i.am, Gwyneth Paltrow, and wine-star turned brand-builder Gary Vaynerchuk. According to Deadline, the three entrepreneurs will offer guidance to app developers who appear on the show. It's still unclear what the exact format will be, but it sounds like Planet of the Apps could be akin to a nerdier Shark Tank. Paltrow and Will.i.am will also serve as executive producers. Continue reading…

 Kyna and Conan Fong were at dinner trying to convince their father, who ran a medical practice, to try something different than just keeping paper records. There’s a good reason for that — they’re slow, they’re hard to transfer and share (often requiring paper delivery or faxes), and there’s a lot of information that can be lost along the way. But despite that being… Read More