Technology news

Google announced its conversation actions for the Google Home this past week, which are similar to the Amazon Echo’s skills but instead prompt users to converse with Home to get something done. Today we got a better idea of Google’s partners. Domino’s Pizza, Genius, and WebMD will all be supported, according to VentureBeat. Publications, like BuzzFeed, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN will also have actions. The new actions are available starting today, bringing the total numbe

Google Motion Stills took the untapped potential of Apple's Live Photos and made them a killer feature by instantly turning them into GIFs.
Now, Google is adding even more features to Motion Stills that further enhance its toolset. The app now offers the ability to add "motion text" to an image, that can track and move along with motion in the photo. Google's example shows a caption following a bird in flight, and the execution looks pretty slick.Additionally, Motion Stills can now create cinema

Google Motion Stills took the untapped potential of Apple's Live Photos and made them a killer feature by instantly turning them into GIFs.
Now, Google is adding even more features to Motion Stills that further enhance its toolset. The app now offers the ability to add "motion text" to an image, that can track and move along with motion in the photo. Google's example shows a caption following a bird in flight, and the execution looks pretty slick.Additionally, Motion Stills can now create cinema

We now know precisely how much each of Apple’s little wireless earbuds is worth: $69. As Apple Insider noticed this morning, that’s the charge for replacing a lost AirPod, the new Bluetooth variation of Apple’s EarPod headphones. Apple’s service pricing page goes over all the details of repairing or replacing AirPods; the one-year limited warranty covers problems like a defective battery. Otherwise, you’ll be spending $69 to repair or replace an earbud or the chargi

The Pew Research Center is one of the most reputable sources for data on how Americans use and think about technology. Its work is also a great example of how difficult interpreting statistics can be. According to Pew, almost a quarter of Americans have admitted to sharing fake news, a third say they “often” come across made-up political stories, and about two-thirds say the phenomenon has caused “a great deal of confusion” about current events. Is this good? Bad? It&rsqu

General Motors will begin testing its autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EV in Michigan, expanding a program that started earlier this year in San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona. Chevy also released the first official pictures of its autonomous testing rig, complete with a double dose of LIDAR sensors sticking up from the roof like a pair of lobster antennae.
The program will see autonomous Bolt EV’s manufactured at the same assembly plant in Michigan where the standard Bolt EV and Chevy Sonic a

The PowerSiesta is a foldable piece of cardboard that you can take on a plane for sleep. This gadget is self-explanatory, so I think I’ll just let you figure it out. See here:PowerSiestaListen, sleeping on a plane is rough. I get it. Most seats are cramped and finding a way to rest your head isn’t as obvious a task as one would think. I’m short, so I have an easier time of it, but I feel for you tall people. You can’t curl into a compact ball like me. However, even us sho

Launched in February by Russian developer Trinity Digital, FindFace is one part South Park’s TrollTrace, one part restraining order, and a heaping pinch of voyeurism. As the name suggests, it allows you to find the Vkontakte (the biggest rival to Facebook in Russia, often called simply VK) profile of anyone, simply by uploading a photograph of them. The app combines facial recognition software with neural networks, and according to VentureBeat, was intended by the developers to be a

The Obama administration today joined the throngs of anonymous intelligence officials in saying Russian President Vladimir Putin had to have been involved in the cyberespionage operation to undermine the US election, the Associated Press reports. Not only does the White House say Putin was likely involved, but it also asserts that the Russian leader probably directly authorized the hack of the Democratic National Committee. The statements, from White House press secretary Josh Earnes, also sugge

Verizon has just announced that it plans to roll out Samsung’s upcoming Note 7 update, which permanently stops the recalled smartphone from charging and disables its wireless radios, on January 5th. Only last week, the leading US carrier took a controversial stance when it said it would “not be taking part in this update because of the added risk this could pose to Galaxy Note 7 users that do not have another device to switch to.”The company was particularly concerned about nuk

Twitch is getting into the lifestreaming business with a new category, called IRL. IRL is an acronym that stands for ‘in real life’, and it’ll show exactly that. Twitch’s constituency of streamers will broadcast their everyday happenings, allowing them to engage with their audience without it being centered around video games. Emmett Shear, CEO of Twitch, said “We’re amazed by our creators who build thriving communities and create compelling content for milli

