Technology news

Google has announced that Hangouts on Air — the live-streaming service once used by Barack Obama and Pope Francis — will be mostly discontinued next month. A new post over at Google's YouTube support page lays out the details for Hangouts on Air users, who will have to use YouTube Live to handle all their live-streaming needs starting September 12th. That includes events that were already scheduled for after that date, too.
Google’s post features a walkthrough of how users will

It's arguably THE shot of the games so far. The world's fastest man, doing his thing a full stride or two ahead of the rest of the group, shooting a sly grin at the competition in his wake.
The picture of Usain Bolt racing to first place in the 100-meter semifinal in Rio on Sunday is the work of Getty photographer Cameron Spencer. It's a remarkable snapshot that's since gone viral and it's the result of a pro at the right place and the right time taking a big, but calculated, gamble.
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Snapchat is said to be in the late-stage process of acquiring mobile search and discovery app Vurb for $110 million.
According to The Information, the purchase of Vurb will give the ephemeral messaging app company more resources to bolster its messaging and search features. Sources told the publication that 75 percent of the price tag would be in stock while the rest are in cash. Snapchat is also said to be heavily interested in Vurb’s founder Bobby Lo, a serial entrepreneur who previ

If you’re constantly changing your work hours or frequently jet-setting between time zones, you may be more vulnerable to catching a virus than people with consistent work schedules or less erratic itineraries, a new study suggests.
The body’s internal clock works like a protective shield — or an open door — when it comes to viral infections, according to the study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
Throw off

There's nothing we love more than recreating an epic fight scene. This one between the Bride and Copperhead of Kill Bill is no different. 
In this clip from our CineFix series Homemade Movies, the Bride finds her target at home, and their brawl wrecks havoc on the living room until they are interrupted by the arrival of a school bus. 
Subscribe to CineFix for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/cinefixWe made Adam Pally play our new game 'Trump or Troll,' and he hated it
'Stranger

GUEST: Bots are redefining how consumers interact with products and services.
Conversational interfaces may already seem groundbreaking, but we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The real disruption will take place in the business world. Even though business bots are just gearing up, they will soon be influential enough that we can expect them to disrupt competition and turn power dynamics upside down. They will shake up entire markets, and it all starts with employees.
Here are the first f

If you’re waiting for the new Nexus to land, it’s probably closer than you might think. New FCC documents all but confirm an HTC-made device with support documentation for Google. In a filing with the FCC, HTC wrote the included support documentation would be published to Google’s support website at “the time the product is commercially released.” Elsewhere, spy shots show a device that looks a lot like the rumored HTC Nexus in the wild. More images have been

Competitive, team-based shooting may finally find a home on mobile.
Developer Super Bit Machine announced today that its multiplayer mobile game Armajet will enter a free beta period on August 18 for iOS and Android. Multiplayer shooters are one of the most popular kinds of games on consoles and PC, but that experience hasn’t translated as well to the $36 billion mobile market, which is hurt by limiting, touch-based controls.
Of course, almost all of those console games are first-person sh

Humans have spent centuries trying to understand the intricacies of love. The answer, as it turns out, might be as simple as GIFs and a dating app. While you spend 20 minutes trying to craft a perfect opener, the guy who sent this GIF is about to take that girl you just matched with out for some cheap beer and free pretzels. According to Tinder, GIF messages are 30 percent more likely to receive a response than their non-GIF counterparts. The company also revealed that conversati

Next year’s Tribeca Film Festival is going to be interesting.
Today the organization announced it will start accepting applications from virtual reality filmmakers to premiere at the main 2017 festival. This is a noteworthy change for the New York event — cofounded by actor Robert De Niro — and marks the first time that VR filmmakers will be allowed to compete alongside traditional filmmakers at a major festival.
In prior years, the Tribeca Film Fe

A pair of Transparent veterans — creator Jill Soloway and writer Ethan Kuperberg — are working together on a new show for Amazon, an as-yet-untitled musical comedy that'll focus on a woman finding herself in Los Angeles. (That's not much to go on, but I suppose you could describe Transparent the same way.) According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kuperberg came up with the idea and is writing the show; Soloway is serving as its executive producer alongside another Transparent alum,

