Technology news

Five hours ago, Sunni LaBeouf retweeted an eight-month-old tweet from internet personality Steven Crowder. In that time, hundreds of people have already turned the source into a punchline. These are the precious and almost clockwork early stages in the birth of a meme.
"This is the ideal make body," says the tweet, "You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like." Attached is an image ofa man who appears to be mixed martial artist Fedor Emelianenko, standing uncomfortably in a

The E! docu-series I Am Cait has been canceled after two seasons. The show, which dealt with reality star Caitlyn Jenner coming to terms with her transition, comes to an end after grappling with the issues involving trans identity and Jenner's personal politics but failing to build a large enough audience to sustain it.
Jenner announced that the show wouldn't return on Twitter this afternoon:After 2 amazing seasons of @IAmCait, it's time for the next adventure. Thank you E! & thank you

Intel has entered into a new licensing agreement with competitor ARM to produce ARM-based chips in Intel factories. The deal, announced today at the Intel Developer Forum, is a strategic move from the Santa Clara, CA company to offer its large-scale custom chip manufacturing facilities, which include 10-nanometer production lines, to third-parties, including those using its rival's technology. Intel's new foundry licensing agreements also include deals to produce chips for LG Electroni

Quib (pronounced like cube) is attempting to be the Swiss army knife of power banks, adding on a microSD card reader and a built-in cable that will let you charge and sync your phone to your computer like it's 2010 all over again. Currently on Indiegogo, Quib doesn't require any additional cables, which is nice, but it also won't fully recharge any phone on the market thanks to a tiny 1,500mAh battery (the company says it can bring an iPhone 6 from zero to 50 percent).While not having to ca

Qiub (pronounced like cube) is attempting to be the Swiss army knife of power banks, adding on a microSD card reader and a built-in cable that will let you charge and sync your phone to your computer like it's 2010 all over again. Currently on Indiegogo, Qiub doesn't require any additional cables, which is nice, but it also won't fully recharge any phone on the market thanks to a tiny 1,500mAh battery (the company says it can bring an iPhone 6 from zero to 50 percent).While not having to ca

Stranger Things has become Netflix’s latest cultural conversation starter due in no small part to its fierce loyalty to the works of Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and pretty much every other prominent genre filmmaker and novelist from the 1980s. But the show’s success isn’t just due to thescenes, shots, and scenarios it cribs — though there are certainly plenty. It also emulates the storytelling style of the era: a time when movies reigned supreme, stories had endings,

Seven members of an international tortoise smuggling ring are going to jail after Chinese police caught one member in an airport with two sacks holding 316 tortoises. Ring members had been taking radiated turtles from their native Madagascar, wrapping them in tin foil to avoid x-ray detection, stuffing them on a flight, and flying them to China. The plan was to breed each new batch, and then sell the offspring for profit. It worked for a while, but apparently it’s not that easy hiding 316

 Silicon Valley’s gig economy isn’t known for being very supportive of its core workers — the ones working on the ground, making deliveries and picking up and dropping off passengers. The “best” cases in point are Uber and Lyft, two on-demand ride companies that have been resistant to allow drivers to access their fair share of wealth. Josephine, the startup… Read More

A heartwarming crime story out of Canada this weekend: someone stole 20,000 "litres" of real genuine maple syrup in Quebec, worth roughly $150,000. Even better, and by "better" I mean more criminal, someone stole $18 million of maple syrup back in 2012.
How? Why? I don't know. I don't write these headlines. I just read them and repeat them as if they're real facts instead of Canadian fan fiction.
These heists got me thinking: I bet it would be pretty great to steal a bunch of maple syrup, becaus

Intel today introduced a new chip module it calls Joule, a tiny board for developers designed to bring powerful computer vision technology to cheap and easy-to-make prototypes. Joule is essentially a tiny and powerful computer with all its standard up-to-date parts. But it also has enhanced sensors powered by Intel's RealSense tech that make it suitable for powering software for drones, robots, and other gadgets to help those devices see, analyze, and collect data about the real world. Inte

Lana Del Rey's peppiest tracks are always about classic American brands: Pepsi cola, Mountain Dew, James Dean, Lolita shades, Bruce Springsteen, et cetera. A recently unearthed 2011 demo about BlackBerry Messenger is no exception, but it is the most exuberant, dance pop-inspired of them all.
If your issue with Lana Del Rey stems from her proclivity for doom and gloom, "BBM Baby" just might change your mind. Turns out all it took to cheer up Lana was a really hot text from a pretty good keyb

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update is on its way to Windows 10 Mobile devices, Microsoft confirmed today. It's not quite as feature packed as the desktop update released for PCs earlier this month, but does add some niceties like a camera shortcut and media controls on the lock screen, plus a new, vastly improved universal Skype app. The settings menu has seen some changes, and the Anniversary Update also adds support for fingerprint readers to Windows 10 Mobile. Oh, and you get a lot o

Ford plans to build a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals by 2021, the company announced today. The vehicle will be aimed at ride-hailing and ride-sharing fleets.
To get there, Ford is working with a number of startups, including a new investment in Velodyne, a firm that makes LIDAR sensors; the acquisition of SAIPS, an Israeli company that makes computer vision and machine learning software; an exclusive licensing agreement with “virtual retina” technology co

Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is responsible for one of TV's most eccentric and brilliant shows. Gifted with the ability to make us empathize with an alcoholic, self-centered, depressive talking horse, he has extended his talents to musing on another character from an alternate animated universe: Marge Simpson.
A 15-tweet poem he wrote in July (and thankfully exhumed by The A.V. Club) begins with an examination of Marge's social life. Here's the tweetstorm as it appeared

