Technology news

Near, far, wherever they are, we believe that Barack Obama and Joe Biden's bromance does go on.
With inauguration day only hours away, it's time to look back on the laughter, the tears and the fierce brotherly love that made the Obama and Biden friendship the beloved First Bromance of America that it's been over these past eight years.
SEE ALSO: 10 inspiring moments from Barack Obama's presidency in GIFs
From ice-cream socials and grand birthday gestures to supportive speeches and financial assi

A little confession from me. I was homeschooled (that's not the confession part), and in 8th grade my algebra textbook had the answers to half the problems in the back. And when I was stumped, I would cheat.
Sorry, mom!
Of course, cheating at math is a terrible way to learn, because the whole point isn't to know the answer to 2x + 2 = 7x - 5, it's to understand the methodology that can solve any like problem.
But what if you could cheat at your homework and learn? That seems to be the premise be

Uber will pay $20 million to settle a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that it misled drivers about earnings and vehicle financing, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. The consumer protection agency alleged that Uber publicized misleading statements about the amount of money drivers could earn in 20 cities. For example, Uber said drivers could earn up to $90,000 a year in New York City and $74,000 in San Francisco.As part of the settlement, Uber is not admitting any wrongdoing, but ha

The mod-sharing platform ModDrop said it has acquired the premier Torchlight modding community site, runicgamesfansite.com (RGF). The site boasts over 20 million mods downloaded and hosts more than 3,200 community uploads.
The goal is to help the mod community, where sophisticated users modify existing games with new enhancements (mods) that gamers can choose to adopt, for Torchlight. If the mods are popular, they can generate more players for an existing game.
“This is an excellent commun

Ginger emoji are in the works, according to a report by Emojipedia. The Unicode Committee will be meeting next week at the Apple campus in Cupertino, CA to discuss how to implement emoji with red hair in upcoming Unicode standards.
A proposal suggests several methods for adding a red-headed option. One would be to offer a man or woman emoji with red hair, for which users can pick the skin tone. Another would be to add red hair and white skin as a modifier option for current emoji that can be cus

(Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp forecast full-year earnings above Wall Street estimates and reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue, helped by growth in newer areas such as cloud-based services and analytics.
IBM’s shares were up 2.9 percent at $171.64 in after-hours trading on Thursday.
The Armonk, New York-based company forecast adjusted earnings of at least $13.80 per share for fiscal 2017, beating the average analyst estimate of $13.74, according to Thoms

The United Launch Alliance is kicking off its first mission of the year with the launch of its Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening. The vehicle will be sending an infrared surveillance satellite into a high orbit for the US Air Force. Take off is scheduled for 7:46PM ET, though ULA has a 40-minute launch window in which the rocket can launch anytime before 8:26PM ET.
Called the SBIRS GEO-3, the satellite going into space tonight is part of the Defense Department’s Spa

GUEST: Trust is the foundation of all relationships, particularly in media. If you don’t trust your agency, you shouldn’t be using them — especially related to advertising. There’s a lot of talk in the marketing and media domain at the moment regarding transparency related to media buying. The infamous ANA report on media transparency in the ad industry has done its part in stirring up this debate, which has been brewing under the surface for decades.
When

Enterprise software company Atlassian today disclosed new financial figures about Trello, the task management startup that it recently acquired.
The company said it expects Trello to bring in $1 million in the third year of Atlassian’s 2017 fiscal year, which will end on March 31, and $4 million in the entire 2017 fiscal year, which will end on June 30. Meanwhile as a whole Atlassian aims to generate $155-$157 million in revenue in the current quarter and $611-$615 million in the fiscal ye

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Customers are pretty, pretty clear about what keeps them loyal to the brands they love — and it’s not how hot your CMO is. The number one differentiator in the market is a

On Friday, hundreds of thousands of people will arrive in downtown Washington for the inauguration of Donald Trump. Many will be there to celebrate the incoming president, but a significant number will also be there to signal opposition, as part of the Women’s March and other demonstrations. Given the incoming President’s reliance on private security forces distinct from the Secret Service, it’s unclear how authorities will respond to the protests. If you’re planning on a

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will soon star in his own DC Comics movie. Deadline reports that the actor will star in Black Adam, a companion to the upcoming Shazam! where he’s already set to play the superpowered anti-hero.
But who will play Shazam?
Johnson has been linked to the Shazam! project since 2014 when the casting was officially announced. Since then, Warner Bros. has been relatively quiet about the film, making no announcements about who will fill the title role. However

Intel announced the Compute Card at CES 2017 a few weeks ago. It’s a credit card-sized device that’s essentially a full computer, complete with CPU, GPU, and wireless connectivity. It’s designed to let hardware manufacturers easily add computer internals to smart devices, all built around a single, upgradable standard.
The new Nexdock is one of the first products we’ve seen announced that looks to take advantage of the Intel Compute Card. The company is actually listed as

In a Q&A on Periscope today, Julian Assange continued to squirm around questions over what exactly would be required for him to fulfill his promise to face charges in the United States should President Obama grant clemency to Chelsea Manning, as he did on Tuesday.
The problem, Assange seems to say, is that there are currently no public charges against him. The US Justice Department has been investigating Assange and WikiLeaks for seven years over the publication of sensitive documents leaked

