Technology news

Today, I attempted to soundtrack my office life. As you might expect, sometimes the life of a blogger isn’t all that thrilling — but maybe it would be if I had a perpetual soundtrack playing in the background. Moodelizer, a new iOS app that launched earlier this month but is officially being announced today won’t soundtrack your whole life, but it’ll provide you with music to play during any moment you want to record. An Android version is expected later this year.
The ap

Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Facebook-owned VR company Oculus and primary inventor of the Oculus Rift headset, is leaving the company. “Palmer will be dearly missed,” Facebook told UploadVR, which broke the news, and later confirmed to The Verge. “Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.&

Truly reusable rockets could dramatically change the space industry. Until now, almost all rockets that achieve orbit are either destroyed or can’t be recovered. This means that we have to start from scratch with an entirely new rocket for each new launch, and that’s expensive. For over five years now, SpaceX has been working to create reusable rockets that could save millions of dollars and make missions cheaper. Elon Musk's company has already landed its Falcon 9 rockets on land an

GoPro’s Karma drone is now available in Europe. Specifically, the company is selling the quadcopter in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Germany starting today on GoPro.com and at “selected online retailers.” A Karma bundled with the Hero 5 Black will set customers back €1,399, or they can buy the drone with no camera for €999. That’s about $1,500 and $1,100, respectively, which makes Karma significantly more expensive than it is in the United States.Karma seemed like a

Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways have both launched electronics loaner programs for passengers, flying in upper-class cabins on certain routes. The move comes after both the United States and the United Kingdom banned inbound travelers flying from a number of Middle Eastern countries from carrying electronic devices larger than a smartphone into the cabin.
Qatar Airways announced today that it will loan laptops to its business class customers on US-bound flights. Passengers can use USB flash dri

Starting today, you can hail a car on Lyft via a wearable gadget for your thumb. Only you can’t really do that because this is just a dumb prank. But wow, what a prank it is.Lyft loves its pranks. Every year, the ride-hail company does something outlandish for April Fools’ Day. Last year, Lyft added something called "prank mode" to its app, allowing customers in NYC, LA, and San Francisco to embark on elaborate pranks involving fake radio stations, actors, and of course, Lyft Line. O

Comcast’s prepaid internet service, after years of testing, is now available to all Xfinity customers. The package allows consumers to pay for internet service on a pay-as-you-go basis, with refills ranging from seven to 30 days.Comcast is partnering with Boost Mobile to sell the $80 prepaid internet starter kits, which come with a wireless DOCSIS 3.0 gateway and 30 days of service. Download speeds measure up to 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps for uploads, and refills start at $15 for one we

This week, Congress voted to allow internet service providers to sell users’ web browsing histories, rolling back FCC rules passed under the Obama administration. Activists have already roundly criticized the vote as a win for a telecom industry eager to help sell targeted ads.
The tool sends random searches through a browser window
Built by technologist Dan Schultz, a tool called Internet Noise will send random searches through a browser window, introducing some chaos to the tracking and

This week, Congress voted to allow internet service providers to sell users’ web browsing histories, rolling back FCC rules passed under the Obama administration. Activists have already roundly criticized the vote as a win for a telecom industry eager to help sell targeted ads, but there’s one new idea on what users can do to fight back.
The tool sends random searches through a browser window
Built by technologist Dan Schultz, a tool called Internet Noise will send random searches th

Microsoft is prepping for a gradual, multi-stage rollout of the Windows 10 Creators Update starting on April 11th. But if you’re eager to get your hands on it a bit early, you can manually download it on April 5th. The company said in a blog post today that it will make the Creators Update available through its Update Assistant so anyone who is using a licensed version of Windows 10 can install it one week ahead of the official rollout.
You can download the Creators Update a week early
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The dock that unlocks the Galaxy S8’s desktop PC-like experience will retail for $149.99, according to Samsung’s website. It’s scheduled to ship in “late April,” likely coinciding with the widespread launch of the company’s latest flagship smartphone. That’s not exactly cheap, but you can probably expect to see some deals for DeX; T-Mobile is giving a free dock to its @Work enterprise customers who reserve the Galaxy S8 in-store.The DeX Station, as Samsu

Matrix Labs recently released the Matrix Creator, a powerful Raspberry Pi accessory that adds a whole bunch of sensors to the miniature computer (including a microphone array, temperature, UV, pressure, and more), letting you extend a Raspberry Pi into a full-fledged development device with a ton of different uses. (via TechCrunch). And as a follow-up to the Matrix Creator, the company is going even smaller with the Matrix Voice — a cheaper version of the creator that focuses on one thing:

The music industry has a long and tortured relationship with the tech companies that pay for the privilege of streaming their songs. Record executives and individual artists have complained that they aren’t being paid enough, and in some cases kept their catalog off of the services entirely. But in the latest report from the Record Industry Association of America, the prominence of streaming continues to grow. For the first time ever, revenue from streaming music made up the majority of th

