Technology news

The newest Windows 10 Insider Build (15002) is one of the biggest updates I’ve seen leading up to the Creators Update launching publicly in the coming months. One of the new features in tow is a blue light filter. If you’re not familiar, pretty much every new smartphone now includes some kind of blue light filter, the sleep-aiding technique pioneered by f.lux. Research shows that blue wavelengths of light keep you awake; compare the coolness of a noon day sun with the warm color of

Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer will be resigning from the board after her company completes its acquisition by Verizon. She is not the only one to depart from the combined company, as cofounder David Filo, Eddy Hartenstein, Richard Hill, Jane Shaw, and Maynard Webb will be leaving. Eric Brandt will become the chairman of the board.
In other news, the holding company what remains from Yahoo, including the Yahoo Japan and Alibaba stakes, will become an investment company known as Altaba, Inc.

Last week during CES, Verizon quietly increased its upgrade fee from $20 up to $30. This charge is applied whenever a customer either buys a phone outright or splits payments up monthly with Verizon’s device payment plans.Those are pretty much the only valid ways to buy phones from Verizon at this point, since the company also got rid of two-year contracts last week — this time for good. Subsidized contract pricing had remained available to existing customers after being phased out f

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks revival officially has a premiere date, reports TheWrap. According to Showtime CEO Dave Nevins, the series will debut on May 21st, with much of the original cast in tow.
Nevins made the reveal today at the Television Critics Association press tour. The new, limited series will feature 18 episodes, starting with a two-hour premiere on the 21st. According to Nevins, the show will be a “close-ended, one-time event.”“We’ve seen the whole thing,&

GUEST: Over 2.5 billion people have at least one messaging app installed on their phone. According to the consulting firm Activate, by the end of 2018 a total of 3.6 billion users will be using messaging apps to connect with friends and businesses. Messaging really is the new social media.
Many hotels already offer messaging options, giving their guests the ability to text them through proprietary apps or messaging channels on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or even SMS.
The re

A VR headset that can be worn like a pair of regular glasses is pretty much the holy grail of the technology (until we get VR contact lenses, anyway). But while I expected decent VR glasses to be at least a couple of years away, I was surprised to find a pair in a small booth at this year’s CES. What is it? It’s a VR headset that looks and, most importantly, feels like wearing a regular pair of glasses. Dlodlo’s V1 has actually been making the rounds since the summer of 2016,

Theft has struck one of gaming’s biggest hardware companies.
Razer confirmed to GamesBeat that two of its Project Valerie laptop prototypes were stolen from its booth at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The hardware and peripheral manufacturer is offering a reward to any person with information that could lead to their recovery We had a chance to look at the laptop ourselves at CES, which has three 4K screens arranged side-by-side-by-side that fold out from a

In late 2015, iPhone and PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz teased a project that sounded like a dream: his new company would produce a $1,000 consumer product that could grant your car semi-autonomous capabilities. Eleven months and one terse letter from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration later, Hotz killed the project.About a month after that, Hotz resurrected it as a two open-source efforts, splitting the hardware and software of the self-driving tech he had created with the res

Microsoft is starting 2017 by killing off a notable console exclusive.
Earlier today, Kotaku reported that the publisher had cancelled the action-role-playing game Scalebound. Microsoft has now confirmed  to the publication that the Platinum Games project slated for Xbox One and PC is no longer in development. Microsoft previously touted Scalebound as a big console exclusive (meaning it wasn’t coming out for its main competition, the PlayStation 4), often drawing attention to the

It isn’t easy to find the oddball gadgets across CES. This year’s big tech trade show in Las Vegas covered more than 2.6 million square feet of event space, with nearly 4,000 exhibitors. But as usual, we came back with our impressions of the weirdest gadgets that are coming in 2017.
There were lots of analog turntables, virtual reality headsets, home robots, selfie drones, and smart refrigerators. But those things seem so normal now, compared to some of the new weirdness.
LoveBox
The

