Technology news

Lyft has raised $500 million in additional funding, valuing the Uber competitor between $6.9 billion and $7.5 billion according to several media reports. The money, which Lyft was rumored to be attempting to raise last month, will fund the company’s competition with the much more valuable — and better funded — Uber.
Lyft has doubled its valuation since its last capital raise, in January 2016, when the company was valued at $4.5 billion. The raise is the company’s 11th acc

 New legal documents show that Twitter is taking the Department of Homeland Security to court to protect the true identity of an account that claims to be run by employees of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The account, @ALT_USCIS, is one of many “alt” government agency accounts that began appearing in the early days of the Trump administration. The filing… Read More

Originally spotted by Kotaku, New School student Kara Quinteros’ fashion line Start a New Thread pulls common phrases and acronyms off of 4chan and constructs them for the real world.Some of the designs — especially a transparent “normie” purse and plastic “anon” visor— look pretty wearable. The clothes are made exclusively from synthetic materials, and they all incorporate common 4chan and general forum lingo that would likely make no sense at all to so

This week, hundreds of companies submitted proposals for President Donald Trump’s nebulous signature campaign promise, a wall between the United States and Mexico. The cost of this politically charged construction project, as well as the source of the funding, is still unsettled. And while Trump has made many specific proclamations about the wall, they aren’t consistent enough to give us an idea of its final form. The proposal request asks for both concrete-based walls and “oth

Twitter has launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration, after the Department of Homeland Security sought to unmask an anonymous user of an anti-Trump account.
According to Twitter’s suit, filed today in Northern California District Court, US Customs and Border Protection has attempted to use a “limited-purpose investigatory tool” to unmask the owner of the Twitter account “@ALT_USCIS.” The account, one of several “alt” government accounts that a

 In mid-January, the ongoing race for AI put Montreal-based Maluuba on our radar. Microsoft acquired the startup and its team of researchers to build better machine intelligence tools for analyzing unstructured text to enable more natural human computer interaction — think bots that can actually respond with reasonable intelligence to a text you send. The team dropped its first paper… Read More

Nvidia's been enjoying a long and uninterrupted run at the top of the graphics card heap, and it just extended its lead with the new Titan Xp. For $1,200, the card offers the same Pascal GP102 GPU as the $5,000-ish Quadro P6000, with all 3,840 CUDA cores to play with. It also has much faster memory than the Quadro, bumping up from the 10GHz of last year's Titan to 11.4Ghz. Like the Titan X (which can now be had for around $1,000, if you can find it in stock), the Xp has 12GB of GDDR5X RAM.
With

More than a year after Activision Blizzard officially acquired Candy Crush creator King for $5.9 billion, the Swedish developer has revealed that it’s creating a new mobile game based on Call of Duty. The game appears to be very early in development, and will be handled by a new team within King’s Stockholm studio. There are currently no details on when the new Call of Duty game will be released.
“Our challenge as a team is to create a Call of Duty experience on mobile that wil

Five years ago, YouTube opened their partner program to everyone. This was a really big deal: it meant anyone could sign up for the service, start uploading videos, and immediately begin making money. This model helped YouTube grow into the web’s biggest video platform, but it has also led to some problems. People were creating accounts that uploaded content owned by other people, sometimes big record labels or movie studios, sometimes other popular YouTube creators.In an effort to combat

2050 is only about 30 years from now, which means it’s close enough that we can imagine it happening, but far enough away that we can’t confidently say what it will look like. Maybe that’s why 2050 is the year Kaspersky Lab chose to envision for its new futuristic, interactive map. The map, called Earth 2050, imagines our world three decades from now, Wired reports.
The project allows users to explore how different cities around the world might look in 2050, 2040, and 2030. It&

NBA Playgrounds is a new arcade basketball game from developer Saber Interactive that throws out the rulebook of ordinary basketball play in favor of tons of sweet, sweet dunks in the spiritual style of over-the-top basketball games of eras past like NBA Jam and NBA Street.
Playgrounds will offer a mixture of modern-day and former NBA stars; both local and online multiplayer; and, perhaps most importantly, “hundreds of over-the-top dunks and moves.” (Although there is no confirmation