Nearly a quarter of Americans surveyed admitted to sharing fake news. You can interpret this two ways: that’s not as terrible as I first thought; or, three-quarters of Americans are liars (or completely oblivious). According to a new report from the Pew Research Center: 23 percent of respondents admitted to sharing fabricated political stories on social media. Of this group, 14 percent of respondents said they shared the news knowing it was fake at the time. For what it’s worth

Doom is a classic game from the annals of computer history, and in recent years it's become a benchmark of sorts of pushing the limits of absurd hardware that can run it. "Will it run Doom?" has become the standard of hacking something to a conceivable point of usability.“Will it run ‘Doom’?”
But it may be that we've come to the end of this cycle, with the latest enterprising hack from the Radioactive Channel on YouTube that has managed to put a playable version of Doom 2

Police across the country will now have a harder time singling out individual Twitter users. Twitter announced today that it has cut off all geospatial intelligence data being sold to police intelligence centers, also known as fusion centers.
The geospatial intelligence tool was being provided by Dataminr, an analytics firm partially owned by Twitter, which has exclusive access to the company’s live data feed or “firehose.” Dataminr introduced the system in March, and the ACLU

T-Mobile announced today that it’s giving away a 12 months of DirecTV Now, AT&T’s new live TV service, to customers who switch from AT&T. The company says you’ll only need to migrate one number to T-Mobile and it will give you a $35 credit on your bill for the next year. However, you will have to sign up for T-Mobile One, the company’s confusing new unlimited plan, and open two lines with the company. Also, the $35 credit is the price of DirecTV Now’s cheape

Evernote slightly botched its latest privacy policy release, leaving users worried about spying engineers invading their privacy. Now the company is trying to quell concerns. Evernote’s new privacy policy, which it unveiled yesterday, states that Evernote employees sometimes review users’ notes in an effort to improve the company’s machine learning capabilities. Users weren’t happy about this change.
Loved using @evernote, sorry their new privacy policy mean I'll be movin

Google Maps, an app favored by nearly 70 percent of iPhone users, will now list wheelchair accessibility alongside information like traffic and store hours. The new addition makes using the app easier for people with disabilities, as well as parents with strollers and the elderly.A team of Google employees, led by Google Drive product manager Rio Akasaka, took advantage of a dying company policy to make Google Maps accessible for people with physical disabilities. The famous 20 percent policy, a

A few months I wrote about the Consumer Review Fairness Act. In a nutshell, this offers legal protections to consumers who leave negative reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. You can now call out the restaurant who gave you food poisoning, or a bed-bug infested hotel without the risk of being dragged into a civil court. The long-overdue bill explicitly bans non-disparagement clauses in contracts between businesses and patrons. Over the years, there’s been a rash of people getting s

Super Mario Run, Nintendo’s first true smartphone game, arrives today on iOS. It’s a little different than your typical Mario fanfare, which typically send the mustachioed plumber out on a grand adventure. Instead, the game has three modes — which you can test out for free — for players to sink their time into.
The game does include in-game purchases with coin currency and a one-time fee of $9.99 to unlock its full features, and it will require an active internet connecti

Fake news has become a bigger problem than ever in 2016, and Facebook’s been at the center of it as the platform where most people share stories. But now it’s actually doing something about it. The company today announced a series of steps it’s taking to combat the spread of fake news stories. First up the company is making it easier to report fake news. Just click on the upper right hand corner of the post, and you’ll have an option to report a story as fake. You can al

On your marks, get set, go! Super Mario Run is now available on iOS. It’s a bit confusing to download, or at least it was for me. The normal download/buy icon wasn’t showing and instead it had the same ‘notify’ button that’s been there for weeks. After clicking it though, the game downloaded and I was met with three free levels — if you want all 24, you’ll need to fork over $10. The simplistic runner is all Mario. This Mario, however, seems to have been

Calico Labs — the mysterious life-extension research and development company backed by Google and pharmaceutical giant AbbVie — is harnessing a colony of walking, toothy scrotums known as naked mole rats to unlock the secrets of aging. It also has tapped leaders in genetics and biology to study mice, yeast, and worms in an ambitious mission to understand and extend the human lifespan, according to a recent look into the secretive workings of Calico reported today by MIT Technology Re