A number of Silicon Valley leaders have banded together to support a crowdfunding effort to build the first coding academy in Gaza. The campaign, which started December 13, is called #PowerUpGazaGeeks and now has the backing of supporters such as Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, author Eric Ries, 500 Startups partner Dave McClure, Y Combinator partner Paul Graham, Techstars’ Brad Feld, and many others.
#PowerUpGazaGeeks had an initial goal of $95,000, which would have gone towards

One of the Xbox One’s biggest upcoming games is no more: today Microsoft revealed that action game Scalebound has been canceled. “After careful deliberation, Microsoft Studios has come to the decision to end production for Scalebound,” the company said in a statement. The game has been in the works for more than four years, and was being developed by Japanese studio Platinum Games, best known for fast-paced action titles like Bayonetta and Vanquish.
At Gamescom in 2015, Scalebo

Two units of the most interesting product Razer showed at this year’s CES were stolen from its booth yesterday, the company says. Both items were prototype models of a laptop, called Project Valerie, that has three 4K displays. Razer says the products were taken around 4PM on Sunday.
“Anyone who would do this clearly isn’t very smart.”
“We treat theft/larceny, and if relevant to this case, industrial espionage, very seriously — it is cheating, and cheating doe

Nintendo will soon give us all the details about its upcoming Switch console and games on Thursday and Friday, but we’re not going to wait.
On this week’s episode of the GamesBeat Decides podcast, host Jeffrey Grubb and cohost Mike Minotti decide the forgotten Nintendo franchises that the company needs to bring back on its hybrid home/handheld system that is due out in March. Of course we talk about Metroid and F-Zero, but we also remember some other favorites like Advance Wars that

GUEST: Popular visions of artificial intelligence often focus on robots and the dystopian future they will create for humanity, but to understand the true impact of AI, its skeptics and detractors should look at the future of cybersecurity.
The reason is simple: If we have any hope of winning the war on cybercrime, we have no choice but to rely on AI to supplement our human skills and experience.
With the number and sophistication of cybercriminals continuing to grow, the technology industry has

Have you ever wondered if you should have just one more drink? Your body may say no, but your mind objects. Proof wants to put an end to the internal debate with a wearable that functions as a stylish, but conspicuous breathalyzer.
Created by Milo Sensor, Proof is not only hardware but software. When you’re out on the town and choosing to partake in adult beverages, you wear the device, which has a sensor that measures the amount of ethanol in your skin. That is used to determine your bloo

A French company named Zhor-Tech was showing off two pairs of “smart” high heels at CES last week, adding to the list of tech companies that are trying to appeal to women with a variety of Bluetooth-connected, traditionally femme products.
The Zhor-Tech Digitsole heels come in two models: a pair with heated insoles and another pair with an adjustable, mechanical high heel. The heated insoles build on previous technology that Zhor-Tech has made under its Digitsole brand, whereas the a

Considering how cold and miserable it is in most of the Northern Hemisphere right now, the Bahamas sound lovely … especially with some high-level Hearthstone play to keep you entertained.
Blizzard announced today that the Winter Championship for its Hearthstone Championship Tour will take place in the Bahamas at the Melia Nassau Beach resort from March 23 to March 26. Some of the best players of the digital card game behemoth will compete there for a $250,000 prize pool. Th

Lucid Motors is a small electric car startup based out of Menlo Park, Calif. that has big dreams for the future. But not that big. Unlike some of its peers (I’m looking at you, Faraday Future), the company steers clear of making outsized promises about the nature of its car. It won’t transform transportation. It won’t reformat your life. It just wants to make a beautiful, zero-emission car that you can drive in style.
I got to take a ride in Lucid Motors’ Air prototype du

The Nissan Vmotion 2.0 isn't a typical concept car, full of amazing but ultimately meaningless specs and crazy power numbers. Instead, it's all about design. This is what Nissan says will be the design direction for its next generation of sedans, and it looks straight out of Minority Report or I, Robot.
Design is what separates cars from one another, and gives an unspoken voice to the brand. The Ford Mustang is the Mustang because of the design, not because of what’s under the hood (though

