Technology news

Twitter is considering offering a paid subscription to power users, including brands and news organizations, The Verge has confirmed. Twitter users today began tweeting screenshots of the survey and a mock-up of what the premium version of Twitter could look like, with new analytics, alerts about breaking news, and information about what an account’s followers are tweeting about. The advanced features would be contained within Tweetdeck, the company’s app for professionals. The core

Workflow, the well-liked automation app that Apple just picked up through an acquisition, got its start in 2014 at a hackathon in Michigan, of all places.
Nick Frey, Conrad Kramer, Veeral Patel, and Ari Weinstein built the app in January 2014 for a Major League Hacking student member hackathon hosted by the University of Michigan. Judges evaluated contributions from 604 people, taking into consideration usefulness, originality, technical difficulty, and design.
Workflow won the hackathon’s

For all of its customization benefits, Android has never been well known for having the most user-friendly settings options. Case in point: setting a custom ringtone for devices running the AOSP version of Android has, in the past, involved plugging your phone into your computer to drag and drop song and sound files onto the phone for use later, or to move downloaded files to the proper location on the phone using a file manager.
With Google’s Android O, however, you’ll be able to cu

Wasteland 3 will be Brian Fargo’s swan song.
The CEO of InXile Entertainment and the founder of Interplay told Eurogamer he plans to retire after the post-apocalyptic game ships in 2019.
“I think some relaxation is in order,” Fargo said in an email to GamesBeat. “I’ve been on the front lines reinventing myself for almost 40 years.”
Wasteland 3 has gathered more than $3.1 million in crowdfunding money, and Fig announced this morning that investors and fans will

Donald Trump welcomed members of the American Trucking Association to the White House today to listen to truckers and CEOs talk about healthcare. Later, the leader of the free world got in the cab of a truck and pretended to drive it. He pulled the horn and made some funny faces that were probably intended to look cool and tough.The internet then did what it does, which was to have itself a laugh.when ur $2.25 shy of the seamless delivery minimum pic.twitter.com/41RTI2fYtL— Josh Petri (@jo

Lionsgate is a movie and TV studio known for films like Twilight and The Hunger Games. But now it’s also getting a reputation in games. And today, the company had a “helluva good day,” according to game chief Peter Levin.
Today, the company and its partners released Power Rangers: Legacy Wars, a mobile game based on the Power Rangers franchise that gets a film reboot on Friday. On top of that, the company has three out of the five featured slots on Google Play, including Power

At the Scale: The Future of Tech and Entertainment conference in Santa Monica, California, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke on a variety of topics, from his tenure at Disney, the next installments of the Star Wars franchise, and that the company is looking at what comes after 2019’s Episode IX.According to Variety, Iger reaffirmed that Disney would not digitally re-create Carrie Fisher’s General Leia as they had done in last year’s Rogue One, but also stated no other changes were bein

Gaming sales are slowing down at GameStop, but the company is quickly transitioning into a one-stop shop for hardcore enthusiasts who want more than just the games.
GameStop‘s collectibles business rose to $212.4 million last quarter, which is a year-over-year increase of 27.8 percent. The world’s largest gaming-specific retailer credited the ongoing resurgence of the Pokémon brand for driving that growth. While consumers spent less money on games and hardware at GameStop

The Baselworld 2017 watch show is in full swing, and Samsung is using it as an opportunity to show off three new series of concepts from watch designer Yvan Arpa inspired by its Gear S3 smartwatch, including an honest-to-god pocket watch version of the Gear S3. That’s right, it’s a smart pocket watch, and it’s one of the wackiest and most interesting smartwatch ideas I’ve ever seen.
If the idea was to simply take a traditional pocket watch and replace the mechanical innar

GameStop said that revenues for its fourth quarter ended January 28 dropped 13.6 percent to $3.05 billion, while net income was down 18 percent to $208.7 million. On an adjusted basis, earnings were $243.8 million, down 3 percent from a year ago. Those earnings were below analysts’ expectations.
The world’s biggest game retail store operator said that overall video game sales were weak, particularly as the consoles show their age. But non-gaming businesses helped stabilize the compan

Google has partnered with Howard University to launch a school branch right on the company’s campus, where undergraduate students will have a chance to learn from Google engineers in addition to the university’s own faculty.
The new campus, called Howard West, “is now the centerpiece of Google’s effort to recruit more black software engineers from historically black colleges and universities,” says Bonita Stewart, Google’s VP of global partnerships, who is her

