Technology news

OPINION: I’m going to spoil something about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for you: You can catch and ride a skeleton horse. Are you mad at me? Send your hate mail here, but that’s the last spoiler in this story, I swear!
I don’t think you should get mad. The new Zelda is far too expansive, with way too many things to do for you to realistically expect to find them all through natural exploration. Is it more magical for you to discover the stalhorse on your own? P

Venom is on his way to the big screen... again. Sony reportedly has a movie starring the Spidey villian scheduled for an October 2018 release, even though the studio currently shares custody of Spider-Man with Marvel. We don’t know much about what’s planned, but we do know that a script is already in the works.
Venom is Spider-Man’s Bizarro
I’m a huge Spider-Man fan, so I know a little bit about the character and what he represents. Since he has the same abilities but lac

Unlike the Nintendo Switch, Twelve South’s HiRise 2 iPhone stand is not exactly new. But, as the company’s enterprising marketing team has discovered, it is perhaps the best-looking solution for standing up your Nintendo Switch while charging it at the same time.While using Nintendo’s own charging dock only allows you to play the Switch on a connected screen, using the built-in kickstand results in a flimsy setup that blocks the USB-C port on the bottom, the HiRise 2 solves all

Microsoft today released yet another preview build of the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update with no big features — just bug fixes, really. Build 15061 appears just one day after build 15060.
Today there appear to be just four changes.
Some virtual private network (VPN) connections weren’t showing up in Settings > Network & Internet > VPN, but now they all should be there, Dona Sarkar, a software engineer in Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, wrote in a blog post

GUEST: If you’ve recently had your first interaction with a voice-based personal assistant like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, you might get the sense that artificial intelligence is just a few years away from being able to talk and act like a human. It will soon be capable of managing our schedules, troubleshooting technical issues, or even holding conversation.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal piece titled “Alexa and Cortana May Be Heading to the Office,&rdquo

One of the many things I liked about my last phone, the HTC One, was its lock screen weather widget. In a world of full-featured, minute-by-minute weather apps, it didn’t offer much: just the current temperature, the day’s projected high and low range, and an icon that indicated sun, rain, or snow. But it did exactly what I wanted. I could hit the power button on my way out the door and instantly gauge whether I should be grabbing a heavy coat or a light jacket, and whether I should

Using your voice to lock your front door or change the temperature in your home is outdated. You need to get on the new ocarina-controlled smart home.
YouTube creator Allen Pan of the Sufficiently Advanced channel released a new video today showing off how he controls the tech in his internet-connected household by playing songs from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on his own ocarina. The clip shows him unlocking his front door by playing Zelda’s Lullaby, turning on the heat by p

Amazon has added what might be the strangest feature for Prime members yet: a Outfit Compare tool that will judge your clothing, as spotted by TechCrunch.It’s a pretty simple feature: users can upload two pictures of themselves in different outfits and receive a response in a few minutes letting you know which looks better. Amazon says that the results take into account fit, color, style, and current trends, and that the app “is powered by a team of fashion specialists.” The FA

Next month, Tesla will no longer offer the Model S sedan with a 60 kilowatt-hour battery pack — the cheapest car it sells. With the change, the Model S will start at $77,800 with a 75kWh battery before any state or federal tax incentives, up from $71,300 currently. Of course, Tesla will launch the Model 3 later this year, which will be much cheaper still, starting around $35,000.
Model S cars with a 60kWh battery pack purchased since last spring (and 70kWh versions, which were available fo

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the tiny details that differentiate the 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast from the 1991 animated version.
There’s been a fair bit of controversy over Bill Condon’s live-action remake of Disney’s animated 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast, mostly centered over Condon’s proclamation that he’s given Disney its first canonically, openly gay character. In an interview with Attitude, Condon described that character, the villain’s sycoph

LG introduced its 32-inch 4K monitor, the 32UD99, at CES this year, and now we’re getting pricing info. The display will be available on March 28th for $999, according to a listing on B&H. Adorama also lists the display at that price and says it’s “coming soon,” but doesn’t specifically cite March 28th.In case you missed the original announcement, here are the 32UD99’s specs:
USB-C, DisplayPort, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports
AMD FreeSync Techno

Pirates could be going from Hearthstone’s dominant faction to crab food.
Blizzard showed off 11 new cards for Journey to Un’Goro, the next expansion for Blizzard’s digital card game behemoth. The set — the first of three planned for the year — comes out in mid-April. Un’Goro will add 135 new cards and start the Year of the Mammoth, which makes cards from older sets ineligible in the standard format.
In 2016, Hearthstone earned $394.6 million earned i

