Technology news

Swords and zombies did well last month.
The gaming industry generated $724 million in revenues in the United States last month, according to data-tracking firm The NPD Group. That’s down 21 percent year-over-year from $918.7 million. All segments — hardware, console and PC software, and accessories —  were down compared to the same period in 2016.
But it’s revenues from console hardware that is falling the hardest.
February 2017 results
NPD tracks data from physical

For families living in large cities, finding great places for children to exercise and keep busy in can be problematic. Some are better than others, but do you really want to commit in the long-term when there are many more to see? Also, do you want to add some diversity in the playgrounds where your children spend time at? Kidpass is a service that mirrors what ClassPass does for fitness and focuses it around activity providers for kids.
The subscription service for kids’ classes has prev

Mount Etna, Europe’s largest and most active volcano, has been spewing red-hot molten rock and ash for the past few weeks. And today, an unexpected eruption from the Sicilian volcano injured at least 10 people, according to local media.The explosion was recorded in a harrowing video by BBC science reporter Rebecca Morelle and camerawoman Rachel Price, who were on the scene to film the volcano.
The moment of the Etna explosion - filmed by @NewsCamerawoman - she, @alisonfrancis & I VERY

You will soon no longer need to find some friends to amble down the East Sea road.
Funforge is preparing to release Tokaido, its first digital adaptation for one of its board games, on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets “within the next 10 days,” a company spokesperson said over email. The publisher has sold more than 250,000 copies of Tokaido since its debut in 2012, and it’s been nominated for a number of awards. It’s the latest board game to join others in th

Netflix vice president of product Todd Yellin said in a briefing today that the video streaming company would be changing its ratings system for the first time in several years, switching from a traditional five-star rating to a thumbs up/thumbs down system.“Five stars feels very yesterday now,” Yellin said. “We’re spending many billions of dollars on the titles we’re producing and licensing, and with these big catalogs, that just adds a challenge ... Bubbling up th

AMD made big waves in the chip world last month when it unveiled the Ryzen series as a new line of processors that could actually challenge Intel’s long seated dominance when it comes to high-end performance.But where the Ryzen 7 was a top-tier line akin to Intel’s Core i7 models aimed at users who demand peak performance at any price, the Ryzen 5 could be a much bigger deal as a cheaper, mid-range model that’s taking aim at Intel’s popular Core i5 line.
A viable competit

GUEST: Let’s talk about the millennial generation — the demographic segment so coveted that marketing managers from all over the globe are fighting over them.
Are they really such a complex generation that we must resort to artificial intelligence to figure out what they want and to keep them coming back for more? Turns out they are, and AI is indeed the ultimate weapon in the fight for the millennial generation’s ever-shortening attention span. Luckily, rapid strides

Syfy announced today that it has picked up The Expanse for a third, 13-episode season, which will air on the network in 2018.Based on the series of novels by James S.A. Corey, The Expanse is set two centuries from now in an inhabited solar system. The show follows a spaceship crewman, James Holden, and a detective on Ceres, Joe Miller, who become intertwined in a system-wide conspiracy that brings everyone to the brink of war.The second season of the show is currently airing on Syfy, and has dep

Adobe made $1.68 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2017, continuing the growth trend the company kicked off when it stopped selling software and started renting it as monthly and annual subscriptions.
That $1.68 billion figure is a record for Adobe, but Adobe has reported “record” quarterly revenue every three months since the second quarter of 2015, so don’t let the term get you too excited.
While Adobe’s subscription businesses are growing, it&rsq

Weird as it might sound, there are competitive rememberers out there who can memorize a deck of cards in seconds or dozens of words in minutes. So, naturally, someone decided to study them. It turns out that practicing their techniques doesn't just improve your memory — it can also change how your brain works.
The right kind of memory training may cause lasting changes to the brain
There’s been a long-standing debate about whether memory athletes are born with superior memories, or w

It looks like the characters in Mass Effect: Andromeda can’t grow facial hair and have been watching fake-beard make-up tutorials on YouTube instead.
Above: Ch-ch-ch-chia!Image Credit: GamesBeat
The facial hair in Mass Effect: Andromeda is awful, and I hate it. Electronic Arts and BioWare have had five years since the release of Mass Effect 3 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC to improve on the technology of Mass Effect: Andromeda, which debuts on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and

