Technology news

A judge has thrown out Lindsay Lohan’s lawsuit claiming the makers of Grand Theft Auto V illegally used her likeness in marketing materials. The decision, made on the grounds that GTA V is satire, frees developer Rockstar Games and publisher Take-Two Interactive from a longstanding and somewhat absurd legal battle with the actress. Two years ago, Lohan claimed an illustration of a blonde female taking a selfie in a red bikini, which is featured on the game’s cover art and i

Following today's announcement of a worldwide recall of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, Samsung has issued an official statement on how it will exchange devices for customers in the US. The US carriers have already halted sales and offered ways for customers who have already purchased the device to get refunds. Now Samsung has announced its own exchange program, which will provide customers with a new device as soon as next week.
Note 7 customers taking advantage of Samsung's exchange pr

Chinese company Insta360 introduced four 360-degree cameras at IFA this week. There’s one for everyone.
The Insta360 Stereo takes "hemispherical 3D photos and videos" and supports live streaming. This is good for your friend who loves Facebook Live.
The Pro-Professional 360-degree camera is for pros. I have no other details, so this is for your truly professional friends.
The Insta360 Air is an Android HD camera that shoots and streams "HD VR and panoramic stills and videos." This sou

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system is taking aim at its number one problem — with a new strategy designed to contain the puddles of urine and eliminate lingering pee smells inside its elevators.
Elevator shafts are basically stink-generators
The overhaul will include testing a prototype odor-eating spray called the "Urine-B-Gone System" currently installed in the elevator at Civic Center Station. The lavender scented, enzyme-based spray is misted hourly into the shaft from a grid of

The sold-out Call of Duty XP fan event is well under way at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., in the heart of Los Angeles. The event features all sorts of crazy activities for the thousands of die-hard Call of Duty fans who are attending the event. I got a preview of them yesterday, and GamesBeat’s Giancarlo Valdes is also checking them out over the weekend.
The anchor of the event is the Call of Duty World League Championship, where 30 of the world’s best Call of Duty: Black Ops III t

Samsung has recalled 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones just a couple of weeks after they went on sale due to safety concerns with the battery. There have been 35 reported cases of phones either exploding or catching fire, and Samsung is recalling all of the units it has produced so far.
The company says it has identified a problem with the battery cell and will be rectifying it in the coming weeks. That means that if you've already bought a Note 7, you should probably return it or exchange i

Netflix has officially granted Stranger Things a second season. We really dug the show and enjoyed the supernatural mystery that played out over the short eight-episode run, even as it raised a number of questions that will certainly play to a second season.
While we wait for the second season to arrive on Netflix, let's go over what we'd like to see in the show's sophomore season.
More geeky book references and different influences
Stranger Things contained a metric ton of references to a whole

Berlin-based Wooga, the maker of casual games such as Pearl’s Peril, has laid off 40 people out of its 300 employees.
Jens Begemann, CEO of Wooga, confirmed in an email that the company made the cutbacks. Going forward, he said that Wooga will streamline its operations into three studios focused on creating hit casual mobile games.
This is includes the puzzle studio, led by Matt Roberts, who joined Wooga from Microsoft in early 2015. The first release of the Wooga puzzle studio w

VB LIVE: Customers don’t care when they start browsing in one place and end up purchasing in another — but you need to. Join our free VB Live event to learn more about out how Staples keeps users connected and satisfied and spending across all their shopping channels.
Register here for free.
When Faisal Masud joined office supply chain store giant Staples as chief digital officer three and a half years ago, the mandate was clear: follow shoppers moving online and meet the demands of

PREVIEW: The challenge with the billion-dollar-per-year Call of Duty franchise is to offer gamers something new without alienating those who want something familiar. It’s that contrast between the passion for something favorite with the quest for something new. The key to this balancing act is multiplayer combat, which Activision is revealing for the first time at its Call of Duty XP fan event in Los Angeles.
With Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Infinity Ward and Activision are taking some

Google has confirmed reports saying its modular Project Ara smartphone project has been suspended. When asked about the status of Ara, a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat the phone would not be coming to market, despite the company saying as recently as May that an Ara phone would ship to developers this fall. The decision was reportedly made by Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh, who's been trying to streamline the company's seemingly disorganized product lineup. News of

Google’s ambitious plan to bring modular smartphones to market, Project Ara, has been suspended.
While there’s still a chance that Google will breathe new life into Ara by licensing it to third-parties, the company — plagued by delays and talent drain — long abandoned its original vision: to dramatically reduce e-waste and bring an “open hardware ecosystem” to billions of people.
In light of Google’s shrinking ambitions for

Now, thanks to a spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, you can "hear" what the planet's extreme auroras sound like.
NASA's Juno probe, which went into orbit around Jupiter in July, collected data about the radio emissions coming from Jupiter's auroras and beamed it back to Earth. Scientists then took the data and turned it into sound, allowing you to hear the eerie tone of Jupiter's powerful cosmic light show. (Skip to about the 20 second mark to get to actual sound of the auroras.)
SEE ALSO: NASA's Jun

Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrez wanted Americans to be afraid, very afraid, of the "dominant" and "imposing" culture threatening the United States from its southern border, so on MSNBC Thursday night, he offered a vision of a dystopian future. 
Imagine, he said, an America beset by "taco trucks on every corner."
SEE ALSO: Ivanka Trump's unpaid interns share cringeworthy financial advice
Steak. Chicken. Tortillas. All steaming and sizzling in front of your eyes. Everywhere you look

New photos beamed back to Earth from NASA's Juno spacecraft show the beautiful, giant planet as never before.
Storms swirl in the new images, taken just before Juno's close pass by the planet on Aug. 27. The spacecraft's closest pass that day brought it about 2,500 miles above Jupiter's cloud tops, according to NASA.
The new photos reveal never-before-seen views of the planet's north polar region.
SEE ALSO: We're about to get our closest-ever look at Jupiter
“First glimpse of Jupiter&rsquo

GUEST: When it comes to enterprise customer care, machine learning enables virtual assistant solutions to automate tasks that used to require a live agent: password resets, address and complex information collection, even sales support.
Integrating machine learning into enterprise customer care opens doors to more flexible automated solutions. It also frees up live agents to focus on handling complex or revenue-generating tasks. With the growing challenges and volume of customer interactions tha

As Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble launched their respective eBook readers in 2007 and 2010, there were many who rushed to predict that the printed book would soon be meeting an untimely end. New data from the Pew Research Center now suggests that your standard paper, ink, and glue novel has considerable staying power with consumers.
Pew’s study surveyed readers, and found that while the total number of Americans who had read a book in the past year had dipped slightly (73 percent, down fr

When a hurricane hits, one if the last jobs you want is to be a reporter for the local news.
While it's always important for the media to get a first-person look at the weather outside, some would argue that sending a reporter out into hurricane is a bit unnecessary. 
While a bit ridiculous, throwing a hurricane into a live broadcast creates its fair share of hilarious moments, which YouTube channel News Be Funny rounded up into one clip. Winona Ryder talks 'Stranger Things' and her d

PREVIEW: When you get shot in the Frontier multiplayer map in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, your dead body starts floating in space. That’s because the gravity boots stop working when you give up the ghost.
I got to see this a lot in the first public hands-on session of Infinite Warfare multiplayer at Activision’s Call of Duty XP event in Los Angeles. That’s because everybody kept shooting me. I got a few kills myself, but there’s a pretty good learning curve on using a

The U.S. Postal service has just joined Star Trek's 50-year-and-counting mission.
The iconic space exploration TV series and multimedia franchise is celebrating 50 years since the airing of the second pilot , on Sept. 8. Now there's a collection of forever U.S. Postal Service Stamps to help you celebrate and mail some snail mail in Federation style.
SEE ALSO: Smithsonian sets 3 days of 'Star Trek' 50 year celebration awesomeness
The stamps feature four Star Trek-inspired graphic designs includin

Project Ara, Google’s lofty vision of a modular smartphone with a vibrant third-party hardware ecosystem, is no more.
A Google spokesperson confirmed today that the company has suspended its plan to bring the modular smartphone to market after nearly three years of development, following a revealing report from Reuters.
The spokesperson declined to comment any further on the report.
Reuters says the project was shelved in order to “streamline the company&rsqu

Last June Apple said it would be changing up its rules around subscription services for App Store developers, giving more of a revenue cut to app makers who maintain long-term subscribers. Now, those changes have gone into effect.
Apple has put up a web page detailing the new guidelines for developers and offering some "best practices" for app makes who opt into the new services. The new rules allow for auto-renewable subscriptions, free trials of apps, territory-specific pricing (i.e. offe

 It’s pretty odd that even while people are chatting about producing the VR video’s crazy theoretical future with 8K resolution per eye, stereoscopic rendering and light field-ready footage, I’m still here struggling to keep Louis C.K. clips from buffering on my mobile phone. For VR to be successful, companies are going to need to start correcting some of the growing pains… Read More

Intel is making some weird naming changes to its processors this year that are certain to confuse people about what they’re buying. As spotted by Laptop Mag, the Core m name is largely going away in favor of Core i, which means it’s going to be much harder to tell exactly how powerful the processor is inside of a new laptop.
At least in the short term, that’s a problem because there’s a real difference between the two lines. Core i processors are what you find in most lap

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has completed its first flyby around Jupiter with its instruments switched on — and it sent us back the very first up close images of the gas giant’s north pole. The high-resolution photos are stunning, and are already revealing storms and weather activity that scientists had never seen before.
During the flyby, which was completed on August 27th, the probe came about 2,500 miles above the planet, with its eight science instruments switched on. It took on

Until I played the open beta for Battlefield 1 this week, I thought I was done with the series. And that was a pretty disappointing feeling, since I've played every game in it from 1942 all the way to Battlefield 4 — all in, I'm talking about thousands of hours spent capturing Wake Island, doing flips in helicopters, trolling teammates with vehicle stunts, and all kinds of other things you can only do and see in Battlefield games. But somewhere along the line, I got tired of