Among other announcements today, including a new VR reference design and a partnership with Microsoft to bring mixed reality to the mainstream, Intel said it has created a module aimed at robotics makers and developers.
Called Project Euclid, the module is based on Intel's RealSense "perceptual computing" technology. It's a small, candybar-sized kit that "brings sensors to any robot," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich during the company's keynote.
All the stuff you need to build robots, in

The Vaultek is a connected safe that’s being crowdfunded on Indiegogo. It can be unlocked through either a Bluetooth-reliant phone app, a fingerprint scanner, a keyboard with a numeric passcode, or a regular manual key. Users have options. None of these methods are new ideas, so it’s easy to imagine that Vaultek’s creators can create a tangible product if they reach their funding goal. Here’s the thing, though, I don’t know who Vaultek’s creators are and

Virtual reality and augmented reality are being touted as the next big thing in truly innovative computing, but they're still not exactly mainstream due to the computing power required and the need to be tethered to a phone or a PC. Intel and Microsoft think they can change that.
Today at Intel's annual developers conference, Microsoft's Windows chief, Terry Myerson, announced a partnership with the chip maker that will make all future Windows 10 PCs able to support mixed reality applications. C

Airbnb is testing a new app called Airbnb Trips, which offers city guides and local event suggestions. The app was first spotted by Bloomberg, which suggests that the app could be part of Airbnb's plan to begin offering travel services beyond merely booking a home. Those don't appear to be built into the app just yet, but it's easy to imagine Trips turning into a way to make restaurant reservations or book a tour. Continue reading…

What will be the next great song meme? Is it any fun to guess? I suppose you could say that by trying to predict a meme, I'm making sure that it will never become a meme at all. To that I say: Leo still won his Oscar, and you're speaking in logical fallacies.
The perfect memeable song has a few qualities, which we can glean from putting Smash Mouth's "All Star," Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," Carly Rae Jepsen's "Run Away With Me" and Santana ft. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty'

Today, Intel announced a new virtual reality reference design it's calling Project Alloy, a cordless system the company says contains everything you need to have a VR experience without extraneous components. That means the headset contains the computational and graphics power neccesary to create the virtual images and an internal battery for power, as well as 3D cameras and sensors powered by Intel's RealSense motion tracking tech. CEO Brian Krzanich says the device is capable of "mixed re

The Obit Worldphone MV1, the latest smartphone to come out of ex-Apple CEO John Sculley's new company, has made its way to the UK six months after being announced at Mobile World Congress. The affordable 5-inch Android device isn't designed to compete against Sculley's old company — the MV1's competition is low-cost devices like the Moto E and every phone released by Blu, thanks to a £99 price tag and specs to match:
5-inch 720p display
1.3 GHz quad-core Snapdrago

Microsoft started including Bluetooth support on its latest Xbox One controllers, but for older models the company is unveiling a new way you can connect a controller to a PC without wires or USB dongles. It's called Xbox Wireless and it's designed to let any Xbox accessories work with PCs that integrate the Xbox Wireless platform. The first device to support Microsoft's Xbox Wireless is Lenovo's latest IdeaCentre Y710 Cube gaming PC.
Microsoft uses a proprietary wireless communication

You haven't seen the last of Rami Malek brooding underneath a hoodie in the glow of a computer screen. USA's Mr. Robot has just been renewed for a third season, Deadline reports. The series is currently in the middle of its second season, with fsociety still sabotaging Evil Corp and Elliott's own mind sabotaging him.
Mr. Robot has been praised as one of USA's smartest shows, but has seen its viewership decline this season. Last week, the series hit a new viewership low with just 572,00

In March, the college-centric social network Yik Yak took a step away from its origins in anonymity by asking users to create "handles" that they could optionally attach to their posts. Today the company is eliminating the last traces of anonymity from its app, requiring users to create handles that will be attached to their activity on Yik Yak. It’s also adding 18-character status messages that expire after 24 hours, as well as a feed of nearby users with whom you can exchange messages. "

Anki is gearing up for the launch of its toy robot Cozmo with a new series of videos it's calling "Cozmoments," little vignettes designed to humanize its artificial intelligence-powered character. The first of these videos, released today with the title "Best Friend," features Cozmo weaving his way around the house to sneak up on the family dog before devilishly tapping it on its tail to wake it from sleep.
It feels very Pixar-like — if the Disney-owned animation studio made live-acti

Sur La Table, a cooking-ware store that Wikipedia reliably tells me is French for "on the table," just announced its first foray into the connected space with the launch of their Perfect Kitchen Pro Smart Scale and App System. It's a smart kitchen scale that connects to the Perfect Kitchen apps for baking, cooking, and mixing drinks. The idea is kind of clever — you select your recipe, and simply add ingredients to the bowl / drink mixer / container until the scale pings your pho

If there's an Amazon original series you've been meaning to check out, but you don't have a Prime account, now's your chance. Amazon just made the pilot episodes of 10 of its original series available to watch for free on YouTube and Facebook, Deadline reports.
The pilot dump includes Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle, The Man in the High Castle, Bosch, and Red Oaks, along with episodes from a handful of Amazon's children's series. While this is the first time Amazon has made these pilots a

June 1999 changed the world. On the first day of the month, Napster launched and began to change the music industry; George W. Bush announced he was running for president of the United States; and June closed when a legendary Mexican guitarist teamed up with Matchbox Twenty’s frontman Rob Thomas to give the world a five-minute Latin rock song about being smooth.
Cut to June 2016. The Bush family worked to reassemble the rubble from Jeb Bush's doomed presidential campaign, and music streami