The race to combine old-school luxury brands with modern technology is well and truly on, as today Montblanc joins Tag Heuer in rolling out its own Android​ Wear watch. The Montblanc Summit is the company's first venture into the digital timekeeping world, bringing with it some of the expertise Montblanc has for crafting mechanical timepieces. I got to see and wear this fancified Android Wear watch in London today, sitting down with Montblanc's director of new technologies, Felix Obschonka

Spotify will soon concede on one of its most controversial policies — that all music on its platform be available to both free and paid users. As it works to renegotiate its now expired licensing deals with music labels, Spotify has agreed to restrict some new releases to its premium tier, The Verge has learned.
Spotify needs the biggest album releases
The deal may be months away from being finalized, but Spotify is said to have cleared this particular clause with major record labels. The

Google’s making a small but helpful change to desktop Gmail today that’ll be useful for anyone who sends or receives video attachments: from now on, you’ll be able to stream them on the page, rather than having to download the file first.
Video attachments can still be downloaded, but clicking on a file will now pull up a YouTube-style video player that’ll let you play the clip back, adjust quality and sound levels, and even stream it to a Chromecast device. (Though, in m

Google Home users heard an advertisement today along with their daily update; however, Google denies the statement was an ad. The audio clip lasting roughly 15 seconds was removed from Google Home by Thursday afternoon.
Today when people told the smart speaker “Tell me about my day,” after it rattled off weather, commute times, and calendar events, Google Assistant said, “By the way, Disney’s live action Beauty and the Beast opens today. In this version of

Netflix’s Iron Fist debuts tonight at midnight, and despite the critical shellacking the series has taken over the past week, the show must go on. As part of the series’s launch, the company has teamed up with Twitch and two of today’s most celebrated fighting-game players, Justin Wong and Daigo Umehara, to stream several rounds of Street Fighter V and Marvel vs. Capcom 3.Twitch announced the matches between the old rivals on Twitter last night:
In 24 hours, the greatest rivalr

GUEST: If you’ve ever worked in a big company, you carry the scars of processes and workflows. Even in the most advanced companies, most processes are not what I would consider delightful. When presenting about UX, I ask the audience “Who here likes to do their expense reports?” — I get laughter, but no one raises their hands.
Processes like expense reporting should be delightful — you paid for something and now the company pays you back! Magic! And it’s

Google today announced that the Annotations Editor tool for putting text annotations in YouTube videos will be going away on May 2. No longer will people be able to add new annotations or edit existing annotations with the tool as of that date. However, video creators can use other tools to add content to videos after they’ve been uploaded.
YouTube introduced Annotations Editor all the way back in 2008 — “before the world went mobile,” Google product manager Muli Salem wr

The last four episodes of Saturday Night Live’s 42nd season will air live in every US time zone, a first for the NBC series. Until now, the show was broadcast live from New York City at 11:30PM ET (and 10:30PM CT), and was re-broadcast three hours later for Mountain and Pacific time zones. This means for the next month, West Coasters will have to tune in at 8:30PM PT to catch the new episodes, hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Chris Pine, Melissa McCarthy, and The Rock.
In a statement to The Daily B

I care more about Microsoft’s efforts to bring Xbox 360 games to the Xbox One than I thought I would when the company first announced it, and one of the games the company added today is a big reason for this.
Xbox One backward compatibility is getting support for Street Fighter IV, Luxor 2, and Madballs in … Babo: Invasion today, but the standout addition for me is the 2008 Xbox Live Arcade release Poker Smash. This is a puzzler that has blocks falling from the sky, but unlike

As criticism of Uber has mounted over the past month, one of its most prominent partners has discussed whether to continue its relationship with the company. Spotify decided not to participate in a press campaign about an upcoming update to the Uber app, The Verge has learned. In an internal company-wide email, the company’s head of product refers to discussions the company held about ending Uber’s API access, which allows riders to control a driver’s sound system from their sm