As President Trump maps out plans for a border wall with Mexico, Customs and Border Protection is looking at a more mobile way to monitor the border: consumer drones. The agency is currently soliciting proposals for small unmanned aerial systems, similar to consumer drones manufactured by DJI and Parrot, to be deployed by US Border Patrol agents in the field.First described in a contractor solicitation notice last summer, the proposed aircraft would be small enough to be carried in a truck and s

Sensei, the arm of Adobe that fiddles around with AI and machine learning, has released a trailer for some new selfie-improving features they have in the works. Adobe hasn’t announced if or when these features will be included in any of its apps, but the video is still a fun watch.It shows a dude taking a bad, embarrassing selfie and improving it using tools that apply artificial depth of field, tweak the perspective so it’s not clear it was taken from so close to the face, and steal

April Fools’ Day was last weekend, but we’re still seeing a few enterprising #brands get in last-minute jokes and goofs. That includes the developer of running app Runtastic, which today announced a spinoff cooking app called Runtasty.The announcement page has all the hallmarks of a classic internet gag: a seemingly functional promotional video; a bizarre name (seriously, “Runtasty”) that happens to be a strange take on the actual product name; and a ridiculous claim, lik

In a season filled with almost endless smartphone hype and announcements, you’d be forgiven if you missed that HTC, once a major player in the Android world, announced and released a new, high-end phone. That phone, the $750 U Ultra, is the company’s current flagship, and the first major device released under its own name since last spring’s HTC 10.But there’s little about the U Ultra, apart from its screen size (5.7 inches) and price (high), that makes it feel like much

Even in an era where people complain that everyone has a podcast, there are still plenty of curious people out there who’d like to give it a shot but don’t know where to start. (I am primarily talking about myself here, but maybe also you!) It’s one thing to have an idea for a show; it’s another to piece together the necessary software, hardware, and hosting services needed to make your dream a reality.Today Anchor, an iOS app that aims to “democratize audio,”

The next Xbox is a powerful machine. As Digital Foundry revealed today in a lengthy rundown of specs, Project Scorpio — the codename for the next Xbox One — will be both faster and more powerful than its predecessor and its console competitor, capable of running games in native 4K. Even older Xbox One titles will see an improvement, in some cases with smoother performance, improved textures, and the ability to play at a higher resolution. These are all great additions that will surel

One of my regrets in life — not one of the main ones, like opening a credit card specifically to finance a spontaneous trip to E.B. White’s rural estate — is never taking the time to watch a Fast & the Furious movie. Who could have guessed that these seemingly chauvinist, boring movies about street racing and close-ups of butt cheeks would eventually become a beloved cinematic tradition about family, family, family, and hilarious naming conventions?Who could have guessed th

How many of the things you bought in 2012 are still good today? How many of them do you even have anymore? In my trade as a tech reviewer, I'm used to devices that go from new to obsolete in a matter of weeks, and in gaming, the window of novelty and joy is often even briefer. So it's nice to see a 2012 game that truly stands the test of time and even reverses the fast-aging process to actually get better with age. Yes, I've gone back to Tristram for a run around the Diablo III playground, and I

Western Digital is known for its hard drives — particularly the cheap and portable My Passport line of external hard drives that are almost a ubiquitous standard for anyone looking to back up their computer on a budget.But apparently, the company has never actually released a portable solid state drive, something Western Digital is correcting now with the release of the new My Passport SSD. As you might be able to guess from the name, the My Passport SSD takes the look of the recently rede

Walt’s column this week focuses on the problems with audio on the latest TVs. They have become very thin with small bezels, so there’s barely any room to put decent speakers on the product. Walt and Nilay discuss Sonos’ solution to this problem on Ctrl-Walt-Delete.Also, FCC news continues after Congress’ rollback of FCC’s privacy rules and this podcast continues to update you.We love your feedback on the topics of the show and suggestions on how to make our podcasts