Some Call of Duty fans have their doubts about Infinite Warfare and the game’s hard sci-fi setting, but developer Infinity Ward knows how to win you over.
The next Call of Duty game will give anyone who preorders a chance to join a beta test that begins October 14 on PlayStation 4. An Xbox One version of the trial will come soon after — although publisher Activision has not provided an exact date. The demo for the space shooter is completely skipping PC.
It’s fitting that Call

The UK government has agreed to ban the sale of microbeads in beauty products, The Guardian reports. The tiny plastic beads, usually found in soaps and lotions, pose a threat to marine life once they end up in the water supply. Although some companies have already removed microbeads from their products in the UK, the government will now mandate the beads be phased out entirely by the end of 2017.
Tiny plastic, no-good beads
Scientists have noted that the beads are about the size of fis

Want to fill your home with dozens of rabbits? No, no, hear us out — what if they were cute little bunny bags?
Japanese brand Felissimo, already notable for its mopdog-shaped mops, has blessed the world with these rabbit-shaped storage units, which are both highly functional and very cute.
SEE ALSO: Give your kitchen sponge a rest on this adorable bedImage:felissimoAccording to RocketNews24, the bags' design borrows from a traditional Japanese "wrapping cloth" called furoshiki. In this cas

For its next big feature update, Pokémon Go will let you become best buds with your favorite pocket monster. Called simply “Buddy Pokémon,” the features lets you choose which pokémon from your collection you like best, and you’ll then reap a variety of benefits from your virtual friendship, including “unique” rewards and experiences.
“Buddy pokémon will appear alongside your trainer avatar on your profile screen,” explains dev

Between one Trump tweet after another and inquests into Hillary Clinton’s emails, there’s been little attention paid to either party’s environmental policies. Yet, with devastating flooding in Louisiana and wildfires tearing apart the West, both parties’ environmental platforms deserve more attention.
It’s no surprise that the Republican and Democratic party platforms depict starkly different visions for America’s open spaces. But specifically, we found the pl

Let’s splat some Call of Duty bros with paint.
Activision is giving you control of a paintball gun at its Call of Duty XP 2016 fan event. If you go to the Twitch Plays Nuketown livestreaming video channel today, you can input commands for a chaingun filled with paintballs. You can use this to fire at people who are playing the map in real life as part of the XP event in Los Angeles today.
Everyone can participate in #CODXP2016's Nuketown Paintball on @Twitch, 9/3 at 11AM-8PM PT: https://t.

Early Friday morning, former Stanford University student Brock Turner left a Santa Clara County jail after serving half of a six-month sentence for sexual assault. 
His release marked the latest chapter in a case that garnered national attention and went viral when Turner's victim, who remains anonymous, made public a searing account of her assault, its aftermath and her disappointment in a legal system that she felt failed to recognize the gravity of Turner's crime. 
SEE ALSO: People

With at least 35 cases of Samsung's new Galaxy Note7 catching fire while charging, Samsung has halted further shipments of its devices. 
The South Korean company will replace the phones that have already been sold, were at retailers and were in transit, Samsung said Friday. Future shipments are delayed.  
SEE ALSO: Samsung makes critical decision on Galaxy Note 7 due to reports of explosions
How much will the ordeal cost the conglomerate? 
It's difficult to peg given the global sc

The US Food and Drug Administration has banned 19 active ingredients in antibacterial soaps — including the hotly debated chemicals triclosan and triclocarban. The rule is meant to help curb antibiotic-resistance and some other effects of the chemicals, including hormonal interference.
"In fact, some data suggests that antibacterial ingredients may do more harm than good over the long-term."
Manufacturers who make soaps and hand cleansers with these ingredients will need to either remove t

The Call of Duty: Jackal Assault virtual reality experience is on display at the Call of Duty XP event in Los Angeles. And Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, just announced that Jackal Assault will run on the Sony PlayStation VR headset that debuts in October.
The Jackal Assault will be available for free to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare players on the PS4.Announcing the Jackal Assault, a Call of Duty @PlayStation VR experience, coming free for all PS4 Infinite Warfare play

Alcatel announced at IFA this week that it’s going to be releasing a VR headset called Vision that won’t require a phone. Engadget reports that everything, including an eight-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and sensors, like an accelerometer, gyroscope, and proximity sensor, will be stuffed inside. The display will consists of two 3.8-inch AMOLEDs with 1080 x 1020 resolution for each eye, and the battery can reportedly last between three and four hours. For compariso

Yesterday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, destroying its entire payload. Part of that payload was a satellite that would have provided a crucial data link for Facebooks’ Internet.org project. Experts are still sorting through what caused the explosion and what it means for SpaceX, but it’s already clear the explosion will be a major setback for Internet.org’s ambitions in sub-saharan Africa.
In the broad view, Internet.org aims to co