Technology news

Advanced Micro Devices said today it plans to raise $1.02 billion in common stock and debt as part of its plan to restructure its debt.
Sunnyvale, California-based AMD, which is the No. 2 maker of PC microprocessors, said it plans to raise $600 million in common stock from the public market, as well as $450 million in convertible senior notes due 2026 ($30 million goes to the costs of the transaction). AMD CEO Lisa Su recently announced AMD’s upcoming family of Zen-based processo

GUEST: People are more into texting than talking. About 65 percent of us would prefer to have a long and painful conversation via Whatsapp than to have one-minute phone call or face-to-face meeting. We text while driving, even though we know it’s extremely dangerous. Families may still sit together at the dinner table, but often, they’re texting other people.
There is simply too much going on — too many people to talk to, too many contacts to maintain — so it can feel eas

Oracle today said that it has acquired LogFire, which provides a cloud-based service companies can use to manage their product inventory. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The LogFire service will remain available for now. The team will join Oracle’s supply chain management cloud division.
“Supply chain organizations are under enormous pressure to capitalize on evolving business trends such as omni-channel fulfillment, integrated logistics and dynamic sourcing, while si

Xbox Live is going to make it easier to find new friends.
Microsoft announced today that new features will enter testing soon for Preview members on Xbox One and the Xbox app on Windows 10. Specifically, Clubs and Looking for Group will help Xbox fans find others to play with and create social circles. New features like these can help Microsoft differentiate itself from its main competitor, Sony and its PlayStation 4, and this could help it sell more systems — the PS4 has a huge sales lead

Microsoft is starting to preview its upcoming October Xbox One update today. While the summer update was primarily focused on bringing universal apps and Cortana to Xbox One, the October update includes some highly requested gaming features. Xbox Live Clubs and Looking for Group are both entering into testing today, allowing Xbox One preview members to create clubs and start finding Xbox Live members to play multiplayer games with.
Clubs are designed to be created by anyone on Xbox Live, and you

If you read enough tech news, you’re sure to see upcoming gadgets and features get leaked through regulatory filings, patent applications, and trademarks well ahead of their intended announcement. No company is immune to this, but Apple has largely avoided it — maybe until now.
Trademark attorney Brian Conroy claims to have dug up a litany of Apple trademark applications that include names no one else has seen. Among those: Iris Engine, Smart Button, Touch Bar, and Control Strip, all

Former One Direction member Zayn Malik is teaming up with Law & Order creator and executive producer Dick Wolf to make a TV show about a boy band.
The show, called Boys, will focus on the thrills and insane pressures of being young and getting "catapulted into fame at a dizzying speed," Variety reports. It will also feature original music, presumably so it can create another One Direction in the process of delivering a One Direction post-mortem.
it's called boys
Deta

Volkswagen announced a major partnership with an Illinois-based trucking company called Navistar, a sign that the automaker is eager to move passed its emissions scandal and focus on expanding its operations. Navistar also owns International Trucks, which encompasses a variety of medium-duty trucks.VW said it has forged a technology and purchasing deal with Navistar, which in addition to trucks also manufacturers school buses and large-scale engines. The deal, which was first reported by Reuters

Microsoft is taking Slack head on, and reportedly doing it under the Skype umbrella. According to MSPowerUser, the software giant is developing new messaging software that closely mirrors Slack functionality. The new effort is called Skype Teams, and it promises to cater to the the same large teams and newsrooms that already use Slack every day, while also leveraging Skype’s core feature set.
Skype Teams, per MSPowerUser, looks very much like Slack, in that it features both channels and pr

 With the sale of marijuana either for recreational or medicinal purposes becoming legal in more and more states, new and existing retailers are struggling to find ways to keep track of inventory while remaining compliant with various state and federal laws.
Former Outright co-founders, a cloud-based financial management application, are tackling this problem with their next venture, Green Bits. Read More

Amazon is expanding the universal search feature of its Fire TV and Fire Stick streaming devices with a software update that’s being released today. The update adds big names like Netflix and HBO Go, bringing the number of search compatible apps or channels to 75. Amazon says that more services like HBO Now are on the way. With the update, Amazon says it has the “broadest cross-provider search of any streaming media player.”On top of this, Amazon is borrowing a page from the li

