Technology news

A series of new conversation actions have been added for Google Home users to play with, ranging from info about the cafeteria at Carnegie Mellon University to CNN and air quality updates from around the world.
Roughly 10 new services from third-party creators were added to Google Assistant in the past week. More than 80 actions have been added since the launch of the Actions on Google platform last December, with Aeden from Westworld found alongside brands like Kayak and BuzzFeed

 In the face of criticism around its new FOIA process, the FBI moved to clarify some questions surrounding the online portal that will replace its existing process starting March 1. The FOIA changes, initially reported by the Daily Dot earlier this week, set off a chain of controversy that on Friday made it all the way to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, an established voice in online privacy. In an… Read More

(Reuters) – Ford plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in tech startup Argo AI to help the Detroit automaker reach its goal of producing a self-driving vehicle for commercial ride sharing fleets by 2021, the companies announced on Friday.
The investment in Pittsburg-based Argo AI, founded by former executives on self-driving teams at Google and Uber, will make Ford the company’s largest shareholder.
Ford Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields said the investment is in line

Here’s the important thing about John Wick: Chapter 2: it’s a grim, brutal, airless action film full of doggy reaction shots. The original 2014 John Wick was a surprise hit about an unstoppable assassin who’s dragged out of retirement for a few dozen more murders after a highly placed criminal thug kills his puppy. After killing generic villains by the busload in a stylish frenzy of mayhem, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) ends the movie by adopting a new dog to signal that he’s

Google officially launched Android Wear 2.0 this week with the LG Watch Sport and Watch Style. They’re both now available to order through the Google Store, although the titanium version of the Sport already appears to have sold out. Best Buy is also currently selling the Watch Style, but seemingly not the Sport. We aren’t sure if they will in the future.The larger Sport costs $349 and is decked out with features, including support for LTE connections, NFC for Android Pay, GPS and a

It’s no secret that Apple’s culture of secrecy forbids even the most powerful at the company from spilling details about upcoming products. But, as CEO Tim Cook has illustrated frequently in the past, there are ways to drop hints and talk around the concrete facts.Much like how Cook gave rough outlines in interviews of Apple’s interest in the TV space, the executive is now doing the same for augmented reality. And if past comments from Cook are any indication, a product unveili

The Expanse is a television show based on the novels by James S.A. Corey. Every week, I’ll be taking a look at one moment in each episode of the show’s second season, and chatting with the creators about how it was created and what it means for the larger story.
Spoilers ahead for the third episode of season 2, “Static.”
Last week, we dissected the battle scenes in the premiere episodes of The Expanse’s second season. The episode ended on a significant note. In an a

I’m a bit of a coffee addict. At my local Dunn Brothers coffee shop, they know which breakfast sandwich I like right down to the Swiss cheese and that I’m a fan of light roast. They also know I arrive around 6 a.m. with a look that says, “Help me — I need caffeine right now.”
It’s not that I’m drowsy. It takes a few cups before I’m in full work performance mode. That’s why it surprised me so much when I backed out of a parking spot after bein

Pinterest, the startup whose eponymous app lets people save content like images and recipes to boards that others can follow, has hired Randy Keller as its head of search, a new position. Keller joins after more than a decade at Google, where he was most recently a senior staff engineer and lead for ranking and features on Google Image Search.
Before leaving Google, Keller led a team of 40 engineers, according to his LinkedIn page. He was responsible for incorporating machine learning and comput

In 2005, on an Antarctic ridge that’s considered the coldest place in the world, a team of researchers plunged a drill through miles of ice. Once complete, the hole looked like a nightmarishly deep toilet — complete with a little blue lid that plonked down after the metal drill dropped out of sight.The mission, led by Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, was to extract nearly 800,000 years of Earth’s climate history, left as an imprint in ice beneath the surface.

Twilio isn’t worried about competition in the communication space, at least not for now. Company chief executive Jeff Lawson seemed to dismiss news this week regarding BlackBerry’s launch of a messaging app developer kit, suggesting that there wasn’t anything his cloud-based communication platform had to worry about.
During Twilio’s fourth quarter earnings call on Tuesday, William Blair analyst Bhavan Suri was interested in Lawson’s reaction on the competitive envir

Ever since Netflix dropped its trailer for the second season of Stranger Things during the Super Bowl, there’s been an influx of details about what to expect, including one interesting detail: Wall-E and Finding Dory director Andrew Stanton will be directing two of the episodes, Entertainment Weekly reports.
“Andrew called me out of the blue and said, ‘I love it. I would be honored to be part of it,” the show’s executive producer, Shawn Levy, told EW.
While there ar

