Technology news

After just seven months at Apple, robotics expert Yoky Matsuoka is rejoining Alphabet’s Nest as its chief technology officer. Matsuoka left Nest back in 2015 from her position as vice president of technology to join Twitter, only to decline the job to focus on overcoming her life-threatening illness.
At Nest, Matsuoka will use her robotics background to define roadmaps for the engineering and product teams, according to Bloomberg. She will also be responsible for finding ways for Nest to c

Mobile World Congress will be missing its usual Samsung flagship star in Barcelona next month, but there’s another Korean company ready to fill the void. LG has set a February 26th date for the unveiling of the G6, its next flagship Android phone, and The Verge has obtained the first image of the upcoming phone.
As previously revealed by LG Display and confirmed by The Verge, the G6 will feature a large 5.7-inch display with an unusual aspect ratio of 2:1 and an emphasis on minimal bezels.

Vinyl’s resurgence in popularity means more companies are coming up with new and different ways to play back all those newly purchased records. Which means we get devices like Love, which puts a new spin on the turntable concept by packing the entirety of the hardware of the device into what is essentially a giant, spinning tonearm.
LOVE - The First Intelligent TurntableComing Soon | LOVE Turntable - Intelligent Turntable Record PlayerGet 50% Off Launch ➜ comingsoon-tech.com/love-th

Tesla is adopting a take-it-slow approach to the rollout of its next-generation Autopilot system, in an effort to balance safety concerns against its race to put advanced self-driving technology in the hands of its customers. A Tesla spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that customer safety is the primary reason behind Tesla’s slow deployment of Autopilot features and Elon Musk himself advised owners to exercise caution when using Autopilot when part of the system was rolled out over the we

Tesla is adopting a take-it-slow approach to the rollout of its next-generation Autopilot system, in an effort to balance safety concerns against its race to put advanced self-driving technology in the hands of its customers. A Tesla spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that customer safety is the primary reason behind Tesla’s slow deployment of Autopilot features and Elon Musk himself advised owners to exercise caution when using Autopilot when part of the system was rolled out over the we

If it’s possible to have too much mindless fun at a film festival, I’ve done it. Not stupid fun, to be clear, just fun that defies rational analysis — in this case, a full-body haptic suit created for the cult musical shooter Rez Infinite. The Synesthesia Suit straps 26 discs around your arms, legs, and torso, where they vibrate in time to an experience. Combine it with a virtual reality headset, and you’ve got a perfect way to escape the crowds of something like Sundance

Google and LG are planning to mark the launch of Android Wear 2.0 with a pair of smartwatches, it was reported last week, and today Techno Buffalo has published what it claims is an image of the coming wearables. Co-developed with Google (think Nexus), these are purported to be the next flagship devices for Android Wear. The design matches up with initial details revealed by VentureBeat’s Evan Blass: they’ve both got circular displays and a rotating digital crown that will be used to

Donald Trump has elevated Ajit Pai to chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, giving control over the agency to a reliable conservative who’s been opposed to pretty much every big action the commission has taken in recent years, from establishing net neutrality to protecting consumer privacy to restricting major cable mergers.
Pai has been a commissioner at the FCC since 2012, when he was appointed by then-President Obama and confirmed by the Senate. Though an Obama appointee, P

A staple of Microsoft’s recent press conferences has been Bryan Roper, the exuberant man wearing a trilby who was able to do a better job than anyone else on the planet at getting people excited about minor Windows features. But it looks like we’ve seen the last of him at Microsoft: Roper tweeted out today that he’s been laid off, as part of around 700 jobs being cut this week.
It’s a bit of a surprise to see Microsoft let go of such a recognizable and well-liked, if also

In the fourth season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Frank warns Mac and Dennis about the dangers of manhunting: “Don’t even joke about hunting no man.” It’s too bad that advice didn’t travel to the network execs at CBS, where the latest attempt to grab eyeballs is a reality show called Hunted, billed as “the world’s most elaborate game of hide and go seek.”But it’s a bit more complicated than a spiffed-up playground competition.

Logan director James Mangold took to Twitter today to formally announce to fans that his upcoming X-Men movie has officially received an R rating from the MPAA. As Mangold notes, that’s due to “strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity.”
Official: Please be advised that LOGAN has been rated R for “strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity.”— Mangold (@mang0ld) January 23, 2017Logan’s rating doesn&rsqu

Imagine a future where you tap an app on your smartphone to summon a self-driving car. Heard this one already? Okay, what about when your robot car drives into an airless tube hundreds of miles long and careens across country at close to the speed of sound? Now are you impressed?
This completely outrageous vision of the future comes courtesy of Hyperloop One, the occasionally troubled Los Angeles-based startup working on Elon Musk’s vision of an ultrafast transportation system. The company

Two years after the initial discussions began, Sprint has made a substantial investment in Tidal, acquiring 33 percent of the company. The deal will help stabilize Tidal, which has had issues keeping up with its payments to music labels over the past year, according to multiple sources and numerous reports.Tidal has been looking for a partner for the past year, according to sources, with Samsung and then Apple considering, but ultimately declining, to acquire the company. After those two moves f