Google Plus continues to be deprecated across Google properties. This time, the company is discontinuing its ‘Hangouts On Air’ feature in favor of YouTube Live. Starting September 12, those who want to start live broadcasts will need to use YouTube Live. Google says it’s a hard deadline, too: Events cannot be scheduled on Google+ after September 12 and you will need to move existing events scheduled to happen after September 12 to YouTube Live. Hangouts On Air features Q&A

Audi is launching a new vehicle-to-infrastructure platform (V2I) in some of its 2017 cars, allowing vehicles to notify drivers of how long they’ll be waiting at a red light. It’s the first step in what is expected to be a massive leap forward in connected cars, as vehicles talk to surrounding infrastructure and other vehicles to make driving safer and more convenient.
The car will wirelessly receive real-time signal information from city-wide traffic management systems, allowing driv

GUEST: Chatbots are a powerful new channel to increase sales and assist more customers. They are are also a minefield of mismatched expectations.
Inconsistencies in the customer experience hurt a brand’s ability to develop fruitful, long-term customer relationships. Within the field of customer communications, the bar is set high, and we’ve worked hard to gain consumers’ trust in instant, real-time chat interactions. The evolution of customer service, stemming from call ce

Google today quietly announced that Google+ Hangouts On Air will no longer be available on September 12. Four weeks from now, Google users will be asked to use YouTube Live instead.
Google first debuted the livestreaming feature for its Hangouts group video chat on Google+ back in September 2011, though it was only available to select performers and celebrities. Google started making Hangouts On Air available to all its users in May 2012, and completed the rollout a month later. But then in May

Online shooter fans will soon get their first taste of World War I.
Publisher Electronic Arts and developer Dice announced today that Battlefield 1 will start its open beta test on August 31 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The online shooter is one of Electronic Art’s biggest releases for the holiday season, which is when game sales are at a yearly high thanks to gift-giving. The full game comes out on October 21. Such betas are meant to help developers find bugs and problems wit

Battlefield 1, Electronic Art's new first-person shooter set during the first world war, will have a public beta starting on August 31st for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC players. To be eligible to play, you'll need to register as a Battlefield Insider, the game's online testing and fan community. It's free to join, and as long as you do so before August 21st, you'll be granted access to the beta when it comes out. You'll be able to play popular game modes like Rush and Conquest

The other day, while feeling nostalgic, I remembered a YouTube channel I had loved to watch in high school. Created by a teenager from Connecticut, the videos were mostly lo-fi comedy sketches starring their young amateur director and some people I assumed were his closest friends. I wanted to rewatch the videos, to remember the feeling that came with streaming them on a loop from a bedroom I slept in a decade ago, but I couldn't. I don’t remember the creator's name, the name of the channe

The Onion Omega2 is the latest tiny computer continuing in the tradition of the Raspberry Pi. The Omega2 is the successor to last year’s Omega, a hackable, expandable, and affordable computer that was one-fourth the size of the Pi. The Omega2 and its main competitor, the Raspberry Pi Zero, are both $5 computers that hope to be cheap enough, and tiny enough, for people to buy a new unit with each new DIY project they take on.
For 5 bucks, you get a 580 MHz CPU, 64MB of memory, and 16MB of s

Back in March, I attended a crowded panel at the Upload Collective, where a number of venture capitalists and investors talked about investing in virtual reality and augmented reality startups.
And last week, I returned to attend another series of panels that took the temperature on the VR and AR markets again. I’ll be writing about each of these panels. Now that the VR headsets have launched (or soon, as is the case with Sony’s PlayStation VR), investors are turning to a new focus:

If you need to sell consumers on a new technology, you may as well take advantage one of the biggest names in modern gaming.
Microsoft will release a free update for the beta version of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition today that makes the popular block-building title compatible with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. This could introduce VR to a whole new audience, as Minecraft is one of the most popular games ever. Its fans could become interested in the Oculus Rift if they t

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced their collaboration to promote the BOTS Act (Better On-line Ticket Sales Act of 2016) yesterday, in a joint press conference. The bill, which mirrors one introduced in February of last year by House Republicans, proposes a new federal law that would fine ticket resellers who use bots to bypass online security measures. These bots buy hundreds, sometimes thousands of tickets to concerts and events in a matter

