Technology news

Giant pandas, break out your best bamboo. You're no longer considered an endangered species.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Sunday moved the black-eared, white-faced bears from "endangered" to "vulnerable" on its Red List of Threatened Species.
But eastern gorillas, the world's largest living primate, have little reason to celebrate. 
The ape species is now listed as "critically endangered," the last step before an animal is considered extinct, the IUCN said du

EnvyUs is the best team in the world in Call of Duty: Black Ops III.
After four days of competition at The Forum arena in Inglewood, California, EnvyUs won the annual Call of Duty Championship at Activision’s fan event for the franchise. They defeated Splyce 3-1 in a best-of-five series, capping off their victory with a dominant performance in capture the flag. The victory nets EnvyUs a trophy and $800,000, the lion’s share of the total $2 million prize that was up for

Leslie Jones is back to communicating with her adoring public on Twitter after cowardly hacker-trolls drove her away, probably to compensate for their own failings.
SEE ALSO: An 8- to 9-year-old kid wrote Leslie Jones the greatest fan letter ever
The Saturday Night Live alum and Ghostbusters star returned on Saturday evening with a series of tweets ruminating about breakfast cereal, comic books and beloved TV icons of the '80s and '90s. 
It all started with a mic drop ...And then the floodg

FEATURE: The first project from the Holospark VR studio The Impossible Travel Agency, which both aptly describes the experience while encapsulating the promise of the medium. VR can take you to places you could never go, and when you’re standing on a mountaintop as a manta ray-like creature flies past and an otherworldly ritual unfolds all around, you realize just how powerful virtual reality can be.
The Impossible Travel Agency draws its inspiration from theBlu and Fantasia. Of

SpaceX may be on the hook to compensate Space Communication Ltd. for the satellite that was destroyed during the explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket — either with a free trip or $50 million, according to Reuters.
The construction, launch preparation and operation of the AMOS-6 satellite, which would have been used to "significantly expand the variety of communications services provided by Spacecom," reportedly cost the company more than $195 million.The officials from the company also noted tha

GUEST: It may be hard to believe all the hype out there about chatbots – if only because there’s just so darn much of it out there right now to believe. But I’m here to attest that bots are not just a fad. Based on the early returns we’ve witnessed since developing one to use with our community of sports fans, I think they truly represent a promising, transformative new interface method ready to enable users to get more out of their technology.
Of course, not all applicat

When I first reported on Slim Pack, I said it may be the perfect backpack. Slimfold, the company behind Slim Pack, asked me to test my theory — and I wasn’t disappointed. Construction Slim Pack is made up (almost entirely) of a lightweight, water resistant material. It’s exceedingly thin, but really durable. I happen to have an expensive Nike rain suit made of the same fabric, and have been outside during some torrential Oregon downpours; I’ve got no concern this one isn

GUEST: No matter where you stand politically, there is no doubt that the 2016 election is different from the rest. Never before have we seen two candidates this polarizing and levels of national frustration and discontent this high.
As the cofounder and CEO of a tech unicorn, Apttus, I can attest to the fact that the 2016 election has created a complex situation for any executive – one ripe for an enterprising team but certainly not without its risks. I’ve worked with investors close

Stop-motion animation has been a mainstay in cinematic special effects for almost as long as movies have been around. Filmmaker Vugar Efendi recently posted a video that charts the history of the technique, and shows just how far it has come since it was first introduced over a century ago.
Starting with 1900’s The Enchanted Drawing and running all the way up through 2016’s Kubo and the Two Strings,short video is a fascinating look at how the technique has evolved over the

Google is killing Project Ara, it’s modular smartphone concept that aimed to let you ‘upgrade’ your phone piece by piece. In theory, it sounds pretty amazing. In practice, it would have been terrible. Google was trying to gamify upgrades As-is, the smartphone upgrade process typically involves buying an entirely new phone every year or two, which has a slew of new components both inside and out. That means that every so often, we’re out $500-800. It’s a big spend,

And this is why it’s called a beta test. Electronic Arts said on its Battlefield Twitter account that the Battlefield 1 open beta is current experiencing server outages. No doubt it has something to do with Activision pulling the cables out of a server farm during the Call of Duty World Championships.
“We’re working to resolve as soon as possible,” EA said.@xmmx001 The Battlefield 1 Open Beta is currently experiencing server outages. We’re working to resolve as soon

