Technology news

GUEST: This is a write-up covering the development of my startup, Teller, and the launch of our first pilot program with Brooklyn Cooperative.
Although I don’t love the name “chatbot,” it is the easiest way to refer to a conversational messaging agent. There are several different levels of chatbots, from simple fraud alert messages, where you respond with a “yes” or “no,” to sophisticated agents that can hold entire conversations. I imagined that the ser

Last week, Amazon.com filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission, seeking permission to run experiments on a number of frequency bands that might have some connection to the company’s work with delivery drones.The application requests permission for a “five-month experimental special temporary authority to operate on selected” frequencies to test equipment and software “designed to support innovative communications capabilities and functionalities.&rd

Video game tapes have shrunk a bit over the past 30 years.
To save the battery life in its upcoming Switch console, Nintendo is not using spinning discs like Blu-rays. Instead, the hybrid handheld/home system will use a card-style medium similar to what the publisher used on the 3DS.
During a livestream from a media event in New York City today, Nintendo of America employees provided fans with a close-up view of what the company is calling Switch game cards.
Here’s a look at the back and f

Now that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has been out in theaters for a month, the veil of secrecy has been lifted and we’ve learned quite a lot about about how the film came together. This is pretty typical for most movies, save for the fact that Rogue One went through some extensive reshoots to tighten it up.Disney put an enormous amount of effort into Rogue One, bringing in writer and director Tony Gilroy in June to help fix up the film by writing new dialogue and directing some additional

China as a nation has a checkered past with the video game industry. For example, for almost a decade and a half, home video game consoles themselves were banned in the country, but due to cultural differences, internet cafes and VR arcades have all been booming as of late. As a result of this trepidation it comes as no surprise then that China’s media regulator would have concerns over augmented reality (AR) games such as Pokémon Go.
According to an original report by Yang Fan for

Jude Law evidently isn’t a child of the internet. Despite playing the Church’s holiest supervillain in HBO’s The Young Pope, Law was unprepared for how easily the show could be turned into memes. In fact, he had no idea what memes were before the show starting popping up in them. Minor spoilers ahead.
“I’ve been completely unaware of what a meme was.”
“Having spent the last week in New York and doing lots of press I’ve become very aware,” Law

Google has a lot of self-driving cars that have driven a lot of miles, but so far, no commercial use for them. But that could change if the Silicon Valley giant pursues its rumored plans of developing an autonomous ride-sharing network to compete with Uber and Lyft. Recently, Google filed a patent application that could be seen as the first shot across Uber’s bow.The application, first noticed earlier this month by the website Patent Yogi, is for efficiently determining pickup and destinat

GUEST: A few months ago, a friend called me excitedly to share a startup idea. He was an investor’s dream entrepreneur: engineering undergrad with an MBA from MIT, worked at Google, and literally wrote a book on the core tech behind his startup. He launched a product, was getting a little attention, and was at an inflection point. He probably could have raised funding based on this traction and asked me, “Should I take the plunge and do this full time? I think I’m ready.”

Cars that drive you home on their own. Cars that connect to other cars and also to the stoplight in front of you. Cars that are much safer and reduce accidents.
This is what we can expect in the next few years as AI and machine learning hit the road (literally), helping us drive smarter and even offering to take over the driving for us entirely. A radical next step from what modern cars can already do in terms of automated driving, these vehicles will let you take a nap on the highway. They will

GUEST: While the details of the Trump administration’s economic policies are still to be determined, the President-elect’s comments on the campaign trail indicate he is ready to shake up the status quo. Recent interviews and early cabinet selections have given us a preview of his plans. In particular, the new administration seems eager to simplify complex regulations and to advance initiatives to bring jobs and capital back from overseas.
As the specifics of those policies take shape

Leah Reich was one of the first internet advice columnists. Her column "Ask Leah" ran on IGN, where she gave advice to gamers for two and a half years. During the day, Leah is Slack’s user researcher, but her views here do not represent her employer. How to be Human runs every other Sunday. You can write to her at [email protected] and read more How to be Human here.
Hey Leah,I’m a 25-year-old male and I don’t really know what to do about my girlfriend (22). I have been in a

A year after it announced that it would no longer use elephants in its performances, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will hold its final performances in May of this year.
The Cirus’s parent company, Feld Entertainment Inc, revealed that it would hold its final shows in at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, in Rhode Island on May 7, and at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, on May 21, 2017. According to the company, the removal of the

The Internet of Things is expected to grow quickly to tens of billions of connected devices, from smart refrigerators to smart showers to smart cruise ships.
But at some point, the wireless data networks won’t be able to handle all that traffic from the connected devices. That’s why tech companies want to upgrade to 5G wireless, which is a fifth-generation mobile network that can transmit data at gigabits per second, compared to the single-digit megabits per second that we get today

AMC has greenlit a documentary series that will explore the history of science fiction, hosted by director James Cameron. James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction will run for six episodes and will debut in 2018.The Museum of Pop Culture of Seattle, home to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (of which Cameron is a member) will be consulting on the series, which will spend each episode exploring the “‘big questions’ that humanity has contemplated throughout histo

It was an hour into the new year on January 1st, and I was on the shores of a frozen lake in Rikkenstorp, a few hours from Stockholm. My friends and I had rented a house to spend a lovely New Year’s Eve playing board games and eating insane amounts of food. After toasting to the beginning of the new year and before heading to bed, we decided to go out to watch the stars. And that was when I witnessed the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.
The air was cold but not freezing, and the w

