Technology news

Amazon’s ambitious physical retail plans extend well beyond its new cashier-less convenience store unveiled earlier today. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Amazon hopes to ultimately operate more than 2,000 grocery and convenience stores across the US in a number of different formats. The goal is for Amazon, the biggest online retailer in the US, to completely control the physical flow of products from its warehouses to the end consumer, opening up the possibility for a

Why would you want to “drain the swamp” when it’s home to crocodiles, snapping turtles, and other wonderful wildlife? That’s what a number of biologists are wondering, after the catchphrase from President-elect Donald Trump took on a life of its own.
And so the scientists have rushed to defend the good name of this noble wetland ecosystem with #ReignTheSwamp. On the delightful corner of the internet known as biologist Twitter, scientists are giving some much-deserved atte

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be an emotional roller coaster for a college student: first, you get to go home, feast, see your hometown friends; then you head back to school only to realize there are still finals and papers in the way before the extended Christmas break. The last thing on your mind is making sure your paper is formatted correctly before handing it to the professor and peacing out for the holidays.
A little update on Google Docs should help make life a little e

In the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every studio wants a behemoth self-referential franchise to call its own. Last night, we got a look at Universal’s effort: a reboot of the classic Universal Monsters films, beginning with The Mummy. The lurching bandaged corpse of the past has been replaced with Tom Cruise, an ancient female mummy bent on global destruction, and an extravagant special effects budget.
Universal is serious about this franchise push, going so far as to lay groundwo

If you ask Tumblr, 2016 is the year of the caterpillar.Specifically, it is the year of Chicken Nugget, a caterpillar who eventually metamorphosed into a butterfly named Chicken Wing. Chicken Wing née Chicken Nugget was the platform’s biggest celebrity of the year, and the story that introduced him to the internet was the most reblogged Tumblr post of 2016.
http://oddity-txt.tumblr.com/post/148513030881/so-i-found-this-caterpillar-on-my-way-to-class
The second biggest post on Tumblr

One of the biggest downsides of vinyl is the inconvenience of using it on the go. With the exception of things like the now-defunct Audio-Technica AT727 portable vinyl player, you've pretty much got to lug an entire turntable around for listening to vinyl records anywhere outside of your living room.The RokBlok is a creative Kickstarter project solution to portable vinyl. It's a small block that rides along your records, serving as both needle and speaker to play back audio. And while it still n

Brian Richmond, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History who has been investigated three times for the same accusation of sexual misconduct, has resigned his post effective December 31st, according to the museum.“The investigation ended with Brian’s resignation.”
For the remainder of Richmond’s time at the museum, he will continue to work offsite, as he has been required to do for the last year, according to a statement from Anne Canty, a spokeswoma

Google is releasing Android 7.1.1 today, and with it, Nexus devices will gain features that were already included on the Pixel and Pixel XL, like more inclusive emoji and a GIF keyboard. Google created counterparts to its male emoji earlier this year so the update will allow Android users to text an emoji of a female astronaut or doctor, among other career-oriented emoji.
The GIF keyboard that’s available on the Pixel is also coming to updated devices. Users can directly search for GIFs, b

Last week, I wrote about the Ixoost EsaVox, a $21,000 Lamborghini-blazoned speaker that is made out of the actual exhaust pipe of a Lamborghini. In that post, I had commented that while EsaVox stood out for truly integrating the automotive qualities of its namesake in a way that products from Porsche Design — a design studio that, while largely unrelated to the famed automaker, still shares a name and corporate heritage with the luxury vehicles — did not.
It has come to my attention,

Here’s a car you probably won’t ever be able to buy: a 2017 Lexus IS covered in 41,999 programmable LED lights that changes color on a whim and, if it is ever allowed on the road, would probably be the world’s most distracting vehicle. The car, dubbed the LIT IS, was created as part of a collaboration between Lexus and video streaming service Vevo to promote UK singer Dua Lipa’s new video, “Be The One,” according to Gizmodo. Oh, and did we mention this thing c

Liftware, a company known for its Steady electronic spoon designed to help individuals suffering from hand tremors or Parkinson's disease eat, is back with its second product, the Level. Like the Steady, the Level is an electronic eating utensil, and is the first product released by Liftware since its acquisition by Google and integration into Alphabet's Verily Life Sciences division last year.
The Level is meant to help those who have limited hand and arm mobility — such as individuals su