Hey, I’m sure you wanted a new smart light. Maybe you haven’t gotten around to buying one yet, or, perhaps, you were holding out a HomeKit-enabled bulb that doesn’t require a hub. I’ve got news for you: iLuv just launched a light that works with HomeKit, meaning you can use Siri for controls. It also doesn’t need a hub; instead pairs over Wi-Fi. Called the Rainbow8, the LED light glows in millions of programmable colors and can group with other bulbs, so you can con

President Donald Trump released his 2018 budget blueprint, and it eliminates four of America’s independent cultural agencies: the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to The Washington Post.
Legislators have frequently targeted these four agencies for cuts. Collectively, the cuts would eliminate $971 million from the national budget. The budget will ne

Square’s merchant authentication service is currently down, meaning that if you want to buy that coffee or get lunch from a food truck, you might want to carry some cash with you. The company has identified the cause, but does not have an estimated time for when a fix will be implemented.
Only Square Cash is unaffected by this outage, which has lasted for more than an hour. Payments, Point of Sale, and dashboard services worldwide are experiencing issues as are Square’s appointments,

House Speaker Paul Ryan today closed the case on President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the Obama administration had his phones tapped during the election. Citing intelligence reports given to House leaders, Ryan said, “No such wiretap existed,” according to CNN. Although it will likely remain a talking point for Trump and his aides to insinuate the criminal wrongdoing of his predecessor without evidence, Ryan’s admission here should, at the very least, put pressure

Snapchat parent company Snap slipped below the $20 per share mark for the first time today, two weeks after the company started trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $24 per share.
Up-to-the-minute stock alerts don’t reveal much about Snap — the stock may sink lower before the end of the day, or rebound slightly if investors leap at the discount. But this dip reinforces a broader trend: After an investor frenzy, the social media stock is settling down from euphoric

Michael Whelan is one of the best science fiction and fantasy artists in the business. Over his 40-year career, he’s won 15 Hugo Awards, and been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. His art has become iconic, with an instantly recognizable style marked by bright, saturated colors and swirling skies. He’s especially known as a covers artist for books including Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderso

A new challenger is coming to the esports table.
CD Projekt Red announced the Gwent Challenger tournament today. The competition will pit four players against professional gamers in the digital card game, which is in beta for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. They will compete for a prize pool of $100,000. You can sign up for the tournament here, which is for the PC version of the game.
This is Gwent’s first big overture toward the esports world, a market that will generate as muc

Passengers waiting for a train in Rhinecliff, New York on Tuesday had ample time to realize that the tracks they were standing near were covered with mountains of snow. They also had, presumably, long minutes to do the complex math necessary to figure out what would happen if the snow were to be hit by the fast-moving train.And, if you watch this video closely, you’ll notice that many of them had time to take out their phones and prepare to film whatever fate was about to befall them.winte

Today some Google Home owners are hearing something extra when they ask for a summary of the day ahead from the smart speaker: an advertisement for the opening of Beauty and the Beast. Several users on Reddit have noticed the audio ad and Bryson Meunier posted a clip to Twitter. Some Android users are also getting the ad through Google Assistant on mobile.
The ad is delivered using the regular Google Assistant voice, so it blends in seamlessly with the other information — but some people s

I’ve always been a fan of squigglevision, the animation effect in which lines oscillate to make static scenes feel more dynamic. It involves animators drawing the same image multiple times and looping the drawings in a sequence to create depth and movement. Mathematician and comic artist Olivia Walch is a fan as well, and her latest app Squigglish makes this effect easily achievable for even the most casual doodler.I was immediately drawn to Squigglish because it’s a refreshingly sim

Just three days after Apple came out with the sixth beta release of iOS 10.3, a new update to iOS 10, today Apple started rolling out the seventh beta release.
That Apple chose to put out a seventh build before making iOS 10.3 available to everyone, and so soon after the previous one, suggests that the official version could be coming out shortly, perhaps in the next week.
In addition to releasing the seventh beta to developers today, Apple also made it available to public beta testers.
Today&rs

Sephora is joining multiple other companies in recognizing the importance AR is going to play in future beauty product shopping.
The makeup retailer introduced a “Sephora Virtual Artist” this week in an update to its iOS app. The feature, which was developed in partnership with AR company ModiFace, scans your face, figures out where your lips and eyes are, and lets you try on different looks.
Right now, you can only play with lip colors, eyeshadows, and false lash styles. If you like