These days it seems like beloved canceled TV shows are like vampires: constantly coming back from the dead.
But is the mother of all vampire shows next on the revival docket? At a recent reunion for the 20th anniversary of the premiere, the cast of the seminal teen horror classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer covered all sorts of topics during their EW photoshoot, including the possibility of the show's return.
The show's creator and general nerd god Joss Whedon didn't outright nix the idea:  Th

2017 is fast on its way to being a very, very good year for Stephen King fans.
SEE ALSO: This 1979 Stephen King novel is a chilling prediction of Donald Trump's rise
We've already got the long-awaited adaptation of The Dark Tower coming this summer, and now we also have our first teaser trailer for Andrés Muschietti's It remake to get excited about.
And what's the point in having a teaser if you can't obsessively break it down, frame-by-frame?
In a cathartic effort to forget about the 5+

Jack Dorsey runs two big, well-known businesses (Twitter and Square), but he doesn't think one of them needs to be profitable, despite how much Wall Street would like it. 
SEE ALSO: No, Twitter shouldn't ban Trump—here's why
“Profitability is a choice, right? It is a choice between investment and driving profit," Dorsey said at Twitter’s international headquarters in Dublin, rounded up in a piece by Silicon Republic. 
"We believe there is a massive opportunity to grow

Is Brad Pitt's Afghanistan War satire War Machine: 
A) hilarious, because it's right on point and uses Brad Pitt to perfection; 
B) depressing, because it's a reminder of how little we've learned from that whole experience; or
C) kinda both?
We're going with C, personally, but your mileage may vary. 
SEE ALSO: With this hire, Netflix is basically a Hollywood studio now
Netflix's new feature is based on the real-life rise and fall of Stanley McChrystal, whom you may remember as th

CNN commentator Angela Rye is doing everything she can not to explode.
Rye butted heads with former U.S. Congressman Joe Walsh's on CNN's Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin yesterday after he suggested that President Obama was held to a lower standard because of his race.
SEE ALSO: Interview: Maxine Waters thinks millennials can change politics for everyone (yes, everyone)
The commentator then pushed Walsh to explain why Obama held to a lower standard when our current President had no political experi

On Thursday morning, the Environmental Protection Agency sent out a press release containing praise for President Donald Trump's executive order that rolls back Obama-era climate change rules. 
But the agency's press office made an obvious mistake in the first paragraph, which included harshly critical comments attributed to West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican coal booster and prominent Trump supporter.
The quote, falsely attributed to Capito, actually belonged to Delaware

Last year, a futuristic water taxi startup called SeaBubbles first revealed its bold vision to revolutionize urban travel: a network of autonomous, egg-shaped river shuttles equipped with hydrofoils and distributed to cities situated on major waterways around the globe. The idea seemed pretty far out at the time, but now the creators have shared the first images of their first full-scale prototype exclusively with The Verge. And as you can see, this thing literally flies above the surface of the

The Possible: "A Balloon Ride to Space"“A Balloon Ride to Space,” episode 4 of THE POSSIBLE, takes you where few have gone before. You’ll witness the construction of a technologically advanced balloon that, when inflated, is as big as a football stadium…soar 100,000 feet above Earth…and experience an utterly unique and awe-inspiring perspective on the planet we call home. World View, the company behind the balloon, plans to offer commercial flights starting in 201

Twitter usernames will no longer count against the 140-character limit in replies, the company said today, following months of testing in which users complained that the redesign was confusing. Expect them to complain about this design, too: if more than one person is mentioned in your reply, Twitter hides their name unless you mouse over a link, making replies harder to browse.
The goal of the redesign is to “let you express more with 140 characters,” Twitter said in a blog post. Th

It's now possible to squeeze in a few extra characters on Twitter. 
Beginning now, usernames will no longer count toward the service's 140-character limit, Twitter announced. The change also means that replies will look a whole lot different than before.
SEE ALSO: Yeah, Twitter's watching you even when you're not tweeting
Instead of beginning with usernames, tweet replies will contain only the text of the tweet itself and the handles you're replying to will appear inline. Tweets will still

The fang blenny fish’s two-inch body is not very intimidating to predators, and its pair of teeth give it the look of a braces-wearing teenager. But those canines pack a chemical punch, helping the fang blenny escape the maw of would-be bullies.In a report published in Currently Biology, researchers found that fang blennies’ venom includes three components. The first is a neuropeptide — little protein-like molecules that help neurons pass information — that occurs in veno

The first episode of Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy game is still a few weeks away, but the new debut trailer provides a good idea of what to expect. The trailer mostly sets the tone, rather than explicitly laying out the story; you can see the heroes during an awkward elevator ride and there is, of course, a Walkman. But it also provides a glimpse at the series’s villain, with a version of the death-obsessed Thanos that looks like a cross between the live-action films and comic

Brace yourselves: this adorable child is about to teach you everything you need to know when dealing with your exes.
Instagram user Dani Lane shared a video of two of her daughters Dannah and Dani that has perhaps revolutionized everything videos of your nieces and nephews could be. (Sounds like an overstatement but truly, bear with us.)
It all started when 5-year-old Dannah got dumped by her boyfriend at school - after she thought they were getting engaged(!). While the kindergartener was expec

