Technology news

Emoji are weird. They’re more than just a set of cutsey images you stick at the end of a Slack message with your workmates. They’re something substantially more than the emoticons and glyphs of yesteryear. I suppose you could say they are essentially a kind of universal language we all can understand. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone would try to capitalize on this global phenomenon. Already, Emoji have been front-and-center in a number of advertising campaigns

Google has shut out nearly 200 websites from its advertising platform since announcing it would purge fake news publishers last November.
The search giant released the number as part of its annual fraudulent advertising report, in which the company recaps its efforts to fight scams, malware and other harmful ads over the course of the past year. 
SEE ALSO: Google brags it's keeping you safe from weight-loss scams and malware
Those efforts now extend to deceitful publishers too, thanks to a

The Trump administration is mandating that any studies or data from scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public.
The communications director for President Donald Trump's transition team at EPA, Doug Ericksen, said Wednesday the review also extends to content on the federal agency's website, including details of scientific evidence showing that the Earth's climate is warming and man-made carbon emissions

 Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said today on the company’s call accompanying its first-quarter earnings report that Qualcomm would continue to work with Apple as a supplier despite a major legal battle between the two companies.
“We intend to remain a good supplier to Apple even while this dispute continues,” Mollenkopf said on the call. “Our preference is to resolve… Read More

As of this week, anyone can publish an app for Google’s Daydream VR platform, which had previously been limited to a select group of partners. As Google’s developer site notes, anyone can make and submit a Daydream app through the Play Store, similar to any other Android app.The move isn’t totally unexpected, given that Google had previously promised to open up the platform to all developers in 2017 back when Daydream was announced, but it’s a welcome change nonetheless.I

Gmail will soon block JavaScript files from being uploaded and sent over email. Starting February 13th, you’ll no longer be able to attach .js files as they are increasingly being used as a form of malware. If a user downloads a malicious JavaScript file, hackers can use it to gain access to their PC to steal data or perform other damaging functions.
As reported by Android Police, JavaScript joins .exe, .bat, and .msc as file types that are restricted from being shared as a direct attachme

As CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk is a busy man. He wants to save lives by making safer, self-driving cars, and save humanity by starting a colony on Mars. But he also wants to save humanity from traffic.
Elon Musk thinks being stuck in traffic is “soul-destroying” — but, he has a solution: tunnels. Musk has been tweeting about tunnels for a month now, and even said he’s going to build a tunnel boring machine and start digging. In developed cities, we can’t wide

Chronicling Dory the blue tang's journey to discover her roots, Finding Dory is a delightful, earnest animated film perfect for both children and adults. 
But if what if it had, like, a bunch of swearing in it?
Let Ellen DeGeneres show you what you'e been missing — with a perfect assist from co-star and animated octopus Ed O'Neill.Watch Oprah lose her mind when she meets Mary Tyler Moore
Ta-Nehisi Coates explains why there could never be a 'black Donald Trump'
Hilarious bad lip readi

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now is a cinematic classic. Now, nearly 40 years later, Francis Ford Coppola has assembled a group of game designers to adapt the movie into a video game, and they’re turning to Kickstarter to fund it. Yeah.According to Deadline, the game will be financed in part through Kickstarter, which is looking to raise $900,000 before the end of February. The description describes the project as an “immersive, psychedelic horror RPG

Microsoft is adding a “Game Mode” to Windows 10 that’ll optimize the system for playing video games. We’ve known for a week or so that this feature was coming soon, and now Microsoft is starting to explain how it’ll work.
When a system goes into Game Mode, it’ll “prioritize CPU and GPU resources to your game,” according to a video Microsoft released today. The mode’s goal is supposed to be improving each game’s frame rate.Microsoft is a

Pentax’s newest camera is a relatively tiny DSLR called the KP. On paper, the KP is a mixed bag of features you’d expect to find in a modern camera: it has 5-axis in-body image stabilization and weather sealing, but only shoots 1080p video. It has Wi-Fi, and a tilt-out touchscreen, but only 27 autofocus points and a top speed of 7 still images per second.
The KP’s most mad feature, though, is that the 24-megapixel APS-C sensor is capable of shooting at ISO 819,200. That’s

Quantum computing is a very complicated subject branch of computer science that could one day radically change the way our computers function. At the forefront of that field is a Canadian company called D-Wave, which created the world’s biggest quantum computing chip last year, with over 2000 qubits (quantum bits) to perform calculations. Now, that chip is finally shipping in a 10-foot-tall, $15 million dollar quantum computer called the D-Wave 2000Q, which is a successor to the company&rs

Lyft is partnering with a handful of employee benefit services to allow people who receive pretax transportation benefits through their employers to use that money for carpooling trips. People who live in New York City, Boston, Seattle, and Miami will soon be able to use pretax dollars to pay for Lyft Line trips to and from work, the ride-hailing company announced today.Lyft said that it was teaming up with WageWorks, Zenefits, Benefit Resource, Commuter Benefit Solutions, and Navia to offer the

