Technology news

Sleep gadgets are having a moment. So far this year we’ve talked about connected beds, connected pillows, sleep trackers, and alarm clocks to help us optimize sleep time. We’re all apparently really struggling with this natural instinct. The Kello is a new sleep-oriented connected alarm clock that just launched on Kickstarter, but unlike other gadgets, its goal is to help us regularize our sleeping patterns, as opposed to tracking our actual time asleep.
More than anything, Kello esp

Saturday Night Live has announced that Alec Baldwin will don the Trump makeup and wig left behind by former cast member and current SNL announcer Darrell Hammond. Before Hammond, the role was played by Taran Killam.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Baldwin will appear in several episodes in the role, similar to the arrangement that SNL made when it cast Larry David as Bernie Sanders last season.The night we’ve all been waiting for. #SNLPremiere pic.twitter.com/WiY1jLpop5
— S

The United Nations will launch its first-ever space mission aboard Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spaceplane in 2021. The news was announced yesterday at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
"The possibilities are endless."
The goal of the mission is to give developing nations that don’t have their own space programs the chance to fly payloads in microgravity. The United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is accepting proposals "on an

Spotify is reportedly in advanced talks to purchase SoundCloud, according to a report from the Financial Times. The move would give Spotify a larger library of content  — SoundCloud has over 125 million songs — and remove a competitor from the streaming music landscape after SoundCloud launched its own paid service earlier this year. But outside of that the benefits of the acquisition seem limited for Spotify.
For SoundCloud, the deal makes much more sense. The Be

Five of the world’s largest technology companies have come together to shed light on the ongoing development of artificial intelligence. The entities involved are Facebook, Google and its DeepMind subsidiary, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM, and the group's new nonprofit organization will grow to include a number of AI research groups and academics. Announced today, the coalition will be known as the Partnership on AI and it will be co-chaired by Microsoft Research chief Eric Horvitz and D

Slack, the workplace productivity chat tool that lets you quietly discuss the merits of strawberry / frosted vs. brown-sugar / unfrosted PopTarts with a colleague for up to six hours at a time without anyone else noticing that you're being totally useless, is an acronym. The letters S-L-A-C-K stand for things.
But what?
Here are some of our guesses:Sorry Losers, America Chose KaitlynSo Long and Cool KeysStart Looking at Clark KentwhydoeshelookjustlikeSupermanbutwithglassesStop Licking: All

As the battle for exclusive albums and access to artists heats up in the world of streaming music, YouTube has signed an industry legend to help cement relationships with the musicians who publish on its platform. Lyor Cohen, who as head of Warner Music Group in 2006 did the industry's first licensing with YouTube, has now come aboard as the video giant's "global head of music."
Cohen laid out his agenda in a letter to the YouTube Music team. "First, helping the music community embrace the techn

Like so many film industries in developing countries, Nigerian cinema started small and scrappy, with inexperienced filmmakers rushing out ultra-low-budget movies on tight turnarounds for quick profits. But the cinema scene The New York Times dubbed "Nollywood" has grown with incredible speed: Nigerian filmmakers are producing more than a thousand movies a year — more than twice Hollywood's annual output, and second only to India in terms of production. In 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers calc

Fantasy author Lev Grossman has announced his next book project: The Bright Sword, which will be a new take on Arthurian legend.
The Bright Sword will begin following the death of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Galahad, and will feature some of the "minor figures from the margins of Arthurian mythology" as they work to rebuild England, while coming to terms with the toll their adventures have had on them. "I'd been casting about for a new story to tell after the third Magicians book," Grossman told

 Skymind, a company developing an open-source deep-learning library for Java, along with tools for implementation, today closed $3 million in financing from Tencent, SV Angel, GreatPoint Ventures, Mandra Capital and Y Combinator. Skymind was previously part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch and has taken money from Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures and a number of other… Read More

