Technology news

Twitter today introduced QR codes into its apps for iOS and Android, because not having QR codes was Twitter’s biggest existential threat as a business and the main reason that no one ever followed anyone on the service.Before now, to follow someone on Twitter you had to click a giant button that said “Follow” at the top of their profile. Ugh, no thanks! Now, following someone is as easy as navigating to your profile, tapping the gear icon, tapping “QR code,” tappin

Following letters from Congress requesting the FCC refrain from any “controversial” moves before Trump takes office and a new Congress meets, the agency announced today that it has removed all of the major items from a meeting set for tomorrow.
All of the major agenda items scrapped
An FCC spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the agenda items — which included votes on business data service price caps, mobile broadband funding, and roaming standards — were halted in re

In the days leading up to and following this election, Facebook has been called lots of things — "a website," "an internet company," "a major player in the media universe," "a strange new class of media outlet," a "tech behemoth," a "cesspool of nonsense." Vox cut to the chase, calling on Facebook to "admit that it is, in fact, a media company" observing "that the design of its news feed inherently involves making editorial decisions, and that it has a responsibility to make those decision

A new stick-on wearable sensor uses the symphony of internal rumblings, whooshing, gurglings, and cracklings to help doctors diagnose different conditions. And this souped-up, miniaturized stethoscope could one day be a way for clinicians to continuously monitor patients outside of the clinic. So far it’s been tested on chicken breasts and a very small group of people.
It sticks to the skin like a temporary tattoo
This wearable, smaller than a penny, can hear the beat of your heart, the so

Highly anticipated Japanese RPG Persona 5 has been delayed by a few months. The English version was originally scheduled to launch on Valentine’s Day, but is now slated for an April 4th release. (It launched in Japan back in September.)
“We wanted to put the utmost care into ensuring it winds up the best when it launches in the West,” explains Atlus’ John Hardin. There’s some good news, though. When the game does finally launch, it will have dual audio support, mean

President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist seems to think there are too many immigrants leading Silicon Valley. Steve Bannon, who previously served as Breitbart News Network’s executive chairman, hinted at some of his views on foreign workers at technology companies in the past. In an interview between Trump and Bannon that took place last year, and that The Washington Post resurfaced yesterday, Bannon alluded to the idea that foreign students should return to their respective c

Prince’s estate is suing Roc Nation for copyright infringement, claiming that Tidal does not have permission to stream large portions of Prince’s catalog. The lawsuit, first reported by the StarTribune, accuses Jay Z’s company of illegally adding 15 additional albums from Prince’s catalog to its offerings back in June.
Both Roc Nation and Prince’s estate acknowledge the initial agreement between Prince and Roc Nation that gave Tidal the right to exclusively stream H

Imagine if every newspaper came with a mandatory T-shirt. Suddenly, that tabloid you paged through out of curiosity becomes part of your identity. You have to explain to friends that despite being a walking billboard, you don’t actually agree with The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorials, or think The New York Times is too liberal but still covers the facts. Increasingly, you stick to outlets you unambiguously approve of, reinforcing things you already believe.
This is how F

There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Nier, an action role-playing game released in 2010. Despite coming from Square Enix — the company behind genre mainstays like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest — the game didn’t sell particularly well, and the reaction from critics was mixed. Despite this, it managed to create a cult following, thanks in large part to its distinct, almost sorrowful take on a post-apocalyptic world. It may not have been the huge hit Square Enix

In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted that climate change was a concept invented by China to make US businesses less competitive. Four years later, Trump was elected president of the United States — and so China decided to address the preposterous claim, telling the president-elect that China didn’t concoct the “global warming hoax.”
China’s vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters today that China can’t be blamed because Trump’s Republican predecessors

I have sunk a couple thousand dollars into a top-of-the-line gaming PC. After a week with the PS4 Pro, I’m beginning to regret it.
PC gaming has secured a monopoly on high-end visuals by catering to a subset of gamers willing to spend limitless amounts of time and money in pursuit of better frame rates, higher video resolution, and supplemental graphical effects. Meanwhile, console manufacturers have focused on selling reliable hardware at a reasonable cost. At launch, the PlayStation 4 an

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The Daily Show alum’s acclaimed news comedy series on TBS, has been renewed through 2017. Variety reports that the weekly show, which regularly skewers politics and current events with a feminist bent, was picked up for a second season thanks to Bee’s unique voice, and she’s sure to use that to her advantage in the year ahead.
“Of course we’re picking up the show.”“Of course we’re picking up the show,” Thom Hin

In the aftermath of a US presidential election that seemed to shock at least half the country, many Americans are asking themselves how they missed the popularity of Donald Trump. One answer is a concept known as the filter bubble: the idea that personalization tools from companies like Facebook and Google have isolated us from opposing viewpoints, leading conservatives and liberals to feel like they occupy separate realities.
The concept was popularized by Eli Pariser, co-founder of Upworthy, w

If you’re a fan of artist and designer Ash Thorp, there’s a good chance you’ve heard him talk about “Lost Boy,” a personal project that looked to blend together elements of Akira and Mad Max into some kind of new sci-fi universe. Well, now that personal project is something much bigger — a dreamy, violent, and largely silent nine-minute short
Lost Boy was written and directed by Thorp and Anthony Scott Burns (who also creates thumping electronic music under th

