Technology news

Heroes of the Storm is welcoming its latest fighter.
The newest character for Blizzard’s multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is now available. Zul’jin, a troll from the Warcraft universe, is an assassin character that excels at killing enemy heroes with his throwing axes. He also attacks faster the less life he has and is even able to sacrifice his own health to temporarily boost his attack power.  Heroes of the Storm is a free-to-play game for PC, so post-release c

At the CES consumer technology conference in Las Vegas today, accessory maker Griffin Technology announced the launch of a new product that brings MagSafe-like functionality to the new MacBook Pro, which does away with the long-running MagSafe standard for charging cables and instead uses the emerging USB-C standard.
The BreakSafe Hi-Power Magnetic USB-C Breakaway Cable offers up to 100 watts of charging capacity, which means that it can handle the new MacBook Pro — unlike its original Bre

Routers are suddenly getting really, really interesting after spending an eternity being weird, ugly, and dull. Every company and probably half of all Kickstarter campaigns are now trying to get in on the multi-unit router craze — today, there’s a new one being announced by Asus.
At CES, Asus is unveiling a pair of routers called the HiveSpot and HiveDot. Both work in generally the same way, creating a single Wi-Fi network that can blanket a large area, with the size depending on how

Samsung Electronics America president Tim Baxter announced that the company has sold 5 million Gear VR virtual reality headsets for mobile devices to date.
The South Korean electronics giant made the announcement at its press event at CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week.
Baxter said that consumers have viewed over 10 million hours of 360-degree video in VR, and he said more hours of video are being uploaded via Gear 360 camera.
That’s good news for the VR industry

Samsung on Wednesday announced it’s launching a laptop geared for the gaming audience called the Notebook Odyssey. This is the company’s first official foray into the space, but it may leave some gamers wondering why. The computer is available in two screen sizes — 15.6 and 17.3 inches.
In addition, Samsung has refreshed its 15-inch Notebook 9 laptop for those in the U.S. to now include an Nvidia GeForce 940 GX processor chip and an improved design.
“Today, serious and ev

Following months of leaks, Samsung is today making its latest Chromebook official. The new computer is actually two models — the Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro — and is the first one built from the ground up with support for Android apps. It’s also the first Chromebook to come with a stylus and support on-screen inking. The Chromebook Plus will be available starting this February for $449; the virtually-identical-save-for-a-different-processor Chromebook Pro will arrive lat

Samsung has teamed up with Google to create the Chromebook Plus and Pro, two Chrome OS laptops that are the first to natively support Google Play apps. Both feature 360-degree rotating touchscreens, a built-in stylus, quad high-definition screens, 4 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, and more.
The Samsung Chromebook Plus will be priced at $449 and will go on sale February 12 with the beta version of the Google Play Store installed. The Chromebook Pro has not been priced, but will be slightly more expe

Gaming laptops are one of the things that every PC maker has prioritized at this year’s CES, with big names like Lenovo, and now Samsung, starting whole new sub-brands of gaming PCs. Samsung’s answer to Lenovo’s Legion is the Notebook Odyssey. The Odyssey begins with a 15-inch laptop in February and a 17-inch behemoth in April, both of which look like rejects from Alienware’s design interns. There’s an upsettingly high degree of unoriginality about these laptops, wh

The 2017 edition of the Samsung Notebook 9 comes with the claim of being the world’s lightest 13-inch laptop, and at only 1.8 pounds / 820 grams of weight, it probably merits the title. I tried it out here at CES 2017, and what’s interesting about itto me is how little Samsung has compromised in terms of connectivity with this new laptop, endowing it with full-size HDMI and two USB-A ports along with the new hotness that is the thinner and smaller USB-C.Just look at the side profile

Google has been sued by the Department of Labor for withholding data in an ongoing audit. In a complaint filed today, the Department says Google refused to provide compensation data as part of an anti-discrimination audit, and seeks a court order forcing the company to comply.
The case stems from Google’s federal contracting business, which provides advertising and cloud computing services to a number of federal agencies. As a federal contractor with more than $10,000 in business, it is su

I love a good printer, and the Nemonic printer seems like a good printer. The device’s whole aesthetic pleases me. Its pastel color palette is just trendy enough, it’s tiny and therefore cute, and it’s minimalistic. Plus, it’s very easy to use. The printer connects over Bluetooth to your phone and relies on a companion Android / iOS app. With the app, you can choose a template or take a photo to print. And that’s about it. Simple, like I said. The printer will cost