When I opened up Apple’s new Clips app yesterday, as I’ve been doing for the past few days, I was greeted with the same photo-capture screen that’s prioritized in all the social “story” apps. Take a picture! Capture video! Share! Share everything! they scream at you. I added some text overlays and emoji, and fumbled my way through Live Titles, the feature that’s distinctive to Apple Clips. And eventually, I shared my Clips. But it took a while. Because Clips t

While its stunning, almost edgeless display left many in awe, one design aspect about the Galaxy S8 tech aficionados rushed to ridicule was Samsung’s decision to build a dedicated physical button for its virtual assistant, Bixby. But as it turns out – there might be a little workaround to swap it out with Google Assistant. One crafty S8 owner has found a way to remap the dedicated Bixby button and use it to open Android’s built-in Assistant feature. All you need to make the sw

We took a spin by the headquarters of the Drone Racing League this week to check out the newest version of their custom quadcopter, the DRL 3. The league, which airs on big networks like ESPN and Sky, says it reached an audience of more than 30 million viewers during its inaugural season last year, and is set to broadcast its second season this July. To amp up the excitement, the company has created a new drone that is faster, more agile, and much harder to break.The DRL 3 was designed around a

Today, executives from the Los Angeles-based startup Hyperloop One will gather in Washington, DC, to make two announcements: one is that its test track in the Nevada desert is finally complete and ready to host the first full-system test in the next few months; and the other is that Hyperloop One is eyeing less than a dozen regions in the US as possible future locations for its ultrafast, futuristic transportation system.The event in the nation’s capitol is being billed as the company&rsqu

When is a worker not a worker? When they’re an “independent supplier,” says UK takeout service Deliveroo. This is according to the company’s vocab “crib-sheet,” which features a six-page list of do’s and don’ts, guiding staff on how to talk about the business.
The internal document was seen by a number of publications, and makes for some awkward reading. It says bicycle couriers who work for Deliveroo are never to be referred to as workers, employe

One of the sucky legacies of 2016 is the surge of fake news. Donald Trump rode a wave of misinformation to the White House and British voters shot themselves in the foot after listening to the false promises of Brexit. Norway is one of the countries that isn’t especially keen on following the fuckups of the US and UK by letting lies slide. That’s why Norway’s three biggest competing media outlets announced a joint project to combat fake news. Dagbladet, VG and the public

Rapid expansion should be the goal for any company, right? What entrepreneur doesn’t look at the exponential success of companies like Facebook and feel pangs of jealousy? What could possibly be bad about something so fortuitous as growth? And yet, in truth growth can be as much friend as foe. Entrepreneurs are often the types of people who build the ship while they sail it. This works in calm waters, but can become a whole lot more challenging when there are 50 foot waves, or s

Terrace House has become Netflix Japan's breakout international hit — and with good reason — but for my money it runs second place to another of the streaming service's Japanese shows. Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories follows the owner and clientele of a tiny Tokyo restaurant, telling short, touching stories of family, friendship, and humanity in the heart of urban sprawl.Like Terrace House, Midnight Diner had a life before Netflix, existing as a manga, a TV drama, and a movie before th

Comcast is jumping into the world of wireless, and will be unveiling its long-discussed mobile phone service later today. The company confirmed last September it would be launching a network this year, and according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it will be unveiled later today as Xfinity Mobile.
The service will be an MVNO, meaning that Comcast will be piggybacking on Verizon’s cellular network. It plans to supplement this with millions of Wi-Fi hotspots, similar to the approac

Scattered throughout my living room is the tangible proof that 2017 is already off to a great start when it comes to Good Ass Video Games™. We’re not even four months in and we already got Horizon, Nier: Automata, Resident Evil 7, Yakuza 0 and a new Zelda (aka the best game in recent history). I hoped to add Mass Effect: Andromeda to that list but alas, BioWare’s latest doesn’t come close to the greatness that 2017 graced us with so far. Don’t get me wrong, I hecki

Apple might have new trouble on its hands. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has filed a lawsuit against the local branch of Apple and its US-based parent company, accusing the tech giant of violating and falsely representing consumer rights under Australian law. In a media release earlier today, the government agency announced it has begun proceedings against the Cupertino heavyweight after its investigation indicated that numerous Apple customers, experiencin