Technology news

GUEST: When I started to learn about data science and consider it as a career choice, there was a diagram that I came across regularly and still come across today, in articles and even text books aimed at introducing and educating the world about the “sexiest job of the 21st century.” First created by Drew Conway, it illustrates the three broad skill groups you need to be a data scientist.Data science is a new career for the age of Big Data (whatever that means this week), but you ca

Last week, The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens shut down the live-streaming art protest He Will Not Divide Us created by Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö, and Luke Turner. As of today, the project has found a new home at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico.In a statement, LaBeouf, Rönkkö, and Turner announced that the stream — which displayed “the museum has abandoned us”, after being just down by the Museum of the Moving Image, had retur

If you thought the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was boring, just look at how pop culturally relevant they've become with their latest blog post. 
Although the latest Hunger Games movie came out months ago, the Bureau took its own data on employment (based on industries, occupation, employment numbers and geography) to figure out the eternal question of how the dystopian future country of Panem from the book and film series lines up with the real U.S. geography.
SEE ALSO: Woody Harrelson

Norma McCorvey, whose legal challenge under the pseudonym "Jane Roe" led to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision that legalized abortion but who later became an outspoken opponent of the procedure, died Saturday. She was 69.
McCorvey died at an assisted living center in Katy, Texas, said journalist Joshua Prager, who is working on a book about McCorvey and was with her and her family when she died. He said she died of heart failure and had been ill for some time.
SEE ALSO: These lawmakers

Earlier this week, YouTube streamer PewDiePie lost a contract with Disney because of some Nazi references in his videos and one absurdly ill-considered attempt to make a joke out of genocide. But as a variety of people have pointed out, this controversy is only the latest example of a pushback against “political correctness,” often centered around the “manosphere,” the “alt-right,” and the uglier parts of video game culture.
In a well-argued BuzzFeed essay, wr

While Rogue One: A Star Wars Story followed a group of rebels on a secret mission to steal the Death Star plans, the Empire had its share of elite units as well. Their story will be told in a new novel by Christie Golden, set after the events of Rogue One and A New Hope.Inferno Squad takes place after the destruction of the first Death Star, and follows a unit that is designed to infiltrate and take down the remaining elements of Saw Gerrera’s Partisans cell, which have been conducting str

GUEST: When I search for a movie time on my phone or computer, I am presented with ads (for example, from Google AdWords). When I ask Alexa, no such ads exist. Yet.
The growing proliferation of voice-enabled devices like Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home raises some interesting opportunities and challenges for advertisers and consumers. This medium does not currently support advertising. But as consumer adoption increases, use of competing, ad-supported platforms based on typed-in quer

Apartment Investment & Management Company (AIMCO), one of the largest owners and operators of apartments in the United States, has filed a pair of lawsuits in Florida and California against short-term rental site Airbnb, alleging that it helps tenants violate their leases and that it creates unsafe conditions for other renters.AIMCO owns or manages around 50,000 apartments in 23 states across the US. “Short-term rental arrangements, whether through Airbnb or otherwise, are expressly pr

Donald Trump has already referred to his club, Mar-a-Lago, as the "Winter White House," leading many to believe that his weekend trips to Florida would become a regular occurrence. In a tweet on Saturday, he called the club the "Southern White House" — and now people are even more convinced.
On Twitter, critics are pointing out the already high cost of Trump's travels, particularly considering he frequently criticized President Obama for traveling. There's also the fact that dues at Mar-a-

Sometimes the best way to understand the present is to look at the past.
Or at least that's true with Zora Neale Hurston's classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The book was written 80 years ago, but the commentary it makes on race and feminism feels as fresh and contemporary as anything published today.
SEE ALSO: Like these books? Read these classics of black literature next.
Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford, a southern woman living in Florida in the early 19

“Weird Al” Yankovic has been delighting audiences with his parodies of popular songs for decades, and later this year, will release a career-spanning boxed set. In preparation for its release, the singer has released his parody of The Beatles’ “Tax Man”, fittingly titled “Pac-Man”.Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of “Weird Al” Yankovic, is set to be released in November, and will contain all 14 of Weird Al’s albums, as well as a bonus al

If we learned one thing from Hidden Figures (and we learned a whole lot), it's that Hollywood can and should tell the stories of history's hidden women. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, starring Oprah Winfrey, HBO shines a light on the eponymous heroine, whose cells were used in groundbreaking medical research and kept from her family.
Winfrey plays Lacks' daughter Deborah, and the film follows her journey as she pieces together her mother's past.
SEE ALSO: The 'Song to Song' trailer is

I stare at a computer for entirely too many hours a day — more than I’d care to think about — and by the end of the week, I feel it. At least, my eyes do.
Eye strain from staring at a computer is so common it has its own name: computer vision syndrome. And it’s pretty widespread, though estimates of its prevalence vary. The symptoms will probably sound familiar: blurry vision, headaches, dry eyes, watery eyes, and tired eyes.For most people, these symptoms are temporary
F