Amazon isn’t at CES in any formal capacity, but once again, it seems to be everywhere thanks to Alexa. Since opening up its voice assistant to other companies’ products, we’ve seen it put in all types of gadgets and gain some strange integrations. And at CES this week, the continuation of that is one of the biggest trends we’ve seen.
Here are the highlights:
Alexa built in
These products include a microphone and speakers, so you can talk directly to them to interact with

Death nets downloads.
Publisher GungHo Entertainment announced today that its free-to-play hack-‘n’-slash game Let It Die has surpassed 1 million downloads since coming out for the PlayStation 4 on December 3. Those could translate into potential customers that could spend money on in-game transactions.
GungHo’s best known for its biggest hit, the mobile game Puzzle & Dragons. Let It Die is the publisher’s first PlayStation 4 game, although it did publish the mobile v

Samsung on Wednesday announced its intentions to support early-stage startups focused on emerging technologies. The company, through its global innovation group, has established a $150 million fund targeting businesses specializing in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and “other new frontier technologies.”
So far, Samsung has made investments in 10 startups: Converge Industries, Dashbot, Entry Point VR, Filament, Intezer, LiquidSky, Otto Radio, 2Sens, Safe

Asus unveiled its original ZenBook 3 back at Computex last year that looked like a Windows-powered MacBook, and now the company is ready to launch a slightly larger model that's more likely to target the new MacBook Pro. While the original ZenBook 3 features a 12.5-inch display with a single USB-C port (like the MacBook), the new ZenBook 3 Deluxe includes a 14-inch display inside a 13-inch chassis. Asus is using thin bezels on the display to squeeze this screen inside a smaller form factor, but

Whistle just announced its new Whistle 3 pet tracking collar at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The collar lets you monitor your pet's daily activity from any smartphone, or locate and track your pet from anywhere in the US using GPS and cellular should it get lost or stole. Whistle 3 improves upon the original with the promise of faster and more accurate location tracking, and improved geo-fencing to create multiple safe areas. The waterproof, on-collar hardware is now 50 perce

Toyota unveiled its Concept-i vehicle today at CES, and in case you weren’t sure, this is about as concept-y as concept vehicles get. The futuristic design and aerodynamic shape just screams science fiction. And to top it off, Toyota says the car has built-in artificial intelligence, nicknamed “Yui,” designed to “learn from and grow with the driver.”That’s right, Toyota wants your car to become part of your family.“The interface begins with the visual re

We first saw the URB-E electric vehicle three years ago, when the company debuted a prototype at CES 2014. We got a chance to take the first production model for a spin in December of 2015, and came away impressed. Today the company is unveiling four new units and a range of accessories that extend its capabilities beyond simple transportation.The most interesting of these new vehicles is the URB-E Sport. It costs $899, including shipping, which means its about 40 percent cheaper than the model

Toyota on Wednesday unveiled the next concept car it’s working on, called the Concept-i. Jumping into the autonomous vehicle space, the car maker doesn’t envision a system to let you get to your destination hands-free, but rather one that knows not only your route, but also driving patterns, schedules, emotion, and other data points.
The Concept-i is expected to begin on-road evaluations within “the next few years” in Japan.
In a statement, Toyota explained that the

A fossilized shark skull that’s more than 280 million years old could be a missing evolutionary link between sharks, and their strange deep-sea relatives known as ghost sharks. That’s not all: by virtually reconstructing the ancient shark’s brain, the researchers discovered that modern day ghost sharks are more distantly related to today’s sharks than we thought.The ancient skull is a missing evolutionary link
The skull belonged to an extinct type of shark called a symmor

Casio’s Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10 was a niche but impressive smartwatch debut — unlike most products in the category, it was obvious exactly who might want to use it and why. Now Casio is back one year later with a follow-up product that builds on the previous blueprint.
The Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F20 fixes one of the WSD-F10’s more obvious omissions by adding GPS support. In addition to this, Casio is including the ability to download maps from Mapbox and use them offline i

Publishing platform Medium announced today that it had laid off 50 people — about a third of it staff — amid growing concerns about its advertising-based model. The company said it would explore alternatives to pageview-based advertising in the hopes that it can develop a lucrative, sustainable alternative for writers publishers. “While we could continue on our current path  —  and there is a business case for doing so  —  we decided that we

The US Navy plans to deploy its squadron of highly trained, bomb-locating bottlenose dolphins this spring. But the dolphins won’t be using their sonar for their usual missions of hunting down underwater mines or warding off enemy swimmers. Instead, the dolphins will be searching out their tiny, highly endangered relatives called vaquitas in an effort to conserve the last of these rapidly disappearing porpoises.There are less than 60 vaquitas left in the world
There are less than 60 vaquita

