Technology news

It’s not a huge surprise that business software maker Tableau, now led by former Amazon executive Adam Selipsky, is putting the online version of its data visualization tool on Amazon Web Services. Selipsky, after all, had spent more than a decade helping build Amazon Web Services into the public cloud juggernaut it now is.
But if you dig deeper, an interesting narrative emerges — but back to that in a moment.
The news, to be formally announced next week at the annual AWS Re:Invent c

In a last-ditch effort to get you to open up Pokémon Go for the first time since July, Niantic is adding a new species to the lineup: Ditto.
As you may recall, Ditto is the pokémon that has the ability to mimic other creatures it sees. And that’s exactly what Ditto does in the game: hide under the guise of other pokémon. In order to catch Ditto, you may have to catch a bunch of other scrub pokémon to find the real deal — even the Pidgeys and Rattatas. How

GUEST: Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Google, have entirely too much control over the news most people see. Good thing Facebook and Google are cracking down on “fake news sites,” right? After all, Fake News on Facebook changed the election results (maybe).
One of the more damning stats about fake news on Facebook came from the increased engagement of “fake news” compared to “real news” in the time approaching the U.S. presidential election. Ironically, this

She’s fast enough for you, old man
Electronic Arts announced today that its mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is receiving ships in a new update. Galaxy of Heroes is a turn-based role-playing game featuring Star Wars heroes and villains, but now players can take part in space combat with iconic vessels like the Millennium Falcon and TIE Fighter. The update is free for the iOS and Android app.Galaxy of Heroes is the top-grossing Star Wars mobile game of all time, EA said. It is the No

FEATURE: The PlayStation 4 Pro is fast, but let’s see if we can make it faster.
One of the many improvements the PS4 Pro has over the original 2013 console is the capability to support the high-bandwidth SATA 3 data interface for storage drives. That means, theoretically, that the new system should have the transfer rate required to take advantage of fast solid-state drives (SSD) compared to the slower spinning medium in the traditional hard-disc drive that comes with the Pro. I&rsquo

So you like clicky keyboards. If that’s the case, you probably have a favorite model (or switch type) — maybe, for example, the one my colleague Paul Miller recently dubbed “the clickiest keyboard of all time.” But Deskthority forum member and mechanical keyboard expert HaaTa reminds us that these pronouncements are a fool’s errand, for there is no way a mere human could really, objectively judge the nature of a click.
For that, you would need something like the For

The European Space Agency is still trying to figure out why its ExoMars Schiaparelli lander crashed on the surface of Mars last month, and it’s looking like it has something to do with bad data that the vehicle gathered during its descent. In an update today, the agency said that information collected by one of the lander’s instruments made the vehicle think it was below ground level — while it was still falling. This triggered a chain of events that threw part of Schiaparelli&

President Obama awarded his last Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest US honor given to a civilian — in a packed ceremony on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. Margaret Hamilton, the woman behind the onboard flight software for NASA Apollo lunar modules and command modules, was among the 21 recipients.Hamilton is the brains behind Apollo’s onboard softwareHamilton, who invented the term “software engineer,” began her career as a computer programmer at

A startup based in Finland called Eve has already raised more than $860,000 through an Indiegogo campaign for the Eve V, a $699 convertible Windows tablets with high-end specifications. The campaign is way over the $75,000 goal for the campaign after launching two days ago.
The 24-person startup has financial backing from Intel, Microsoft, and the Finnish government, cofounder and chief executive Konstantinos Karatsevidis told VentureBeat in an interview. But that — and the small matter of

President-elect Donald Trump says he told Tim Cook in a phone call recently that he intends to get Apple to build its products in the US.
“I said, ‘Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here,’” Trump recou

It brings me incredible joy to write this: The Verge merch store is back. Don't believe me? Just go to store.theverge.com right now and see for yourself.
Today we’re offering about a half-dozen shirt designs as well as 18 x 24-inch poster of E-Waste New York City, which we made for Andy Hawkins’ feature “E-Waste Empire” earlier this year.Command Line subscribers, look for a discount code in today and tomorrow’s newsletter. If you haven’t signed up already, you