Apple today released the fifth version of the public beta for iOS 10, the next version of its mobile operating system. Today’s release comes one week after the fourth public beta became available.
Compared with iOS 9, the new OS features redesigned Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Maps, and Photos apps, along with a new Home app for controlling Internet-connected devices. Apple isn’t saying what’s in today’s release, but generally these updates fix bugs and add new features

Google's latest Nexus phone is shaping up to be an all-metal device that comes in both 5-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes, according to a report from Android Police. The smaller phone, codenamed "Sailfish" and seen in the leaked image above, looks very much like the existing Nexus 5X with a fingerprint scanner on the back and same camera and front plate design. Android Police says the 5.5-inch model, codenamed "Marlin," won't look much different. In an interesting twist, the report adds

After months of waiting, Minecraft is now available on the Oculus Rift, via a free update to the game’s Windows 10 beta edition. You could already play Minecraft on the Rift via a mod called Minecrift, but this is the first official version of the game for desktop virtual reality — a Gear VR version was released in April. (Vive users can still use a mod called Vivecraft, which also supports the Rift.)
The Minecraft team says that Windows 10 users will see some features that aren&rsqu

In the past couple of months, Google, Apple, and Facebook have all announced major changes to user acquisition tools, as well as the app store business and user experience.
These upgrades for smart acquisition bidding, discovery, and subscription have the potential to change the mobile game landscape for years to come. Matt Marshall, the founder of VentureBeat, delved into this at our GamesBeat 2016 conference a couple of weeks ago.
In a fireside chat, Marshall interviewed Lee Jones, the global

VB LIVE: Mobile gaming looks like a solitary pursuit, but it’s increasingly clear that lifetime value relies on users who make your game — and their fellow players — a part of their lives. Join our panel of game experts to find out how exactly how you can build a community that wins hearts, minds, and revenue.
Register here for free.
“Everyone in the games industry talks about lifetime value — it’s the key for making money, especially on mobile,” sa

Twitter has figured out a way to make money off of a feature it cloned from Snapchat less than two months ago. It's now allowing advertisers to offer sponsored stickers, which will appear up front in the list of stickers that users can place on their photos.
The new ad format kicks off today with a sponsorship from Pepsi, which has paid for eight custom stickers, six of which are weird smiley faces, one of which is a trophy, and only one of which has a Pepsi logo on it. Twitter will allow a

Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show is ending its run on Comedy Central less than two years after its feted premiere, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Wilmore leapt from The Daily Show's roster of contributors into a slot replacing Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report in January 2015, and The Nightly Show was renewed for a second season last September.
"I'm saddened and surprised we won't be covering this crazy election"
Comedy Central decided to terminate that second season early bec

To all who come to this twisted place, welcome.
Publisher Bethesda has released a new trailer for NukaWorld, the next and final piece of downloadable content for Fallout 4. It comes out on August 30. Fallout 4 originally released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 10, 2015. The open-world role-playing game was an immediate hit, generating $750 million in 24 hours. New content like this can bring players back to the game while having them spend more money.NukaWorld is the final plann

Sometimes I wake up late and forget to pack lunch for work. It happens to everyone. Whenever I forget leftovers and want to save money, I try to piece together a meal with whatever snacks I can find in the break room. But on Mondays, when the break room hasn't yet been restocked, my hunger can lead to delirium, and suddenly, led by a voracious appetite, I wonder, "What if the office supplies themselves could be a meal?"
The stop-motion Papermeal video series from Australian design studio Ye

Twitter’s sticker feature is opening up to advertisers.
The social network announced today that brands can now create and promote their own stickers on Twitter, starting with sugar-water and snack conglomerate PepsiCo.
Twitter first introduced stickers in June in hopes that users would enjoy tacking small, colorful illustrations onto their photos — as you do in apps like Snapchat. Seven weeks later, the company says “millions of photos have be

"Beaucoup bitches in the lobby," Slim Jxmmi rasps in the opening moments of SremmLife 2. The line peaks and cracks like the rallying cry of a teenager who has just discovered the existence of women and wants to share his joy. Here, 30 seconds into Rae Sremmurd’s second full-length album, one could be forgiven for thinking that Slim Jxmmi and his brother Swae Lee haven’t moved much from where they started. The Mississippi rap duo forced their way into public consciousness with 2014&rs

