Technology news

Sonic Mania looks like it could be a return to form for the beleaguered series, and much of that has to do with its retro style: it may be launching in 2017, but it looks like the classic Sonic many of us grew up with. Sega is hoping to capitalize on that with the game collector's edition, which, among other things, includes a Sonic statue sat atop a replica Genesis console, and a non-functioning cartridge with a golden ring inside. And what better way to sell a retro package like that than with

REVIEW: World of Warcraft: Legion just gave the world’s leading paid-subscription massively multiplayer online role-playing game a massive boost in the right direction.
The expansion pack’s enormous scope and nearly endless run of things to do, combined with an unbelievably smooth launch — oh, and a new mobile app — make it the best expansion ever written for World of Warcraft.
Blizzard Entertainment released World of Warcraft: Legion August 30 for PC and M

Nintendo has dabbled in mediums outside of games. Fans have seen television shows, books, and even a Hollywood Mario Brothers movies. But animator is working to help us all imagine what it would look like if the publisher partnered with the legendary animation company Studio Ghibli.
In 2015, artist Matt Vince released a series of posters that portrayed The Legend of Zelda as a film from Spirited Away director and Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki. Now, months later, Vince is ba

It’s important to preface this entire piece by saying that Apple CEO Tim Cook once said that these types of estimates are never ‘anywhere close to being accurate,’ and that they are typically ‘much different than the reality.’ That said, the iPhone 7 is more expensive to manufacture than last year’s 6s — headphone jack be damned. The total cost of the build, according to data from IHS Markit, adds up to $219.80. Once you factor in labor costs, esti

Instagram is now letting users save drafts of their photo edits so they can come back to them later. You know the situation: you just spent 15 minutes perfecting the shadows and highlights on your next Instagram post, only to realize you’re late for work and need to rush. Now the Instagram app will prompt you to either discard or save your photo draft if you leave the editing screen.
Up until today, you had to use some serious tricks to save your work. I used to put my phone on airplane mo

FX has renewed Atlanta for a 10-episode second season, Deadline reports. The show, created by and starring Donald Glover, is still just two episodes into its first season (the third premieres tonight). Although it's early, Atlanta has been received favorably by critics and viewers. Its debut episode was the most-watched premiere of any basic cable comedy show since 2013.
Glover plays Earnest Marks, a credit card salesman with a young daughter who sweet-talks his way into a less de

Porsche has submitted a proposal to be the new battery supplier for Formula E, the all-electric racing series, according to a new report from Motorsport.com. The automaker was also reportedly in talks with two teams about forming a technical partnership, though that endeavor has apparently fizzled out. The FIA, which oversees Formula E, began fielding proposals back in March with the goal of replacing the current battery from Williams Advanced Engineering in the series’ fifth season, which

Samsung has just announced that it has shipped 500,000 replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices to US retailers and carriers. They’ll be available beginning tomorrow to owners of the original, fire-hazard Note 7 for in-store exchanges. This first batch of replenishment stock is intended exclusively for exchanges; Samsung hasn’t yet said when Note 7 retail sales will officially resume — but VentureBeat claims the relaunch will come in late October.In another update, Samsung now says 25

Update: Battle.net is working again, according to Blizzard.
Warcraft has as much a problem with cyberattackers as it does with demons.
Blizzard’s games are currently experiences problems because of another distributed denial-of-service cyberattack (DDoS), which is impacting players’ ability to launch and have stable connections to games like Overwatch and World of Warcraft. This is the fourth DDoS to affect Battle.net, Blizzard’s game client, in the last couple of wee

Apple’s ‘Live Photos,’ short gif-like videos that capture the moments after a photo is taken, are coming to Tumblr. Announced today, Tumblr will begin supporting Live Photos on the web, in addition to providing tools that help other developers do the same. An early-adopter of the technology on mobile, Tumblr beat Google Photos and Facebook by months, and weeks, respectively. Its mobile suite, GIF Maker, already allowed you to turn Live Photos into GIFs you could share on&

Jared Leto will play Andy Warhol in an upcoming biopic titled Warhol, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Leto will also serve as a producer for the film alongside Michael De Luca (The Social Network). Terence Winter (Vinyl, Wolf of Wall Street) is set to write.
The movie will be based on Victor Bockris' Warhol: The Biography. Warhol is often described as having been a nervous, quiet sort of person, so mimicking his personality quirks should be an interesting departure from Leto's rec

Today, the federal government released major new guidelines for self-driving cars. But for anyone waiting for the reaction of big companies like Google and Uber, don’t hold your breath. The chief lobbyist for those companies just convened a press call with reporters in which he said... well, not that much.
Within the 114-page document released by the Department of Transportation was a requirement for auto makers and tech companies working on autonomous technology to share large amounts of

