Technology news

Donald Trump wants comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey to get into politics.
On Friday, Harvey met with Trump in Trump Tower to discuss the Family Feud host getting involved with Ben Carson's inner cities initiative. Carson, the GOP presidential candidate drop-out and surgeon with no government experience, is up for Trump's housing secretary.
SEE ALSO: Steve Harvey can't fathom how anyone could want to date an Asian man
Harvey posted a statement about the meeting on Twitter, calling it "con

Great news, Nintendo Switch fans. We've found the console's first sleeper hit: Snipperclips.
The two-player version of this cooperative puzzle game — there's a four-player mode as well — follows Snip (the red one) and Clip (the yellow one). They look like blobs of color cut out of construction paper, with cheery faces drawn onto each one.
SEE ALSO: Nintendo Switch releases worldwide on March 3
Your goal in a given level varies. In one, you might need to position each character in suc

Taking candy from a baby is easy, but there's zero reason that parents should be handing it out to strangers on a plane to buy cooperation in case their kid screams. No matter what the internet says.
On Friday, reddit user "Fe_Mike" posted a photo of gift baggy and a little note “written” by a three-month old with the comment, “Lady on the airplane just handed this to all of the rows around us. She now has an entire team of passengers ready to help.” 
If this sounds

We got to try Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Nintendo Switch, today—playing seven different games, holding the new Joy-Con controllers in roughly five different ways.
Our first real experience with the Switch and its new Joy-Con controllers might as well start with the goofy-looking fighting game Nintendo unveiled during their presentation out of Tokyo last night, called Arms. 
SEE ALSO: Everything we now know about the Nintendo Switch
The Nintendo staffer manning one of the Arms

 The Switch arrives at one of the most tumultuous moments in Nintendo’s long and storied history. These last several months have seen the gaming giant finally get a little wind in its sails, thanks to the back-to-back successes of the Niantic-produced Pokémon GO and its own in-house creation, Super Mario Run. Both seem like somewhat begrudging victories for the company, after years… Read More

Ryan Gosling does not want to watch his old dance videos (you know, the ones you have probably seen on the internet), but Graham Norton has acquired them, so watch them he must.
To make matters worse, he must watch them with Ben Affleck, Sienna Miller and his La La Land co-star Emma Stone. 
Do you think Emma Stone wishes they had used that choreography for La La Land? Probably, right?Bull shark steals a fish right off a fisherman's line
Totally gnarly cat hits the slopes for some radical s

Donald Trump released a brand new list of celebrity performers for his inauguration today and the result is still a little short.
The presidential inaugural committee has struggled to attract celebrities to perform at the event, or at least ones you don't have to Google to find out who they are. Even though Trump has attracted new names to perform, the number pales in comparison to the number of A-list celebrities who'll be protesting him.
SEE ALSO: Can we please stop branding compassion as 'lib

Neither WhatsApp nor The Guardian are having a good day.
The UK-based newspaper published a scathing exclusive report early Friday morning, purporting to reveal disturbing news about the encryption used by WhatsApp's, the Facebook-owned messaging service. Almost as soon as the article went live, however, security experts took to the internet to publicly question the nature of its claims.  
Late in the day Friday, Open Whisper Systems, the team behind the end-to-end encryption service used b

"Oh my f*ck."
Fisherman were surprised to see a rogue bull shark doing a little bit of opportunist fishing on the Breede River in Western Cape, South Africa, last month. The men noticed the shark in the water, and sure enough, it snagged a fish right off their line as they reeled it in to the boat.
While bull sharks are commonly seen near the mouth of the river, this video was taken 28 kilometers upstream, so it was quite a shock to see the shark in an area where people typically play in the ri

Kaitlyn Tiffany: The Chainsmokers. What do you know about them?
Lizzie Plaugic: They love art.
Kaitlyn: But did you know they’re behind the hit song “Closer,” which was inescapable in America this past year? Or that they’re an electronic pop-duo made up of two men named Drew Taggart and Alex Pall? Or that they’ve claimed their penises are 17.34 inches when put together?
Lizzie: They love math.
Kaitlyn: Did you know that they have a new song? It’s called &ldquo

After the Nintendo Switch event on Jan. 13, our hype for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is at an all-time high.
We, being two guys who love video games and play them all the time, came up with a few features we hope the newest installment in the legendary franchise includes.
SEE ALSO: Where I see myself in 10 years if 'Fantastic Beasts' is good vs. if it is bad
The game comes out on March 3, so it's unlikely that Nintendo will be able to include any of our very good and real ideas in ti

Beloved children's book author, bisexual, whirlwind romancer, mistress— did we mention beloved children's book author?
A new book about Margaret Wise Brown, most commonly known for penning Goodnight Moon, has revealed some incredibly badass things about her personal life, including her sexuality, affairs and thoughts on kids. All of it is made more iconic when you consider she was born in 1910. 
SEE ALSO: Comedian trolls subway riders with jaw-dropping books about Trump
In the Great G