Adi Robertson: I’m convening this roundtable because for some reason, the world now has a “smart hairbrush,” and we need to talk about it.
Let’s be clear, the smart hairbrush looks kind of terrible and pointless. But it seems to be inspiring the same kind of weird dismissiveness that always comes up when someone talks about stereotypically feminine tech, and I don’t think that’s right. I love the idea of beauty and self-care gadgets, especially at CES, where a

In the early 2020s, two separate NASA missions will launch to asteroids in the Solar System, to learn more about what our cosmic neighborhood was like when it was young. NASA announced today that it had selected two missions, called Lucy and Psyche, from the five finalists in the Discovery Program — the space agency’s competition for scientists to come up with new ways to investigate the Solar System. Lucy is slated to launch in 2021, while Psyche will launch in 2023.
Lucy is slated

Overwatch could be adding a celebrity to its roster.
Terry Crews, an actor known for his intensity and bulging muscles, wants to voice a character in Overwatch, Blizzard’s hit team-based shooter that has over 20 million players since launching last May for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The Brooklyn 99 star (or maybe you know him from those over-the-top Old Spice commercials) recently visited Blizzard and posed in front of an Overwatch logo. Crews site, ArtBuff, then today posted a

VB LIVE: The very best marketing campaigns grab their audience by the gonads — but it takes data to figure out exactly what goes into reaching out and touching someone. Join GPS technology giant Garmin for insight into turning analytics into powerful creative that gets bottom line results.
Register here for free.
Under global digital advertising and social media manager Carla Meyer, Garmin has grown from a one-person social media team to a ten-person global digital advertising departm

Medium announced it is changing business models in a bid to salvage its original mission, but in doing so, it has to lay off 50 employees, or one-third of the workforce. The departures come from “sales, support, and other business functions”. The move was driven by the company’s recognition that it didn’t have the right solution for monetizing based on its content. To continue on this route would “put us at risk.”
Another result of the layoffs include the clos

Don’t put away your Wii U just yet: Nintendo 64 cult classic Pokémon Snap is coming to the console. The game will be available to download through Nintendo’s virtual console classic games service starting tomorrow.
First released on the N64 in 1999, Pokémon Snap differs from other games in the series in that you’re tasked with photographing pocket monsters instead of capturing them. It’s essentially a pokémon safari where you need to find and snap pic

It’s a fascinating time to purchase a PC. While Apple has managed to incite a firestorm around the MacBook by toning down performance and stripping out ports, the Windows hardware ecosystem has marched forward in recent years relatively unabated. We now have Windows 10, Microsoft’s most robust and fleshed-out operating system in almost a decade. We’re also experiencing a surge in experimental electronics that rely on the added power of the desktop and laptop, led by the burgeon

Patients with painful open sores on their legs have long used a skin substitute as treatment — but we’ve only now figured out how it works. The skin substitute actually encourages the skin to learn to heal again, researchers say, and understanding this process can help us develop even better technologies to heal wounds.The skin substitute, called bilayered living cellular construct or Apligraf, is like a patch that you put over these leg ulcers. It seems to help the ulcer improve, an

New research confirms that there wasn't a pause on global warming in the oceans — only a change in measurements. This confirms findings from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and may finally put to rest the controversy about an apparent slowdown in rising global temperatures.
The controversy heated up around five years ago, as many scientists, including the International Panel on Climate Change, acknowledged the so-called “global warming hiatus” &md

Everyone knows about fitness trackers that measures your steps and heart rate at some point, but what about your eyesight? That’s what EyeQue’s Personal Vision Tracker sets out to do with its $30 gadget. What is it? No, it’s not a gadget you strap around your eyeball. Instead the EyeQue is a small cylindrical microscope which uses your phone’s display and a set of lenses to measure your eye’s refractive error to detect nearsightedness, farsightedness, and

Panasonic unveiled the long-awaited Lumix GH5 at Photokina 2016, but the company’s announcement was surprisingly light on specs. Now the company has filled in the blanks at CES, and the final picture looks like this: it’s a beefed-up GH4 — both in specs and in size — that fixes a number of problems and adds new features. But it will all come at significant price: Panasonic will charge $1,999 for just the GH5 camera body when it hits retail shelves in late March.Panasonic

Newscorp CEO Rupert Murdoch may have a significant influence in the next four years of American telecom policy. According to a new report from New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, President-elect Trump has asked the conservative Australian broadcast titan to submit names of his preferred candidates for chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Current chairman Tom Wheeler plans to step down when Trump takes office, and the president-elect is expected to nominate a successor in the we

