Technology news

Lucid Motors has unveiled its 1,000-horsepower, 400-mile range, Model S-fighting electric sedan. It’s called the Lucid Air and early versions will run north of $100,000 (exact pricing will be disclosed later), with available 100kWh and 130kWh battery packs. Naturally, there are long-range radar, cameras and LIDAR to make it self-drive-ready, with over-the-air updates and an app! Deliveries are planned for 2018.
That all sounds terrific, and you can order one right now. Following in Tesla&r

Yahoo has even more security problems than you thought. The company has discovered a new breach dating back to August 2013, which exposed names, emails and hashed passwords for more than a billion users. The discovery was announced in a post today by CISO Bob Lord, who attributed it to “an unauthorized third party.” Payment information was not involved, and the breach is believed to be entirely distinct from the Yahoo breach announced in September.
The passwords involved were hashed

 Uber is aware of the incident depicted in the video above, which appears to show one of its self-driving test SUVs running a red light in San Francisco, where it launched a live pilot of the cars in service early on Wednesday, and the company tells TechCrunch it is investigating what exactly occurred. The video, published by the San Francisco Examiner, was captured by a dashcam mounted inside… Read More

California became the first state in the US to approve energy efficiency requirements for laptops, desktops, and monitors today, in a change that could ultimately impact computers’ energy efficiency across the country.
The new standards, approved by California’s Energy Commission, require most computers to draw less power while idle. Laptops are only required to see a slight reduction in power draw, since they’re already designed to be energy efficient; the commission estimates

 Zola, the online wedding registry for engaged couples, has confirmed that it raised $25 million in Series C funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to Re/code.
We first reported on the round in late November, at which time sources said the company was valued at $200 million, pre-money.
Zola lets couples put together a wedding registry online, which can include products from… Read More

Women who receive abortions experience less short-term anxiety and low self-esteem than women who are denied them, according to a new study. This is consistent with previous findings that the vast majority of women who receive abortions feel relief. And it’s another nail in the coffin of the tired misconception that women who terminate their pregnancies are psychologically damaged by the experience.In the United States, 35 states require a waiting period and counseling before a woman can t

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team said the questionnaire sent last week to the Energy Department asking for the names of employees working on climate change was not authorized, according to Reuters. The questionnaire raised alarm for singling out climate scientists, and was criticized by some members of Congress and the White House.
"The questionnaire was not authorized or part of our standard protocol," Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told Reuters. "The person who sent it has been prop

Christmas card writing sucks (or so I'm told — I’ve going to be honest and admit that I’ve never actually written a Christmas card in my life). But, you know what would make things better? Robots. Robots make everything better! And the only way to improve on a card-writing robot, of course, would be to make it out of the most fun toy in the world: Lego! Which is exactly what creative teenagers Sanjay and Arvind Seshan have done. The Holiday Plott3r is a Lego MindStorms-powered

Yesterday, Google tentatively agreed to a series of changes in the way it collects data from Gmail, as part of a proposed settlement in Northern California District Court. If the court approves the settlement, Google will eliminate any collection of advertising data before an email is accessible in a user’s inbox. The result likely won’t be noticeable to users, but it represents a real change to the way Google’s systems work, brought about after a voluntary settlement rather th

Twitter, President-elect Donald Trump’s media platform of choice, was reportedly left out of today’s big Trump tech roundtable because of a failed deal over sponsored emoji. Politico reports that a source says Twitter was “bounced” from the meeting because it had refused to approve two sponsored emoji during the election, an incident that Trump campaign digital advertising director Gary Coby wrote about last month.
Today’s tech summit was attended by many major Sili

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released a list of 145 films that will be eligible for this year’s Oscar for Best Original Score. That list doesn’t include Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Arrival, which has an original score by Jóhann Jóhannsson.The decision to disqualify Arrival was unanimous, Variety reports, due to the fact that it contains some borrowed music, including pieces of Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” t

Only a year ago, it seemed that Google or Uber could be morphing into full-service car companies, and we were all waiting for a primer on the Apple car. But that’s old news.
If 2016 has shown us anything about the emerging tech-car industry, it’s that carmakers and tech companies have a codependent relationship. A heated competition is underway to make autonomous cars and streets safe enough that consumers will use them. What’s shifted over the past year is that it looks like t

Here’s a moral quandary for you: do you consider yourself a good person? The breakdown of what makes someone “good” or “bad is complicated: do you base it on their kindness? Their impact on the world at large? Whether or not they’ve ever eaten the last of the office cereal and then put the empty box back on the shelf?
The question suggests a binary answer, though reality is messier than a simple “yes” or “no” — unless you ate the cereal