The Trump White House is adding Skype seats to its press room. During today’s press briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer, it was announced that “beginning later this week,” there will be four Skype systems in the briefing room next to the usual White House press corps.“This will open up the briefing to journalists who live beyond 50 miles of the Washington, DC area and to organizations that don’t currently have a day pass,” Spicer said. “As always, an

The resurgence of vinyl has been a centerpiece of the physical media story for years now, but records aren’t the only format that’s steadily rising back to relevance. Cassette tapes, a majority of which are sold online in direct-to-consumer settings, are experiencing a bit of a comeback, according to Nielsen’s year-end music report. In 2016, cassette sales rose 74 percent, to 129,000 units. That’s a paltry amount when compared to vinyl’s 13.1 million unit sales, and

If there were a gambling site where you could go to make bets on how people are bound to react to individual movies, the money-making gambit of the season would be slapping your life savings on “Colossal is really going to piss people off.” How many people, and how pissed off they’re going to get, will probably depend on whether the advertising gets more specific and transparent about what the movie actually is. From the currently available teaser, Nacho Vigalondo’s lates

Remember last week when I said ZTE’s crowdsourced Hawkeye phone had already had “quite the journey?” Well turns out its journey wasn’t anywhere near an end. After officially launching its eye-tracking, sticky phone on Kickstarter earlier this month and then later unveiling the device’s midrange specs, Jeff Yee, VP of planning and partnerships at ZTE, pulled a “my bad.” In a post this weekend, Yee explains that given that the phone has raised less than $3

If you’ve been looking at Apple’s new USB-C equipped MacBook Pros but were worried about the price, today might be a good time to take the plunge on the upgrade. As noted by Reddit, Best Buy is offering a $225 discount on the base model of Apple’s newest laptop, bringing the price down to $1,274.99 instead of the usual $1,499.99.
That gets you a 13-inch version of the newest MacBook Pro, without the touchscreen Touch Bar, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel Core i5 proce

Bushwick opens on a scene that’s supposed to convey millennial Brooklynite normalcy: a college student and her boyfriend get off the L train, bantering about introducing him to her family while complaining about the subway. The station is strangely empty. Then a man runs down the stairs on fire, an explosion kills the boyfriend within minutes, and the real movie begins.
Directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, Bushwick is one part social commentary, three parts hard-driving urban warf

While T-Mobile customers have been able to roam in over 100 countries for free since 2013, AT&T users have been stuck with the ripoff known as AT&T Passport, which starts at $40 a month for just 200 MB of data. Today, the company is introducing a $10 day pass for international roaming, which might help to reduce costs for the occasional traveler.
The $10 international day pass essentially unlocks the ability to use your domestic plan abroad for a 24-hour period — so if you have an

"If you don't know who Slenderman is, you're living under a rock," remarks one of the dozens of teens appearing in YouTube videos that are excerpted in Beware the Slenderman. It's the first hint that the documentary is going to try to do the impossible:€” explain the internet, and its seedy underbelly, to people who... live under rocks. In other words: primarily offline.
The uncanny disconnect between what feels culturally ubiquitous on the internet and what is truly something everyon

Adventure Time is back this week for its eighth season, which means it’s time to grab your friends and catch up on one of the most important animated series to come out in recent years. That’s not an overstatement; in just six years, Adventure Time, with its whimsical storytelling, mature themes, and complex world-building, has managed to create a template for how to tell stories for kids and adults.
Maybe you’ve fallen behind. Maybe you never got into the show at all. (Shame o

Last week, in one of its final acts under the Obama administration, the US Department of Transportation designated 10 sites in nine states to serve as proving grounds for self-driving cars. The selection came after a nationwide contest among testing centers that began in November, Bloomberg reports.The states that will host automated vehicle testing sites are Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland, Michigan, California (which will host two sites), Iowa, Wisconsin, Florida, and North Carolina. The winners

Google just announced the new and improved Google Voice that the company teased a few weeks ago. Today you’ll find updated versions of Voice available for Android, iOS, and on the web. The service has been given a much-needed visual refresh, bringing it in line with Google’s other apps. According to Google’s blog post on the changes, “your inbox now has separate tabs for text messages, calls and voicemails. Conversations stay in one continuous thread, so you can easily se

Every time Amazon has news about the Echo it likes to trot out the latest stat for the number of skills (or apps) available for its digital assistant Alexa. The most recent figure was the impressive-sounding “7,000-plus,” but anyone who actually uses an Echo knows that the vast majority of these skills are useless.Some are bad because they take longer to use than your phone or computer; some are bad because of the limitations of the platform; and some are bad because they’re ju

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly canceled a climate change summit scheduled for next month in Atlanta, according to E&E News, a trade publication for energy and environment professionals. The news comes a few days after Donald Trump, who wants to roll back Obama’s environmental policies, was sworn in as president.
Those scheduled to speak at the conference received an email saying the summit was canceled, according to E&E News, which obtained a copy of the