Adobe shared its third-quarter earnings report today, revealing (for the third quarter in a row) “record” $1.46 billion in revenue and $0.75 (non-GAAP) earnings per share. Analysts had expected slightly less: $1.45 billion in revenue and $0.72 earnings per share, on average.
Last year, Adobe reported $1.22 billion in revenue for the third quarter.
This release marks the second time Adobe has chosen to exclude Creative Cloud subscription numbers from its

As long as there have been marketplaces to sell goods, there have been scummy people looking to rip others off. Most, however, aren’t as creative as what happened to Mimi Jiang, a Chinese woman who tried to purchase a rose gold iPhone 7 online. What Jiang got, however, was something else entirely. Inside the package were two iPhones — an iPhone 3 and an iPhone 4 — both of which are all but worthless today. The surprise came with the inclusion of a Yu-Gi-Oh card called ‘P

While Google’s latest update to the Google Search app beta on Android seemed fairly innocuous, Android Police noticed a major change which we’ve since replicated: the company has removed all references to Google Now. The Google Now cards are now called “Feed,” while “Now on Tap”  is now simply called “Screen search.” Tapping the three dot menu still provides a ‘Customize Google Now’ option, but at this point my guess is that

ABC News and Facebook are teaming up to bring live streams of all the 2016 presidential debates online. The three debates will air live across eight TV networks as they typically do, but also on ABC News’ Facebook page. Viewers will be able to ask questions and make comments, which ABC says will be incorporated into the Facebook Live coverage. The debates will also be preceded by a new show called Strait Talk and then followed by another Facebook Live show hosted by Nightline co-ancho

Today, AT&T Labs announced a new wireless technology called Airgig, designed to transmit data at gigabit speeds over existing power infrastructure. The system would move the data between routers at the top of utility poles, transmitting data wirelessly over the millimeter waveband, also known as "gigabit wifi." AT&T expects the first field trials of the system to begin next year.
The announcement comes after a number of major investments in millimeter wave systems. Google is actively exp

Google seems to be stripping Google Now of its name and breaking it into more generic parts. According to 9to5Google, the latest beta for Google's Android search app refers to Google Now as "Feed" and refers Now on Tap as "Screen search." Their actual names are (almost) nowhere to be seen.
There are a few reasons why Google might want to do away with the Now branding. For one, it was pretty confusing in the case of Now on Tap. While the name was clever, it wasn't at all descriptive; "screen

GUEST: Many of the big players in IT are taking an interest in artificial intelligence nowadays. A.I. has already become a part of our daily lives and has the potential to penetrate further to fulfill our day-to-day needs. It is apparent from the existing tools that A.I. has a significant role to play in the areas of business and marketing.
Here are some of the best A.I.-based tools that can benefit small and medium business.
1. Gluru
Gluru acts like a personal assistant that will keep a wa

Nothing lasts forever — not even Pokémon fever.
Above: You mad?Image Credit: Clash Royale
Developer Niantic’s Google Maps-powered location game that places digital creatures into your real world using augmented reality has fallen from the No. 1 spot on the iOS App Store’s top-grossing charts, according to data-tracking firm Sensor Tower. Pokémon Go spent more than two months at the top following its release in early July. It ended yesterday, September 19, at

Allset, an app that promises to cut restaurant wait time in half by allowing customers to book tables and preorder meals, announced today that it raised a $2.35 million investment led by New York-based VC firm Metamorphic Ventures.
With operations in San Francisco, Palo Alto (California), and Manhattan, Allset plans to expand its service to Los Angeles and Chicago. The funding capital will also help AllSet to expand product research, development, and marketing.
While Allset is free for its

The latest Google Maps for Android update (9/16) contains a small but important change that isn’t mentioned on the change log: the direction arrow, which represents the user’s position on the map along with their bearing, has turned into a flashlight-like blue beam.
What’s more, the beam shines more narrowly depending on the accuracy of the compass at the moment. A wide beam means that the compass needs calibration; luckily, in reporting the change, the Google Lat Long blog sho

Gamblit Gaming has teamed up with Phosphor Games to take the virtual reality shooter game The Brookhaven Experiment into land-based casinos as part of an attempt to target younger gamblers.
Younger folks visit casinos often, but they don’t like older slot machines and table games as much as they enjoy video games. So Gamblit is trying to change that.
Gamblit Gaming specializes in real-money gambling and skill games in both mobile and land-based casinos. Gamblit is “gamblifying”

Tardigrades — also known as "water bears" — are microscopic animals that can live through almost anything: 30 years in a freezer, rapid dehydration, boiling and freezing temperatures, massive doses of radiation, baths in organic solvents, and a trip to open space. Today, scientists sequencing their genome have discovered clues to just how they do it — which may help us learn how to be just as tough ourselves.
Which may help us learn how to be just as tough ourselves
Over time,

After 11 years of grocery store check-out tabloids like US Weekly, In Touch, Star, and even the occasionally reputable People reporting that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were splitting up, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have split up.Neither one of these people have ever been very independently interesting as celebrities, both because they’re reliably good at their jobs and because they aren’t that chatty with the public. There aren’t a lot of plot points in the narrative about B