The developer responsible for bringing deep narrative gameplay to the worlds of The Walking Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Minecraft is getting a new boss.
Dan Connors, who cofounded Telltale Games and worked as its chief executive officer until January 2015, is retaking that role. Kevin Bruner, who came on as CEO of the company more than two years ago, is stepping down. Bruner explained in a note to Telltale employees (as Kotaku first reported) that he will stay on the with t

Microsoft surprised everyone with its unveiling of the Surface Book laptop with a detachable display, but the software maker might not bring this tablet feature to its Surface Book 2. DigiTimes reports that Microsoft’s new Surface Book has entered mass production and could be unveiled by the end of the month or April. The timing is hardly surprising given persistent rumors about the Surface Book successor over the past year, but DigiTimes also claims Microsoft will adopt a clamshell design

Our next speakers for our upcoming GamesBeat Summit event will talk about “Bucking the status quo: Redesigning leadership for diverse talent, perspectives, and products.”
They will speak at our event entitled GamesBeat Summit 2017: How games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic. GamesBeat Summit 2017 will take place on May 1-2 at the historic Claremont resort hotel in Berkeley, Calif., just a short distance from San Francisco. You can secure your seat here. U

Sony said that its consumers have bought more than 2.6 million copies of its PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn in its February 28 release two weeks ago.
The open-world adventure from Guerrilla Games received a high 89 out of 100 score on Metacritic, which aggregated the average scores of 106 media reviews. (Here’s GamesBeat’s review). The sales make Horizon Zero Dawn the best-selling new first party intellectual property launch on the PS4 to date

Turntable.fm was a social music site that let users join together in a virtual room and listen to music together (right up until it died because apparently licensing music is super expensive). But Vevo is taking another shot at social listening with a new Watch Party feature in an effort to try and expand its service beyond being just a music video provider, according to a report from TechCrunch.Like Turntable.fm, Watch Party drops users into a virtual room, where they can add tracks, vote on se

Anyone who frequently uses ride-sharing services like Uber or Lyft knows the frustration that can come from a driver and rider trying to find each other. Sometimes the driver is on the wrong side of the street, or misses their turn — and sometimes the rider gives terrible directions over the phone.
Uber wants to fix that and has reworked the navigation system it builds into the Uber Driver app in a bid to get everyone to where they’re going more quickly. The navigation system has bee

What do you do after founding a company that manages a billion dollars in annual adspend and is Google’s largest and fastest-growing partner?
Start a new marketing AI company building chatbots, of course.
Above: Larry Kim
Larry Kim, the influential and popular founder of perhaps the best paid search marketing platform on the planet, has left WordStream, the company he founded and built. WordStream currently employs  over 200 people, boasts 10,000 clients, and has an off-the-recor

Autobot? Decepticon? We’re all Cybertronians here — can’t we all get along?
The first update for Transformers: Earth Wars is now available. This mobile base-building strategy game (think Clash of Clans, but with the iconic Optimus Prime and Megatron instead of those loony warriors from Supercell’s hit) is now enabling players to choose Transformers from each side of the war between Autobots and Decepticons, essentially giving them 35 new bots to pick from. This

While many peer-to-peer payment and personal finance services are geared toward the U.S., a new one has emerged to buck that trend. Koho is launching to the general public — starting in every province in Canada except for Quebec — as a mobile hub to help manage people’s finances. The startup has secured a partnership with Visa to give it a boost out of the starting gate.
A blend of Mint.com, Venmo, and Digit, Koho seeks to provide free banking services to millennials,

You’ve heard of endless runners. So indie game publisher Elephant Mouse is turning that idea on its head with an endless climber. The Cary, N.C.-based publisher is releasing Twisty Sky on iOS today as a free download.
Twisty Sky requires both puzzle-solving and quick reflexes. Players climb a colorful, infinitely high tower by swiping blocks to line up ladders before the evil Goonswarm monsters get them.
The game features 25 cartoon characters that can be unlocked, each with unique vi