Snapchat is rolling out the new design it announced last week to all iOS and Android users today, following a brief beta test for a small group of users on Android. As promised, it brings a new search bar front and center, designed to make it easier to start chats with friends and groups from anywhere in the app. Stories from friends and brands will also show up in search, making it easier to access them.
In addition to the search bar, the app itself has gotten a visual refresh, adding some new,

Oculus Story Studio was assembled to be at the vanguard of virtual reality entertainment, experimenting with a form that’s still in its infancy. But it hadn’t really earned that title until now, with the Sundance premiere of Dear Angelica. Despite a running time under 15 minutes, Dear Angelica is a fully formed piece created for VR, in VR. It’s directed by former Pixar artist Saschka Unseld, with art from illustrator Wesley Allsbrook, using a drawing tool called Quill that was

Over the past year, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 missions have become major online spectacles,mostly because each launch has been followed by an attempt to land the rocket after takeoff. But the landing part of the show will be missing from SpaceX’s next launch, scheduled for January 30th. This mission will be an expendable one, according to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk, meaning the company won’t attempt to land the Falcon 9 post-launch.
It’s the first time in a while that SpaceX hasn

A video of white supremacist Richard Spencer getting punched by an Inauguration Day protestor went viral on social media this weekend, prompting a dozen overlapping conversations about the act’s value, as well as the value of celebrating it.While many argued that celebrating any amount of violence hurts the cause of peaceful protesters, others argued that the social risk of being a neo-Nazi should be as high as possible.Literal Nazi Richard Spencer punched in the face, #Hamilton remix pic.

Samsung has confirmed that despite the battery life issues and subsequent recall that plagued the Galaxy Note 7, the company will continue to use the “Galaxy Note” branding for its future phablet devices.
Ahead of Samsung’s presentation on its Note 7 battery investigation, Samsung’s mobile chief D.J. Koh told CNET, "I will bring back a better, safer and very innovative Note 8." Koh cites the fact that there are lots of loyal Note fans out there as the primary reason for s

The Galaxy Note 7 started life looking like Samsung’s best ever smartphone: it combined the huge screen and stylus of a phablet with the petite dimensions of a regular smartphone. But it also had a fatal battery flaw, which led it to overheat and catch fire, turning what was meant to be Samsung Mobile’s glorious apogee into its ignominious nadir. On Sunday night, Samsung streamed an exhaustive 50-minute presentation, covering the findings from its battery fault investigation, and it

In yet another episode of man versus machine, an artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Melon University has been absolutely dismantling a team of professional poker players, accumulating a staggering lead of almost $800,000. The showdown takes place as part of the “Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence” competition which pits a group of four poker pros against the crafty supercomputer Libratus in a heads-up game of No-Limit Texas Hold’em slat

For a writer of violent action thrillers, Taylor Sheridan has an unusual fixation with the inelegance of jurisdiction within American law enforcement. At Sundance, the screenwriter of Sicario and Hell or High Water completed his spiritual trilogy of American bureaucracy and delivered his directorial debut with Wind River. Starring Jeremy Renner as a solemn hunter who discovers a dead teenage girl on the titular snow-covered Indian reservation, and Elizabeth Olsen as the inexperienced FBI agent a

US telco Sprint just bought one-third of Tidal – the struggling streaming service founded by rapper Jay Z. Per the announcement, Jay Z and the Tidal leadership team will remain in control of the company, but Sprint’s customers will gain access to exclusive content. So far, neither Sprint nor Tidal have been forthcoming about what this will entail. As part of the partnership, Sprint will acquire 33 percent of TIDAL. JAY Z and the artist-owners will continue to run TIDAL’s

There’s a lot being said about the filter bubble – that social media (Facebook, mostly) only shows you what you want to see because you only see the stories that your friends like. Now I don’t know about you, but on Facebook, I’m just as connected to my family as I am the people I know professionally. And while you’re stuck with the family you have, you’re able to choose your friends. Most families are psychotic and everybody has that one crazy uncle, yet I&r

 Tricentis, a startup that helps enterprise development teams automate software testing, got a bushel of money today from Insight Venture Partners — $165 million to be exact. As part of the deal, Insight Managing Director Mike Triplett will join the Tricentis board.
In a traditional software development cycle, developers took months to create and deliver a product. Testing involved… Read More

As a consummate traveler, I know how ambitions to see the world can be hamstrung by a lack of money and time. There are so many cities I want to visit – Saint Petersburg, Johannesburg, Sarajevo – that I just haven’t been able to get around to yet. While no substitute, virtual reality allows you to get a taste of what somewhere is like. Today, Inception VR kicked off its series of interactive, virtual reality city tours with Tel Aviv – the Israeli capital, and one of the

Sprint has announced it’s bought a 33 percent stake in Tidal — the artist-owned streaming service created by Jay Z. In a press release, the mobile carrier described the deal as an “unprecedented partnership” which will give Sprint subscribers “unlimited access to exclusive artist content not available anywhere else.” Sprint previously confirmed it was in “discussions” with Tidal back in April 2015, but said, at the time, that no financial investmen