3D printing company MakerBot has announced two new printers and an official shift of focus, away from general DIY printing and toward the specialized worlds of professional design and education. The MakerBot Replicator Plus and Replicator Mini Plus are new generations of existing products, both promising a simpler process and better results. Launching today, they’re accompanied by a new software system and some supplementary services, as well as a new printing material.
The MakerBot Replic

Erin Brockovich may have made this cancer-causing chemical famous, but data from nationwide tests show it’s still in our water — and at potentially dangerous levels. The US Environmental Protection Agency should have enforced stricter standards on the chemical years ago, advocates say.
The chemical, called chromium-6 or hexavalent chromium, was featured in the movie Erin Brockovich, in which Julia Roberts plays an activist leading a lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric for cont

JK Imaging launched Kodak-branded SP360 action cams at CES this past year, and although it marketed them as the solution for creating great VR content, you needed two cameras to create a fully spherical image. That’s wasn’t practical. The company is now remedying that oversight with the introduction of a new Kodak 4K VR camera, the 4KVR360, that can capture everything by itself. It has a 20-megapixel sensor with lenses on the front and back to record everything happening around

For the last few years, nearly all of OS X's biggest updates have come in response to iOS. First, the Mac got iOS's apps. Then it got iOS's looks. And now it's even getting iOS's naming format. This year, OS X is gone and replacing it is macOS — a new iteration on the same operating system, with a changed but still comfortably familiar name.Perhaps the update is fitting for 2016. With today’s release of macOS Sierra, the latest version of Apple’s desktop OS, the Mac is at long

Apple's macOS Sierra is now available for general consumption, bringing with it a clutch of new features and the end of the OS X name. The biggest addition for the latest version of Apple's desktop OS is Siri, which is now available as a discrete app in both the dock and menu bar. Just like on the iPhone, you can use Siri to get answers to questions about things like the weather and sports results, or more functional tasks like setting reminders or replying to a text — all through the

Olympus is a company responsible for some of the prettiest and most striking designs in mobile photography today. Its new E-PL8 fits right into the heritage established by gorgeous recent models like the M5, M10, and especially the PEN-F, but it lets them down by failing to live up to anywhere close to their build quality and responsiveness. The E-PL8 feels almost like a knockoff Olympus made by Olympus.
At $650 with a kit lens, the E-PL8 is at the entry level of Olympus’ PEN line, aiming

This week, Panasonic announced a new camera in its enthusiast line of compacts: the LX10 (or LX15 for some markets). It’s a successor to the LX7 and the numerous other LX cameras that preceded that one, and pairs a fast zoom lens with a bevy of manual controls. This time, Panasonic stepped up the sensor to a larger 1-inch chip, putting the LX10 head to head with Sony’s popular RX100 line.
I’m sure the LX10 is a good camera and will give Sony a challenge in this enthusiast compa

If Apple can patent a paper bag, there's no reason a bun specially made to hold a hot dog wedged inside of a beef patty can't be patented, too. Mark Murray is the inventor of the Hamdog, and his "Combination hamburger and hot dog bread bun" was granted a US patent in 2009.
Here's the official patent image of the hamdog bun: Google Patents
He first pitched his idea on Shark Tank Australia to a panel of unimpressed judges in 2015. Watch as the judges laugh in his face as he earnestly pre

Samsung has officially recalled the Galaxy Note 7 worldwide, after more than 90 of the large smartphones in the US overheated due to defective batteries. Overheating is, in this case, an understatement, as some owners have claimed their smartphones outright exploded. Exploding lithium-ion batteries actually aren’t so uncommon. As my colleagues Angela Chen and Lauren Goode noted earlier this month, there are many ways for a lithium-ion battery to become dangerous, and they aren’t limi

The BallerYoga mat is $495 to $1,000 worth of the same leather they use to make NFL footballs, but it’s also a statement piece for your home.
What does it state? Either that you’re a committed "baller" who knows that "nothing beats the grip and control of leather," or that you’re Zachary Quinto’s character in American Horror Story: Asylum and everything in your house is made out of skin.BallerYoga promises that every element of its BallerYoga mats are made in the USA &mda

 Progressly, a new platform for supporting growth within large enterprises, just got a big boost in both money and staffing. Ruslan Belkin, a former top exec from Twitter and LinkedIn will be joining the roughly two year old company. With the spotlight drawn, Progressly is taking the opportunity to formally announce a $6 million Series A, led by 8VC, as part of its official coming out… Read More

Yesterday morning, millions of phones across New York City’s five boroughs blared with a siren-like alarm and an ominous message. "Wanted: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic," it said. "Call 9-1-1 if seen." Though the text didn’t mention it, Rahami was wanted for questioning over a Saturday bombing in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea — hours later, he would be arrested in Linden, New Jersey, where he was found sleeping in the doorway of a bar.
At a press