Technology news

Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt said in a briefing today with journalists in San Francisco that the company plans to explore streaming mobile-specific cuts of its original movies and TV shows, to satisfy what he said was a growing audience of mobile Netflix watchers.“It’s not inconceivable that you could take a master [copy] and make a different cut for mobile,” Hunt said. To date, Netflix hasn’t been delivering different cuts for different viewing platforms, Hunt

Wrensilva is back with its latest record console, as first noted by Highsnobiety, and this time it comes with a notably smaller footprint. The Wrensilva Loft is the companies’ newest creation, coming in at less than half the size of previous consoles built by Wrensilva.
Constructed out of North American walnut, the Loft features a Wrensilva amp pushing 300 watts per channel, a fully decoupled belt driven turntable, a 3.5mm jack, and Sonos compatibility, allowing users to stream their recor

Robots are inevitably going to automate millions of jobs in the US and around the world, but there’s an even more complex scenario on the horizon, said roboticist Matt Rendall. In a talk Tuesday at SXSW, Rendall painted a picture of the future of robotic job displacement that focused less on automation and more on the realistic ways in which the robotics industry will reshape global manufacturing.
The takeaway was that America, which has outsourced much of its manufacturing and lacks serio

A passenger on a February 19th flight from Beijing, China to Melbourne, Australia was burned when her headphones caught fire. The incident was detailed in a report released today by the Australian government’s Transport Safety Bureau, which stated that the headphones’ batteries were the likely the cause of the fire. The passenger’s name, the name of the airline, and the brand of the headphones were not released.The ATSB says that “a loud explosion” was heard about t

Tesla will raise a little more than $1 billion to fund the launch of its upcoming Model 3 electric car and to strengthen its balance sheet, the company announced today. Last year, Tesla made a similar stock offering to fund Model 3 production, although without the convertible notes, and another back in 2015.
$250 million will come from a secondary stock offering, plus $750 million in convertible senior notes (basically a loan), as well as options for the underwriters to purchase an additional 15

Google is giving thousands of contractors who normally evaluate search results a new, additional task: help the company downrank blatantly upsetting, offensive, and false content. Search Engine Land has a thorough explainer on the updated guidelines used by Google’s quality raters. Those are the people who rank the usefulness and accuracy of search results to keep improving the company’s search algorithms, which ultimately determine what ranks where.Raters now have access to a new &l

GoPro is reducing its workforce by about 270 employees, the company announced today, citing an effort to reduce operating costs by about $200 million for 2017. The new cuts include current employees as well as open positions, and it’s the third reduction to GoPro’s workforce since the beginning of 2016.The camera company operated at a loss of $373 million in 2016, in part thanks to production delays on the new Hero 5 cameras and the recall of the Karma drone. GoPro’s stock pric

A few weeks ago, WhatsApp replaced the ability for users to set a text-based in-app status with a Snapchat Stories clone. Now, after user backlash, the company is re-adding the ability for users to set an availability status through the About section of the messaging app, according to a report from TechCrunch.
Like Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook’s regular app, the WhatsApp version of Snapchat stories allows users to post pictures and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Whats

You can do pretty much anything on a smartphone nowadays. That’s generally a good thing, but it can present a tough balancing problem for parents who want to give young children access to technology while still keeping tabs on what they’re doing. Google’s new Android app, Family Link, aims to solve that. It lets parents create a Google account for their kids and monitor which apps they can use and how long they’re using them. To get started, parents need to prep in a few

In the 1983 film WarGames, Matthew Broderick’s character David Lightman played a huge role in shaping the public image of computer hackers. But for co-writer Walter F. Parkes, it’s left a complicated legacy. “When I look at that movie, certainly there were some things we got right. Mainly, I think, that the world would not change because of things that IBM and Ma Bell or the government would do — but it would change because of things that people in their garages or bedroo

Between 1945 and 1962, the United States conducted over 200 nuclear tests up high in the atmosphere to learn about the power of nuclear weapons. The terrifying explosions were filmed from every possible angle and distance, and the movies — an estimated 10,000 of them — were then stored in high-security vaults scattered across the country.Now, for the first time, about 4,200 of thee films have been scanned, and around 750 have been declassified by the US government. You can watch abou

Fans are still waiting for a third season of Serial, a podcast from the creators of This American Life. In the meantime, there’s a new, conceptually similar podcast alternative: S-Town, which will be released in full on March 28th.S-Town is the first project from Serial Productions, which was set up earlier this year by some of the talents behind This American Life and Serial. This new series started three years ago after a man reached out to This American Life producer Brian Reed, claimin

Yesterday, an unusual app started making news. Called Facezam, the app promised to instantly identify anyone in front of your phone’s camera, using facial recognition to match them against Facebook profile pictures. It was a terrifying promise: anyone walking down the street could be identified with just a wave of your phone.
It was all fake, as it turned out. The app was built by a viral marketing agency called Zacozo, who mocked up visuals for the app, lied about the broader outlines of