CES 2017 has come to a close, and looking back, it was a really interesting week. News aside, seeing the entire conference come together is really an impressive thing, with hundreds and hundreds of companies flocking to the middle of the desert to show off thousands of products in demos and keynotes. The whole thing feels perfectly choreographed and planned — almost like a Broadway show, in fact.So, with that in mind, along with the fact that the phrase “Consumer Electronic Show&rdqu

In a new wrinkle on the Internet of Things, you can now get a smart shower that notifies you when your water temperature is just right. All you do is preset what your favorite water temperature is and it remembers to restore it for you at the press of a button.
The U by Moen smart shower comes from North Olmsted, Ohio-based Moen, a well-known faucet brand in North America. It’s another example of big non-tech companies trying to take high-tech products to mainstream consumers. In Moen

PRESS RELEASE:Code Accelerates Development of Online-to-Offline Merchant Loyalty ProgramsSAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 9, 2017– The CardLinx Association (“CardLinx”) today announced the availability of a new open source card-linking software suite developed by Microsoft, one of its founding members. Microsoft has made the codebase for its Earn card-linking platform free and publicly available under the MIT License so that other companies can build on the cod

Spider silk is a miracle material that could create super-strong fabrics — but it’s also extremely hard to make. Scientists have created a machine that can spin something almost as good, which means we might be one step closer to the crazy durable textiles in the future.Spiders make silk by secreting a protein solution through a narrow duct. As the solution goes through the duct, the pressure makes the proteins link together to make the silk fiber. For the study published today in th

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs with a ridiculously long list of improvements. This is the first new build of 2017 and shows what’s coming in the company’s Windows 10 Creators Update, which is slated for release in “early 2017.”
Windows 10 is a service, meaning it was built in a very different way than its predecessors so it can be regularly updated with not just fixes but new features too. While Microsoft has released many such updates to date,

Microsoft is releasing a new Windows 10 preview build (15002) to testers today. It’s the first of the year, and it’s packed full of new features and changes. One of the first additions is a new tab preview bar in Microsoft Edge, which lets you visually glance at the rest of your tabs without leaving the page you’re on. Microsoft is also adding the ability to save and restore sets of tabs so it’s quicker to resume if you’ve closed all the tabs off or restarted. You c

Unlike most other Hollywood awards ceremonies, the Golden Globes take time to honor both the great television and movies of the past year. While it lacks serious clout compared to, say, the Academy Awards, the Globes are useful in gauging what was important on the big and small screen, and they help set the stage for later award shows. A movie or series that picks up a Golden Globe has a clearer shot at an Oscar or Emmy later on.
TV continues to leave film in the dust when it comes to diversity

Since the NES Classic was first announced, fans have been wondering if it would be possible to somehow add more games to Nintendo's diminutive retro console, which comes with 30 curated titles and no official options to add more. But over the weekend, news broke of the first successful NES Classic hack that manages to add more NES games to Nintendo's console.
As expected, the hack relies on the fact that the NES Classic is, in essence, simply a Linux computer running an emulator, which in theory

Panorama has announced the lineup for its summer 2017 music festival. The three-day event, which launched last year, will launch on Randall’s Island, New York on July 28th, and will feature the likes of Frank Ocean, Nine Inch Nails, and A Tribe Called Quest as headliners.
Despite it only being in its second year, Panorama is becoming one of New York City’s major festivals, rivaling Governor’s Ball in talent being called on to perform. In addition to the headliners, the event wi

CES 2017 went by in a blur, but one of the memorable moments was when LG introduced its 2.57-millimeter-thick Wallpaper TV.
The LG Signature W7 OLED 4K TV is a very impressive piece of technology. LG announced the television at its press event on Tuesday, and I felt like it got overshadowed during the rest of the show. It is so thin (0.15 inches) that you can mount it on a wall using magnets. To remove it from a wall, you actually peel it off, as if you were pulling wallpaper off the wall.

