Technology news

“This is fucking bonkers, Matthew,” said my exasperated fiancee. I was inclined to agree. We were on our hands and knees, trying to assemble the BrilliantPad, both filled with regret. She, about agreeing to help me set up this review unit; Me, about getting drunk and agreeing to accept a review unit for a ‘smart’ dog toilet. Just a few weeks ago, I received an unsolicited email from BrilliantPad’s PR representative, who had read my coverage of PawSquad and wanted t

Google is getting rid of the Hangout’s SMS messages, and is warning users well in advance. Starting next Monday, app users should start seeing a prompt warning them to choose a different message app. Users who already use another SMS app will not notice a change. In an admin email posted in its entirety to Reddit, the G Suite team warned administrators about the change and when they could expect to see the service vanish. Google has been rolling out multiple changes to Hangouts recen

One of Amazon’s biggest early advantages over brick-and-mortar retailers will disappear for good next month. The company will on April 1st start collecting sales in the states of Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, and New Mexico, according to a report from CNBC. That means Amazon will collect sales tax in all 45 states that require it, ending one of the company’s more drawn-out regulatory fights that the e-commerce giant had resigned itself to losing years ago. (For the record, Alaska, Delaware,

Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger are the latest fashion companies to announce their own Android Wear 2.0 watches at Baselworld 2017. The news continues the trend we’ve been seeing of fashion brands stepping up to fill the gaps in the wearables market caused by an absence of new models from established tech companies like Motorola.
Hugo Boss’ watch — the Touch — looks a bit more formal and appears to have a leather band option, which is nice. According to Wareable, the Touch w

 TechCrunch Include is partnering with Intel Capital for Include Office Hours on March 28th from 11:30am-12:30pm. Intel Capital managing directors Trina Van Pelt and Ken Elefant and director Christine Herron will be giving guidance and advice for underserved and underrepresented founders. Apply here.
In 2014, TechCrunch launched Include to facilitate opportunities for underserved and… Read More

The Jül attempts to solve an issue we likely know well: hot beverages get cold after you pour them and this is unfortunate. Familiar, yes? So the Jül attempts to keep those drinks hot by relying on a heated coaster that’s powered via Micro USB. The mug controls how hot you want to keep your drink, which can also be used to cool down something that’s too hot to consume. Drinks can be kept at between 120 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit.I think what’s so off about the Jü

When I was little, my father drove a gold-colored Volvo 245 Turbo wagon. It had a cavernous cargo area that was regularly used to haul arcade video games, and to my four-year-old ears, the turbo whine sounded like a police car siren. That wagon eventually bit the dust, most likely from mechanical issues with the turbo. After a dalliance with a Subaru, it was eventually replaced with a gold Volvo 850 wagon — and that was the car I drove most often after I got my driver’s license.
Ther

Spider-Man: Homecoming is due out this summer, and I’m pretty excited. Tom Holland proved himself to be an incredibly solid Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War, and even though it’s the third solo Spidey reboot in 15 years, Marvel Studios’ influence (and a good dash of Robert Downey, Jr.’s charm) has me cautiously optimistic that this new take on the character will be a welcome addition to what’s becoming a fun year in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I mean lo

More companies are pulling advertising from YouTube over Google’s inability to ensure ads won’t appear next to hateful and offensive content. The Wall Street Journal reports that YouTube videos centered around racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic views are still scooping up ads from brands like Coca-Cola, Amazon.com, and Microsoft. This is even after reports last week exposed the issue and led to mass advertising boycotts in the UK and now the US, prompting Google to promise companie

The idea of using technology to directly cool Earth’s climate — most often called geoengineering — has always been equal parts bold and crazy. But it’s getting slightly more plausible every day. At an event in Washington, DC today, Harvard professor David Keith announced his new plan for testing his solar radiation management ideas, partnering with an Arizona launch site and a high-altitude balloon company called World View Enterprises. The plan is to launch a series of h

In what might be this week’s worst new idea, Reuters reports that AMC is working on an ad-free subscription video service that would be exclusively available to cable TV customers. In other words, it’d be a paid service that would be separate from your normal cable bill but require a cable account to even sign up for.You’d pay extra— between $4.99 to $6.99 per month (AMC is still finalizing pricing) — on top of your TV bill to get ad-free streaming from whatever thi

After all these years, someone finally invented a way to cheat at darts. YouTuber Mark Rober fulfilled what he called a “dream to create a dartboard where you get a bullseye every time thanks to some engineering.” It’s a real-life aimbot. The dartboard is mounted on sliders that allow it to move smoothly — with some help from small motors — across a glass panel. Six infrared cameras detect the dart’s movement and move the board automatically to catc