Twitch is continuing to expand its scope beyond gaming today with the launch of a new streaming category called IRL. IRL is meant to be a place for users to share their, erm, real life experiences.
“What we’ve heard repeatedly from [Twitch’s creators] is that they are interested in sharing their everyday lives, thoughts, and opinions with their communities,” Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said in a statement. “IRL is designed to help our creators foster that kind of commun

Oftentimes Super Mario Run, the first smartphone game created by Nintendo, feels like a compromised version of the classic games. To work comfortably on a touchscreen held in one hand, Nintendo has had to change its proven formula. This isn’t new for Nintendo, a company that, particularly with portable gaming, has found creative ways to adapt its most beloved franchise. But Super Mario Run is, for better and worse, different.
While Super Mario Run may look like a traditional side-scrolling

Facebook today began rolling out new tools designed to prevent the spread of misinformation, weeks after the US presidential election results raised new questions about how viral hoaxes may have contributed to Donald Trump’s victory. Facebook is introducing tools designed to make it easier to report links shared in the News Feed as fake news, and it’s working with four independent fact-checking organizations to assess the accuracy of viral stories. Facebook users who try to share a s

In July of this year Verizon agreed to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion. But in the months since, Yahoo has come forward to disclose not one, but two massive data breaches. In September Yahoo confirmed that 500 million accounts had been compromised, leaking names, emails, telephones numbers, and hashed passwords. Yesterday the company acknowledged a separate hack that affected over a billion users, exposing much of the same kind of information.Now Bloomberg is reporting that Verizon has formed a l

Studio Ghibli’s Ocean Waves was first released in 1993, but it’s coming to theaters in the US for the first time this month. As The Creator’s Project points out, the movie was originally made for TV, but has been restored in 4K for its theatrical release.
The film, adapted from a novel by Saeko Himuro, is about two boys, Taku and Yutaka, whose friendship is challenged by a shared crush on the same girl. It was directed by Tomomi Mochizuki and written by Kaori Nakamura.
Ghibli,

It's finally here: Nintendo's first proper mobile game has launched on both iPhone and iPad. First announced back at Apple's iPhone event in September, Super Mario Run is a game that looks and feels like a side-scrolling Mario adventure, but makes a number of small-but-important changes to make it fit on your phone. It's the first release in a planned rollout of Nintendo mobile games, which will include both new Animal Crossing and titles. Here's everything you need to know about Mario's mobile

Super Mario Run is now live on the App Store — buy it yourself for $9.99. The much-anticipated game is Nintendo’s first real attempt to puts its storied back catalogue of video game characters to use in the mobile world. Super Mario Run is a take on the endless runner type of game, letting players control Mario in a traditional side-scrolling platformer environment, but with just one control: tap to jump. It’s a simple set-up, but appropriate considering that Mario’s firs

A recently published Nintendo patent shows how virtual reality could work on the company’s upcoming Switch console, despite Nintendo’s overall ambivalence toward VR. The patent, spotted by a NeoGAF member, describes a head-mounted display that would hold the Nintendo Switch tablet, reminiscent of Google’s Daydream headset or the Samsung Gear VR. The headset, Nintendo writes, could “enhance the sense of immersion” and could either include its own tracking sensors or

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In that case, Facebook Messenger just flattered the heck out of Snapchat. It’s no secret that Facebook has been settings its sites on its oh-so-yellow rival, but today’s update to Messenger is the greatest shot across the bow since Instagram first added Stories to its apps. The new Messenger camera dose pretty much everything you’ve come to expect from Snapchat’s cameras. You can add stickers and emoji, you can d

Super Mario Run, the highly-anticipated Nintendo game that will launch exclusively on Apple’s iOS to start, will start showing up in the App Store sometime between 1PM ET and 1:30PM ET today.Apple had said earlier this fall that the game would launch on December 15th, but the timing was unknown. Some people took that to mean exactly at midnight pacific time on December 15, as Recode points out here, and have been tweeting that they’re still waiting for the game to populate the App St