CBS chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves today hinted that DirecTV Now will eventually add his company’s programming to its channel lineup. “I’m assuming we’ll be able to make a deal with them,” he said when the subject of AT&T’s new internet TV service came up. “As they said in The Godfather, ‘We are not unreasonable people here.’’DirecTV Now already offers programming from the other big broadcast networks — ABC, Fox, and NBC &mda

You’re probably still reeling from last night’s Westworld finale. (Unless you haven’t watched the episode, in which case: spoilers ahead!)We saw robot uprisings! The death of Ford! Mysterious programmers controlling Maeve’s every move! Samurai World! But one of the most anticipated pieces of the puzzle that fell into place was the reveal of what the maze means.Too bad it’s still a little confusing. Even Ed Harris, otherwise known as the Man in Black, doesn’t q

Months after Microsoft’s disastrous Tay bot launch on Twitter, the company is giving chatbots another go. This time, it’s testing a bot on Kik. The bot, which was first spotted by Twitter user Tom Hounsell and later written up by MSPoweruser, is called Zo and is essentially an English-language version of Microsoft’s Chinese bot, Xiaoice. Like that bot, Zo attempts conversation with users.Zo really wants to come off as normal. It first “breaks the ice” by posing a qu

Volkswagen announced this morning the launch of a spinoff company focused on “new mobility solutions” such as ride-hailing and on-demand autonomous vehicles. The German car giant says it hopes to generate “a significant share” of its sale revenue from these new services by 2025.The standalone company, Moia, will be headquartered in Berlin, where it will likely test out many of its new services before expanding them to other cities. It’s the latest move by a major ca

Volkswagen announced this morning the launch of a spinoff company focused on “new mobility solutions” such as ride-hailing and on-demand autonomous vehicles. The German car giant says it hopes to generate “a significant share” of its sale revenue from these new services by 2025.The standalone company, Moia, will be headquartered in Berlin, where it will likely test out many of its new services before expanding them to other cities. It’s the latest move by a major ca

AMC’s The Walking Dead has an uncanny knack for manipulating its audience, but this year’s hyper-violent season premiere went too far. So far that we canceled our ongoing series The Walking Dead Quitter’s Club, and co-author Bryan Bishop swore off the show entirely.Now, Nick Statt is trying to change his mind. Instead of tearing the show down, he’ll be finding something to highlight. It might be a subtle change in character, a great action scene, or a new development in a

Panasonic announced last week that it has developed a new kind of IPS LCD display with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, making it competitive with far most expensive OLED technologies. As HDGuru reports, the new technology offers a massive improvement over most of today's LCD displays, which tend to have an average of about a 1,800:1 contrast ratio.Ever since plasma TVs met their untimely demise, the best picture quality has tended to come from OLED displays. While traditional backlit LCD panels te

Uber just announced the launch of Uber AI Labs, a new research group focused on improving everything from the route of your food delivery to the way your self-driving Uber car navigates the roads. The lab will be staffed by members of a startup called Geometric Intelligence, which Uber says it has just acquired for an undisclosed sum.The announcement of the new lab comes as Uber continues to operate a fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, where it’s been offering rides to a select grou

Amazon just unveiled a grocery store without lines or checkout counters. Amazon Go, a retail space located in the company’s hometown of Seattle, lets shoppers just grab the items they want and leave; the order gets charged to their Amazon account afterwards.
Amazon Go works by using computer vision and sensors to detect what items you’re taking out of the store. You start by scanning an app as you enter the Amazon Go shop. As you leave, the sensors at the door identifies the items in

When the Oculus Rift reawakened our fascination with virtual reality in 2012, it was largely a visual medium. People imagined their average VR experience as a more exciting and immersive version of a traditional game or movie, something that gave the same familiar interactions a whole new feel. So controllers that mimicked movable virtual hands, like the Razer Hydra, just seemed like a fascinating but even geekier sub-field of an already geeky technology. But a few years later, motion controls h

 E-commerce company Shopify is doubling down on its mobile product ambitions with today’s acquisition of digital product studio Tiny Hearts. The studio has released a number of mobile apps, games and bots over the past several years, including popular consumer-facing apps like Quick Fit, Next Keyboard, InstaMatch, and Wake Alarm. Prior to the deal, the team had also worked with… Read More