Roughly 15 new services have been added to Google Assistant this week including actions for IMDB movie ratings and others that tell you when the food in your fridge will expire and hear Jaden Smith quotes.
Actions are like voice-only apps for Google Assistant, like skills are for Alexa and Cortana.
Among the most noteworthy new actions is Chefling. You can already ask Google Assistant to add grocery items to a Google Keep shopping list, but Chefling does a few specific t

“Walking simulator” is often used a pejorative to put down a genre of games where you can’t fail and instead experience a world with little to no stakes. But a new game takes that idea to a new level and proves that if you’re skipping games in this genre, then you’re missing out.
Everything is a simulation of all things at all scales. It’s a game where you may start out as a camel, but through exploration, you may find yourself dancing through galaxy as a clus

Shake Shack fans rejoice! The restaurant chain has teamed up with Square’s Caviar on-demand food delivery service to see if it’s a valuable offering. Those in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Chicago are eligible to get any of Shake Shack’s burgers, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, fries, and shakes delivered right to their doorsteps — and delivery is free (you have to pay for your food though).
Here’s the catch: This trial period

YouTube has had automated captions for its videos since 2009, and now it’s expanding the feature to include captions for sound effects. The video service uses machine learning to detect sound effects in videos and add the captions [APPLAUSE], [MUSIC], and [LAUGHTER] to millions of videos.
While those three were some of the most frequent manually captioned sounds, YouTube says it’s only in the early stages of making improvements for its deaf and hard of hearing users. The company says

Throughout the history of cinema, few monsters have remained as iconic as King Kong. Originally debuting in a 1933 film, the massive primate has been re-created multiple times using a variety of visual effects techniques: the painstaking stop-motion animation of the original film, the man-in-a-suit goofiness of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance in Peter Jackson’s 2005 reboot. But when it came time for Kong: Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts turn

Scoffing at ludicrous building design proposals are a part of daily life when you live in New York City — just ask our friends at Curbed. But a new idea from an architecture studio called Oiio is especially insane because oh my god that skyscraper is Clippy.
It looks like your building a nightmarish example of late state capitalism. Would you like some help with that? pic.twitter.com/jHxDzHtHLI— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) March 24, 2017@emilyyoshida pic.twitter.com/jj0KirI7HP—

Movado is another luxury mechanical watchmaker looking to get into the smartwatch game, and it just revealed its new Android Wear 2.0 watch, the Movado Connect, at the Baselworld 2017 watch show.
And it looks pretty much exactly like what you would expect a Movado smartwatch to look like. All the usual hallmarks of Movado’s design ethos are on display with the Connect: the iconic single dot used as a 12 o’clock indicator, a clean and simple case, and a custom watchface made to resemb

T-Mobile is introducing a new program to rescue it’s customers from evil scammers. The mobile carrier is set to unveil two new programs, Scam ID and Scam Block. The former is, as the name sounds, a service which will identify scam calls and alert the potential scammee. Considering scam calls are just as much of a problem as ever these days, it’s a commendable protection. The latter automatically blocks all calls that Scam ID catches. T-Mobile says customers can turn b

Every time GameStop gets a new shipment of Nintendo’s Switch hardware, it sells out within hours. And the company expects a similar level of demand through the end of the year.
GameStop, the world’s largest gaming-specific brick-and-mortar retailer, announced the results of its 2016 fiscal year today. And while gaming sales are down, the company points out the Switch as a potential bright spot moving forward — although GameStop admitted it did not factor in aggressive

For all the viral videos and memes shared on Facebook, the social network has been surprisingly cold towards the GIF, as there’s no simple way for every day users to post them without visiting an external website. That may change at last. According to a report by TechCrunch, Facebook has confirmed it plans to begin testing a GIF button that would allow users to post the animated images as responses in comments. As with Messenger, the GIFs are sourced from sites like Giphy and Tenor. Faceb

OPINION: I have never been a fan of Twitter — I still honestly have a love-hate relationship with the service — but TweetDeck was the exception. Having the app on my phone was incredibly powerful. It’s probably the main reason that I grudgingly caved and joined the flock. The Twitter mobile apps have always been horribly unreliable, so the news this week that Twitter is looking at offering a paid version of TweetDeck has piqued my interest.
To be clear, Twitter has not said tha

There are a few exceptions (most notably the Razer Blade), but most PC gaming laptops are huge, hulking behemoths. Carry one in your rucksack for any length of time, and you’re all-but-guaranteed to have the same back problems as a 75-year old former coal miner. I bring this up simply to contrast it to the GPD Win, which is the subject of this review. Put simply, this is the smallest (and, dare I say, most unabashedly bonkers) PC gaming machine I’ve ever laid hands on. The GPD Win b

