Technology news

Someone has perfected a playbook for pulling webpages off Google, according to a new post by UCLA lawyer Eugene Volokh. Volokh finds a series of unusual court cases that resulted in web pages being de-indexed by Google, making them unavailable to Search or other services. In some cases, reputation management firms were apparently charging as much as $6,000 a month for the service.
Google will generally de-index pages if it receives a credible report that the page contains pirated content or defa

Research firms have been tracking iOS 10 adoption since the early minutes of its release, but Apple today finally released the first official numbers. iOS adoption numbers show that iOS 10 has passed the 50 percent mark in less than a month. In other words, the latest version of the company’s mobile operating system is now on one in every two of its devices.
iOS 10 was released on September 13, meaning it took less than four weeks to reach the majority of users that Apple tracks. While thi

Apparently desktops with simple modular components are going to be the Next Big Thing. Following up on rumors of a modular Surface all-in-one, Samsung has a modular desktop PC on the way – it’s first desktop PC in quite some time (in the US, at least). Amazon is showing two listings for a Samsung ‘ArtPC Pulse.’ The PC – which was originally reported to be revealed on today’s date  – looks a bit like a glowing version of Apple’s tras

As recently as last year, you could position virtual reality headsets sort of like runway fashion designs: as abstractly stylish and futuristic things that the vast majority of people will never have to even consider purchasing, and could therefore admire from afar.
In 2016, that’s changed. VR might not be mainstream, but companies are starting to pitch it that way. Take, for example, Sony’s PlayStation VR, coming out on Thursday. In honor of the release, Sony has published a three-p

A new game company is hoping to get exposure on the largest PC gaming digital store.
Greyborn Studios is a recently created independent studio of veterans that have worked on PC classics System Shock 2 and Thief, the toys-to-life hit Skylanders, and the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. Its first game, Luna and the Moonling, is on Steam Greenlight, where users of the platform can vote on projects to be included in Valve’s digital store.
“While we’re a new indepen

A company called SweetVinyl just introduced a device that takes pops and clicks out of records without damaging them. Called the SugarCube SC-1, SweetVinyl says it designed an algorithm to detect unwanted noises, isolates them, and removes them in real time. The SC-1 is a standalone device that can be hooked up to a turntable through a RCA connector, although SweetVinyl is also incorporating the technology into its new SC-2 vinyl recorder.
Pops and clicks are a natural part of vinyl, especi

I've about had it with Samsung. The company is taking its sweet diddly time communicating whether or not replacement Galaxy Note7 phones are safe or unsafe.
As always is the case with Samsung, the answer depends on whom you ask. More specifically, which Samsung branch you ask.
SEE ALSO: Man claims Samsung Galaxy Note7 replacement sent him to the hospital
Ask Samsung Electronics America and the answer is:Ask Samsung UK, as Business Insider did and the answer is:Who the heck are consumers supposed

Hip-hop had its anti-Donald Trump moment earlier this year with California rapper YG's "Fuck Donald Trump," which later received a remix from G-Eazy and Macklemore. 
Now, as election season heats up, the political jams are slowing down a bit. Some gentle guitars and harmonies have been added, but the sentiment remains somewhat the same with Death Cab for Cutie's surprise new track, "Million Dollar Loan." 
"He's proud to say he built his fortune the old-fashioned way," lead singer Ben

Actor, performance artist and paper bag enthusiast Shia LaBeouf married actress Mia Goth in Las Vegas earlier today. An Elvis impersonator performed the ceremony, naturally. 
You can watch it now via TMZ. If you invested any amount of time in watching him watch all of his movies, it's probably worth celebrating this momentous life occasion with him. 
SEE ALSO: After watching all the Shia LaBeouf movies, Shia LaBeouf is cool with being Shia LaBeouf againThe happy couple met and began da

Twitter launched a new ad campaign today around New York City, placing colorful Twitter-themed signage in some of the city’s numerous subway stations.The ads are pretty cryptic in that they don’t do much of anything to actually explain what Twitter is or why you might use it — they’re just big exclamation marks and question marks with small Twitter birds replacing the periods. But in a short blog post outlining the new campaign, Twitter says it’s an extension of the

GUEST: Recently, there has been a lot of interest in using chatbots as an additional channel to reach consumers where they hang out: in messaging apps. Facebook Messenger, for instance, boasts over 900 million users a month.
Other popular messaging platforms that integrate chatbot technology include Skype, Kik, Slack, and Telegram, just to name a few. Even Google has recently launched Allo, an A.I.-driven smart messaging app.
Chatbots are well suited to provide a wide array of services, ranging

