Technology news

I think the conversation went something like this: “Hey, you know what would be cool? If we took a Nissan GT-R and made it look like the evil cop car from Transformers.” “Yeah! Let’s do that!”
And so here we are, standing outside a parking garage near Times Square with a dozen gawking tourists, staring at a matte black Nissan GT-R with Skyline Metro Police Department emblazoned on the side. The dozens of police strobe lights especially enthrall the kids.
Between a N

The Boox 打字机 — Boox Typewriter is how Google translates it from Chinese — is an upcoming laptop from Onyx, a Chinese maker of a myriad of e-book products (via Liliputing). The Boox line of products typically Android, and add interesting touches to the traditional e-book experience, such as pen input or huge screens.In an online brochure (which is accompanied, naturally, by a peppy soundtrack) announcing its latest onslaught of e-ink products, Onyx lists the Boox

Google’s latest AI toy may be its most clever: an automated drawing bot that analyzes what you’re doodling in real time to suggest a more polished piece of clip art to replace it. Called AutoDraw, the software is another of Google’s ongoing creative machine learning demonstrations that it releases as part of its AI Experiments series. It uses the underlying technology behind the company’s experimental image recognition software to identify potential objects and pairs that

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft — which famously flew by Pluto in the summer of 2015 — is going to sleep for a little while as it speeds toward its next destination at the edge of the Solar System. On April 7th, the vehicle went into hibernation, a mode in which most of its instruments are powered off. This extended nap, which will last until September 11th, will help keep New Horizons in a safe, stabilized state while reducing the wear and tear on some of the probe’s inst

Konami’s infamous cheat code has lived a long life in video games and the internet at large. It first appeared in the 1986 NES game Gradius to help the developers beat their own game; it’s since grown beyond a cheat in later Konami games to a general pop culture joke.It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate use for a cheat code than a bank, and it seems that the Bank of Canada agrees. If you enter the code correctly (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) on its pag

Basing your scam around the government agency meant to protect consumers from getting scammed is not a smart thing to do. This is a lesson that Florida man Daniel Croft is currently learning. Today the Federal Trade Commission announced that it has successfully obtained a preliminary injunction that forbids Croft from telling unsuspecting consumers that the FTC hired him to conduct tech support. He’s been doing so since at least last July.
Croft made up a bogus FTC press release in hopes o

Blizzard just revealed new details about its latest Overwatch live event called Uprising. The limited time event, which starts today and lasts until May 1st, will pit up to four players against an army of Omnic robots who are ravaging the city of King’s Row. Players can assume the role of heroes Tracer, Torbjörn, Reinhardt, and Mercy to fight off the AI invasion in what looks to be a similar cooperative brawl game mode to Blizzard’s Halloween Terror event last October.Overwach l

The Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk has 707-horsepower and can go 0–60 in 3.5 seconds — Jeep says this makes it the quickest SUV ever, though we suspect Tesla might disagree since the Model X (which is really sort of a crossover) can make that run in 2.9 seconds.A few years ago, Dodge released its Challenger and Charger Hellcat models: insanely powerful muscle cars equipped with a supercharged V8 that makes an astonishing 707-horsepower. Jeep engineers have spent the past few years fig

Televisions with Roku’s software preinstalled can now automatically detect what you’re watching via cable, satellite, or an antenna. The new feature, coming to Roku TVs as part of a the latest operating system update, is called “More Ways to Watch” and is designed to show you whenever a show or movie you’ve got on can also be streamed using popular services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video. This could allow you to watch an in-progress episode from the beginning,

In 2006, Bill Rosemann made the move to Marvel from rival DC and was immediately tasked with editing the “cosmic” portion of the company’s portfolio. You know, the stories about superpowered alien rings and far-flung wars in distant galaxies. One of his first projects started as a new series starring wisecracking Star-Lord, but it snowballed into something much bigger. Inspired by the “Annihilation” crossover storyline, Rosemann wanted to create an event that pulled

Starting in early 2018, the Luxor Hotel will be home to the very first e-sports arena on the Las Vegas Strip. The joint venture between Allied Esports, Esports Arena, and Luxor-owner MGM Resorts International will see an existing 30,000-square-foot nightclub transformed into a multi-level e-sports venue. It will be equipped with all the staples of a standard sports arena plus an LED video wall, professional streaming video production studios, and daily gaming stations for attendees.Replacing nig