SpaceX is gearing up for its next Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, but this mission will be a little different from the company’s past launches from the Florida coast. The Falcon 9 won’t be launching from its normal launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Launch Complex 40. Instead, SpaceX will be launching out of Launch Complex 39A — a site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center that was once used for Space Shuttle launches and flights of the Saturn V rocke

It’s okay to be Real Mad at Apple for dropping MagSafe power connectors on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I get it. But somehow I have become The Verge’s resident USB Type-C reporter, and I suspect it’s because I love the little thing, despite its many problems. I love it because of its potential to replace all the different kinds of plugs that are out there. I love it because I can use the same cable to charge my phone (a Pixel XL), my laptop (a MacBook), and many of the r

Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, already known for his quirky style, has found his next project. According to TheWrap, the director is now set to helm Bubbles, a stop-motion animated feature about Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee Bubbles.
“It’s an idea that fascinates me and one I want to develop further,” Waititi said in a statement. “Most people know I’m a huge Michael Jackson fan, so the main thing for me is to make sure it’s respectful of him a

A robot sent into a Fukushima reactor to inspect and clean the nuclear plant had to abruptly end its mission after excess radiation fried the robot’s camera. It was the first time a robot had entered the Unit 2 reactor since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, reports the Associated Press.
the robot endured an estimated radiation of 650 Sieverts per hour
The cleaning robot was recalled after just two hours into the mission after enduring an estimated radiation of 650 Sieverts per hour accordi

The people who create mods for video games should make money from their work. At least, that is still the position of Valve boss Gabe Newell.
Steam does not offer a way for mod developers to directly sell their creations to that PC gaming platform’s millions of users anymore, but it did for a brief time in April 2015. After years on the market, Valve and publisher Bethesda worked together to introduce paid mods for open-world role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In response

If you’re a long time Windows user reading a tech blog, chances are you’ve had to mess around with drivers in the Device Manager at some point. You might’ve noticed something peculiar – Microsoft’s drivers are from 2006. Specifically, June 21, 2006. Surely Microsoft has updated drivers since then, right? After all, most of the components in your computer were probably released after 2006. Is it a bug that’s been around since last decade? Did Microsoft invent

Storm Ventures’ investment team is growing by one — the firm has hired Pascale Diaine as a principal. The founder of Orange’s startup accelerator starts her job as a venture capitalist on February 13 and plans to focus on artificial intelligence and augmented reality solutions targeting the enterprise.
A longtime veteran of the French telecommunication company, Diaine led the initiative to establish the Orange Fab accelerator, bringing in startups like Edyn, Emberlight, Fenix I

Instant Tethering, a new Android feature that lets select devices automatically use the same cellular data connection as your smartphone, is now available across numerous Pixel and Nexus products. Any Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, or Nexus 6P running Android 7.1.1 and above can be a “host” and share its internet connection automatically with another supported device signed into the same Google account.“When you unlock a tablet such as the Pixel C, it will notice if there

Valve — co-creator of the HTC Vive headset — is developing three full titles for virtual reality, Eurogamer reports. At a media roundtable, founder and president Gabe Newell said that “right now we're building three VR games,” not just short titles like Vive minigame collection The Lab. “When I say we're building three games, we're building three full games, not experiments,” he said. And while Newell is open to the idea that VR might totally fail, he thinks w

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Who are they going to believe — you, the person looking to make a profit from the tender, innocent consumers you’re targeting? Or their favorite social media star, the internet-famous pe

In Marvel Comics’ next major event series, Marvel’s superheroes will take on Captain America himself. According to ABC News, the nine-issue miniseries — titled Secret Empire — comes in the aftermath of last year’s Civil War II event, and will pick up with the larger Marvel Universe learning that Captain America is secretly an agent of Hydra.Spoilers ahead. Marvel ComicsThe series will kick off in April with issue #0, as Captain America leads SHIELD to contain three

Gary Whitta, the screenwriter for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, will be one of our speakers at GamesBeat Summit 2017: How games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic.
He will speak to our theme of the inspiration that happens between science fiction, games, and real-world technology. Jamil Moledina of Google Play will moderate Whitta’s talk
It will take place on May 1-2, 2017, at the historic Claremont resort hotel in Berkeley, Calif., just a short distance from San Francisco

Ford announced plans today to invest $1 billion over the course of five years into a new, previously unheard of artificial intelligence startup called Argo AI. The company, which has operated in secret out of its Pittsburgh headquarters for months, was founded by Bryan Salesky, a multi-year veteran of Google’s self-driving team, and Peter Rander, who led autonomous efforts at Uber up until September 2016. Ford’s goal is to tap into Argo AI’s expertise to help establish the car

Every Friday, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn present a new series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and fo