Kids are not to be trusted. And now, thanks to Uber for teens, they don't have to be.
The scandal-plagued ride-hail company announced Thursday a new program allowing parents to add teenagers to a "family profile," thus allowing plucky youngsters aged 13 to 17 the ability to hail a car all by their grownup selves. No adults required.
"We all wish we could be in multiple places at once," the saccharine ad copy — no doubt channeling Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's desire to simultaneously extingui

Hey friends, it's time for another riveting poll from President Trump's campaign. Woo hoo!
On Thursday, Trump Headquarters sent out another one of its middle school-esque email polls, but rather than solely throwing shade at the media, this poll simply inquired whether the recipients stand with President Trump. 
Sounds like a simple choice, right? Well, wait until you have a look at the response options.
SEE ALSO: Trump follows up bizarre press conference with even weirder email
Basically,

European launch provider, Arianespace, was forced to indefinitely postpone the launch of one of its Ariane 5 rockets this week, due to protests at the French Guiana space center where the vehicle is meant to take off. Employees from two companies and a local hospital have been striking, partially over salary negotiations, and have prevented the Ariane 5 from getting to the launchpad for its launch.
Roadblocks made out of tires have been set up at the center
The rocket is supposed to send two com

Apple will begin to manufacture iPhones in India in the next two months, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The manufacturing duties will fall to Wistron Corp which will reportedly start manufacturing iPhone 6 and 6S models in the next four to six weeks, and iPhone SE devices in around three months.Neither Apple nor Wistron responded to the WSJ’s requests for comment about details on either company’s specific plans for expansion in India. Adding manufacturing pla

Nearly a year has passed since the hype cycle began for the next Gorillaz album. Today, the record finally has a name and a release date. Humanz, the band’s third full-length album, will be available on April 28th. Along with that info, the band has posted a new video and a collection of portraits of its fictional members.
Gorillaz is an experiment by Damn Albarn and Jamie Hewlett that mixes music, marketing, and animated art. The two members, along with a handful of collaborators, are rep

A pizza delivery man picked up an unexpected companion while dropping off pies this week. 
While out on delivery, Steve Donovan says he spotted Mr. Snickers, a lost dog, running across a busy four-lane road and in need of a ride back home. 
SEE ALSO: This smart collar will make pet care a walk in the park
Donovan shared his story on Reddit's r/aww and included a photo of his temporary delivery companion. For 20 minutes, Papa John's had an unofficial new employee out on delivery duty.Im

You don't need to have a full-time job yet to be worried about robots taking it. 
The 15-year-old son of  Cathy Engelbert, CEO of consulting firm Deloitte, is already thinking about automation. He asked his mom if robots were going to take his job someday, Engelbert wrote in a blog post on LinkedIn. 
"I told him: 'Don’t worry—I’ve never met a machine with courage and empathy,'" Engelbert wrote. "We’ll still need those in the new economy." 
Engelbert ha

Gorillaz are officiall back, and they've brought floating pizza with them. 
Today they announced their first album in six years, Humanz, and released the first single, "Satunz Barz" featuring Popcaan. 
The 360 degree video (directed by Jamie Hewlett) takes you on a journey through a haunted house that just happens to be somewhere in outer space. Read more...
More about Music, Music Video, Gorillaz, Entertainment, and Videos

Friends don't let friends make tattoo decisions.
Elle Mills, a YouTuber and student, wanted to make a series of "first time" videos for her channel. Her friend, Tavian Palacios, had recently gotten a tattoo and suggested Mills get one for the first video of the series.
SEE ALSO: Say goodbye to YouTube's long, unskippable ads starting next year
"[I] felt like it wouldn't be an exciting YouTube video if I just got a tattoo and that was it, so I decided it would be a whole lot more entertaining if

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. Or you just reset the game board and play again.
A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game adapts George R.R. Martin's enormously popular series of novels into a game you can play at home. Using the books as a springboard, players participate in their own bloody struggles for control of the Seven Kingdoms.
SEE ALSO: The 'Game of Thrones' cast is freaking out about the show ending, too
The initial game — which heads to Kickstarte

Had enough of alternate endings to Rogue One? Then you may want to check out the far superior alternate endings for its sequel — a little movie now known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. 
The Rogue One endings have been arriving thick and fast over the last week or so, thanks largely to the release of the Star Wars standalone movie in digital formats this Friday. We've learned that Jyn Erso might have survived in an escape pod or by being frozen in carbonite; that Orson Krennic ma