What is the best smartphone? Does it even matter?
These are the questions I wanted to answer as I peeled back the plastic film on my new iPhone 7 — a device meant to replace my potentially explosive Galaxy Note7 after I'd spent years as a devoted Android user. I thought this would be straightforward, but Apple's world is odder than I expected. This review is a journey of betrayal, laser-enriched cat poop and smartphone butts. 
SEE ALSO: iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus: the review
So, yeah:

Twitter launched an outdoor campaign in New York City Monday. 
The creative — question marks and exclamation points — is apparently a nod to Twitter's focus on "now," "live," and "what's happening."
SEE ALSO: The saga of Twitter's potential acquisition, explained via its year-old Moments feature
"Questions and answers, statements and trends - it’s happening right now on Twitter all around the world," Twitter Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland wrote in a blog post about

Can the world's most invincible superhero have a bad day? If he's appearing in our CineFix series, Bad Days, then absolutely.
Exploiting Superman's susceptibility to kryptonite (a go-to for comic writers), villain extraordinaire Lex Luthor mind-controls the Man of Steel and rides a crime wave faster than a speeding bullet. But will it last?
Subscribe to CineFix for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/cinefix Read more...More about Mashable Video, Animation, Superheroes, Superman, and Bad Days

Obviously the perfect Halloween costume for the year of 2016 is a White Walker from HBO’s Game of Thrones. There are a lot of reasons that this choice makes perfect sense to me:
White Walkers had a big year on Game of Thrones this season, in that they killed one of your favorite characters and the audience learned a little bit about their mythology via flashback. Additionally, they finally made it be winter after six years of just talking about it.White Walkers are scary.Unfortunately, the

If you enjoyed the savagery of last night’s U.S. presidential debate, then you may delight in an encounter with Donald Trump via the BFF Trump bot. Or if verbal brawls are not your thing, then there are also bots for HR tasks, for chatting with strangers (remember Chatroulette?), CRM, and polling on this week’s top bot list.
Here are the five most popular bots this past week, as they appear on Botlist. Give them a try and let us know what you think.
Above: RAI bot

Last week's news that 4chan is facing financial ruin has drawn buyout interest from a couple of the internet's most notorious self-styled villains.
The latest suitor is conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who's looking to make a bid for the forum site with the help of an anonymous wealthy backer, the Hollywood Reporter first reported on Saturday.
SEE ALSO: Lawless forum site 4chan is going broke as ad sales dry up
"As a free-speech fundamentalist and a student of Internet culture, I appr

Charlie Rose has had a storied career in journalism. After interviewing the who’s-who of international celebrities, Rose pivoted last night from world leaders and entertainment stars to ‘Sophia’ a smart AI in a humanoid robot shell. The interview detailed just how far we’ve come, and how far we’ve yet to come in the field of robotics. Created by David Hansen, of Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong, Sophia is a robot modeled after its creator’s wife, with a few

InXile Entertainment hit its $2.75 million goal for the campaign for the development of Wasteland 3 on Fig. The campaign reached its month goal in just three days, showing both the demand for the Wasteland franchise and the maturing of this new crowdfunding platform. So far, the studio has raised $2.85 million.
InXile CEO Brian Fargo said in a brief conversation on Friday that Fig was a good place to raise the money because it allows contributors to own equity, or a piece of

With North Carolina reeling from more than 17 inches of rain from Hurricane Matthew, it's time to face the fact that the way we measure hurricanes and communicate their likely impacts is seriously flawed. 
We need a new hurricane intensity metric that more accurately reflects a storm's potential to cause death and destruction well inland, rather than the Saffir-Simpson Wind Intensity Scale, which focuses on the potential for coastal damage from high winds and storm surge flooding. 
SEE

Editor's note: This is the 35th entry in the writer's project to read one book about each of the U.S. Presidents in the year prior to Election Day 2016. Follow Marcus' progress at the @44in52 Twitter account and the 44 in 52 Spreadsheet.  
Just as I was wrapping up Robert Dallek's terrific JFK biography An Unfinished Life last month, news broke of Hillary Clinton nearly fainting on her way to her vehicle as she left a 9/11 memorial event.
The Clinton campaign quickly issued a statement that

A tiny kitten who survived the devastation of Hurricane Matthew was snuggled into a tube sock and cradled into the arms of a new family.
The kitten was rescued from the storm and brought into Petsmart's Banfield Pet Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, The Telegraph reported. Two holes ripped into the sock allowed its tiny furry legs to poke through. An adorable kitten wearing just a sock amid a deadly storm was enough to make some hearts melt.
SEE ALSO: Romeo the dog pulled alive from Italy ear