Companies have been gunning to make the best pair of wireless earbuds for a few years now, and now some of them have moved on to trying to become the smartest. Doppler Labs is working on earbuds that augment the sounds of the world around you, while Apple is clearly hoping to bring Siri to your ear with AirPods. The idea of a discreet, in-ear technology that connects you to the internet’s endless well of information is clearly a powerful one.Of course, bigger, bulkier headphones would give

When Google discontinued Latitude in 2013, it never truly made a replacement for its version of iOS’s Find My Friend. With Trusted Contacts, Google’s bringing location tracking back so you can communicate with and locate loved ones in cases of emergency.
Trusted Contacts lets you add people with whom you want to share your whereabouts, whether it’s your GPS location or if you’re online. During a crisis, friends and family members can request your status to see if you&rsqu

Most of us can’t wait for 2016 to end, and researchers at Microsoft are giving us good reason to think ahead. The company polled 17 women working in its research organization about the technology advances they expect to see in 2017, as well as a decade later in 2027. The researchers’ predictions touch on natural language processing, machine learning, agricultural software, and virtual reality, among other topics. You can check them all out here, but I’ve put some of the most in

Final Fantasy XV is a joyful payoff for fans who followed the role-playing game through its rocky decade-long development. But is it worth visiting if you only played Final Fantasy VII? Or what if you’ve never tried Final Fantasy and the word chocobo sounds like a flavorless dietary chocolate alternative?Final Fantasy XV’s creators declare in the game’s opening screens that their game is designed for new and returning players alike, but Final Fantasy’s long and weird hist

Plume is announcing today that its Adaptive WiFi system is now available for purchase, following pre-orders earlier this summer. Plume is a mesh-based home Wi-Fi system that uses compact "pods" to provide coverage in every room of your home. The system is managed by a backend system that monitors the network and adjusts it according to devices and load.
Like Eero and other mesh systems, Plume is meant to prevent signal drops and dead spots in your home. However, unlike Eero, which is meant to co

Headphone design is no stranger to invasions from other categories, whether you’re talking LED lights, belt buckles, or, um, cat-ear speakers. Usually, I snarl at those excesses, but I find myself smiling at the latest example: a fully functional VU meter integrated into the ear cups of the new Meters Music OV-1 cans.
Who’s Meters Music, you ask? I was pondering that same question when I first heard of them this morning, but it turns out there’s some decent sonic pedigree behin

Every week, I swing for the fences with one massive theory about the future of Westworld. Am I wrong? Am I right? We probably won’t know for sure for years, so why not enjoy the present?
In the middle of Westworld’s season finale, the young board member Charlotte Haleprepares a coup against park founder Dr. Robert Ford. To the childish story director Lee Sizemore, Hale describes an anodyne vision for the future of the resort following its creator’s forced retirement: “Sim

Hand-tracking company Leap Motion is announcing a new platform that will bring its tech to mobile phone-based virtual reality headsets. The Leap Motion Mobile Platform uses two miniature cameras, embedded in a face plate, to detect finger motion that’s integrated into lower-powered VR experiences. It’s supposed to be showing up in commercial headsets next year, although we don’t know which ones.Leap Motion began as a desktop-mounted, non-VR hand tracker, but for the past few ye

Today Blink is announcing its first outdoor camera: the $119 Blink XT. Blink is a newcomer that's quickly making a name for itself with tiny, low-cost security cameras that are truly wireless thanks to their ability to run for two years or more off a pair of regular lithium AAs. The Blink XT continues the trend but adds weatherproofing, a 1080p camera, and infrared night vision. That means you can put the Blink XT pretty much anywhere you want... like hidden in a tree — anywhere within ran

This is the week we find out how good the complete Oculus Rift experience is now that the $199 Oculus Touch controllers are shipping to early adopters. You'd better believe Adi Robertson will have something to say about the controllers that work with 53 titles at launch on Tuesday December 6th.
Tuesday's also the start of Code Commerce event in San Francisco. The 3rd event focused on retailing and e-tailing in the internet age is hosted by Recode's Jason Del Rey and features speakers like Apple'