President-elect Donald Trump hosted some of the technology industry’s top leaders at Trump Tower in New York today, and told them to contact him directly if he could help them with their problems. “Anything we can do to help this go along, and we’re going to be there for you,” Trump said. “You’ll call my people, you’ll call me. It doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here.”
Guests at the table, included Apple

The death of Flash continues to move forward, and now Microsoft is taking its swing at the aging internet standard. The next release of Microsoft Edge will now default to HTML5 content if available, while Flash will be blocked by default. Users will instead be presented an option as to whether or not they'd like the plug-in to load.Flash will be blocked by default
In order to make things easier for users, Microsoft will be allowing the most popular sites that use Flash to be excepted from the bl

NASA's CYGNSS mission, an initiative to send eight small satellites into space on a Pegasus XL rocket, has been delayed once again. The launch was originally scheduled for Monday, but was scrubbed because of a faulty hydraulic pump. It was rescheduled for Wednesday, but has been cancelled yet again due to software issues. A new launch date has been set for Thursday at 8:26AM ET.
The satellites being launched are meant to study various aspects of tropical storms and hurricanes from orbit, he

Facebook would not help build a registry of Muslims — or, presumably, any other group — and it has not been asked to do so, the company said in a statement today to The Verge.
No one has asked us to build a Muslim registry, and of course we would not do so.
A Facebook spokesperson had previously called the registry, which was originally proposed by President-elect Trump during the campaign, a “straw man,” or a sham argument designed to be defeated, in an email accidentall

Many of our primate relatives have penis bones. Humans don’t — and the reason is probably because we don’t need to have as much sex, researchers say.In a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of Royal Society B, researchers traced the evolutionary history of the penis bone, or bacula. It’s been around for a long time (no pun intended), first evolving between 145 and 95 million years ago. That means the most recent ancestor that all primates and carnivores s

 Starbucks is venturing further into its own original content. On the heels of its feel-good series “Upstanders,” the coffee chain is now introducing its second video series, “1st & Main,” created by several longtime “The Simpsons” writers. “1st & Main’s” animated video shorts will kick off this Friday, and will be only around 60 to… Read More

Every time I think we’ve reached the peak of human ingenuity, new technology crops up to remind me that there is still much more to be invented. Today Gizmodo brought a new gadget to my attention that once again proves how rapidly society is advancing. The Pulse is a heater for lube. It sounds useful. But here’s the thing: Pulse relies on proprietary lube pods. Yes, LUBE PODS.
The company currently only sells one kind of lube that’s silicone-based. Another water-based lube is r

 President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum has picked up two of the highest-flying and hardest-driving executives in the tech industry with the addition of Uber Technologies’ Travis Kalanick and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. Announced today, the two appointees join a board headed by private equity titan Stephen Schwarzman, who heads the multi-billion-dollar private… Read More

The Amazon Echo is becoming a hotel room luxury, and maybe a potential privacy concern for guests. Less than a month before the technology industry heads to Las Vegas and CES 2017, the Wynn Las Vegas just announced that it’ll be putting the Echo in all 4,748 of its hotel rooms by this coming summer. Alexa will let guests control room lights, room temperature, drapery, and the television using voice commands. “She becomes our butler, at the service of each of our guests,” said C

Jerry Maguire, a 139-minute movie about Tom Cruise slowly losing his mind, turns 20 years old this month. To commemorate the milestone, the VHS diehards at Everything is Terrible are turning a Los Angeles art gallery into a Jerry Maguire-themed video store. That’s right: a video store stocked only with VHS tapes of the seminal 17-hour movie about absolutely nothing, Jerry Maguire.I am out here for you
As Consequence of Sound points out, Everything is Terrible is the proud owner of the worl

Raytheon could have saved the Death Star, and they want you to know about it. This morning, the defense contractor posted an elaborate faux-feature describing how basic cybersecurity failings allowed the Rebels to steal the plans to the Death Star, as portrayed in Rogue One.
To be clear: a real defense contractor with real contracts across the globe has thoughts on how it would have stopped the theft of plans for a starship that does not exist, to assist the antagonists in a popular work of fict

Snap Inc.'s Spectacles are the latest craze (assuming you can buy a pair). But if you regularly wear glasses, it can be a bit of a challenge to use the Snapchat sunglasses, which aren't available with prescription lenses.Starting at $29 for single vision lenses
Thankfully, online glasses company GlassesUSA.com is aiming to help that, offering prescription Spectacle lenses starting at $29 for single vision lenses, although that cost can rapidly increase depending on tinting, UV protection, and pr