IMAX VR experiences are coming, and it looks like they’re going to be here a lot sooner than you might think.
The company has announced that it is planning to open its first location-based VR centers in the fourth quarter of this year. That news comes from IMAX chief B.D. officer Rob Lister at Taiwanese tech company Acer’s IFA 2016 press conference in Berlin, Germany. Lister took the stage to confirm that these new centers will be found in multiplexes, shopping malls, and standalone

The former Young Astronaut in me jumped at General Motors’ offer to play with the RoboGlove. Who would pass up a chance to flex space-aged superhuman strength? I traveled to GM’s Warren, Michigan Technical Center, where its robotics program lives. I didn’t know that one of the famed Robonauts would be at GM to greet me along with the engineers who helped build it.
The RoboGlove is the offspring of Robonaut
The RoboGlove is the offspring ofRobonaut (known as R2, naturally)

Here’s something you might not know about me: I like to be tidy. That’s not to say my apartment is an ode to cleanliness, but I hate clutter. It’s probably why these pics delight me so much. As some may have guessed by my inclusion of velcro ties in our holiday gift guide (my colleagues laughed at me, then DM’d me in Slack to let me know how great the ties were), I dislike rogue cables. It’s even more bothersome to scale, but these images prove to me there are peop

Recently, rumors have popped up that Apple would be introducing new 5K monitors this Fall to replace the now-defunct Thunderbolt display. At IFA this week, LG announced new displays, one with USB-C functionality. First, here’s a snippet about the USB-C capable from LG’s press release announcing its new monitors: As the first UltraWide™ monitor to feature a USB Type-CTM port, the 38UC99 offers a peek at the future of connectivity. The advanced port allows users to transmit cont

Viktor Marchenko is a particularly nasty boss in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. He’s built like a tank, and he’s a bullet sponge. No matter how many times you shoot him with a sniper rifle in the head, he comes back. But you have to take him down if you want to get to the ending of the game.
Editor’s note: Lots of spoilers here. Check out our Reviews Vault for past game reviews.
Before you get to Marchenko, you have to make a choice. You either rescue some people, or stop Marchenko

Last year artist Truck Torrence, who also goes by the pen name 100% Soft, kicked off a new series of illustrations called "Mass Hysteria." The goal was to take some of the wildest, most crowded scenes in film history — from the news channel gang war of Anchorman to Beatrix Kiddo’s battle with the Crazy 88 — and turn them into adorable prints. Now he’s back with a second run: and this time he’s tackling more than just movies.
Torrence’s second stab at "Mass Hys

Activision has a lot riding on Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The big game publisher has bet the billion-dollar business on the new over the familiar, as it has taken the franchise from modern war into science fiction.
To ease that transition, Infinity Ward designed the game’s core multiplayer to be as familiar as possible to the series’ diehard fans. When you pull the trigger on one of the title’s sci-fi weapons, it will feel like you’re

I’m ready to crown this the best IFA of this decade. In a show already highlighted by Lenovo’s Yoga Book, Acer’s ultraslim notebook, and LG’s enchanting tunnel of OLED, there’s somehow still room to fit in an astounding pair of headphones as well.
Audeze, the boutique audiophile brand responsible for some of the best planar magnetic headphones in the world, has done what many might have thought impossible and shrunken its technology to fit into an in-ear design. The

The final season of Mythbusters had a conspicuous absence: the build team of Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci, and Kari Byron. While the Science Channel is rebooting Mythbusters as as a reality show, the secondary team will be returning to audiences with a new venture called The White Rabbit Project, which will begin airing on Netflix in December.
The trio announced the show during a panel at Dragon Con, which is currently taking place in Atlanta, Georgia.
The build team is coming back together! @Tor

After releasing what many pundits consider the best phone around, Samsung recalled the Note 7 after it started straight-up exploding. Consumer Reports says that’s not good enough. Though Samsung is voluntarily taking Note 7 handsets back, Consumer Reports notes it’s not an actual recall. From its report: Samsung said on Friday it had stopped selling the Note7, and would replace models that consumers had already purchased. But the company’s action was not an official recal

GUEST: The first thing to understand about the European tech scene is that there is no European tech scene. The “European” scene is a collection of startup hubs that have sprung up in the capitals of European countries and that are more or less isolated — most have very limited interaction with other startup hubs.
So while Europe might be a single market, it’s definitely not a single tech scene. That fact makes it difficult to feel the pulse of the European tech. But if y