The arrival this week of Facebook stories presents active social media users with a dilemma: where to post?It’s a problem of Facebook’s creation. For more than three years, the concept of “stories” — a rolling series of photos and videos that disappear 24 hours after you post them — was unique to Snapchat. In some ways, stories defined the company. But last year, Instagram copied the format — and since then, Facebook has introduced stories to Messenger,

Referring a friend to your company is an easy way to earn some extra money, but it requires keeping track of current job openings — and who all your former colleagues are. 
The career site Ladders has a solution: automating the referral process so that a website can tell you who in your network would be a good fit for all the jobs your company has open. That way, you don't have to pay too much attention to what your company needs or troll LinkedIn looking for someone who might be a go

At first blush, a blind tadpole that’s had an eyeball grafted onto its tail sounds like a creature from a fairy tale — the Cyclops’ tadpole cousin. But these tadpoles exist (scientists made them!) and they could actually see through the grafted eyes after being treated with migraine medication. In fact, the feat is even more astonishing than that: the eyes didn’t connect directly to the brain, as eyes ordinarily do; they connected to the spinal cord instead. The results s

What's going on, BioWare?
Here's the deal, folksMass Effect: Andromeda has issues. What those issues are and which of them are most pressing depends a lot on who you're talking to, but it is objectively correct to say that BioWare's latest game arrived in less-than-perfect shape.
SEE ALSO: Assholes try like hell to pin new 'Mass Effect' game's crappy animations on a woman
Even the studio admits it. A Wednesday announcement on Twitter takes general ownership of Andromeda's post-release criticisms

It's ridiculous, really, that there's anything to complain about ride-hailing apps that give us the power to summon our own personal chariots directly to our front doors—but hey, the system ain't perfect. 
And one glaring imperfection? Wonky pickup locations. Sometimes digital lines are crossed, and you wind up sending your driver somewhere other than where you actually are, causing them to cancel the ride, ding your rating, and make you wait even longer.
A new update to Uber's app wi

Would Frozen have become the salient cult of a kids' movie that it now is if it had a different ending? Who can say, really — but in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, producer Peter Del Vecho revealed details of the movie's original plot.
In the old version, Anne and Elsa weren't sisters; Elsa, a spurned woman, is seen as a threat to Arendelle, a prophesied "ruler with a frozen heart" who "will bring destruction to the kingdom." Anna is still a hero, Kristoff is still awesome, an

What's cooler than a few billion dollars? A trillion dollars. 
And for Amazon, that milestone is in sight. The tech giant will eventually be worth $1 trillion, the financial services firm Barclays predicted. 
"AMZN is likely to be one of the first trillion-dollar market cap companies; it's just a question of when, not if, in our view," analyst Ross Sandler wrote in a note to Barclays' clients. 
SEE ALSO: Glimpse into Amazon's futuristic living spheres
The prediction came about bec

Remember when President Donald Trump ran for office and made campaigning for women's empowerment a priority?
If you don't it's probably because you were too distracted by him saying he likes to grab women "by the pussy," suggesting we check out a sex tape of former Miss Universe contestant, Alicia Machado, or calling Hillary Clinton a "nasty woman," among other things.
But in his daily press briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was sure to let everyone know that Trump i

Keeping secrets become dangerous when you're in a marriage. But the secret becomes less dangerous if it involves raising stray kittens, as one grandpa found out.
Syl, the granddaughter of this compassionate man, posted about her grandpa Jimmy's clandestine kitten-raising on Twitter and accompanied the story with an absolutely precious photo of her grandpa in action.
SEE ALSO: Lazy little bird hitches a ride on uninterested catmy grandpa let a stray cat have her kittens in his tool shed and now h

Australian golden retriever Oscar had to get minor surgery. This is decidedly bad news, but his post-surgery bliss says otherwise.
His owner, Sarah, posted this picture of Oscar on the way home from surgery, while he was still on sedatives, showing that he might have not had too bad a time. 
And people could not get enough of it.doggo went under for surgery and now he is DRUGGO pic.twitter.com/ZTJpqapbGq
— hot librarian (@smack__that) March 27, 2017That smile! You can practically see

Like most things in today’s age, the very buildings we create are becoming smarter and more innovative. In the UK and beyond, many of these innovations in design and structure have come out of Foster + Partners — an innovative architecture and design practice based in London. Some of the most iconic buildings on the London skyline owe their existence to Foster + Partners — 30 St Mary Axe (London's first environmental skyscraper) and City Hall are just two of these.
Founded by N

There’s a little bit of a rebel within us all. Brad and Gazz — two Welsh lads with a passion for all things beer — decided to take their love for beer a step further back in 2008 and the result is Tiny Rebel Brewery, an award-winning brewing company whose beers can be found in fridges worldwide.
Tiny Rebel’s humble beginnings can be found in a Welsh garage, where Brad and Gazz spent their weekends on their hobby brewing beer. As self-confessed “beer geeks” the