Mario is slowing down to more of a trot.
Super Mario Run has dropped out of the top 50 grossing iOS apps in the U.S., according to mobile app store market intelligence group Sensor Tower. The auto-running platformer is ranked at No. 52.
Above: Super Mario Run’s ranking in the iTunes’ U.S. top grossing apps list.Image Credit: Sensor Tower
Super Mario Run shot to the top of the charts when it came out on December 15 for iOS, reaching 40 million downloads in four days and becoming one o

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is going to great lengths to protect his privacy on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where he purchased a 700-acre plot of land in 2014 for more than $100 million. Starting last month, Zuckerberg began filing lawsuits against Hawaiian land owners who own small slices of his estate that were passed down from generation to generation, according to the Honolulu Star Advisor. As many as eight suits have been filed against hundreds of people, some of whom are dead. Notably,

GUEST: The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) might have many marketing execs rolling their eyes and saying “Not again!”
As they well know, too often, marketing decisions come down to a guessing game. Marketing automation and analytics software can help, but the testing and measuring tools they offer only generate insights after the fact. And then there’s the meta-decision: How do you know which marketing technology will actually deliver actionable results?
Artificial intel

Under the Obama administration, NASA has had a dynamic eight years. The Mars Curiosity rover landed, intact, on the surface of the Red Planet, and the Kepler mission launched to find planets outside our Solar System. NASA’s Juno spacecraft put itself into orbit around Jupiter, while the New Horizons mission flew by Pluto, marking the first time the tiny world had ever been explored. All the while, the space agency has maintained a steady human presence in lower Earth orbit, and plans to ex

Like most of its competitors, General Motors is betting hard on autonomous cars being the future of transportation. But unlike Ford, Google, Uber, and others, GM has been pretty secretive about its self-driving cars, refusing to release images or footage of any public tests.Today, Kyle Vogt, the head of the self-driving startup Cruise Automation that was recently acquired by GM for a reported $1 billion, tweeted dash camera footage of what’s described as a recent test of its self-driving c

The HBO TV show Westworld has created a Google Assistant action that will talk to you about a trip to Westworld park, a world where AI-powered robots are starting to become self-aware and violent.
You speak with the Google Assistant service by saying “OK Google, let me talk to Aeden at Westworld.”
Aeden is a chatbot that made its debut last fall on the Discover Westworld website. It acts like your travel agent and answers questions like “What is the maze?&rd

The studio behind the cherished Bravely Default Japanese role-playing games are working with the makers of a high-end texture engine used for PC, console, and VR development.
The Belgian graphics middleware company Graphine announced today that it is partnering with Japan-based game engine and middleware company Silicon Studio to bring Graphine’s advanced texture streaming software for PC and console games and virtual reality development, Granite SDK, to the country. Granite SDK boast

 Keenon Werling would be the first to agree that conversational AI is regularly overhyped. So instead of taking the traditional approach and gloating about a glitzy new deeper learning algorithm to pitch his new venture Eloquent Labs, Werling instead opted to differentiate by optimizing something far more low-tech, people. The startup’s special sauce is embracing a mix of AI,… Read More

Stripe is looking to expand its program dedicated to helping foreign entrepreneurs do business in the U.S. To do so, it has hired Sarah Heck, the former lead advisor to President Obama on global entrepreneurship. She begins her role leading external affairs for its Atlas service in February.
A seasoned veteran of governmental affairs, Heck played a part in highlighting entrepreneurship in Cuba during President Obama’s visit last year. It was at this time when Stripe extended Atla

REVIEW: When Apple introduced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in September, it presented consumers with a sort of problem: most headphones and earphones wouldn’t work with these smartphones, because they don’t have a headphone jack. (“Courage”!)
But at the same event Apple proposed a solution: new wireless headphones and earphones, including AirPods, a wireless version of the classic white EarPods.
In addition to letting you make phone calls and listen to music, AirPods

Derek Jeter just hit another home run—in securing startup financing, that is.
The former New York Yankees shortstop co-founded The Players’ Tribune, a site featuring content created by athletes, in 2014. Now, the company is announcing it has raised $40 million in a new round, bringing its total funding to $58 million.
Silicon Valley-based IVP led the round. Previous lead investor NEA also provided additional funding, as did first-time investors like GV, the venture capital arm of Alp

The Tesla driver killed in a crash while the Autopilot system was activated last year would have seen the tractor trailer for at least seven seconds prior to impact, according to the NHTSA investigation of the accident. This should have given the driver enough time to take “some action,” said Bryan Thomas, communications director for NHTSA, though it’s not known “whether that was enough time to avoid or mitigate the crash.”
The NHTSA investigation report called seve

Navigational devices for bikes are nothing new, but Beeline is a different kind of bike GPS. The Bluetooth device doesn’t give riders a direct route to their desired location, but instead points them in the right direction with an approximation of how far they have left to travel. Riders get to devise their own route and discover their city, or something.
Beeline sounds exciting because designing your own adventure is apparently the dream for a renegade biker, but I still don’t total