I’m a software developer by trade. I’ve got a computer science degree. I build shit in my spare time, just for shits and giggles. Believe me, I know how annoying it can be when you’ve got a bug that’s screwing everything up and you’ve got to hunt it down. This goes double when it appears intermittently. When the code base you’re dealing with is deployed at a large scale, the pressure is on to fix any problem that emerges in the shortest time possible.&nb

While robots are increasingly good at seeing, hearing, and understanding the world around them, they are still pretty helpless when it comes to interacting with that world the way humans do. They struggle to open doors, walk down stairs, or eat with a fork. “Their action and manipulation capabilities pale in comparison to those of a two-year-old,” explains Abhinav Gupta, an assistant professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.Gupta and his team are hoping to change that para

Last year, a startup named Kitables was one of a few companies that unleashed working Lego drones into the world. Now the startup is back, and it’s attempting to build an even smaller version of its drone, which it’s calling — you guessed it — the Mini Lego Drone.
Kitables has launched a Kickstarter, which is already fully funded, in order to bring the mini Lego drones to life. The drone, which is designed to be a cheaper option to get kids into the “maker” co

In 2017, a bag of chips knows when you’ve had too much to drink. The bag, a creation by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, comes equipped with tech that’ll help you get home safely after having a few too many. Tostitos’ limited edition ‘Party Safe’ bag comes outfitted with a sensor connected to a microcontroller capable of picking up trace amounts of alcohol on your god-awful post-game breath. Once it detects alcohol, the bag displays a red steering wheel

Apple has hired Dropcam co-founder Greg Duffy for an undisclosed position, reports The Information.The move to Apple is an interesting one, considering rumors of a culture clash between Duffy and former Nest CEO Tony Fadell, who led development on the iPod at Apple before founding Nest. Last year, Duffy said that selling Dropcam to Nest was a “mistake” and criticized Fadell for the way he ran the company, calling him a “tyrant bureaucrat.” Duffy departed Nest in 2015 and

Republicans want to make sure the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t continue with plans to shake up the set-top box market.
In a letter to newly appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai, Republicans on the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee — which monitors the agency — urged the commission to close its set-top box proceeding, killing the proposed rules once and for all.
The rules stalled last year, but the proceeding was never closed
The rules were proposed last year a

When it was first published in October 2015, Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor’s novella Binti earned a considerable amount of praise from readers who bestowed it with the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, as well as a slew of nominations. It’s a fantastic interstellar adventure that follows an impressive central character. Earlier this week, a sequel, Binti: Home, hit bookstores. It’s a vibrant character story that is in every way a worthy successor of an already fantastic

Ever on the lookout for new revenue streams, Facebook is pushing News Feed-like ads right on to your Messenger screen. Announced today, the test only affects users from Austria and Thailand, for now, but it’d be hard to imagine a scenario where this didn’t go worldwide after the kinks have been worked out. The new ads will appear the users’ most recent conversation. According to the announcement, users will have the option to hide or report ads that are irrelevant or offe

The controversial freeze imposed by the Trump administration on all grants and contracts by the Environmental Protection Agency is set to end Friday, according to E&E News, a trade publication for energy and environment professionals.The freeze was announced yesterday and caused a huge outcry in the scientific community. Reuters also reported last night that EPA staff was ordered to take down the agency's climate change page from its website; that also caused massive backlash from scientists

Uber’s unresolved fight with its drivers over their status as independent contractors is now affecting one of the ride-hailing company’s popular side projects: UberEats. A class action lawsuit was filed in Tampa, Florida, yesterday alleging that Uber’s food delivery service erroneously classifies its couriers as freelancers, and demands they be granted benefits typically afforded to full-time employees.The lawsuit claims that UberEats delivery workers suffer “negative tax

Credit cards that give you bonuses – like cashback or air miles – whenever you spend money are nothing new. But they’re only ideal for day-to-day spending. They don’t work for big-ticket items like cars and houses. The median house price in Seattle is $609,100 (according to Zillow, at least). Can you imagine how many air miles or reward points you’d get if you bought that on a reward credit card? That’s basically what Seattle startup FlyHomes is doing. T

Apple is being sued over a 2015 iPhone 6 commercial featuring the Jamie xx song “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times),” The Hollywood Reporter reports. The suit was filed yesterday in Los Angeles by Jerome Lawson, lead singer of The Persuasions, whose song “Good Times” is sampled in the Jamie xx track. However, Lawson is not claiming copyright infringement, because Universal has already cleared the sample; instead, he says the use of his voice in the commercial viol