Listen up, friends: I love The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If I were a betting man, I’d say its odds of being Chris Plante’s Game of the Year: 2017 Edition are quite high. We’re talking top percentile. However, I do have some gripes.Now, I’ve noticed that parts of the internet aren’t especially keen on Zelda gripes. That is a shame. As we all know, no game is perfect, and there’s a certain relief in noting a game’s flaws, as they provide necessa

Mount Etna, Europe’s largest volcano, made headlines yesterday when an explosion injured at least 10 people. A BBC crew captured the moment in a harrowing video, showing scorching hot rocks and ash pelleting visitors. None of the injuries were serious — mostly bruises and burns — but the BBC science reporter Rebecca Morelle did tweet that it was “not an experience I ever ever want to repeat.”
Yesterday’s explosion on the Sicilian volcano was unexpected, but no

 This week four people were accused of hacking at least 500 million Yahoo accounts, Spotify partnered with Waze and Intel bought computer vision company Mobileye. These are the top stories of the week, and you can also get this post as a weekly newsletter in your inbox, if you prefer. 1. The U.S. Department of Justice accused of two Russian FSB officers and two criminal hackers of… Read More

The official Raspberry Pi magazine just announced that over 12.5 million of the affordable little Linux boards have been sold since the original Pi was launched in 2012. As The MagPi points out, this puts the Raspberry Pi past Commodore 64 sales, according to some estimates. That would make the Pi the third best-selling "general purpose computer" ever, behind Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows PCs. As commenters have pointed out, this isn't a precisely fair comparison, because there were othe

Every week, 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 are kicking off a new series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why,

 According to a new report from Reuters, LeEco is said to be seeking a buyer for the 49-acre swath in Silicon Valley set for the site of its future US headquarters. The Chinese electronics polymath highlighted its plans for EcoCity back in October, during its ambitious stateside debut, but a number of recent financial setbacks may have changed those plans.
The report cites anonymous sources… Read More

Netflix appears to be rolling out a button that allows you to skip a shows intro sequence, as spotted by The Verge. It turns out one of us at TNW has had the feature for a while as part of a test, but it seems to be rolling out globally now given widespread mention in social media. It seems it doesn’t show up on a show’s first episode – you know, they want you to at least see it once – but after that I was able to skip the intro on pretty much any show I tried (even

I have two burning questions about Soshee, a new Kickstarter project from a real estate mogul who’s best known for hiding cash and tweeting about it. One: do people really want to spend $149 (or more) on a tiny mechanical dog that responds to social media interactions? And two: will someone please wash those prototypes, or at least give them a trim?The Soshee Kickstarter page boasts that the toy dogs were designed by John Nolan Studio, which has done animatronics work for blockbuster movie

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 episode eight of season 2, “Pyre.”
Earlier this season, The Expanse ran into an issue: it hadn’t finished adapting the first novel of the series, Leviathan Wakes, so the first five episode

Chance the Rapper says Apple paid him $500,000 and paid for a promotional commercial to release his last mixtape, Coloring Book, as an exclusive on Apple Music for two weeks. The declaration came in a tweet this afternoon, as fans questioned Chance’s independence as an artist — a staple in his young career — given that the world’s largest corporation backed his last project.I wanna clear things up. @apple gave me half a mil and a commercial to post Coloring Book exclusive

If you’re the type of person who buys an electric car to show how “green” you are, this may be the electric car for you. It’s the 2018 Ford Focus Electric, and it’s available in a new color: “outrageous green metallic.” It may be the greenest EV on the market.
It’s actually the color “greenery” that Pantone named as its 2017 Color of the Year and, of course, it’s green for St. Patrick’s Day. Here are the important, technical

Navigating your way around the internet may seem intuitive if you’ve grown up with access to it most of your life — but for those who are just beginning to use social media platforms, it can be hard to detect scam from the constant stream of information. The European Commission has taken a step to prevent these types of web-based consumer fraud, ordering companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to address and prevent them from appearing on their sites.
The European Union defines

Apple has announced that it will open two more R&D centers in China, one in Shanghai and one in Suzhou, joining the already planned Beijing and Shenzhen centers that have previously been announced, as noted by AppleInsider.Apple has committed to spending over 3.5 billion yuan (approximately $506.6 million) on research in China, with a focus on working with more local partners in the region to develop new technologies.As pointed out by Bloomberg, the timing is likely intentional, coming just