This trivia is over 9,000 …. somethings.
YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming‘s latest video looks at some of the little-known facts and cut content from video games based on the popular Dragon Ball Z anime. The show (and the manga that inspired it) features plenty of fighting of action, so it’s always translated well to the gaming space.
We’ve had dozens of Dragon Ball games (mostly from publisher Bandai Namco) for just about every console, from the Nintendo Enterta

La La Land’s actors, producers, and songwriters, plus director / screenwriter Damien Chazelle, all had plenty of time to talk about their movie at the Golden Globes last night. They were on stage to accept awards for the film seven times, a ceremony record. Emma Stone, receiving the award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, called the nostalgic classic Hollywood musical extravaganza a movie “for dreamers.” Damien Chazelle, accepting the award for Best Screenplay, thanked h

Apple has Siri, Google has Now (as well as Assistant), Samsung recently acquired Viv, and now it appears Nokia has set sights on building its own artificial intelligence assistant and it seems its name will be Viki. GSMInfo has obtained a document that indicates Nokia (the actual company, not the brand recently acquired by HMD Global) has filed a trademark request with the European Union for what might be an upcoming virtual assistant. Here’s what the filing reads

Our noses aren’t as good as they could be at smelling dangerous odors. So Aryballe Technologies has created a digital nose to do the sniffing for us.
Grenoble, France-based Aryballe showed its NeOse sniffing device at CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas last week. The NeOse is aimed at industrial users who need to know quickly if a scent is a sign of a dangerous gas leak.
The device uses optical sensor technology to identify molecules, mainly by measuring them and how they inter

Super Mario Bros is enjoying a bit of a revival at the moment, thanks to the runaway success of Super Mario Run and the nostalgia-tastic NES Classic Mini. Case in point: Mario, Luigi and friends are coming to a McDonald’s Happy Meal near you (provided you live in the UK, that is). Leaked promotional material sourced from Nintendo Life shows the iconic boxes will go on sale from Wednesday, January 11. Already, some people are reporting getting their hands on one a bit early. @nintendolife

Restaurant booking platform Resy has closed a series A funding round led by Airbnb, with participation from First Data Corporation, RSE Ventures, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures.
Founded out of New York in 2014, Resy offers a consumer-focused mobile app that promises people tables at “great restaurants” when they want it. The company also offers its software to restaurants, and works with more than a thousand eateries in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, a

It appears the much-awaited Galaxy S8 might hit the shelves earlier than expected. A new report suggest Samsung is considering releasing a limited batch of its upcoming flagship handset ahead of its official launch. Citing undisclosed “industry” sources, South Korean news outlet The Investor speculates the smartphone could start shipping as early as February or March. “There is a possibility of the S8 phones being showcased a month or two ahead of the

A new day, a new viral meat meme. #SaltBae is the internet-bestowed nickname of Nusret Gökçe, a butcher, restaurant owner, and conventionally attractive man, who this weekend managed to hold the internet’s attention for a brief while by pounding, slicing, and salting beef with great passion.
Gökçe began his career as a butcher when he was 16, according to Dubai food blog FooDiva, and now owns restaurants in Turkey and Dubai. If you are not lucky enough, as Tommy Hil

Ten years ago today Steve Jobs introduced the very first iPhone. He described it as three devices in one: “A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device.” But since its first unveiling, the iPhone has become much more than that. It’s a symbol of the tech industry, of the modern era as a whole, and has made Apple the largest company in the world in terms of market capitalization, with some even speculating

In the future, our cars will drive themselves. That much is clear. But what we choose to do with our time while being driven to our destinations has sparked a weird, little-noticed movement in the technology and auto industries to redefine automobiles as social environments on par with our homes and work places, a space also known as the “third place.”Take Rinspeed, for example. The Swiss automaker (and self-described think tank) showed up at CES this year with a concept car that tur

In a bid to breathe a little life into its promising augmented reality platform, Tango, Google is partnering with a number of museums around the world. Starting with the Detroit Institute of Arts (before moving on to other, as-yet-unnamed institutions), Google is offering visitors Tango-enabled devices that can be used to explore exhibits in augmented reality.At the DIA, visitors can request a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro (the first Tango-enabled smartphone) from the front desk, and use it to find out more