Today, Boeing unveiled the new sleek, blue spacesuit that astronauts will wear during upcoming missions on the CST-100 Starliner — the capsule that the company is building to take people to and from the International Space Station. The new suits were shown off for the first time this morning during a Facebook Live at Boeing’s facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The pressurized outfits are relatively slim and sport a “Boeing Blue” color, making them q

Facebook’s Trending Topics section – and the company’s attempt at personalizing it – has been controversial since its inception. While it’s a useful vignette of the topics people are talking about, Facebook’s attempts at tailoring the section to your own interests were often met with backlash. Now the company has given up on personalization and settled on a more traditional list of the most popular current events. The update consists of three change

After raising $140 million in funding and growing to over 2 million deliveries per month what’s next for on-demand courier Postmates? Getting you drunk, fast. Startups like Drizly and Minibar already offer on-demand alcohol delivery, but Postmates wants to take it a step further. Rather than the “less than 60 minutes” guarantee of Minibar, Postmates is spinning the industry on its head — and making your head spin — by promising the same service in under 25 minutes.

Less than a week after the start of Shia LaBeouf’s nonstop anti-Trump live stream, “He Will Not Divide Us,” the space has become an online target for Donald Trump supporters and neo-Nazis. BuzzFeed has a detailed report on groups congregating on 4chan and chat platform Discord to disrupt the peaceful exhibit in real life.The stream began on January 20th at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image and is expected to run for the duration of Trump’s four-year presidency.

Apple released its courageous new wireless AirPods in December, and in that time, we’ve spotted lots of people wearing the earbuds on the streets and subways of NYC. Verge reporter Sean O’Kane reviewed them here. But in that review, Sean didn’t talk much about the aesthetic of the AirPods. Do they look good? How do they make us feel? Can they work with our commuter lifestyle and style? We recruited two certifiably fashionable people from our sister publication Racked — Re

Spoilers ahead for M. Night Shyamalan’s Split.
“The only idea more overused than serial killers is multiple personality.” That scripting advice from one screenwriter to another (both played by Nicolas Cage in 2002’s Adaptation), could practically be a diss aimed directly at Split. The latest effort from suspense maestro M. Night Shyamalan casts James McAvoy as mentally ill serial killer Kevin, and more specifically, as Jade, Hedwig, Patricia, Barry, and upward of a dozen

It’s possible to grow organs of one species inside an animal of another species and then transplant that organ to cure disease, according to a study published today in Nature. In this case, mouse pancreas cells were grown in rats, then transplanted into mice to reverse diabetes. The new research opens the possibility of one day creating human organs inside animals like pigs or sheep that could then be transplanted back into needy patients.
“A remarkable scientific achievement”

It’s been five months since Facebook removed editorial descriptions from its Trending Topics box, transforming it from a personalized guide to the day’s news to a context-free list of keywords. The move backfired, routinely grouping stories that had nothing to do with one another under a single keyword and promoting fictional news stories. Now Facebook is ending its effort to create a personalized Trending Topics box, replacing it with a regional list of subjects.Starting today, ever

Today begins week three of the poker tournament between Libratus, an AI system built by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, and four of the world’s top pros. While the humans plan to soldier on, a gallows humor has taken hold. With a little over 80,000 hands played, out of 120,000 total, the humans are down by roughly $750,000, a massive amount that will be all but impossible to come back from.“We’re all down about the price of a small house,” said Jason Les, cha

Donald Trump’s long-held Android phone is a security nightmare for a high-level politician, but according to a report from The New York Times, the newly inaugurated president is still using the device.In a profile of the president’s time so far in the White House, the Times reports that Trump has held on to his “old, unsecured Android phone” — previously reported to be a Samsung device — despite some protests by his aides. According to the Times, he used it to

Vertu has been hand crafting bad, high-priced, "luxury" phones since before the smartphone, and somehow has yet to be stopped. The company was started by Nokia back in 1998, and almost two decades later it won't quit making ugly devices of questionable worth and selling them for thousands of dollars.
The latest device is the Vertu Constellation, which includes the specs of a solid flagship from mid-2016. There's a 2,560 x 1,440 5.5-inch screen, a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, and wireles

Facebook has been on a Snapchat-copying roll. First Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, rolled out its version of 24-hour stories. Then Facebook began testing a similar product on its Messenger app in Poland. And now, Facebook is testing ephemeral stories on its main mobile app. Facebook mobile app users in Ireland can now test the feature, called Facebook Stories, on iOS and Android, as first reported by Business Insider.The feature centers on Facebook’s new in-app camera that acts a l

Over the weekend, millions of women united to stroll the streets of various cities across the globe to protest the recent inauguration of President Donald Trump. But while the Women’s March certainly made a splash in the media, Pornhub reveals it wasn’t all that great for porn traffic. According to the numbers, the website saw an eight-percent decrease in traffic throughout the US compared to an average Saturday – and the adult content h