Fitbit is trying to drum up its appeal to video gamers by adding in-game rewards for those who use its wearable. The fitness tracking company has announced an integration with the game NBA 2K17, which enables gamers to receive a small in-game boost to their MyPlayer — a custom character — if they meet Fitbit’s 10,000 steps goal for the day.It’s the first wearable tracker / video game console integrationDallas Maverick and Fitbit ambassador Harrison Barnes said that the in

We all have our own horror stories about rushing to find a public restroom, but in India, it’s more than just locating a toilet — it’s finding one that’s also clean enough to use. Roughly 70 percent of Indian households don’t have access to toilets, which results in a nationwide culture of open defecation and urination.To combat this issue, India’s Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) is partnering with Google to launch a toilet-locator tool on Google Maps to

Pluto’s most iconic feature — its “icy heart” — may have been responsible for tipping the dwarf planet over. Scientists believe the 600-mile-wide region of frozen plains known as Sputnik Planitia gained enough mass over the years, causing Pluto to tilt to its current orientation. And that could mean there’s a subsurface ocean lurking underneath the dwarf planet.
The cracks and faults on Pluto’s surface tell the story of its rollover, according to two new

One week after the election, President-elect Trump’s White House staff is still being formed, but one familiar name has already surfaced: Peter Thiel. The PayPal co-founder has become one of the most controversial figures in Silicon Valley, thanks to his unusual and often alarming political views, as well as a recently revealed crusade to bankrupt Gawker Media through frivolous litigation, waged secretly over the course of a decade.Most recently, Thiel caused a stir in tech circles with hi

 Wifi is hot again.
Recently products like Google Wifi, Eero, and now the Almond 3 are being released with the goal of changing the Wifi experience, something that really hasn’t really been tried since the technology became widespread in the late 90s.
These devices all promise a few things:
First, mesh networking that actually works (previous systems, including Apple’s Airport… Read More

 Dropbox is getting much more serious about its Dropbox for Business product, and today it announced a partnership with security vendor, Symantec, as part of a broader update to its business products designed to make it more attractive to larger businesses.
Rob Baseman, Dropbox’s head of product for pro, business and enterprise versions, says the idea behind the admin tool update is to… Read More

United is introducing basic economy, a cheaper — and worse — fare class below economy. First spotted by The Points Guy, the new offering gets rid of seat assignments and elite-qualifying miles, forbids paid upgrades and flight changes, and bans overhead carry-on bags. But it’s cheaper! So there’s that.With the carry-on baggage ban you can only bring one personal item onboard like a purse, laptop bag, etc., and United has somehow managed to make its basic economy offering

In 2013, the Anna Kendrick comedy Rapture-Palooza had the misfortune of opening exactly one week ahead of Seth Rogen’s This Is The End, another absurdist envisioning of Judgment Day. (They even shared a primary cast member: Craig Robinson, in both cases playing his usual “teddy bear with a hair-trigger temper.”) Rogen’s better-publicized vanity project buried Rapture-Palooza during its limited release, banishing it to the outer realms of online streaming. It spent the pas

Former Microsoft CEO might have labeled Linux "a cancer" 15 years ago, but things couldn't be any different this week. Microsoft, the software giant that has built its empire on closed-source proprietary software, is joining the Linux Foundation. 10 years ago that would have seemed unimaginable, but Microsoft has been steadily embracing open source recently, leading it to become the top organization with the most open source contributors on Github.
As Ars Technica notes, Microsoft has

I always judge a piece of art by whether I’d put it on my wall. Let me be clear: I cannot afford art, but when I go to museums, I like to picture the Picassos and Monets hanging around my dream house. A startup called Electric Objects knows people like me, who appreciate art, but can’t afford to buy real pieces. Also, the relatively new medium of digital art doesn’t lend itself to conventional art displays. It’s easier than ever to create, but finding ways to show that wo

The most recent update came on October 10th, 2016.
“Rain has been sporadic. A couple of inches a few weeks ago. It was enough to cause [the] grass to just grow like crazy. So I mowed around the cups a week or so ago. [I] haven't been able to get in and clean up the grass that's closest [to the cups], but might just leave them like that for now.”
The commenters left missives of support, like “Thank you so much for this update I was getting very concerned.” Others praised t

Electric and hybrid-fuel cars will be required to produce noise when traveling at low speeds under a new rule issued by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This is to prevent these vehicles from injuring pedestrians, especially people who are blind or are visually impaired.Electric cars, which are growing increasingly popular among manufacturers and consumers, make hardly any engine noise. The only noises they usually generate is caused by wind resistance or tire noises, and t

A virtual reality version of Google Earth is now available for free on the HTC Vive, letting users explore reconstructed cultural treasures, global landmarks, or (for some) their own homes in VR. Google Earth VR has been in development for some time, and it bears conceptual similarity to the version of Street View that Google released on its Cardboard and Daydream platforms. But where Street View offers strings of photospheres collected by 360-degree cameras, users of Earth VR can virtually fly

This post contains major plot spoilers about Arrival.
In one of the final scenes of Arrival, the new first-contact science fiction film with a focus on linguistics, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) explains why she got divorced. “He said I made the wrong choice,” the linguist tells her daughter Hannah. It’s an easy line to overlook, especially as the gravity of the film’s second-half surprise sinks in. Throughout the film, Louise is experiencing not her memories of the past,

 Spotify’s streaming music service has been at the forefront of figuring out new ways to spark music discovery, in terms of personalized playlists and other recommendations. Now the company is taking its collaborative playlist feature and pushing it for use at parties. The “Playlist Potluck,” as this experience is called, allows a Spotify user to invite friends to an event… Read More