When Google announced in February 2015 that its DeepMind AI beat 49 Atari video games, it was a major step forward for machine learning, but it left the team behind DeepMind with a frustrating situation. Even though the AI could beat the games, it needed to be retrained to beat each new game, and quickly forgot how to play a game after it had moved on to the next one.The researchers at DeepMind, however, have developed an algorithm to solve the problem: Elastic Weight Consolidation (EWC).
DeepMi

Where is Uber? Lyft? What the fuck is RideAustin? These are just a few of the questions you find yourself asking when stepping off a plane in Austin, Texas. Austin is one of a handful of places in the US that have banned both Uber and Lyft from doing business within the city. I won’t get into the reasons, it’s been done before, but essentially a disagreement in how both operated led the city to fund its own ride-sharing service, RideAustin. RideAustin is but one of a handful of

Google is making a play to capture the family market. Today it announced its new Family Link app, which lets parents create a Google account for their kids. This account is completely controlled by parents, so that means they can manage the apps their kids use, monitor how long they’re staring at their device, and set a designated “bedtime” for the screen. They can remotely lock it, too.To create this account, parents just have to get their kids a device that runs Android Nouga

To save coral reefs around the world, global temperatures need to level off or decline, according to a new study of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) over the past 20 years. Warming waters are the key driver of mass bleaching, the study found. As the world continues to heat up, these bleaching events will become more frequent and more severe, putting the future of coral reefs at risk.
Bleaching occurs when the colorful algae that live inside the corals are expelled. That can happen for a lot of reaso

In the winter of 2013, Beijing and other cities in the East China Plains became blanketed in thick, eye-stinging, gray smog. The pollution levels were off the charts: people were told to stay indoors, roads were closed, and hundreds of people were hospitalized with respiratory issues. On some days, the smog was so bad that it could be seen in satellite photos.
News articles at the time attributed the so-called “airpocalypse” to China’s heavy coal emissions. But that’s onl

A couple of weeks ago, I told you guys about my newly hatched obsession with the mobile game Egg Inc., which is a deceptively simple and uncannily addictive time occupier that demands a lot of tapping to churn out more chickens. More than a few of you picked up the habit, but one person went the extra mile by crafting her own screen-tapping robot to save her the repetitive strain injury (which, I can confirm, is a real danger with this game):
@vladsavov You made me play this egg game, and now I'

Starz has released a new trailer for American Gods. The footage is the most extensive and violent look yet at the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s classic fantasy novel.Our first look at the show last year introduced Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), who is recruited by Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) to help in a coming war between the gods of the old world and those of the new. This minute-long preview gives a better idea of the stakes: the older gods face an existential crisis, and Shadow will help w

Facebook wants to make it easier to find and contact your local government representatives with a new feature called Town Hall. It’s pretty simple: Enter your address (Facebook says it won’t be displayed or shared) and you’ll see a list of officials at the local, state, and federal levels. You then choose to follow or contact them on Facebook. On the mobile apps, you can find it by clicking on the hamburger menu tab, and scrolling through the apps section (click on ‘See

I’ve been grading on a curve when it comes to truly wireless earbuds. Or at least, I was. It’s such a technological challenge — fitting respectable battery life, sound quality, and wireless radios into such a small form factor — that I felt it worthy to catalog what companies got right in the face of the things they got wrong.
That’s why, despite the low score and headline, I was still a bit forgiving with the Motorola VerveOnes+ last year. (To be clear, they’

If you’re a Fossil Q smartwatch owner, you’re among the lucky Android Wear users. The company announced today that it’s starting to update its smartwatch line to Google’s newest wearable OS: Android Wear 2.0. The rollout starts today with the Fossil Q Wander, Q Marshal, and Q Founder.With the update, wearers will get the chance to use Google Assistant directly from their watch. They can also respond to texts through their watch’s keyboard, handwriting, or Smart Repl

A group of 58 companies, including Lyft, Airbnb, and Dropbox, are protesting the revised travel ban on majority-Muslim countries that the Trump administration released earlier this month. The companies have submitted an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit filed by the state of Hawaii against President Trump. The group wants a temporary restraining order on the ban, saying that it “would inflict significant and irreparable harm on U.S. businesses and their employees” — echoing

Thad Starner, a Georgia Tech professor and a pioneer in wearable tech, was speaking to a big crowd at SXSW about the inspirational uses of wearable tech. He has seen it used to guide firemen in emergency-rescue situations, help a hearing-impaired person have a coherent conversation, or even give those with motor skill disabilities an option to communicate through brain signals.
Then he got a text from his wife on the Google Glass headset he was wearing. Starner has been the technical lead on Goo