A seemingly innocuous men's boot available from a retailer on Amazon has been recalled after a Redditor discovered it left a tread print that looked a lot like a swastika.
Earlier this week a user on the site posted an image of their newly purchased New Men's Polar Fox Winter Cap Toe Wool Lining Boot. A side-by-side shot showed the print the tread left.
SEE ALSO: Virtual reality 'shoes' are here and they're as weird as they sound
The uploader captioned the photo, which has since had over three m

After more than 25 years since its arcade release, Street Fighter II is making its comeback on the Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo revealed Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers at the Nintendo Switch Presentation Thursday, putting a new spin on the classic early-'90s fighting game with both old school and HD versions in the same game.SEE ALSO: Everything we now know about the Nintendo Switch
Players can choose to go toe-to-toe in a pixelated, square resolution reminiscent of the original SFI

Researchers in Australia finally caught on camera what they were looking for: a new species of seadragon in its natural habitat. 
Footage released this week in Marine Biodiversity Records shows the elusive "Ruby Seadragon" in the waters off Australia's remote west coast.
"I fully expected that we knew all the seadragon species that are out there, but the discovery showed us that we can still find big, charismatic, bright red fish that no one has ever seen before," Josefin Stiller of the Scr

The splashiest auto news coming out of CES and the North American International Auto Show has been about new models, self-driving tech, and wild concepts. But in a quieter series of moves, automakers also continued to strengthen their control over what it is we're able to do inside our cars, particularly when it comes to the apps that run on infotainment systems.
Though carmakers have generally embraced Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto, many are hoping to establish an alternative app sy

Fans of some of Nintendo’s more unique features may be in for a disappointment with the Switch.
Neither the Nintendo 3DS’s StreetPass feature or Nintendo’s social network Miiverse will appear on the company’s new Switch console. That’s what David Young, Nintendo of America’s assistant manager of public relations, told GamesBeat today at the Switch event in New York City.
“I can answer that we’re not going to be using Miiverse for Nintendo Switch,&r

SpaceX lost money in 2015 because of a rocket explosion, according to internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The documents also show financial details of the satellite internet business SpaceX hopes to launch to fund its Mars mission.The Journal reviewed SpaceX financial results and forecasts, which aren’t publicly available, from 2011 to 2015. In general, the documents show that the company has huge goals, but isn’t very close to living up to them. For example, an e

GUEST: The Amazon Echo and Echo Dot were the best-selling products across Amazon this year. We are on the cusp of an era where talking to machines will be as natural as talking to humans.
With artificial assistants there is a pressure to provide an experience; to give the customer an interaction that is as both useful and emotionally satisfying as talking to a human. A question to ask: Is there an imperative to make AI communicate like we do or to be understood? Will we start to change how

Human rights groups from around the world have delivered more than a million signatures to the White House, asking President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the man who blew the whistle on warrantless government surveillance of all Americans.
Given the political climate, the timing couldn’t be more urgent. Once Donald Trump comes into office, no such pardon will be possible. In fact, Trump has suggested Snowden should be executed. Snowden can be viewed by patriotic Americans as a fe

Hearthstone could be seeing some big changes, we learned, as two of its most important developers talked to players on Twitch today.
Game director Ben Brode and game designer Dean Ayala answered questions from fans during a Q&A livestream for the leading digital card game. This comes after the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan expansion launched in early December. The set’s new cards have created new decks and strategies. Some fans are concerned about some cards being too powerful (hello,

 In 2013, the government estimated that it issued approximately 60 of these national security letters per day. But, until last summer, no company was allowed to admit that it had received one. This week, the content delivery network Cloudflare revealed that it received a demand for customer data from the FBI in 2013. Cloudflare has been prevented from talking about the demand for years, but… Read More

Andy Rubin, co-founder of the Android operating system, is reportedly building out a new company and working on several new products including a premium smartphone with an edge-to-edge display “that lacks a surrounding bezel.” Bloomberg just published a story with many details on Rubin’s new company, Essential, which he’s preparing to formally announce and lead as CEO.Essential is said to be planning several products — both in mobile and for the smart home, accordin

I spent about 10 minutes strolling through the lush green fields of Hyrule before I decided to change things up. I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild through a Nintendo Switch docked with a nice big television, which created an impressive sense of scale, showcasing just how huge of a world was out in front of me. But I didn’t feel like being tethered anymore. I deconstructed my controller, snapped its pieces on the side of the Switch tablet, and within a few seconds I was

A few days after being accused by the Environmental Protection Agency of cheating on its emissions tests, Fiat Chrysler is now being investigated by the Justice Department for failing to disclose secret software that allegedly facilitated the fraud, according to Bloomberg.Earlier this week, an EPA administrator said FCA’s software appeared to be in violation of the Clean Air Act and was likely contributing to “illegal pollution.” The EPA stopped short of calling the software &l