Security can be easily overlooked when building a product, especially when working with an outsourced engineering team. You want to trust them, so you give them access to your servers. But then you discover fraudulent activity, and, well, you start to panic.
In hindsight, you realize you never should have shared your Secure Shell (SSH) key, instead storing it in a vault with restricted user access. If, however, someone has a private SSH key to your Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elasti

Forget about catching a turkey — you need to grab yourself a Ditto.
Since it launched in this summer, Pokémon Go players have been wondering how they could catch the elusive, blobby pocket monster. The squishy-looking bugger is a unique creature in the game. He can morph into any other Pokémon, essentially forcing mirror matches against any person he fights. Now, an update to the hit mobile game allows you to catch him.
Pokémon Go has been a huge success, gen

As far as adaptations go, The Legend of Zelda peaked with a questionable cartoon. We’re still holding out hope for a live-action show on Netflix at some point. But absolutely nothing has made us fall harder in love with a reimagining of the iconic video game series than this animated fan film based on The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.The short was created by Ember Lab, a company focused on animation, VFX, and games for commercial projects. The company that draws inspiration from th

Here’s the scene: your family is coming in from all parts of the country for the big day. It’s great to see everyone, but you honestly would rather deal with them through Facebook this year. You need a quick and easy way to escape the crowd, so you power up your e-reader and jump into a new world.Books are an amazing portal to leave everything behind for a few (let’s face it, more than a few) hours at a time, and a space opera will get you off this planet altogether. Here are 1

Telegram now has a blogging platform to go along with its popular messaging app. It’s called Telegraph and, according to VentureBeat, offers fast publishing and anonymous posting — without requiring you to register an account or sign in through social media.Telegraph is fast and anonymousThe app’s user interface looks very similar to Medium and allows for easy embeds. You can also embed images from your computer by clicking on the camera button. In comparison to Medium, the loa

SpaceX has won another contract from NASA to launch one of the agency’s Earth science satellites in less than five years. The satellite in question is the Surface Water and Ocean Topography vehicle, or SWOT, and it’s designed to scan the planet’s oceans and provide the “first-ever global survey of Earth’s surface water.” The satellite will ride to space on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, with a target launch date of April 2021 from Vandenberg Air Force

The cold and bitter winds of winter are here, which means one important thing: it’s glove season! Gloves are a marvelous creation, except for the part where they make it impossible to use a touchscreen device that requires a fingerprint. This nifty sticker, TAPS, provides a unique fingerprint that may be able to ease your woes.
TAPS, funded on Kickstarter, is Touch ID compatible and waterproof; each sticker promises a one-of-a-kind fingerprint, even if they come from the same pack. They&rs

In the $36 billion mobile gaming market, Russian developers and publishers are on the rise. And one of the fastest-growing companies is Playrix, which quietly became the No. 2 game publisher in Europe in mid-September, according to market researcher App Annie.
Playrix is a rare company because it has produced three international hits (Township, Fishdom, and Gardenscapes), and it has also been successful self-publishing its games in China and Japan — a rarity for non-Asian game companies. R

Pod tech creates both the worst and most encouraging gadgets. Tortilla pods? Dumb, but probably useful. Cookie pods? Insulting, but likely tasty. We all know that pod tech has its roots in the OG of pod machines: the Keurig. But now, a company called Spinn wants you to know that it too can make a convenient single-serving cup of coffee, without using wasteful, expensive pods.The Spinn coffee machines vary in size but all are marketed as the future of coffee because they take whole beans, grind t

Marnie Winter remembers seeing the oil spread through the waters of Barataria Bay in southeastern Louisiana. It was 2010, just a few weeks after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico began the largest marine oil spill in US history. About 4 million barrels of oil were poured into the sea, affecting more than 1,300 miles of shoreline from Texas to Florida.
“It was scary,” says Winter, who’s the assistant director of the environmental department at J

While Blizzard is starting its own official esports league for Overwatch, third-party event organizers continue to turn to the popular game for their own tournaments.
Next Generation Esports (NGE) is the latest company to start a competition for the class-based team shooter with its Overwatch Winter Premiere event. Beginning in December, NGE’s event will enable teams to register online to partake in online qualifiers before shaving down the field to the top eight teams. Those finalist