Ridiculous gaming computers are nothing new. After all, half the fun of building a small supercomputer that can simulate entire universes is decking it out in glowing lights and swooping chrome accents. The R1 Razer Edition is a recently announced desktop team-up between Razer and Maingear — two of the most well-known gaming hardware companies — and it definitely fits the traditional "over-the-top" bill. Continue reading…

Google is launching a new advertising program called Shop the Look that will let you search for specific outfits and receive photos and purchase links right from the results page. The company is starting out by partnering with sites like Polyvore and LiketoKnow.it, which are Pinterest-like networks that help fashion bloggers make money off social media posts. That way, Google is able to pull in photos and affiliate links when people search for items like "summer dress." The program is part

Last January, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced it had filed permits with Kings County in California to build "the world's first passenger-ready Hyperloop system." But the company never completed its planning application, according to a recent feature story in Wired.
Turns out there’s a bit more to it than that. Back in January, HTT said it would build its Hyperloop as part of Quay Valley, a proposed development meant to house 75,000 people located halfway between San F

Xiaomi will make its Mi Box available to US consumers before the end of the year — and possibly as soon as October — according to a report from TechCrunch. Back in May at Google I/O, Xiaomi showed off the latest version of its Mi Box, a 4K set-top box that runs on Android TV. The Chinese company announced that it would make the Mi Box available in the US, but didn't give out an actual date.
The Mi Box comes with a quad-core ARM processor, 8GB of storage, built-in Google Cas

Instagram photo maps, which displayed the pictures you had taken according to where you had taken them, are going away. The company confirmed to Mashable today that it has begun removing the maps from the service. "Photo Map was not widely used, so we've decided to remove the feature and focus on other priorities," Instagram said in a statement. "You will still be able to see location tags on individual posts." You can still view your own map for now, but the ability to look at other p

Giant pandas are no longer an endangered species; they’re now considered "vulnerable" to extinction. The new designation was announced over the weekend by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an environmental organization that keeps track of the conservation status of plants and animals, according to The New York Times.
The status update is good news for the animals, but it doesn’t mean that pandas are safe. The IUCN says that in the next 80 years, climate chang

Lenovo officially announced its Yoga Book last week at IFA, and while yes, we’re all thirsting for a chance to play with it, we still have a big question: why doesn’t it run Chrome OS? The device, which is part tablet, part 2-in-1, will ship running either Android Marshmallow or Windows 10. No Chrome OS :(. But maybe all hope isn’t lost!
In an interview with TechRadar this week, Matt Lazare, Yoga Book campaign manager at Lenovo, said he and his team are "thinking very seriously

Eight-year-old Ruby Kavanagh is a world-class junior golfer, and according to her newly updated Instagram profile, a self-proclaimed drone-killer. The young golfer was practicing her drive swing when she hit the ball directly at a $1,299 Yuneec Typhoon H hexacopter drone.
At first watch, the video seems almost too well-executed to be real, raising some questions I want answered. How do we know this wasn't a staged moment caught on camera after 12 tries? Why did the drone hover abo

Last summer, researchers discovered a serious problem at the core of Android. There was a flaw in the way Android handled media, potentially allowing remote code execution before a malicious file had even been opened.
Android’s security team patched the initial bug within weeks, but it inspired a wave of new attacks on the way Android processes audio and video files. The first copycat bugs were reported just days after the first patch, with more serious exploits arriving months later. The

Another of the world’s grand tech exhibitions is now in the books, with Berlin hosting what might have been its most varied and intriguing IFA in years. Like other shows, this one had its oddities, such as LG’s fridge running Windows 10, but what stood out to me was the practicality and immediate emotional appeal of many of the new products on show. With modern technology now mainstream and reaching a plateau of good-enough hardware, companies are spending less time chasing and expla