The outgoing head of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, used his final public speech to make a closing argument for maintaining net neutrality, the signature achievement of his time at the agency.
“The overarching goal of the new policies was to promote a thriving broadband ecosystem, and that’s exactly what has happened,” Wheeler said.
Under Trump, Republicans will regain a majority at the FCC and have already made clear their intention to begin pushing back o

Like apparently everyone on the planet, I find it hard to keep up with New Year’s resolutions long-term. Psychology tells us that making idealistic plans for the future is easy, but in the present, we’re still stuck with the conditions that helped build all the bad habits we’re trying to overcome. So this year, instead of making sprawling, abstract resolutions, I’m focusing on something much more manageable: I’m assigning myself one useful, measurable goal a day. An

Due in part to a Verge report from last month, a group of tech workers in Silicon Valley has announced that it will hold a demonstration outside the headquarters of Palantir Technologies in Palo Alto next Wednesday to protest the company’s involvement in intelligence systems used by federal immigration authorities. Since Donald Trump’s upset victory in November, Palantir has made headlines both for its close relationship with the incoming Republican administration and its involvement

Nintendo finally unveiled launch details for its its new Switch console today (to recap: March 3rd worldwide for $299). While the pricing and availability are big news, the bigger news for me was the ability to actually play with the new console at an event in London. The console consists of a 6.2-inch 720p display, with the ability to attach two Joy-Cons to either side of the tablet portion. It’s tablet hardware that’s designed to be used at home in a special Switch Dock, or on the

Takata will plead guilty to a criminal charge related to a cover-up of its defective airbag inflators, and will pay $1 billion in fines and restitution to affected individuals and automakers who purchased its defective airbags, the AP reports.
The company will pay a $25 million criminal fine, $125 million to individuals injured by defective airbags, and $850 million to automakers that purchased the inflators, which were used in some 70 million airbags. The defective inflators have been blamed fo

You don’t get to keep the games you get as part of Nintendo’s Switch Online service.
Nintendo is beginning a paid online gaming network for Switch that is similar to Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus, except it has a few key differences. Switch Online will begin charging a monthly fee in the fall, and active members will get access to online multiplayer, a party system, and a monthly game download. For those downloads, Nintendo is offering up Nintendo Entertainment System and Super

Deadpool made it to the Golden Globes, so the Oscars can’t be that far of a stretch, right? In a new promo spot, the Merc with a Mouth lays out a pretty solid case for why his film debut deserves a Best Picture nomination, including how many chimichangas made it onto the set.
‘Deadpool’ has a real chance of earning a Best Picture nomination
Of course, it’s worth noting that Deadpool actually has a real chance of earning a handful of technical and non-technical Academy Awa

DirecTV Now has been plagued with errors in the month and a half since the streaming service was launched by AT&T. Subscribers have complained of being unable to watch shows, frequent interruptions, missing features, billing issues, and more pretty much nonstop since the service’s November 30th launch. Many say it’s simply unusable.
Since just this Monday, there have been over 200 active forum threads on AT&T’s website complaining about DirecTV Now problems. Meanwhile,

Nintendo is showing off a cute game on its Treehouse Live stream called SnipperClips.
In the two-player game, you play as a cute character that looks like an upside down pencil eraser with legs. How’s that for creativity?
You can snip your character and create the right shape to accomplish various tasks. In the demo on the stream, two characters twisted their shapes around so that both could fit into different halves of a heart. In another part, the characters had to pick up a basketball a

Even our dumb, human-driven automobiles have dozens of electronic chips these days. And many of them are microcontrollers based on ARM’s low-power chip designs. But the world is changing, as cars become connected and smart enough to drive themselves.
Modern cars are so jammed with electronics that they can’t fit anymore. This is driving changes in the supply chain, as lead suppliers can’t supply just a point solution anymore, and vehicle subsystems may be controlled by more pow

Bowser is best known as the spiky foil to Nintendo’s golden boy Mario. He’ll lend a claw to Mario’s cause when it suits him, but he’s still an obsessive kidnapper of ladies who tangles with the mustachioed plumber on an annual basis. But there’s another, softer side to this fire-breathing, turtleshell of evil. Bowser is an attentive and loving father.I’ve got the proof from Nintendo right here. As part of a demonstration of the Switch’s parental controls

Nintendo has revealed prices for the its peripherals for the upcoming Switch game console, and the prices aren’t cheap. While the base console costs $300 when it ships on March 3, the accessories can bring the cost up quite a bit.
The $300 price itself is the same as what the Wii U cost at launch in 2012, but it’s more expensive than the original Wii, which debuted for $250 in 2006. The Switch has only 32GB of storage, and gamers may have to spend money in the future on more spa