A flock of sex-crazed Canadian iPhone owners were disappointed to discover that Apple’s voice-enabled virtual assistant Siri might not be the best travel companion when it comes to locating escorts. Canadian outlet The Toronto Star reports the virtual assistant has curiously been directing users seeking paid sexual pleasures to a certain bar in Toronto, which definitely appears to be the wrong place to find them. Not too long ago, Meltdown eSports Bar co-founder A

If the most effort you’ve ever wanted to put into cleaning your home is yelling at your Roomba while watching it from the couch, then you’re in luck.
iRobot announced today that an Amazon Alexa skill will be available for Roomba 900 Series vacuum owners in the US starting sometime in quarter 2. That means yelling “Alexa, ask Roomba to begin cleaning” will be enough to get your vacuum robot going. Customers will be able to use simple voice commands to start, stop, and paus

HTC is teasing some kind of announcement for March 20. The company’s Taiwan Facebook page posted an image saying ‘Spring is coming,’ along with a caption that Facebook translates to “HTC will give you an unexpected surprise.” It’s logical to think the announcement may be a successor to the excellent HTC 10 – we’ll call it the HTC 11 even though the company has suggested it won’t be named as such. Given the 10 was announced in April 2016, the

Thousands of mobile developers might be in for a nasty surprise as Apple could be planning to obliterate a massive chunk of apps with the launch of its new and improved iOS 11, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower. While the Big A has long been nudging developers to update older apps to be compatible with the new 64-bit processors that kicked off with the iPhone 5S, it seems the electronics giant is finally taking firmer steps to make this happen. Sensor Tower claims the move towar

Update 11:02 AM ET: This post originally suggested Facebook Stories was rolling out globally, but Facebook tells us it’s simply expanded its test to include more countries. We’ve update the post to reflect this information. Facebook has brought an imitation of Snapchat’s Stories to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, but it’s also gearing up to bring it to the biggest platform of them all: Facebook itself. The feature has been testing in Ireland since at least J

McDonald’s is now letting some mobile app users in Washington and California place their orders before actually getting to a restaurant location. With mobile ordering, customers place their orders ahead of time, go to a McDonald’s, check in, and pay through the app. They can then pick up their food using the physical counter, drive-thru, or curbside pickup. The app relies on geofencing to know where customers are in relation to the storefront to keep food fresh.
For now, only people

HTC could be announcing the HTC 11, a successor to 2016’s flagship HTC 10, as early as next week. The rumor is based on a image posted by HTC’s Taiwan Facebook page teasing an announcement for March 20th, as noted by TechRader. HTC Taiwan Facebook pageThe image was accompanied by the extremely vague hint that “HTC will give you an unexpected surprise,” which could really mean anything — but the logical guess would be that HTC is gearing up to announce its new flagsh

Usually when I’m talking to people about superhero movies like Logan and Black Panther, we don't wind up discussing alien eyeballs and pirate eyeliner. But that’s just natural conversation drift for Oscar-winning makeup designer Joel Harlow. He considers Logan his first superhero movie, but it’s just the latest addition to a resume stacked with genre films, including J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot (which won him a Best Achievement in Makeup Oscar) and all five Pirates

“Machine learning is really not dark magic, it’s just another tool.” Greg Corrado should know. As the leading professor involved in the development of Google Brain, and Google’s Director of Augmented Intelligence Research, he worked on their release of their open-source library for machine learning, Tensorflow. “Our main hurdle is to get people educated on how this works in practice.” He shared that practical advice last week at TQ in Amsterdam (disclaim

A design studio called Those is making a smart whiteboard that it calls “the first connected display that draws with a pen.” It’s named Joto, and it’s one part internet-enabled whiteboard, one part art display, and one part nostalgic throwback to a physical medium. It’s an eclectic mix of ideas, and it ends up resulting in a lot of wildly different imagined use cases for the device.The wildest of Joto’s ambitions is as a notification board that integrates with

If you’re too lazy to make dinner, you can pull out your phone to order something on Grubhub. Now, if you’re too lazy to do even that, you can just yell at Alexa.
Grubhub is adding an Alexa skill today that’ll let you reorder any of your last three purchases. If you want something new, you’ll have to go back to your phone. But the integration should offer an even quicker way to place an order, which could be great for those moments when even deciding what you want to eat

Here’s news that could strike terror in the hearts of those living in warmer regions: your bedbug traps might be useless because tropical bedbugs have special pads on their legs that help them climb right out.There are two kinds of bedbugs: the common bedbug, which is the kind that’s usually found in the US and Europe, and the tropical kind in Asia, Australia and... Florida. Peopleoften assume that the tropical and the common bedbug are basically the same, and it is almost impossible

Here’s the funny thing about reviewing gadgets: a hundred journalists can spend weeks with a device, say a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 or GoPro’s Karma drone, and not experience anything out of the ordinary. The drone gets flown thousands of times, the phone’s battery is charged and emptied over and over — nothing crazy happens, and you publish your take. The device is released, and a few weeks later, all hell breaks loose.That was the way things went with my first attempt at r