One thing that virtually all successful businesses today have in common? They make important decisions based on insights derived from their data. And you can become your company’s (highly paid) Big Data pro via the Ultimate Data & Analytics Bundle. This collection features over 130 courses on the tools underlying data analysis, and it’s now over 90 percent off from TNW Deals. Learn to gather large amounts of information, discern patterns within them, and apply your findings to m

Last week, DJI upset its own Apple cart with Osmo+, an update to its already great Osmo gimbal. Now it’s going totally phone-based, and for prosumers who like taking excellent video, Osmo Mobile sounds like a winner. Osmo gimbals have typically worked by using your phone camera as a viewfinder for included cameras, which was just fine. Osmo Mobile removes the camera, and uses your phone for both shooting and viewing photos and video. It’s more than a simple (great) gimbal, too. DJI&

In a pun-rich turn of events, some Australian catfish have started eating mice.
A study published this month in the Journal of Arid Environments found that lesser salmon catfish in the Ashburton River had been eating Spinifex hopping mice in fairly large portions. Of the fish they sampled, 44 percent were found to have the mice in the stomachs, and of those, mice composed about 95 percent of their stomach content.
This is the first report of Spinifex hopping mice being eaten by any fish, as well

 It doesn’t take much. For all the bluster around the conversation about Skynet and robotic overlords, we still melt when a diminutive robot flashes the slightest hint of humanity through a small set of blinking eyes – and then does something nice for us. Sony’s Xperia Agent robotic assistant captured the tech world’s attention when it debuted at MWC in Barcelona, back… Read More

If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to travel back in time and walk the streets of San Francisco, this might be the closest you’ll get.
Two developers, Dan Vanderkam and Raven Keller, had the brilliant idea to take all the old photographs from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection and put them on an interactive map. This map functions similarly to Google Street View, except when you zoom in on a particular place, it gives you photos from as far back as 1850.

HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – The EU’s ruling that Apple Inc must pay a huge tax bill to Ireland was clearly based on facts and existing rules and was not a decision aimed against the United States, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Sunday.
Last week, European Union antitrust regulators ordered Apple to pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes to the Irish government after ruling that a special scheme to route profits through Ireland was illegal state

I know I’m not the only one who’s sensitive to bright light shining in my face in the nighttime, and heck, even in the daytime.
Unfortunately, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have been slow to update their operating systems with extensive dark modes –those that primarily use dark colors in the background instead of white, gray, or some other light color. In the case of Android, a developer preview of Android Nougat included one, but the feature ultimately didn’t make it into

GUEST: Over one billion people using Facebook Messenger, spending on average of 50 minutes of their day engaging with Facebook. It’s clear that Messenger is one of the main places where consumers want to communicate and this provides an incredible opportunity to deliver unique experiences to a captive audience and bots are a great way to accomplish this. While it’s easy to find great use cases in most verticals, this post will focus on healthcare, specifically medication adheren

GUEST: While chatbots have been around since the early 90’s, this year they became completely synonymous with Facebook Messenger. Facebook brought automated, chat-based customer service into the mainstream at a time when businesses and buyers are obsessed with improving the customer experience.
This technology will be transformative. It’s part of a wave of innovations that is going to help businesses meet the expectations of their consumers. Who wouldn’t want every interaction

Man, Azeroth is lucky I’m around.
I’ve become a pretty big deal in the latest expansion for World of Warcraft, Legion. I’m now the leader of the Death Knights, I’m assembling ancient artifacts known as the Pillars of Creation, and I even crafted myself some cool shoulder pauldrons! OK, that last part probably isn’t as impressive, but I’m definitely becoming a big hero.
And I haven’t even hit the level cap yet!
My World of Warcraft: Legion journal
Day 1
D

GUEST: The first quarter of Regulation Crowdfunding has come to an end, and it has yielded some valuable lessons for entrepreneurs looking to crowdfund. In order to understand the results, I played a little Monday Quarterbacking with Marc Snover, CEO and an analyst with Stratifund Inc. – a company that provides analysis of debt and equity crowdfunding campaigns. [Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Stratifund.]
Regulation Crowdfunding kicked off on May 16 and allows any American startup or

It’s Labor Day weekend, which for most of us means a nice, three days off from work. It’s the perfect opportunity to catch up on some of the shows that you’ve probably been hearing about from friends and co-workers.
Here’s ten shows to watch this long holiday weekend on before you have to go back to the office on Tuesday.
American Crime
One of the new anthology dramas just popped up on Netflix. The first season of this crime series stars Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffma