Technology news

Automattic is seeing steady growth in the number of sites using its WordPress content management system — 27 percent of the internet uses it today — and there’s no shortage of die-hard fans and users who gather in towns and cities around the world to support one another’s efforts. The money gleaned from these conferences numbers in the millions, and now that money will be put to good use — supporting those who need it.
At the annual WordCamp US gathering,

Sunday night, HBO will broadcast the 90-minute season finale of Westworld. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that the show has had an eventful couple of weeks, with recent revelations confirming major fan theories while still leaving a bunch of questions unanswered… for the time being.
All of which probably makes this the best time to rewatch the entire season for a quick refresh on all the byzantine plot machinations and character turns — but let’s be ho

Sunday night, HBO will broadcast the 90-minute season finale of Westworld. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that the show has had an eventful couple of weeks, with recent revelations confirming major fan theories while still leaving a bunch of questions unanswered… for the time being.
All of which probably makes this the best time to rewatch the entire season for a quick refresh on all the byzantine plot machinations and character turns — but let’s be ho

The Unity game engine is a versatile tool that developers use to build video games. This year alone it provided a slew of games like Firewatch, Oxenfree, I Am Setsuna, Pokémon Go, ReCore, and the upcoming Cuphead. The engine’s latest update, 5.5, includes a collection of new enhancements and also now comes with integration for Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality headset.
Unity’s 5.5 update is all about new platforms, better tools for artists, and the usual p

 Apple has publicly revealed its ambitions to play in the emerging market of self-driving vehicles with a policy recommendation letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Wall Street Journal first broke news of the communique. Precise details of Apple automotive products were not revealed in the letter. But it did state that: “Apple uses machine learning to make… Read More

Sony loaded its news minigun with ammunition and fired off the announcements and trailers in rapid succession this morning at the PlayStation Experience fan event in Anaheim, Calif.
Fans got a first look at The Last of Us II, more Uncharted downloadable content, and Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. If you missed the live show, I’ve gone ahead and collected all of the available trailers for you right here. Enjoy!
Uncharted: The Lost LegacyThe Last of Us: Part II WindjammersMarvel vs. Capcom

GUEST: The United States is frighteningly unprepared for modern-day cyber warfare. While we focus on hot button security risks such as ISIS and domestic terrorism, we let the overwhelming threat of cyberwarfare remain a lesser priority. That’s a mistake. While cyber threats may pose less of an immediately visible impact, they are a severe long-term threat.
As the new presidential administration prepares to take office and explores ways to bolster our nation’s defenses, cybersecurity

Sony closed its annual PlayStation Experience event by announcing The Last of Us Part Two. The anticipated sequel is the second big announcement from developer Naughty Dog today, following the reveal of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
The Last of Us Part Two takes place after the events of the original game. In the trailer, an adult Ellie sings a brooding tune with the help of an acoustic guitar. Joel, her complicated father figure enters the room, and ask if the young woman plans to go through with

We’re getting a sequel to The Last of Us, and somehow Naughty Dog isn’t calling it More of the Last of Us, The La2t of Us, or The Laster of Us.
The Last of Us: Part II is coming to the PlayStation 4. Developer Naughty Dog and publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment teased the game to cap off its keynote presentation at its annual PlayStation Experience fan event in Anaheim today. The clip shows the first games heroes, Ellie and Joel, discussing plans to murder everything while playi

Old games are better than new games. That’s one of science’s few incontrovertible facts. It has nothing to do with me being age 12 when I played old games. That’s merely a coincidence.
Sony is dropping its anti-science stance against old games, and it is bringing back some of its most beloved franchises. That includes the Wipeout Omega Collection and remasters of PaRappa The Rapper, LocoRoco, and Patapon. Omega Collection brings back content from Wipeout HD, Fury, and 2048

GUEST: As Nolan Bushnell begins work on his first game for mobile, we’re already looking ahead to how people will play the game. It is essential to plan out a response to future analytics right from the first design meeting.
Bushnell announced he would partner with Spil Games in April and already work has started on the first three games. The most advanced of these is code named “Bloxx,” and although the final game will be ground-breaking in many respects, it is based on a &rsq

Facebook has been taking a lot of heat from critics outside of Silicon Valley following the recent election of Donald Trump. But that might not be anywhere near as tough as the recent blasting the social media giant took from one of the region’s own.
Speaking on stage at the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland this week, Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca delivered a scathing assessment of Silicon Valley’s insular culture and its growing detachment from the real

Sony is making another Knack.
PlayStation 4 is getting Knack 2. This is the sequel to the PS4 launch platformer, which starred a character made up of garbage polygons who was trying to get bigger … or something. I don’t know, I didn’t finish it. I didn’t think it was very good, but it still sold decently because it was a rare 2013 PlayStation 4 exclusive.
We’ve seen LGODQ (launch games of dubious quality) get sequels before. Red Steel 2 on the Wii, an action shoote

During today’s Playstation Experience event, Sony and Capcom unveiled the latest iteration of the Marvel vs. Capcom series, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, which is slated to be released sometime in 2017.Earlier this week, Polygon reported that a new installment of the franchise was in development. The announcement trailer shows that the company is drawing heavily upon the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Iron Man and Captain Marvel duking it out Ryu and Mega Man. Shawn Layden, chairman of SIE

When’s Mahvel? Right now.
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is finally returning to a current-gen console. During the keynote presentation at its PlayStation Experience event, Sony announced that the game is available to download digitally today on the PlayStation 4. Capcom lost the license for the game in December 2013, and it had to remove it from certain digital stores as a result. But now that it is back working with Marvel on the just announced Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, the publisher has

Uncharted 2’s Chloe Frazier will be the heroine of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, a standalone adventure coming in 2017. The game will pair Chloe with Nadine Ross from this year’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
The game was announced in the cold open for the annual PlayStation Experience event.In the eight-minute long demo, a woman sneaks through a town wearing a red hijab to conceal her identity. After pulverizing a band of bad dudes, she removes the cloth to reveal the infamous Aus

You were right. Tell the internet that you were right about Marvel.
Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2017. Sony announced the new entry in the fighting-game series at its PlayStation Experience fan event, but it’s also coming to other platforms. That’s a break from how Sony locked up Capcom’s Street Fighter V fighting game for the PS4 in 2016.
As rumors suggested, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite features characters inspired by the Marvel Cin

Naughty Dog is making more Uncharted.
The Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is coming to PlayStation 4 in 2017. This is a standalone story chapter that is essentially downloadable content for Uncharted 4, but you don’t need to own that game to play it. Developer Naughty Dog is setting this addition apart by dropping Nathan Drake as the star. Instead, players will take on the role of Chloe Frazer.
We have a new #Uncharted game! Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a new standalone story chapter. Chloe Fr

GUEST: A research report recently published in China entitled “The Impact of VR on Academic Performance,” asserts that virtual reality improves student test scores and knowledge retention. VR-based learning also tends to leave no student behind since it is able to appeal to even the least responsive of users, the report states.
The study, which compared test performance of students who had learned a stubject via VR versus students who had learned by traditional means, suggests that V

Airbnb has decided to drop a lawsuit that it had brought against New York City over a bill designed to outlaw advertising short-term rentals, according to The New York Times.
Assembly Bill AB 8704-4 prohibited advertising in "a class A multiple dwelling for other than permanent residence purposes." The bill would allow authorities to issue up to $7,500 in fines for residences listed on Airbnb and similar sites, and housing advocates argued that the website was making it difficult to find afforda

Apple, which has been infuriatingly secretive about it’s efforts to build a self-driving car, has sent its strongest hint yet about its so-called Project Titan. In a letter submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the tech giant states that it is “investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation.”
The letter is Apple’s official comment

GUEST: The ongoing struggle between hackers and the civilized world is usually described as a cat and mouse game, with both hackers and security experts trying to stay one step ahead. But as the stakes get higher and “hacktivism” becomes more audacious amidst an increasingly polarized political landscape, 2017 will probably look more like Call of Duty than Tom and Jerry. Are the good guys well enough armed to handle next year’s level of cyber sophistication and severity?
The fo

PREVIEW: Zombie survival stories don’t have to be as bleak or tragic as AMC’s television series The Walking Dead. Capcom Vancouver wants to remind you that the apocalypse can be fun, too.
To commemorate Dead Rising’s 10th anniversary, the developer is delivering another helping of the series’s wacky zombie-slaying humor with Dead Rising 4 (coming to Xbox One and PC on December 6). The latest entry in the open-world franchise brings back two major stars from the first

Maybe I'm just noticing it more right now, but several of the last two months’ biggest titles have all played with time in some really interesting ways. In Westworld, the timing of what we're seeing is one of the series' biggest mysteries. In The Handmaiden, replaying scenes creates tension as we watch events from a new perspective. And in Arrival, the flow of time ties together everything we've seen in unexpected ways.
Some of these twists and turns are more effective than others —

They look like normal black-and-white Holstein cows, a common sight in Western Iowa. But these cows are special: used not for their milk or meat, but for their blood. They’re plasma donors, and one day, the life they save may be your own.The cows were genetically engineered by biotech company SAB Biotherapeutics to produce human antibodies, proteins that fight pathogens. These antibodies could one day treat infectious diseases like Ebola, influenza, and Zika — and their potential to

Making virtual reality games is hard. Buying virtual reality games is risky. But on PlayStation VR, an interesting trend is emerging: the major console game “VR mission.” The VR mission is a free chapter added to a big game with a devoted fanbase, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy XV, or Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. It’s not full VR support — which would probably make you sick anyway — but it’s a sign that the developers are interested in experime

(Reuters) – The U.S. government and the private sector must cooperate to improve the security of digital networks, a U.S. presidential commission on cyber security recommended in a wide-ranging report issued on Friday.
The commission created by President Barack Obama earlier this year also recommended that the president and Congress accelerate the pace at which technology is updated in the federal sector and that the president appoint an ambassador for cyber security for efforts abroad.
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“Now is the best time in history to be an entrepreneur in Europe.” That is one of the banner conclusions from a new report, The State of European Tech, published today by VC firm Atomico and Slush, the organisation behind of the Finnish tech conference of the same name.
The expansive report, which surveyed founders, investors and other members of the European startup community, details a changing Europe that still faces a wealth of challenges but whose ecosystem is maturing, putting

(Reuters) — Hackers stole more than 2 billion rubles ($31 million) from correspondent accounts at the Russian central bank, the bank said on Friday, the latest example of an escalation of cyber attacks on financial institutions around the globe.
Central bank official Artyom Sychyov discussed the losses at a briefing, saying that the hackers had attempted to steal about 5 billion rubles.
Sychyov was commenting on a central bank report released earlier in the day, that told about hackers bre

Apple last week submitted a letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that suggests it’s interested in testing self-driving cars.
The company appears eager to work with other companies in a data-sharing effort but is also keen to preserve privacy, which is in line with the hard-line stance it took in the Apple-FBI controversy earlier this year.
The letter is the clearest indication yet of Apple’s ongoing interest in and knowledge of autonomous vehicles

Facebook’s envy of Snapchat has been well-documented—as have its attempts over the years to imitate various features of the mobile video-messaging service. Virtually none of these efforts have managed to gain much traction with users, however.
In the latest example of this continuing trend, the social networking giant is said to be working on something similar to Snapchat Discover, the feature through which media partners such as CNN and BuzzFeed post their articles and videos f

The golden mole, the real-life version of a tribble, is not actually a mole. Nor is it always golden. It is, however, the star of a new teaser for the upcoming nature documentary, Planet Earth II.It’s not actually a mole
This bug-eating mammal, no larger than a ping-pong ball, burrows through the dry, soft soils of Sub-Saharan Africa. David Attenborough narrates while the tiny mammal tunnels through sand dunes and snuffles after termites. (“Termites: not easy to catch when you’

Artificial intelligence may be making small and steady advances in general-purpose situations like digital assistants. But it’s the more subtle AI accessibility features that have a more substantial impact today, especially for users with disabilities. For instance, an upcoming feature for Office apps like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint will automatically suggest image and slide deck captions, called alt-text, using AI algorithms. That way, when those files are presented to blind users, com

 About two months ago the NFL implemented a new social media policy that effectively banned teams from posting any video-based content during games. The backlash was tremendous, with fans and teams criticizing the NFL for negatively impacting fan’s social media experiences, especially during a TV ratings slump. But now it seems the NFL has decided to relax these restrictions. In a memo… Read More

Donald Trump, a man who has tweeted more than 34,000 times, loves making time for Twitter — despite any other obligations he now has as the president-elect. But he's not a fan of everyone he meets on Twitter. As Mashable reported earlier today, it looks like Trump is blocking people without explanation, leaving them confused, amused, and dismayed.
While there are some users making jokes or bragging about the block, others are far less enthusiastic. A blogger and freelance writer named Heat

Blu, the Florida-based maker of budget Android phones, says it’s swapping out the Chinese update software that stole user data for Google-approved software, according to a report in PCMag. The issue, first unveiled last month by security firm Kryptowire, was a firmware-updating application that monitored user communications and even sent back text messages to a keyword-searchable archive on a Chinese server. Now, any Blu phone — including the popular $50 Blu R1 HD — will use Go