The French woman who received the world’s first partial face transplant 11 years ago has died, according to the Associated Press. Isabelle Dinoire received a new nose, mouth, and chin during a 15-hour groundbreaking procedure in 2005, after her pet Labrador mauled her face while she was blacked out on sleeping pills.
Dinoire received a new nose, mouth, and chin
Her death was announced today by the Amiens University Hospital, the institution that performed the transplant. The procedure, whi

Volvo is forming a joint venture with Swedish automotive safety supplier Autoliv to develop autonomous driving software and sell it to other automakers. It’s the first time an automaker has partnered with a "tier-one" supplier to develop self-driving technology.
The deal will see Volvo and Autoliv move their autonomous vehicle software development and intellectual property to the joint venture, which will start with an initial headcount of 200 employees (split between the existing staffs o

There are a few groups of people who have extra time on their hands this morning: parents who are sending their kids off for the first day of a new school year, summer Olympians who are done with their press tours, and 9 to 5-ers who wisely took today off of work in advance, knowing their Labor Day hangovers would be intolerable.
Of these people, 2,000 are watching a live stream of an intersection in the Wyoming town of Jackson Hole. Additionally, so am I, because my job is to be a rapt observer

Newly published documents from Edward Snowden have shed more light on American surveillance operations in the UK. The Intercept details how the NSA and GCHQ used information gathered by Menwith Hill Station, a massive but tightly sealed facility that intercepts satellite data transmissions worldwide. Among other things, the files appear to include evidence that links UK-based surveillance to American anti-terrorism campaigns outside official combat zones.
While many surveillance efforts focus on

Fans are still yearning for a new Pokémon Snap, but this might be the next best thing: a new feature in Pokémon Sun and Moon will let you take pictures of pocket monsters out in the wild. It’s called a “poké finder,” and will only be available in select areas around the Alola region, Sun and Moon’s take on Hawaii. Once you snap a pic, you can then submit it to be evaluated, and as your skills improve you’ll get access to more photographic tools,

Netflix has renewed Narcos for two more seasons, Entertainment Weekly reports. The news is at least slightly surprising given that the show's main villain, Pablo Escobar (Wagner de Moura), was killed at the end of the second season. But according to EW, Narcos' showrunners have always planned to shift the focus of the drama in later seasons.
"This show has always been about cocaine," Eric Newman, an executive producer, told EW. The third season will reportedly follow the Cali Cart

Tonight, three astronauts will say farewell to the International Space Station as they head back to solid ground. Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, along with veteran NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, will make the three-hour return trip back to Earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule this evening. After getting in the spacecraft, the trio is scheduled to undock from the station at 5:51PM ET and then land in Kazakhstan at 9:14PM ET. Continue reading…

Amazon has today announced a new addition to its suite of "Prime exclusive" smartphones, unlocked phones that are discounted because they display ads for products and services from Amazon. The new model is the Moto G Play, which sells for $99.99 and will start shipping on September 15th. Preorders for the phone start today.
The Moto G Play is the least expensive model in Lenovo's Moto G family and has lower-end specs than the Moto G, which is also available as a Prime exclusive. The Play ha

The spread of ISIS propaganda online has put social media companies in a tough position. Governments are urging Facebook, Twitter, and Google to more aggressively remove extremist content, in the hopes of reducing the terrorist group’s influence. But the companies’ self-moderation systems have struggled to keep pace, and terrorist material continues to spread online.
Now, a nonprofit organization has developed an algorithm that it says can automate the removal of terrorist-related co

On Wednesday afternoon — just a few short hours after Apple will be making some big announcements of its own — Sony will be holding what it’s calling a “PlayStation meeting” in New York. The company says that it will provide “an update on the PlayStation business and PS4,” and it’s widely expected to announce two new versions of the PS4, much like Microsoft did with the Xbox One at E3 this year: a slimmed-down variant of the current console, follow

If you're not familiar with the antics of dancing pumpkin man, then just re-read the three words that come before the comma in this very sentence. In short: he is a man wearing a pumpkin mask that dances. Let me phrase that another way: he is a pumpkin-faced human male who cannot resist the rhythmic lure of music. He is, more prosaically, a 90-second goof created by TV anchor Matt Geiler that was uploaded to YouTube in '06 and that reels in new and delighted (and aroused?) viewers ever