The Land Rover Discovery is coming back to America and it looks fantastic. The Land Rover Discovery name was unceremoniously killed off in 2004 in favor of the uninspired names "LR3" and "LR4" (thanks to associations with the Discovery's famously terrible build quality), but the basic layout of the car continued on: seven seats, fantastic views, top-notch exploration and off-road capabilities.Now the new Land Rover Discovery is here, unveiled this week at the Paris Auto Show. It starts at $49,99

Star Wars’ big blue bad is back. Disney announced this summer that Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of the best-known villains from Star Wars’ past, would be reentering the official canon. This past weekend, he made his triumphant return with the premiere of the third season of Rebels.
Thrawn is notable because he's one of the only major characters from the Expanded Universe (EU) to make the leap between the previous Star Wars canon and Disney's new one. But why does that matter? Star Wars

14-year-old Meetup, a service that connects people around real-world events, is overhauling its image and apps today because, in the words of CEO Scott Heiferman, “everything has to be blown up once in a while.”
The social network hasn’t raised money for nearly a decade. It has 27.68 million users and hosts 257,075 groups. Each group pays about $12 a month, there are no ads, and the company is profitable, Heiferman says.
“When you&r

LG is a proponent of the neckbuds. It introduced a new pair this week, and I have no explanation as to why neckbuds continue to be a thing.
The new LG Tone Active are retractable earbuds that you can wear around your neck. They have a microphone so you can talk on the phone or listen to music, and the battery will reportedly last for a little more than nine hours when playing music. This is essential for especially tough gym sessions. Apparently the enhanced curved design lets you work

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Register here for free.
In the lead gen arena, the argument is that spray and pray is out, and quality is the new black. Sam Yount, CMO of LendingTree, says that’s not n

Following partnerships with Cisco, IBM, and SAP, today Apple announced that it has struck a deal with major consulting firm Deloitte.
As a result Deloitte is forming an “Apple practice” that includes more than 5,000 advisors, but it also will collaborate with Apple on a new program, EnterpriseNext, to bolster adoption of iOS-compliant hardware, software, and services. The EnterpriseNext program could lead to many new iOS apps being developed, partly because Deloitte will provide comp

McLaren Applied Technologies — the technology wing of McLaren’s Formula One team — has won the contract to provide Formula E with an all-new battery starting in 2018, the sport’s governing body announced today. McLaren beat out the likes of Porsche, Red Bull Technology, Renault, and even Williams Advanced Engineering — the company that made the current battery.Formula E, an all-electric racing series that was started in 2014, begins its third season next month. All

Pokémon Go fever has slipped a bit since its peak. The mobile game from Niantic Labs has slipped to No. 3 in the U.S. top-grossing games on the iOS and Android app stores. Meanwhile, MZ’s Mobile Strike has reclaimed No. 1, and MZ’s Game of War: Fire Age has moved up to No. 2.
Supercell’s Clash Royale has fallen to No. 4 and Activision/King’s Candy Crush Saga is No. 5. MZ (formerly Machine Zone) has taken the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on both app stores, and that’

A new synthetic material called hyperelastic bone, or HB, could be "the next breakthrough" in reconstructive surgery, new research shows. The HB can be implanted under the skin as a scaffold for new bone to grow on, or used to replace lost bone matter altogether. Though it hasn’t been tested in humans yet, early experiments on animals appear to have been successful, with "quite astounding" results, according to the researchers. Continue reading…

Health insurance giant Aetna plans to make the Apple Watch cheaper to its customers. The company announced a partnership with the tech titan on Tuesday to create health initiatives exclusive to iOS devices. As part of the program, Aetna will make the Apple Watch available to "select large employers and individual customers during open enrollment season," and plans to reduce "a significant portion" of the Apple Watch cost through monthly payroll deductions. Get the Apple Watch, in other word

Yogg-Saron’s evil reign may finally be at an end.
Blizzard has announced changes to seven cards in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, its popular digital card game for PC and mobile that generates more than $20 million a month from in-game purchases. These nerfs (a term used to describe balance changes that make something less powerful) can make Hearthstone a more fair game, both for casual players and the competitive esports scene. The balances will come out with the 6.1.3 up