 Last year Xiaomi’s market share slid notably in its native China, as the smartphone maker moved from first to fifth place (and tellingly avoided publishing its own sales figures for the first time). 2017, meanwhile, has already has seen its own share of issues for the company, with head of international Hugo Barra jumping ship a few days before it announced that it didn’t… Read More

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Steam Greenlight meets its end, Call of Duty is returning to its roots, and Grand Theft Auto IV joins the Xbox One’s backward compatibility list.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: How Berlin has become more tolerant than Trump’s America
Will Fire Emblem: Heroes lead to Nintendo’s hardcore-gaming demise? GamesBeat Decides
10 reasons your game studio will never get fund

Ark: Survival Evolved has some competition.
Funcom announced today that its open-world survival game Conan Exiles has already reached 320,000 copies sold after one week on Steam Early Access. The sales have helped the Norwegian game publisher recoup the costs of development. It also released the Conan Exiles Dev Kit today, which enables players to make mods. These custom bits could then become free content for other players that can increase their engagement.
Open-world survival g

Valve is ending the crowdsourced Greenlight submission program, replacing it with a direct sign-up system. Instead of putting a game up for community voting on Greenlight, developers will use a new system called Steam Direct, paying a fee for each title they plan to distribute. “Our goal is to provide developers and publishers with a more direct publishing path,” wrote Valve employee Alden Kroll in a blog post. “After the launch of Steam Greenlight, we realized that it was a us

It looks like this year’s movie won’t be the only new take on the classic Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers series. Polygon reports that Castlevania showrunner Adi Shankar is working on an animated Power Rangers reboot, but the project will be much darker than anything fans have seen before.
“It’s a complete retelling of the first three seasons,” Shankar told Polygon. “And it’s going to be really fucking dark. Darker than any other Power Rangers series

OPINION: I don’t really mind vacuuming. It’s not my least favorite chore, but if I can spend less time doing it, why the hell not? Enter autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners.
I’ve been using a Roomba 980 — iRobot‘s top-of-the-line automatic vacuum cleaner — for a few months now, and I must say my experience is full of mixed feelings. The fact that the Roomba lets you multitask while vacuuming is wonderful. The fact that you can’t leave the thing unattended

It’s a never-ending question among Firefly fans: will we ever go into the black again? While Joss Whedon was able to put together Serenity as an apt coda for his story about a band of rag-tag misfits, rumor has it there’s renewed interest in doing something new with the story. During last month’s Television Critics Association panels, executives from Fox noted that they were somewhat interested in a revival of the show.Before you get too excited, the odds are slim. Fox broadcas

Saturday Night Live’s first Snapchat-exclusive digital short “Boycott” was released today in the app’s Discover section. It follows two New Yorkers (the show’s Aidy Bryant and Beck Bennett) as they try to do some ethical spending — refusing to make purchases that support companies associated with Donald Trump in any way.Obviously this effort devolves into absurdity, with the characters stripping off everything they’re wearing because it might somehow be

Subset Games, creator of space roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light, showed off its next game today with a brief trailer. Into the Breach is a randomly generated, turn-based strategy game where players use mechs to fight off an alien threat.Into the Breach is coming to Windows, Mac, and Linux, though the developer notes it won’t be a simultaneous launch. The single-player game will be released “when we feel it's ready,” according to the developer’s site. Continue reading&hell

Newly appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai has already chipped away at net neutrality, slowed a program that assists low-income households with broadband access, and hurt efforts to reform exorbitant calling fees for inmates — and that’s just his first two weeks on the job.
The chairman of the FCC has exceptional power over what the commission does and how it functions. And that means Pai, more than anyone else right now, has control over the fate of not just hot-button issues like net ne

One of the flagship features of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone is a new digital assistant, rumored to be called “Bixby” or “Bix.”
While details on the assistant are still slim, Neowin has uncovered a trademark application filed with the European Trade Mark and Design Network from Samsung for a “B” logo that could be the icon for the Bixby AI. The filing claims that the logo is for “interactive computer software enabling exchange of informa

At the end of 2015, Congress gave NASA a big directive: develop a spacecraft that can land on Jupiter’s moon Europa — an icy world that is thought to harbor a saltwater ocean underneath its surface. Because of the likelihood of liquid water on Europa, the moon has become an enticing place of study for researchers and is considered a top candidate in the search for alien life in our Solar System. And now, thanks to the will of Congress, NASA has come up with a mission concept for land

The Android Nougat rollout news keeps coming and now the Honor 8 is getting the updated OS. Honor tells us people will start seeing Nougat today and that all phones will be updated by the end of February. Meanwhile, the new Honor 6X isn’t getting the most recent version of Android until Q2 of this year. We were slightly disappointed when the 6X launched in January without Nougat, but making us wait longer is kind of way more disappointing?Honor made its US debut with the Honor 5X, and as f