Chester Zoo is one of the biggest zoos in the UK — it sits on about 400 acres in Cheshire, England and was founded in 1931 from the private lizard collection of World War I vet George Mottershead.
It seems like a nice place, where typical zoo things like cotton candy and penguin acrobatics happen. Also, they have just bred an extremely rare tarantula, resulting in the birth of 200 more tarantulas! This is the first time this species of tarantula has been successfully bred by scientists, ma

It looks like we’ll have to suffer a (hopefully) final wait before playing Final Fantasy XV.
Square Enix confirmed rumors today by announcing that its upcoming role-playing game won’t come out until November 29. It was originally set to release worldwide on September 30 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Game director Hajime Tabata noted in a Japanese video released on the publisher’s YouTube page that the delay will help the development team perfect the game without dependin

We’ve had an idea that HTC would make two Nexus phones this year, which we’ve been referring to by their supposed Google codenames Marlin and Sailfish.Today Ausdroid reports that the FCC approved the two phones and is listing them online. Though the phones aren’t explicitly referred to by name, support.google.com/nexus is listed as the place to find their manual. These are probably the new Nexus devices.HTC (FCC)The listing also includes the approved frequency bands and no

EXCLUSIVE: The internet is a beautiful thing. It has the power to change the world on both a global and a local scale.
But anonymity — on social networks and in anonymous social apps — has created some of the most toxic, heinous environments known to woman and man.
It seems that every Whisper, Secret, and Yik Yak turns into a place for hate speech, or quickly becomes a hookup spot. And anonymity also keeps us from being able to use the internet and social platforms as actua

No Man’s Sky is an almost impossibly huge game, an entire virtual universe filled with 18 quintillion planets, each one different from the next thanks to the powers of procedural generation. Instead of a typical review, I’m going to be writing daily dispatches from No Man’s Sky, giving a firsthand account of what the experience is like, and what you can expect if you choose to dive in. You can follow along right here.
I’m exhausted.
Over the last few days, I’ve been

US billionaire Warren Buffett likes to note how little advantage his considerable wealth secures him over the average person. He still wears pants like everyone else, lives in a modest house, and uses the sort of technology that’s accessible to the masses. The only thing, Buffett would argue, that distinguishes his privilege is being able to fly in his own jet and travel faster and more conveniently than everyone else. All the other luxuries out in the world are valueless to Mr. Buffett, b

When Bill Gates gets confused, he emails a smart friend to ask for guidance or to verify that he correctly understands a complicated idea.
That’s why in an interview with The Verge this spring, Bill Gates said he is excited about the emerging field of personalized learning and A.I. tutor bots. Education could change greatly when students have a bot that can field questions and explain difficult-to-understand concepts. The bot won’t get annoyed or tired of hearing the same questi

Sony’s latest software update to the PlayStation 4 is now coming to beta users. Unlike the last major update, which added support for remote streaming to Macs and PCs, the 4.00 firmware beta (codenamed Shingen) is mostly focused on tweaking the PS4’s user interface. One of the biggest changes is the ability to create folders to organize your games and apps, instead of relying purely on Sony’s existing organizational tools. Another is that instead of taking over the whole screen

Here's a puzzle: Google appears to have started work on a completely new operating system, but no one knows quite what it's for. The project's name is Fuchsia, and it currently exists as a growing pile of code on the search giant's code depository and on GitHub too. The fledgling OS has a number of interesting features, but so far Google has yet to comment on its intended function. All we really know is that this looks like a fresh start for Google, as the operating system does not use

The NFL is well into its first week of preseason, and Microsoft is celebrating the return of football to our TV screens with some new Surface Type Covers. There are 32 designs to pick from, featuring all the team logos, and the Type Covers will work with a Surface Pro 3 or Surface Pro 4. All of the designs will be available from today at Microsoft Stores in the US and Canada for $159.99. That's the same price as the Signature Surface Type Cover that originally debuted in April, but Microsof

According to Internet Retailer 2016 Mobile 500, app-based sales are soaring. Purchases through mobile apps increased from $35.48 billion in 2014 to $59.86 billion in 2015. That’s a staggering 68.7 percent growth.
But that doesn’t mean everything is rosy in the app sales garden. Oh no.
New research released today by ARC from Applause — which takes in data from 1.2 million app store reviews across Google Play and the Apple App Store — shows that some of the top retailers in