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs and phones. This build adds new Edge extensions, authentication changes for NAS devices and home file servers, and updates to the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Windows 10 is a service. As we wrote in our deep dive on how Microsoft is still building Windows 10, this means Windows Insiders are getting new builds even though the operating system launched in July 2015. The most recent significant update is the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, re

The world won’t stop ending.
Wasteland 3 is happening, and developer InXile is promising even more improvements and features for this trek into the post-apocalyptic desert. Like with Wasteland 2, InXile is aiming to crowdfund Wasteland 3. The company is asking for $2.75 million on micro-investment platform Fig, which InXile cofounded, that will give supporters a financial stake in the game’s success. That campaign will go live October 5, and that’s when InXile will reveal its p

Volkswagen announced today that it would be offering “preferential” vehicle loans to Russian drivers of the ride-hail service Gett. The news comes five months after Volkswagen said it was investing $300 million in the Tel Aviv-based black car-hailing app.
Drivers in Moscow will receive cheaper financing and insurance terms on a select number of vehicles: the Polo Sedan, Jetta, ŠKODA Rapid, and the ŠKODA Octavia. Gett said its drivers identified these four models as thei

HP Labs is housed in one of the original buildings of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, California. Not far from the original garage where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started HP in 1939, the labs are the home of many innovations over the years, from the inkjet printer to the light-emitting diode to the first programmable scientific desktop calculator.
The company celebrated that heritage yesterday as it invited the press for a day of briefings and a tour of the labs. We attended the event, which w

iMessage is supposed to be a private way of chatting with friends and colleagues, but a report from The Intercept this morning points out one glaring flaw: though Apple doesn’t know what your messages say, it does get to see who you might be talking to.
When you try to contact someone through Apple’s Messages app, the app automatically pings Apple’s servers to see if that person has an iMessage account. When that happens, Apple gets to see who you’re trying to contact, wh

I admit it: I'm an optimist. I wanted Elon Musk to show me a strong Mars plan with real finances and real life-support design. I was hoping he'd talked some of his billionaire friends into financing this Mars dream. I wanted the dream to be real.
Optimists, of course, are frequently disappointed, which is why we're often mistaken for cynics. And so, listening to Musk talk about a ticket to Mars that costs less than $200,000 — the median price of a house in America — I must say: I was

Hard to starboard! Chinese games developer Kingnet Technology announced that its mobile naval game Thunder Fleet will be its first title released for Western markets.
The ship combat-based app will be available for iOS and Android devices, although we do not know when. Expansion westward could bring Kignet a lot more revenue. While market intelligence group Niko Partners expects the Chinese mobile games market to be worth $8.3 billion in 2017, the worldwide mobile market is worth

Lenovo is apparently working on a Bluetooth blaster that it’ll likely use for VR / AR gaming. The device passed through the FCC this week, and its application gives us a lot of detail on what we can expect, including a full diagram and photos, but it also keeps us in the dark. We have questions, like why is Lenovo making a Bluetooth blaster, and what are we supposed to do with this thing?
But first, let's check out a very illuminating "function button" diagram.Lenovo (FCC)As you can see, t

Twitter Moments — those collections of tweets about certain subjects, often the ones that are in the news and are being discussed by lots of users — now make a lot more sense.
Today Twitter said that it’s starting to roll out the ability for any user to make their own Moments in the app’s web client. The feature is coming soon to Twitter’s mobile apps. A video — in a tweet, naturally — shows how the process works on desktop.
For everyone who wants to mak

XSplit is expanding its platform today by purchasing two tools for livestreamers.
SplitmediaLabs, which owns and operates the XSplit service that enables you to simply broadcast video to Twitch and YouTube, revealed today that it has acquired the custom-overlay and video-graphics company Strexm for an undisclosed sum. More than 150,000 people use Strexm to bring interactive animations and other onscreen popups to their Twitch and YouTube gaming livestreams. SplitmediaLabs also acquired