Users of the popular music-identification app Shazam can now look up songs within iMessage without leaving their conversation. Today, the London-based company announced the launch of Shazam for iMessage, where you can send song names and previews to those you're messaging.
This is one of several initiatives that Shazam has introduced this year to attract more users. Another notable launch was their integration with Google Play Music. This feature lets Google Play Music users liste

Over here in non-debate news, there's been a lot of chatter over the past few days about whether Taylor Swift will be dropping her sixth studio album in the next few weeks (most notably, the Washington Post lays out a few reaching reasons here).
As any good Swiftie is aware, Taylor is a highly regimented professional who has dropped an album right around the end of October every two years for the past decade — like clockwork. She first soared into our hearts with Taylor Swift on Oct. 24, 2

A 2,500-year-old stash of whole marijuana plants have been unearthed from an ancient tomb in northwest China. This discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that ancient people used marijuana for its psychoactive properties, and incorporated it into their rituals.The plants were found lying like a burial shroud
A team of archaeologists, led by Hongen Jiang with the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered 13 marijuana plants that were still largely intact, if yellowed and des

Now that you can get a VR-capable desktop PC for $499 you might find yourself wondering, "How can PC manufacturers possibly keep margins alive?" Samsung found a way. Its new ArtPC Pulse cylindrical PC / speaker is $1,199.99 to preorder on Amazon right now. I suppose a lower-end SKU could be forthcoming, but there's not a ton of fat to cut here: the 256GB SSD is nice, but 8GB of RAM is basically a minimum these days, and the AMD Radeon RX 460 graphics card falls below Oculus's new minimum VR spec

Actress and outspoken activist Shailene Woodley was arrested Monday afternoon in Sioux County, North Dakota, while protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, a controversial pipeline over 1,000 miles long that would transport crude oil through sacred lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
Woodley was one of many of activists and Indigenous peoples in the region protesting the construction of the pipeline, which was recently put on pause (though not halted completely) by the Obama administration. Th

On a Monday when the nation at large is suffering democracy hangover, a small fraction are also recovering from New York Comic Con. The four-day conference held in Manhattan over the weekend brought together science fiction and fantasy fans to celebrate the best of film, television and booksMashable was all over this smorgasbord of geekery, and we picked our favorite panel revelations from the weekend's offerings.
SEE ALSO: From page to screen and back: Fan culture's huge impact on New York Comi

The election is near, and for many of us it just can’t come soon enough. With nearly a third of voters casting a ballot for ‘the lesser of two evils,’ the 2016 election is certainly one to forget. Unfortunately, there’s really no hole deep enough to hide from election news, and until it’s over — we’re stuck living in a Mike Judge-esque dystopian future where Brawndo really is what plants crave. After Donald Trump’s comments on women, minoriti

Here, the mapping business, announced today that it was teaming up with Iowa’s Department of Transportation to transform a nearly 30-mile stretch of Interstate-380 into a special corridor for self-driving cars and trucks.Here says it will use its open location platform, which includes real-time and predictive traffic maps, to help Iowa transportation officials develop ways for self-driving vehicles to better communicate with the infrastructure and other vehicles. The firm did not disclose

I’ve encountered a number of frustrating situations in which the PlayStation VR loses its tracking. That either breaks the illusion of virtual reality or, at worst, it makes me feel nauseous. Now, Sony has come out to address growing consumer concerns about its headset technology.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has updated its PlayStation Blog post about PSVR’s most frequently asked questions with responses to inquiries about room lighting and reflective surfaces. Many

After the phrase "grab them by the pussy" went viral on Friday, most commentators immediately agreed that the phrase implied sexual assault.
But not all. On Monday, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top Trump surrogate, explained to The Weekly Standard that "grabbing" a woman's vagina was not in fact, sexual assault, and that any attempt to interpret it that way was "a stretch."
SEE ALSO: Muslims throw Trumps' answer back in his face in the most clever way
What exactly the act was, Sessions co

NEW YORK — What happens if Donald Trump becomes President of the United States? New web series Trumpocalypse probes the possibilities.
The 3D animated series, which launches Monday evening, takes an absurdist pop culture approach to what will happen under a Trump presidency post Election Day.
SEE ALSO: #GiveMoreThanTrump: Comedy writer calls out Trump for charity
The series is from Astronauts Wanted, a digital studio headed by Judy McGrath. The company is also behind Lilly Singh's document

Preorders are now open for Oculus Touch, ahead of the controller bundle's launch on December 6th. For $199, people who preorder the bundle will get two Touch controllers, as well as an additional tracking camera, a connector for Rock Band VR, and two games that use the new devices: party game VR Sports Challenge, and first-person magic battler The Unspoken.
Priority for preorders is given to people who already bought a Rift through Oculus' own store — if you preord