In December, Tesla rolled out a new update that limited vehicles driving with its Autopilot engaged to drive at the speed limit on an undivided road. The move was met with protests from drivers, and now, a new update will once again allow vehicles to cruise along slightly above the posted limit.Prior to December’s update, drivers had been able to set their vehicle to drive at up to 5 miles above the posted speed limit on roads and undivided highways. This new update (8.0.2.52.22) allows dr

Facebook will begin rolling out its fake news filter in Germany, The Financial Times reports, where lawmakers have expressed growing concern over the spread of fabricated news stories and Russian interference ahead of national elections later this year. The social network will begin fact-checking and flagging fake news for users in Germany over the coming weeks, according to the FT. The tools were first launched in the US last month, as part of a partnership with independent fact-checking organi

In 2017, Mark Wahlberg is the perfect muse for a certain sort of creative. As the star of Lone Survivor (based on a true story of tragedy in Afghanistan), Deepwater Horizon (based on a true story of tragedy at sea), and now Patriots Day (based on a true story of tragedy in Boston), he’s the poster boy for films about needless violence against American bodies — an affectless prism through which viewers can project their own pre-conceived (and carefully catered to) notions of American

Designing new cards for digital card brawler like Hearthstone isn’t easy, and changes are bound to happen before the final release.
It turns out that the whole Jade Golem idea used to look a lot different. In its final form for December’s Mean Street of Gadgetzan expansion, certain cards for the Rogue, Shaman, and Druid summon a Jade Golem. The first Jade Golem is a 1/1 minion, but the second one would be 2/2, then 3/3, and so on. But it didn’t always work that.
GamesBeat

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify in court on Tuesday, January 17 for a potentially explosive lawsuit that claims the Oculus VR startup he acquired for $2 billion was based on stolen technology.
The more than two-year-old suit against Facebook by game maker Zenimax has culminated with a public trial by jury in a Dallas court that began on January 9. Zenimax is seeking $2 billion in damages against Facebook, which is the amount the social networking giant initially paid to buy Oculus in 2

A small autonomous bus called an Arma is running a short route along Las Vegas’ Fremont Street, marking, according to transit operator Keolis, the first time a self-driving bus has moved passengers on an American public road.
The route is short—just three blocks. And this is only a pilot test, which started on January 11th and will end January 20th. While the test lasts, the fully-electric bus can carry around a dozen passengers, moving at a top speed limited to 16 miles per hour, th

The VR community was hit with quite a shock yesterday. Guerrilla Cambridge, the Sony-owned developer behind PlayStation VR multiplayer first-person shooter Rigs: Mechanized Combat League, was confirmed to be closing just a few months on from the game’s launch last October.
Needless to say, shutting the doors to the studio behind one of the biggest titles on the new hardware comes as a big surprise. RIGS might not have exactly been the new Call of Duty, but it was one of the better rev

After 146 years, the Greatest Show on Earth is closing. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus told the Associated Press that the show will shut down for good in May.
The American icon tried to revive its fortunes with modern technology, but it couldn’t stop declining attendance. Public tastes changed, and the group had damaging battles with animal rights groups over its treatment of elephants (retired earlier) and big cats, such as lions and tigers.
“There isn’t any one

GUEST: A true genius, Alan Turing was played brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch inThe Imitation Game — the movie about his life and role in ending WWII — which introduced him to a whole new generation of admirers. It was Turing who predicted machine learning would play a big role in modern computing in his article the “Turing Test,” way back in 1950.
Indeed, Turing was way ahead of his time, which was a major theme in the movie, but now the world has caugh

The BBC and AMC had a hit recently with their 6-part adaptation of John le Carré’s novel The Night Manager. The show picked up three Golden Globes for Best Actor (Tom Hiddleston, Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Laurie), and Best Supporting Actress (Olivia Colman). Now, the two networks are turning to another one of le Carré’s novels: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
According to Variety, the project will be written by Simon Beaufoy, who won an Academy Award for his screen

The Hunters weren’t always Grimy Goons.
The newest expansion for Blizzard’s digital card game behemoth Hearthstone, December’s Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, introduced the idea of tri-class gangs. Three of the game’s nine classes belong in one of three gangs: the Kabal, the Grimy Goons, and the Jade Lotus.
Hunters ended up in the Grimy Goons, which players can use cards to buff others in their hands. But according to senior game designer Peter Whalen, Rexxar (and altern

GUEST: At one of my recent talks in New York about AI in the supply chain, one of the key questions that came up was “Are you talking about robots?”
You see, AI has been romanticized into this abstract term that conjures images of walking robots doing your household chores while you just sit back and relax.
But what does it really mean, and where did the term actually come from? Artificial intelligence encompasses the new paradigm of machine learning and big data processes that enabl

The road to photorealistic VR is long, but Otoy is helping to shorten it with the integration of its technology into the free version of Unity.
The company announced last month that its Octane Renderer would be coming to the world’s most popular game development engine, allowing users to import its ORBX file format to view them within the engine. It’s a huge step forward for creating visually believable VR environments; Otoy is employing lightfield technology to create scenes th

During all the fuss about the Nintendo Switch yesterday, 505 Games announced a new game called Quarantine. It wasn’t the best timing, but I thought the new original title was worth a second look.
Quarantine is about waging a global war against the outbreak of a disease. It debuts on Steam Early Access for $15 on February 9.
The single-player, turn-based strategy game was created by developer Sproing and will be published by 505 Games.
As the director of Pandemic Defense, an international b