If you're in New York City, you could get your hands on a coveted rainbow bagel pretty easily. Only a MetroCard fare and a few subway stops are between you and the copious amounts of dyed dough.
But if you have a mobility-related disability, public transportation — and navigating a city overall — isn't exactly bagel quest-friendly.
Just ask Zach Anner.
SEE ALSO: New fitness app offers accessible workouts for people of all abilities
To mark Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month this March,

For the first time, the fungus causing the deadly white-nose syndrome in bats has been found in Texas. The fungus, called Pseudogymnoascus destructans, or PD, was also detected for the first time on two species of bats. That means PD is spreading westward and to more species, putting large populations of bats at risk in the US and possibly in Central America.
“We remain, I guess, on the edges of our seats to know exactly what’s going to happen as PD enters the ranges of those additio

Samsung has announced a new version of its Gear S3 Classic smartwatch, endowing the Tizen-powered timepiece with 4G LTE connectivity. The addition of LTE gives Classic the same cellular broadband capabilities as its sibling, the Gear S3 Frontier.
The announcement comes just days before Samsung’s biggest launch of the year, its Unpacked event introducing the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
Besides the addition of the new radio, however, not much has changed about this wearable — targeted at co

Titanfall 2 is returning to the colonial times of the original game.
Developer Respawn revealed today that it is launching its next free downloadable-content pack March 30 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. This new DLC, called Colony Reborn, will take players back to the Colony map from the original Titanfall. Respawn and publisher Electronic Arts have kept a steady stream of new maps and content flowing into Titanfall 2 in an effort to keep players engaged and coming back, which could in

If you were waiting for the Indian government to slow down (or completely stop) with its push to bring Aadhaar biometric identity system into your lives, don’t hold your breath.
SEE ALSO: India's database with biometric details of its billion citizens ignites privacy debate
Started as an optional program, in the recent years, the government has upped the ante and has made it mandatory to use Aadhar card in order to access other services.
As has been the case in the past, the decision was i

Details on upcoming Star Wars films are usually harder to find than Death Star plans. But Disney CEO Bob Iger just dropped a few key details about The Last Jedi and the untitled young Han Solo movie in an on-stage interview Thursday.
Iger was being interviewed by the dean of USC's Annenberg journalism school, Willow Bay — who also happens to be his wife. When Bay asked about the galaxy far, far away, according to reporters in the audience, Iger was more than forthcoming.
SEE ALSO: Woody Ha

Forget the iPhone 8 (or "X" or "Edition" or whatever it'll be called) that's coming later this year. As tech obsessors, we want to know what Apple's cooking up in its secret Cupertino labs for the future.
A new patent made public on Thursday (via AppleInsider) suggests Apple is exploring the idea of turning your iPhone into a "brain" that powers a MacBook-liked device.
SEE ALSO: Future iPhones and iPads could have stretchy screens
As with all patents, the description is broad and vague. In a nut

When was the last time you actually watched a movie on DVD? Maybe like, 2014? 
You probably still have a dusty stack of plastic boxes sitting on a shelf somewhere, though, doing little more than taking up space as you flip through multiple streaming services for your TV time.  
Walmart-owned Vudu has offered disc-rich movie fans the ability to convert their DVDs and Blu-rays to digital files in-store and at home for some time through its Disc-to-Digital program. Starting today, the app

Death isn't always permanent on Game of Thrones (just ask Jon Snow), which sometimes leads to conspiracy theories whenever a character is seemingly killed off without showing us the fatal blow onscreen.
Such is the case with Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane), who died at the vengeful hands of Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) in the Season 5 finaleOr did he?
(Yes, he did.)
Despite persistent fan theories that Brienne might have inexplicably decided to spare the life of the man she's been

Mark Cuban threw his hat into the proverbial hoverboard ring in 2015, smack in the middle of the height of the fad. He signed a letter of intent to buy the patent rights to a hoverboard design from Shane Chen, the (somewhat disputed) creator of the hoverboard. But a few months later he backed away. Razor swooped in and bought the rights instead, and in the meantime, Cuban told BuzzFeed that “we will come out with our own board that we feel respects necessary IP and introduces our own.&rdqu

In Sweden, Fika is one of the first words that foreigners learn when visiting the country. It’s sort of like a coffee break or afternoon tea in England, but with much greater social connotations. This Swedish obsession with coffee is part of the reason why Volvo outfits its auto show booths with a coffee shop for attendees — that and the fact that Dean Shaw, head of communications for Volvo Cars USA, is a coffee fanatic.It also explains why Volvo installed a miniature coffee shop in