EXCLUSIVE: I always like the fairy tale that tells me that games can be made anywhere by anybody. While walking the streets of Berlin after Casual Connect Europe, I found a couple that reinforced this idea for me again.
It was pure serendipity. I was trying to get on a tour of the city and bought a ticket for a double-decker bus. Just ahead of me was a couple that was trying to do the same. But as we stepped onto the tour bus, the driver told us we were too late and that they were shutting down

Is Apple trying to tell us something? 
The tech giant's latest iPad Pro ads heavily feature Twitter — but nope, Apple isn't buying the social network. 
The ads all feature giant print-outs of tweets. The tweets seem to be from regular Twitter users who are either skeptical about getting an iPad or frustrated with their old laptops and Wi-Fi. 
Rumors swirled back in October that Apple or Google would make a bid for Twitter, which was reportedly seeking a buyer. 
Since t

GUEST: The bot ecosystem is maturing, and larger organizations are starting to adopt communication platforms that let bots take part in enterprise workflows. There is a growing opportunity for bot builders to move their user bases from early adopters to big enterprises. But the opportunity to capture big clients comes with complexity: From stringent policies and security requirements to longer procurement processes and larger scale workflows, there’s a lot to consider if you want to build

In 2017, is anything even surprising anymore? 
Kyrie Irving, Cleveland Cavaliers guard and NBA All-Star, thinks the Earth is flat and that it's "not even a conspiracy theory."
Irving shared his view of the world and its 2D shape during the podcast "Road Trippin' with RJ & Channing," ESPN reported. He was joined during the podcast by his teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye ahead of NBA All-Star Weekend. 
SEE ALSO: College coach shaking invisible hands is really committed t

Automation is part of the future, and Bill Gates is already thinking about what that means for our government. 
The billionaire Microsoft founder philosophized about the future of automation in an interview with Quartz. Robots are coming for lots of jobs, he said, and wouldn't it be fair if they paid taxes, too? 
"Right now if a human worker does, you know, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the

Lady Gaga puts on quite the show, so it's easy to forget she's also a phenomenal singer. Here to remind you: her isolated mic feed from this year's Super Bowl halftime show.
Yes, it's a little weird to hear "Poker Face" with no instrumentals, but Gaga's voice punctuated by long periods of silence is somehow ... comforting? At the very least, it's worth a full listen.Get your tissues 'cos Steve Irwin's son is basically a mini-Steve on 'Tonight Show'
Relive SpaceX's incredible daytime rocket land

Jar Jar Binks never had a chance. After his debut in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, critics scorched him in reviews and fans turned him into a punchline. Even The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams joked about hiding his bones in the desert of Jakku. Everyone in the room had a good laugh.Disliking Jar Jar is an easy cause to rally around, like the inverse of the internet’s love for bacon or cute animal videos. But Chuck Wendig’s new Star Wars novel, Star Wars Aftermath: E

Connor Cox will never forget to take out the trash again.
Late last month, the Westminster College student received a care package from his mother shortly after beginning his second semester of school. Exciting, right? 
SEE ALSO: Dad receives unintentionally hilarious letter from son's school
But this wasn't just any care package. It was a care package stuffed to the brim with crumpled garbage.Thought my mom was sending me a care package... but instead she sent me a box of trash i was suppo

Image: Metropolitan Museum of ArtBorn to an aristocratic Austrian family in 1839, Baron Raimund von Stillfried spent his youth adventuring around the world before opening a photo studio in Yokohama, Japan.There, he specialized in producing hand-colored souvenir photos of traditional Japanese “types” for wealthy Western tourists to bring home. His costumed portraits became highly influential in crafting European perceptions of Japan.In the mid-1870s, he traveled to Shanghai and applie

HBO has released the first teaser for its upcoming film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
The story of Henrietta Lacks was documented in Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 book of the same title, which explores the story behind Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line that is derived from samples taken from her. Directed by George C. Wolfe, the film stars Oprah Winfrey as Henrietta Lack’s daughter, Deborah, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Henrietta Lacks, and Rose Byrne as Rebecca Skloot.I

On Friday, NASA announced that it Juno spacecraft would remain in its current 53-day orbit of Jupiter for the duration of its mission. The decision is a new setback for the spacecraft, which was scheduled to shift to a shorter, 14 day orbital schedule.This isn’s the first time that Juno has run into issues orbiting Jupiter. In October, NASA delayed an orbit around the planet due to a pair of helium check valves not working properly. While the spacecraft has since completed two additional o

What do Annie Wilkes, the Shawshank State Prison and Danny Torrance have in common? The same thing as Stephen King and J.J. Abrams: Hulu's upcoming Castle Rock.
SEE ALSO: This 1979 Stephen King novel is a chilling prediction of Donald Trump's rise
A thrillingly creepy teaser for the show flashes recognizable names from King's oeuvre, all tied together by Castle Rock, a fictitious town that appears in these works. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Each season will follow a different set of c

Elon Musk's spaceflight company SpaceX just aborted its launch in perhaps the most dramatic way possible.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 was set to launch an uncrewed Dragon capsule loaded with about 5,500 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station under a contract with NASA, but with just 13 seconds left in the countdown, the company decided to abort the launch. 
SEE ALSO: Sorry, y'all. SpaceX isn't going to Mars in 2018
The decision was made on Saturday out of an "overabundance of caution"

It’s always fun seeing locations you recognize pop up in movies. It sort of lets you feel like you’re in on the secret, like you know the world these characters exist in better than they do.
What’s even better, and tougher, is when a film actually tries to inhabit a location, to imbue a location’s attitude throughout the picture. That’s one thing I thought the film adaptation of Fences absolutely nailed (among many others: see its four Oscar nominations).
The city o

Whether you’re a Twitch streamer or a noob, you can probably appreciate the loot from FanFit Gaming.
The Toronto-based company has come out with hand-bent lights inspired by video games. The original gaming merchandise is for people who take their gaming experience beyond the screen and into the rest of their home. In an age when games are the leading form of entertainment, it’s not a bad idea for a business.
“We celebrate the best of gaming design and aesthetic through our exc

I can’t wish the PlayStation Vita a happy fifth birthday because it’s been dead for a while now. The portable console has become a safe haven for indie games and Japanese visual novels, but third-party developers like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts along with Sony itself have reduced their Vita support to a smattering of annual cash-grabs. Yet every month when I pack for a flight, my Vita feels very much alive.
My Nintendo 3DS and iPad offer new games, though I typically prefer passing

 Ford has invested $1 billion in a joint venture with Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based company with ties to Carnegie Mellon. The goal is to completely outfit Ford vehicles with self-driving technology. Interestingly this isn’t a case of a large company simply hiring talent but the creation of an entirely separate company with an independent equity structure.
Ford is the “majority… Read More

Start your weekend off right this morning by watching a SpaceX rocket launch and landing. The company’s Falcon 9 is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a Dragon cargo capsule filled with nearly 5,500 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station. About 10 minutes after take off, the majority of the rocket will return to the Cape and attempt to land at SpaceX’s ground-based landing site, called Landing Zone 1.
Today’s launch is extra special
It’

Update February 18th, 10:10AM ET: The launch was supposed to take place on Saturday, February 18th at 10:01AM ET. But the launch was aborted just 13 seconds before liftoff out of an “abundance of caution,” thanks to a vector control issue in the upper stage of the vehicle. SpaceX will try to launch again on Sunday at 9:38AM ET.
Start your Sunday morning off right by watching a SpaceX rocket launch and landing. The company’s Falcon 9 is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral, Flor

(Reuters) – Automation and the new U.S. administration were the big unknowns at the Indian tech sector’s annual shindig this week, with machines threatening to take away thousands of jobs and concerns over possible visa rule changes in the key American market.
But senior executives from the $150 billion industry, which rose to prominence at the turn of the century by helping Western firms solve the “Y2K” bug, said companies with skilled English-speaking staff and low cost

Microsoft’s Azure public cloud business is certainly growing. What’s not certain is exactly how big it is. An analyst at J.P. Morgan has taken a guess, as the Wall Street Journal reported today.If the analyst is right, Azure pulled in around $2.7 billion in revenue in all of 2016. Put another way, in each quarter in 2016 Azure brought in, on average, $675 million in revenue. J.P. Morgan didn’t respond to a request for comment. Neither did Microsoft, for that matter.
Assuming th

Unlike most automakers, Tesla doesn’t schedule redesigns, updates, and new features for its cars to coincide with traditional model years.
Aided by the fact that most of its new features are software-related, Tesla takes a more flexible approach.
Many new features are pushed to its electric cars whenever they’re ready, in the form of over-the-air software updates.
That means, when checking for the latest Tesla updates, the best place to look typically isn’t a company press rele

GUEST: It’s an esports world, and we’re just living in it.
It might have seemed liked hyperbole to say this a few years ago, but it’s become impossible to ignore the mammoth impact esports have left on gaming. Game developers can’t shrug about esports now that finals of last year’s League of Legends world championship pulled in 36 million daily views across the globe and distributed $6.3 million in prize money. Market researcher Newzoo predicts the esports gaming ma

Google today announced that it in recent weeks it’s been testing Voice over LTE (VoLTE) network connections for some people who subscribe to its Project Fi wireless service. Getting access to VoLTE means that phone calls will use 4G LTE, allowing for better call quality and faster data connections for mapping apps and other services that consume data.
“You can tell you’re making a VoLTE call because your signal indicator will continue to display LTE instead of falling to H (HSP

Last year, Netflix scored an unexpected hit with Stranger Things, a show that combined the influence of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg into one glorious, retro-80s treat. Audiences apparently weren’t the only ones that noticed, because now King and Spielberg heir apparent J.J. Abrams have announced a Hulu project with its own Stranger Things-esque vibe called Castle Rock.
The announcement came today via the Twitter account of Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions, with a mysterious, handw