 Amazon has been steadily pushing its way into fashion over the past several years, with investments in its own private labels – from workwear to activewear – plus increased fashion ad spending and even its own trend-obsessed TV show, Style Code Live. Now the online retailer is looking to dole out its fashion advice to the masses, too, through a new feature called… Read More

 lef was a mobile authentication app that I chose for increasing my own WordPress security when I started blogging years ago — as did a million other sites. However, the app is officially and unexpectedly shutting down on June 6th; former employees will continue working on other projects at Twilio, including the Authy app and API. I spoke with Clef co-founder, Brennen Byrne and asked… Read More

Ever since the original Razer Blade was announced way back in 2011, the series has received some praise as the MacBook of gaming laptops. For good reason – it was one of the first glimmers of hope that a laptop could pack in a powerful graphics card without the dimensions of a whale or looking like it was designed by a teenager on an acid trip. Now packing a VR-ready Nvidia 1060, the Blade is a more powerful gaming rig than ever, but it’s the classy design and compact chassis that r

Independent games have always been a crucial slice of the iOS app market. Now, Apple is adding a new section to the App Store to better highlight these games from smaller studios, which can sometimes get lost in the shuffle of big-budget titles and free-to-play behemoths.The new Indie Game Showcase will feature new games and also highlight older titles, and will be curated by Apple’s editorial team in a manner similar to other featured apps on the store. In addition to the individual app s

 Early investor and Executive Chairman of ClassPass Fritz Lanman will be taking over as CEO of the company, with cofounder and former CEO Payal Kadakia swapping with him for the Executive Chairman role. ClassPass, for those of you who live under a rock, is a subscription service that lets users book and access a variety of fitness classes and boutique gyms under a single ClassPass membership.… Read More

Forget those non-tech hand warmer packs, gamers, because the Danes have a gadget solution for your sad, frozen hands. A company called Envavo has designed something called the Heatbuff, which basically works as a highly targeted space heater for gamers’ hands. They put it on Kickstarter this week. I wasn’t aware that gamers’ hands got cold while gaming, or that they needed to be kept warm, but I guess this is a legitimate issue. There’s even a three-year-old Reddit thread

Netflix is rolling out a button that lets you skip the opening credits on some television shows. This week some Twitter users spotted a “skip intro” button that appears when you hover over the title sequence for shows including Netflix originals House of Cards and Iron Fist, and Mad Men (a third-party show). Both those shows open each episode with the title sequence, making it unclear whether you’ll be able to skip title sequences in shows with cold opens.The first mention of t

An arrest has been made three months after someone tweeted a seizure-inducing strobe at writer and Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald. The Dallas FBI confirmed the arrest to The Verge today, and noted that a press release with more details is coming. Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, tweeted details of the arrest and said that more than 40 other people also sent him strobes after he publicized the first attack. Their information is now with the FBI, he says.He currently faces federal ch

At the start of the year, Hasbro announced it was putting the future of Monopoly into the hands of people on the internet. The company held a public vote, asking fans to decide on a revamped set of game pieces for the newest edition of the classic board game. Today, the results of that vote are in. The original boot, thimble, and wheelbarrow pieces will be replaced by a Tyrannosaurus rex, a penguin, and a rubber ducky, AP reports.
Voters were allowed to choose from 56 new tokens (plus the eight

 LinkedIn, the social network for professionals that is now owned by Microsoft, is making one of the tools that it has developed in-house for its own work open for use by others. The company today announced that it would be open sourcing Flashback, a tool for mocking internet traffic for developer tests, under a BSD two-clause license.
In a blog post, LinkedIn said that it had been using… Read More

Last fall, an obscure company named Erato released some of the first usable wireless earbuds. The Apollo 7 earbuds were tiny, produced decent sound, and had a Bluetooth connection that didn’t cut out all the time — a problem that doomed similar products. The big issue was a pair of Apollo 7s would set you back $299, a price tag that was way too high considering the earbuds had no buttons or extra features.Now Erato is back with a new pair called the Muse 5. At $179, they are cheaper

Out of all the federal agencies that received budget plans from President Donald Trump yesterday, NASA fared pretty well. The space agency is only facing a 0.8 percent cut in its overall budget — a relatively mild change compared to the Environmental Protection Agency, which could see its funding slashed by 31 percent.
Packed within NASA’s small budget decrease are some pretty sizable cuts
But packed within NASA’s small budget decrease are some pretty sizable cuts. A few major

Sonic Forces is the recently revealed title for Sega’s next big 3D Sonic the Hedgehog title. The company has been secretive about the game for nearly a year, after it was first announced under the working title of Project Sonic 2017, but today we’re finally getting a glimpse of gameplay.The new footage shows off the gameplay for Modern Sonic — as teased in the first trailer. The brief Modern Sonic gameplay clip looks similar to that of Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations, featur