Hewlett-Packard, the original startup of Silicon Valley, is in its 76th year. Its HP Labs research division has just turned 50, and Dion Weisler, the CEO of the newly reinvented HP, honored the occasion with a speech that touted the company’s innovation heritage and its emphasis on diversity.
Joining in the sentiment of other Silicon Valley CEOs like Intel’s Brian Krzanich, Weisler said on Tuesday night at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, that diversity will be critical to the succe

Jagex, the developer behind the browser-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game RuneScape, announced today that it took a “pivotal role” in the creation of a new Chinese games company, Zhongji Holding.
And why not? China is one of the biggest and fastest-growing gaming markets in the world. Asian games market intelligence group Niko Partners expects digital games revenue to reach $20.4 billion by 2020, and it expects its mobile game market to reach $8

EXCLUSIVE: Bright Box is unveiling a self-driving car retrofit solution with a neural network that learns extreme driving through computer games.
Bright Box’s Remoto Pilot emphasizes safe, reliable road/lane following as well as real-time detection and avoidance of various obstacles such as cars and pedestrians. It may sound crazy, but it makes a lot of sense to use games like Grand Theft Auto V to train a computer for a driverless car. After all, you can practice

Microsoft today updated its Skype for iOS app with new features specific to iOS 10. You can download the new app now directly from Apple’s App Store (iPhone, iPad).
Skype now supports SiriKit, which means you can call someone on Skype just like you would place a normal call with voice commands. You can just say “Call [contact name]” and as long as the Skype contact information is saved in your iOS device, Siri and Skype will take care of the rest. Just like on a normal call, Si

Amazon is overhauling its Fire TV Stick with two noteworthy changes: It’s “up to 30 percent faster,” according to Amazon, and its now comes bundled with the Alexa voice remote. You can preorder it today for $40, but it won’t ship until October 20.
The Fire TV Stick — a name I only hear in Gary Busey’s voice after this commercial — was already a pretty capable streaming device before the update. With new internals, including&

Stephen Kaplan, co-owner and vice chairman of the Memphis Grizzlies NBA basketball team, has increased his stake in the esports gaming team The Immortals and is joining the company’s board.
Above: Steve Kaplan of Oak Tree Capital.Image Credit: Oak Tree Capital
The move is the third major move by NBA team owners this week to buy stakes in esports teams. Clearly, the NBA has gotten religion about the potential of video games to become spectator sports.
Kaplan is now a “major shareholde

Life On Air, the startup that previously launched the Meerkat video streaming app, is announcing today the launch of a new app called Houseparty, which lets many people hang out with each other on video. The app is available for Android and iOS, and the team is considering adding a desktop version.
In March, after Meerkat had lost popularity, the startup announced that it was changing direction and building something new. Leading up to that announcement, Life On Air had started testing Housepart

Battlefield 1's new trailer for its single-player mode promises a story of brotherhood, betrayal, and big explosions, set against the backdrop of World War I. But that's not the only story developer DICE wants to tell with its upcoming shooter, senior producer Aleks Grondal tells me. "A lot of the secret sauce in this franchise lies with stories that people create," Grondal says, referring to the Battlefield games' multiplayer modes.
Unlike the scripted story you'd expect to get from s

SPONSORED: This sponsored post is produced by Klipfolio.
Every startup needs capital — money it can use to either get off the ground or ramp up growth. Knowing when to seek outside investment from venture capitalists can be a big decision for startups.
Unfortunately, too many startups don’t know enough about how the VC investor system works. Here are six things I think every startup entrepreneur should know about venture capitalists.
1. Understand what a VC is, and how a VC

The company that turned live streaming into a sensation last year is ready to introduce its next act. Meerkat, which sparked new interest in mobile broadcasting before sputtering amid competition from Facebook and Twitter, has returned with Houseparty. It’s an app for video chatting with friends that the company is calling a "synchronous social network" — a place to be together even when you’re apart.
Built under a pseudonym for 10 months, the app for Androi