Dinosaurs just can't get a break. First, a comet slams into the Earth and renders them extinct. Now a group of scientists wants to dramatically shake-up the dino family tree. 
A new study, published this week in the journal Nature, proposes a major reordering of dinosaurs' evolutionary history. 
The revised tree swaps around large subfamilies and adds a new branch for the Tyrannosaurus Rex and its ilk. The study also suggests that dinosaurs may have originated in the Northern Hemispher

Only the biggest of movies get the privilege of teasing the teaser and making us pay attention. 
For better or worse, Justice League, you certainly qualify.
SEE ALSO: 'Wonder Woman' gets an origin story in new trailer
Warner Bros. on Thursday revealed that "IN 2 DAYS" (that's Saturday, if you do the math) a new Justice League trailer will arrive, and though they're not saying exactly what time, you'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to slip this thing past us.
Zack Snyder dropped

Should a hybrid smartwatch take modern tech back in time or bring legacy timekeeping mechanisms to today’s digital watches? Two new smartwatches hit Kickstarter this morning, peddling radically different visions of what the future of connected watches should look like: the Nowa Shaper and the MyKronoz ZeTime.At their heart, the two watches are built around the same concept: that a timepiece should offer mechanical hands to tell time. But the execution is where things begin to differ, as th

Jaguar Land Rover and AT&T have partnered up to offer a $20-per-month, unlimited, prepaid data plan for owners of select JLR cars. This makes JLR the second automaker after General Motors to offer an unlimited data plan for its in-car Wi-Fi hot spots.
Notably, this car-based unlimited data plans does not include the same 22GB soft cap as AT&T’s standalone unlimited plans — users can use as much data as they want. With smartphone- and tablet-based plans, once a particular devi

Airlines are getting creative following the new ban on electronic devices on flights into the U.S. from certain Middle Eastern and African airports.
Emirates, one of those affected with flights coming in from Dubai, announced Thursday a service for laptop-using travelers who want to use their banned device to actually get some work done.
SEE ALSO: Emirates already tweeted a joke about the electronics ban
The new service lets passengers use their laptops and tablets until right before they board.

If you're part of the Harry Potter generation, you probably remember the hit 2007 club banger "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" from Potter Puppet Pals. That video is exactly 10 years old now, so we're going to go drown in wizard angst over the passage of time.
SEE ALSO: Harry Potter and Voldemort were in love and we have proof
In "The Mysterious Ticking Noise," Severus Snape wanders the blue-curtained halls of Hogwarts in search of the source of a "kind of catchy" ticking sound he can't seem to s

Facebook still wants to turn your News Feed into an online shopping tool.
Its latest effort to turn into an ecommerce giant is a new ad format that lets brands pair their commercials with collections of images and product listings in the same post.
When clicked, the images lead to a catalog of a given retailers' items hosted within Facebook. But users will be directed off the platform if they actually want to buy something.
Facebook has been trying to get people to shop through its site for year

Holy crap. Every time you think President Trump and his administration can't possibly get any worse at using Twitter ... they do.
It's just — it's truly unbelievable, and on Wednesday afternoon, things escalated when the official Twitter account of Trump's very own Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, tweeted something so phenomenal, so absurd, so utterly LOL-worthy that, though it's been deleted, it will leave a permanent imprint on our hearts for the rest of time.
SEE ALSO: The 10 m

Instagram just announced a major change to how it deals with posts that contain sensitive content. 
The app will soon begin to blur out photos and videos that have been deemed "sensitive." Users will still be able to view the images but will need to take the additional step of tapping on the post in order to see them.
SEE ALSO: How to banish ads from your Instagram feed
It's not clear what types of "sensitive" content will earn your post the new treatment. It doesn't sound like the company

Google's facing an advertiser revolt this week after it came to light that several big brands' ads were served on YouTube videos promoting terrorism, extremism, and other violent forms of hate.
More than 250 brands have split from YouTube after various investigations in the Times of London outed the ad placements. Needless to say, brands don't want their ads being served on YouTube's most hateful content. And how often are their ads served in these cesspools?
Well: It took us just around five mi

Are loving movie reviews and reading their Rotten Tomatoes ratings mutually exclusive? Apparently, according to Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, who recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his hatred of the latter.
“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes,” said Ratner, whose company helped finance the famously panned Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (he also directed X-Men: The Last Stand — never forget). “I think it’