Samsung is challenging the notion that OLED TVs represent the pinnacle of picture quality in the living room. Tonight at CES 2017, the company unveiled its latest flagship televisions, the QLED series. It’ll be available in three models: the Q9, Q8, and Q7. Samsung says that QLED TV represents its best achievement in image quality and viewing experience yet.Of course Samsung would say that at an event meant to showcase said product. But the company insists it’s made very real improve

Gaming’s next big sci-fi epic is coming very soon: developer BioWare has announced that Mass Effect: Andromeda will be launching in March. The role-playing game will be available in North America on March 21st, followed by Europe on the 23rd. Andromeda is coming to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Originally slated to launch last year, Andromeda is the fourth main release in the series, and it kicks off a new storyline set six centuries after the events of the original trilogy, which c

After a decade of bewilderment, astronomers have pinpointed the source of a mysterious blast of radio waves coming from deep outside the Milky Way: a dwarf galaxy located 3 billion light years from Earth. It’s a remarkable first in the study of what has been a tremendous astronomical puzzle. Scientists still don’t know what causes these deep space pulses, but locating the galaxy that spawned one brings us closer to figuring out where they come from.
First discovered in 2007, only 18

Logitech is announcing its latest gaming headset here at CES – the G533 – and I’ve had the chance to play with it for a few weeks. They’re pretty rad. What is it? Logitech is no stranger to surround sound headphones, but it’s top of the line model, the G933, is both expensive ($200) and kind of guady. The G533 shaves off a few features in return for a stealthier, cleaner (though still large) design and comparable audio quality at a lower price of $149. The key

Put your hand up if you hate voicemail. Now put it back down, you look silly with your hand up at your desk. Westworld is long over, but there was one thing in the series that got lodged in my brain and hasn’t left since. It wasn’t the cool sex robots. It wasn’t the amazingly selective guns that can’t hurt guests or the fun folding tablets. Out of all the awesome technology in Westworld, the only thing that really stuck was the existence of non-annoying voicemail. Someho

Ricoh is trying to push its 360-degree cameras into live streaming territory with a new camera called the Ricoh R. It looks similar, if a bit more rugged, to the Theta S and the cheaper SC that have come before it, but it’s company’s first spherical cameras that can apparently live stream without a bunch of workarounds.The Ricoh R can live stream 2K, 360-degree video at 30 frames per second. The camera also stitches the images from the dual lenses together in real time, and Ricoh say

The HiMirror Plus is a new smart mirror that’ll scan your face and tell you what’s wrong with it. It looks for wrinkles, red spots, pores, fine lines, and brightness levels. The mirror’s a harsh critic, yes, but the idea is that you’ll track your skin as you change beauty products, so you’ll know what’s working and what’s not. Also, you can watch yourself slowly age! That’s fun. The mirror rates each part of your skin on a scale of 100 with 100 rep

JBL has announced the BassPro Go, a “hybrid automobile subwoofer and portable speaker” that would’ve been groundbreaking a decade ago. The BassPro Go can connect to your car’s sound system and operate as a standalone 8-inch subwoofer to add some probably-not-that-great bass to your car.But when you’re ready to leave your car you can detach the speaker and use it over Bluetooth with up to 15 hours of playback time. Seems pretty basic right? Well given that it’l

Every year, the marketing arm of the tech industry huddles around a simmering cauldron of PR gumbo and fishes out a single word or phrase that will embody the hope — and hype — of the latest generation of gadgets. Previous examples have ranged from the charmingly vague (the “Internet of Things”) to the idiotic (the use of “smart” as a catch-all modifier) and the merely hopeful (“3D TVs” were doomed from the start really.) In 2017, though, you shoul

LG announced the latest iterations of its mid-range smartphones today at CES 2017, with new versions of the K-Series line and the LG Stylus 3. All the new devices represent upgrades over the previous versions of both the Stylus and K Series products, with the 2017 models adding things like improved cameras, larger batteries, and on the top models in the range, integrated fingerprint sensors.The Stylus 3 is perhaps the most powerful of LG's new mid-range products, with a 1.5GHz octa-core processo

LG is defending its champion-of-TV-picture-quality crown here at CES 2017. For a few years running, the company’s dedication to OLED sets has earned it rave reviews and the loyalty of home theater buffs. It’s been rumored that LG is (finally) about to get some competition in OLED 4K TVs from Sony, so this year the company needs to find another way to stand out. And it’s doing that through presentation. This is the new LG Signature 4K OLED W series. The W stands for wallpaper an