Many retailers let you buy things on credit. If you want to get a new MacBook Pro, for example, but can’t stomach the eye-watering up-front costs, Apple is happy to let you pay in monthly installments. But the same isn’t true for interactions with smaller, independent shops, or when you buy things on sites like Craigslist and Gumtree. Enter INSTO. Founded by former eBay Taiwan exec Bruce Chen, INSTO lets you pay for pretty much anything in small, digestible monthly installments

It’s been a week since Fitbit announced that it was buying up the assets of smartwatch maker Pebble, and a lot of questions still exist around exactly how Pebble’s existing products will work. Today a member of Pebble’s developer team attempted to address some of those questions.In a blog post on the company’s website, Pebble employee (well, now Fitbit employee) Jon Barlow wrote that Fitbit is “going out of its way” to keep Pebble’s software and services

Disregarding his Fifth Amendment rights, the Florida Court of Appeals has ordered a male suspect to surrender his iPhone 5 passcode to police. The decision runs counter to a Virginia court ruling in a separate case that stipulates suspects can be required to unlock a phone with their fingerprint, but can’t be forced to reveal their passcode as this could possibly violate Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. According to Courthouse News, the suspect in que

Instagram has just crossed another milestone, hitting 600 million monthly active users. For reference, the service hit 500 million monthly active users back in July, along with 300 million daily active users. Instagram hasn’t updated the number of daily active users, so perhaps that number hasn’t crossed a major milestone, but it still shows Instagram has plenty of momentum for a six-year old app. In fact, its growth rate has increased, as it only took the app six months to add 100

Facebook’s latest attempt to clone the success of Snapchat is making its way to Messenger. The company’s standalone messaging app now has a camera front and center that comes packed with many of the now-familiar features once pioneered by its rival. Using the new camera, you can doodle over photos or videos using your finger, add stickers and emojis, add real-time masks and effects to your selfies, and stylize your creations with Prisma-like art filters. Facebook says the product is

Alto is a way better email app than you’d expect to come from AOL in 2016. It’s better than any app you’d expect to come from AOL in 2016. Available on the web, Android, and iOS, Alto’s approach to email resembles that of CloudMagic and other email software that’s designed to simplify inbox management and show you important stuff first.Alto’s stacks categorize your emails based on popular criteria (snoozed, messages from contacts, messages with files / photos,

In 2015, a small company called AmpMe rolled out an app with a clever premise — it let you sync audio playback across any number of phones, offering users a (hopefully) better option for filling a room with music than just placing a phone in a bowl. Today the company is taking the idea a step further with an update to the app that extends AmpMe to Bluetooth speakers.The basic workings remain the same. Everyone still needs to use the AmpMe app — which is free and available on iOS or A

Walt’s column this week highlights the problems with the AT&T-Time Warner merger, with Walt suggesting that content and distribution should be separate. This week on Ctrl-Walt-Delete Walt and Nilay give examples why this merger might not be a good idea, and how the results of this may play into a repudiation of net neutrality.We love your feedback on the topics of the show and suggestions on how to make our podcasts better and more fun — you can tweet at Walt at @waltmossberg and

La La Land is a full-throated, big-budget musical, a technical masterpiece in which 200 people hit their marks every second and the whole magical, surrealist affair is painted with Technicolor candy hues. Seven years before that, Damien Chazelle made another musical — a much quieter, rougher, and less expensive one.
sun-kissed LA and the gloomy east coast both get musicals
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is Chazelle’s first film, a cinéma vérite-style musical about two

Whether you’re happy in your job or looking for a change, your next step will definitely require learning something new — and most likely, something you never expected coming. Prepare for that brave new world today with eduCBA’s full roster of tech training courses. Right now, you can lock in access to up-to-date training in hundreds of disciplines — for life, we might add — at just $49 from TNW Deals. No matter whether you’re interested in programming, IT, w

 Airfare prediction app Hopper has grown from 1 million downloads to over 10 million in the course of a year – a trajectory that’s allowed it to pull in $82 million CAD (~$61.2 million US) in additional funding to continue to grow its business. The Series C round was led by North American pension fund manager, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and includes participation… Read More