Ubisoft is going to the movies.
The French video game publisher announced today that Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan, director of Traffic, will write and direct the upcoming film version of Ubisoft’s The Division. Ubisoft Motion Pictures will develop the film with Jake Gyllenhaal’s and Riva Marker’s (Beasts of No Nation) Nine Stories and Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films. The Division is a massively multiplayer online shooter that takes place in a post-pandemic New Yor

Technology startups are fleeting and prone to failure, cropping up and disappearing as fast as our screen-addled attention spans. But rarely does one stick out quite like Adoptly, an apparently earnest attempt at making a Tinder-like mobile app for child adoption. The four-person operation, which quietly launched a Kickstarter campaign last week, says it wants to connect prospective parents with adoptable children.In a concept video, adults swipe right or left to accept or reject kids looking fo

We’re just getting settled in at the Sundance Film Festival, but virtual reality film companies are already using the show to announce new VR series — and one of them, yes, is based on the cult 1992 science fiction film The Lawnmower Man.
You may know The Lawnmower Man as “that movie everyone brings up when someone mentions virtual reality, after The Matrix and before Ready Player One.” You might also remember it as a seminal depiction of the technology as a kind of low-p

Tesla knew its customers were likely going to misuse its semi-autonomous Autopilot system, and tested all the ways that could happen, according to a government report released today on the fatal accident last year in Florida.
“It appears that over the course of researching and developing Autopilot, Tesla considered the possibility that drivers could misuse the system in a variety of ways, including those identified above — i.e., through mode confusion, distracted driving, and use of

Tesla’s crash rate dropped 40 percent after the electric carmaker installed its semi-autonomous Autopilot software, government regulators reported today.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration just released its report on the May 2016 fatal accident involving a Tesla Model S. Within the document, the government reports that the number of crashes dropped dramatically after Tesla introduced Autopilot in 2015, a fact that would seem to bolster the company’s claims about the sa

XCOM fans are going to have a busy day.
2K announced today that the free Long War 2 mod is available for its strategy game XCOM 2 on PC via the Steam Wokshop. It gives player a longer campaign than the original game (about 100 to 120 missions), smarter enemies, and new soldier classes. Although it’s a mod, 2K and XCOM developer Firaxis are promoting it directly and even partnered with Long War 2 developer Pavonis Interactive to help create it.
The first Long War was one of the most popular

If you haven’t played a Yakuza game before, you might be picturing something along the lines of Grand Theft Auto, only set in modern-day Japan. After all, like GTA, Sega’s Yakuza is an open-world action game series with a focus on crime. But despite their thematic similarities, the two aren’t much alike at all. Whereas GTA and its ilk offer stunningly dynamic locations to explore, ones that feel shockingly close to their real-world counterparts, Yakuza’s hyper-detailed wo

The Gorillaz have been promising a return to form for nearly a year, but with Donald Trump about to claim the White House, the group saw fit to finally release new music. Titled “Hallelujah Money,” the track, released through UPROXX, takes aim at the president-elect’s love of money and power, which both come at the expense of people.
The track and video both feature London poet and musician Benjamin Clementine, whose artistry has earned him comparisons to Nina Simone and Leonar

Fujifilm announced two new cameras today, the fixed-lens X100F and the interchangeable lens X-T20. Both cameras are updates to prior models in Fujifilm’s lineup, and introduce the 24.3-megapixel sensor and new processor from the company’s higher-end cameras. While the biggest update in both cameras is indeed the new image sensor, there are some tweaks to the features and design of both, so I spent some time with them this morning to see what’s new.
The X100F has seen the larges

The federal investigation into the fatal accident involving a Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode has ended, with no vehicle recalls being ordered, according to Reuters.
BREAKING: U.S. closes Tesla Autopilot death investigation without demanding recall - source— Reuters Tech News (@ReutersTech) January 19, 2017Further details about the conclusions of the investigation are still unclear. A spokesperson for the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which had been investigating the c

Facebook temporarily limited the ability of media outlet RT to post to the site this week, as RT said the block would curb its ability to cover Donald Trump’s inauguration. Formerly known as Russia Today, RT has been accused of acting as an English-language propaganda arm for the Russian government.
Banned from posting photos, videos, and shared content
The story behind the ban, which Facebook has since halted, is tangled, but seems to stem from a copyright dispute. According to RT, the ou

The White House this week published an overview explaining its plans for a "digital transition" between the departing Obama administration and the incoming 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump. It details how each White House social media account (and position-specific handles like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, and @VP) will be transferred to Trump's administration. Since Obama is the first commander in chief to have a significant, consistent presence on most of these apps, there's not much in t

I’ve had an awful time learning how to play real-time strategy games on consoles. RTS games are so much easier with a mouse and keyboard on the PC. But I gave Microsoft’s Halo Wars 2 on the Xbox One a try, and I’m happy with the results so far.
Halo Wars 2 debuts on Xbox One and Windows PC on February 21. I expect the Windows version will be quite popular. But if it’s a hit on the Xbox One as well, then Microsoft will capture some more eyeballs during