Google Talk — affectionally known as “Gchat” — is finally getting replaced for good. Google actually released Hangouts back in 2013 as a more feature-filled chat service take the place of Talk in the Gmail sidebar, but users have been able to stick with the older, more basic service if they chose.That’s changing on June 26th, when anyone still using Gchat will be forcibly transitioned over to Hangouts. It’s not a major change for most — there will still

Amazon had some Nintendo Switches for sale this afternoon, which was great if you’d been pining for one, but not so great if you didn’t have a Prime subscription. You see, the company was only selling the $300 console to people with Prime.
As you can see in the above image, Amazon had the console back in stock but only let Prime members add it to their cart. Bummer. (Insert Amazon sales pitch here about how a Prime membership costs only $100 per year for unlimited two-day shipping an

As you’re aware from the headline of this post, I have an idea for the perfect version of Twitter. It’s a good idea, and you’re welcome. But first: the inspiration. One day, I noticed something many people have noticed before, something I’ve allowed to recede into the depths of my brain when more pressing matters came along. Twitter is terrible. There are too many people content to tweet dumb things until their fingers fall off, and Twitter refuses to punish them for it.

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Super Mario Run finally come out on Android, Yooka-Laylee’s developers deal with the fallout of a popular YouTuber’s racist remarks, and Red Dead Redemption is coming to PC … as a Grand Theft Auto V mod.
Please check out our GamesBeat Summit 2017 event coming May 1-2 on the inspiration between science fiction, tech, and games. Use Deantak code for 20 percent off.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinio

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have invented a robot skin that surpasses human flesh. Professor Ravinder Dahiya and his team created a silicone and graphine skin which provides haptic feedback to the user. The thin layer of graphine acts as a sensor, making the electronic skin (e-skin) very sensitive to touch. It’s also flexible and cheap to manufacture. Professor Dahiya told Forbes, “It is one order of magnitude better than human skin.” Did I mention it’s

YouTube “react videos” went full-ouroboros awhile ago. First, kids were recorded reacting to everything from Windows 95 to Sonic the Hedgehog; then parents reacted to their kids reacting to stuff; and eventually react videos reacted to react videos reacting to react videos. It’s the sort of increasingly self-aware entertainment that grows stale as it becomes less authentic
Fine Brothers Entertainment has a new take on the react genre, one that manages to be even more meta than

In 2014, I spoke with Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society, about his quixotic mission: to get recognition for a new category of cloud called the “undulatus asperatus.” For years, individuals from across the world had been sending him pictures of the unusual formations, trying to figure out what they were. But they had no official name.
Yesterday, on World Meteorological Day — 9 years after the classification was first submitted — the World M

Chess is famous as perhaps the most respected board game ever played, and we often uses chess as a way to metaphorically teach lessons about the world. But as it turns out, chess is also pretty good at teaching programming lessons, too. And the Raspberry Turk — a chess-playing robot from developer Joey Meyer — is a masterwork in that regard, serving as a way to learn everything from machine vision to robotics to AI.Raspberry Turk is, in the simplest terms, a robot that can play chess

With so many VPN providers out there, coupled with so many VPN deals, it’s tough for the security-minded customer to arrive at a concrete conclusion. However, we’d like to suggest a lifetime of PureVPN’s industry-leading service at an exclusive rate you’ll only find from TNW Deals. Right now, you can score a lifetime PureVPN subscription for only $60 using coupon code TNW9 — an offer you won’t see anywhere else. Beyond pulling down glowing reviews f

Our newest speakers for our upcoming GamesBeat Summit event are Rod Chong, chief commercial officer at Project Cars maker Slightly Mad Studios, and Laszlo Kishonti, CEO of self-driving car software maker AImotive. You could call them the odd couple at our GamesBeat Summit 2017: How games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic.
GamesBeat Summit 2017 will take place on May 1 and May 2, 2017, at the historic Claremont resort hotel in Berkeley, Calif., just a short distance fr

During a Facebook Live event in December, Mark Zuckerberg indicated that more support for animated GIFs would be coming to the social network, this time within the comment thread. VentureBeat has learned that on Monday, the company will begin testing this feature out to a “small percentage” of people, thereby making it easier to be equally as expressive in your response as you are with posting.
A Facebook spokesperson shared this statement: “Everyone loves a good GIF

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he’s “not at all” worried about robots displacing American workers, and his definition of artificial intelligence comes from Star Wars. In an interview today with Axios’ Mike Allen, Mnuchin said he was unconcerned about the effects of automation, both with physical machines and artificial intelligence. “In terms of artificial intelligence taking over American jobs, I think we're so far away from that that it's not even on my ra