Microsoft today announced Office 365 is now available in 10 new countries: Bhutan, Cambodia, Greenland, Guadeloupe, Laos, Maldives, Martinique, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Vatican City. This brings the total for Office 365 to 150 markets, with support for 44 languages.
Even after a quarter of a century, Office is still incredibly important to Microsoft’s bottom line. Office 365 is a prime example of the company successfully transitioning from a traditional software model to a subscription rev

Another day, another new fitness tracker — although this one is a relatively inexpensive fitness-focused smartwatch.Huami is now selling its Amazfit Pace smartwatch in the US, a product that was previously only available in China, where Huami is based. The GPS-equipped Amazfit Pace tracks daily activity and calories burned, along with running distances, speed, and cadence. It tracks elevation, which some fitness-focused smartwatches don’t do, and has optical heart rate sensors. Huami

Amid billions in AI investment and a rush to make profitable bots by virtually every major tech giant from Apple to Google to Samsung, it can be tough to remember there are bots out there with a mission to protect the most precious, priceless thing of all — life.
As messaging apps grow user bases larger than social media platforms, we’ve rounded up a list of five bots and AI services that use SMS and chat apps to help save people’s lives.Rescue can make

Earlier this month, Ubisoft released a sequel to its open-world hacking adventure, Watch Dogs. Gone is the city of Chicago and the dour grimace of vigilante Aiden Pearce. Watch Dogs 2 instead focuses on Marcus Holloway, a youthful hacker living in the bright and beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. As part of DedSec, players complete missions around San Francisco with the aim of destroying the city’s advanced surveillance system.We’re down with the change of scenery and much-needed hero

 Apptopia, a startup that began its life as a marketplace for reselling apps before morphing into the app intelligence provider that’s now used by Google, Facebook, Pinterest, NBCU, and others, has closed on a second seed round of $2.7 million. The round, which was led by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, brings Apptopia’s total raise to date to $5 million.… Read More

 Amazon’s purchases of Twitch and Elemental Technologies appear to be only two parts of a bigger strategy at the company to move deeper into video services through acquisition. Last year, the marketplace and cloud computing giant also quietly acquired a startup out of San Francisco called Biba Systems, which develops and operates video messaging apps aimed at business users.… Read More

Spotify and Sonos have gotten together for a little holiday promotion they’re calling Playlist Potluck. It lets a host create a Spotify playlist they can share via email, and anyone who’s invited can add their own track. The theme is friendship, family, and togetherness.
I would wager that the chances of my extended family putting together a coherent and enjoyable playlist are about as good as the odds we can talk politics without someone throwing mash potatoes.Love, love will tear u

For years now, Valve’s Steam service has dominated PC gaming. Not every title is on its store, and markets like GoG and Itch.io have carved out their own niche. But it’s still probably the best-known way to find and play games on any computer — whether you’ve got a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine. And in the next few months, it could take over yet another category: the virtual reality headset.
In the VR world, Valve is mostly known for co-developing the HTC Vive, a powerfu

Above: Kendall & Kylie stickers for iMessage chats.Image Credit: Glu
Glu Mobile has made its name with celebrity games such as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and it has figured out another way to make money with celebrities. Today, the San Francisco company is launching iMessage stickers for Kendall & Kylie, the free-to-play mobile game based on celebrities Kendall and Kylie Jenner.
Glu has created a number of games based on celebrities who, collectively, have more than a billion s

Looking for a new excuse to stare at your phone all day during Thanksgiving?
Microsoft today announced that the Microsoft Solitaire Collection is now out for iOS and Android as a free app. Microsoft’s version of the single-player card game has become iconic, since it has long come built-in with the Windows operating system. I certainly have a lot of memories wasting time on my dad’s Windows 95 PC with Solitaire. The Solitaire Collection has reached more than 119 million unique player

Microsoft is bringing its popular version of Solitaire to iOS and Android today. While the game as existed on Windows for more than 25 years, the modern Solitaire Collection will now be available outside of Windows for the first time. Microsoft is offering its Solitaire Collection on iOS and Android free of charge, as the company hopes to gain more players to add to the 119 million who have played the game on Windows 8 and Windows 10.
The Microsoft Solitaire Collection for iOS and Android includ