Volcanic eruptions have been big penguin killers in the Antarctic over the past several thousand years, according to a new study that used penguin poop to track population booms and busts in the region.Gentoo penguins, which weigh 12 pounds and stand almost three feet high, are well known for the prodigious quantities of poop they produce. In fact, they even spread their feces across their breeding sites — making massive skidmarks on the icy Antarctic landscape that help scientists count t

Google is introducing a new feature on its Chrome browser today to prevent articles from skipping back to the top if you’ve scrolled farther down the page. Called Scroll Anchoring, the feature was first available in a developer build last year, but is now rolling out more widely to users on Chrome 56 or later.
“This feature works by locking the scroll position on an on-screen element to keep our users in the same spot even as offscreen content continues to load,” Google wrote i

Yesterday, Ludacris released a video for his new track “Vitamin D,” but the only thing anyone was paying attention to were his abs. The video, starring Luda as a plastic surgeon, features our hero sporting a six-pack that is very obviously more CGI than crunches. It would be strange and funny if these CG-abs were the result of vanity, insecurity, and an amateur graphics artist, but obvious-looking CGI is kinda Luda’s thing. As Stereogum points out, Ludacris has been doing this

Microsoft is still expected to hold a spring hardware event in early May, but the company could focus it on a new Windows 10 Cloud variant. ZDNet reports that the codename of Microsoft’s unannounced event is “Bespin,” a fictional Star Wars planet that includes a “Cloud City.” Rumors of a Windows 10 Cloud variant first surfaced in January, with early copies showing that it will be another simplified version of Windows designed to run Microsoft’s Universal apps

The next big Uncharted adventure is coming this summer. Today developer Naughty Dog announced that Uncharted: The Lost Legacy will be launching on PS4 on August 22nd. First unveiled last December, The Lost Legacy is a standalone spinoff that is the first in the series to not star hero Nathan Drake, who ended his treasure-hunting career in last year’s Uncharted 4. Instead, the new game will see players control co-leads Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross. While it’s not a numbered, main entr

Nissan just unveiled its one-off Rogue Dogue "project" SUV at the New York International Auto Show, according to SlashGear. Nissan also brought that SUV with tank tracks to the show, so it’s really on a high-concept roll here. The Rogue Dogue has a lot of dog-centric features, such as a dog ramp for old dogs to get in and out of the dog SUV, a dog shower for messy dogs, a dog hot air blower for cold dogs, a dog harness for unrestrained dogs, a dog cop car partition for criminal dogs, and p

After Congress repealed the FCC’s broadband privacy rules two weeks ago, new FCC chairman Ajit Pai promised the American people that he would ensure that the personal information they give to their ISPs would continue to be protected. Pai said that he planned to work with the Federal Trade Commission to “restore the FTC’s authority to police internet service providers’ privacy practices.”But this plan will not only fail to provide effective broadband privacy protect

As scientists continue their exploration of the thousands of organisms that live inside our body, a new study is showing just how much one “good” bacteria can be exploited to its host’s advantage. Scientists were able to engineer this bacteria to find and attack a harmful pathogen in mice and worms, preventing and halting infections in the process.
The thousands of bacteria and fungi that live inside us are called the microbiome, and the “good” bacteria and yeast ar

Most women wear sports bras when working out, so it makes sense to think about building a fitness tracker directly into one. A company called Vitali is doing something similar: It’s working on a connected sports bra, but it isn’t for tracking fitness. Instead, it’s designed for stress management.
The Vitali measures posture, heart rate variability, and breathing, and it’ll gently vibrate to prompt wearers to take a breath when it senses sign of stress, like an increased h

Fitbit’s upcoming smartwatch won’t launch until the fall, according to a new report in Yahoo Finance.The company’s first official smartwatch, as well as an upcoming pair of Bluetooth headphones, have been plagued by production issues, including problems with the watch’s GPS antennae and challenges around waterproofing the device, the report says.Fitbit did not immediately respond to Verge requests for comment.
Fitbit’s smartwatch plans have long been in the works, a

GoPro had a terrible 2016, losing $373 million and recalling its malfunctioning Karma drones. In a new attempt to get people to buy more of its cameras, the company has launched a trade-up program that allows GoPro owners to trade in their previous-generation Hero cameras for $100 off a Hero 5 Black or $50 off a Hero 5 Session.If you want to replace the GoPro camera you’re not using, you can go to the company’s trade-up website. There, you can pick the camera you want and receive ins

The Best Buy subreddit is not affiliated with Best Buy the company in any way. It’s just a place for people who work at Best Buy or shop at Best Buy to hang out, ask gadget questions, talk about Apple Watch displays, dish about return policies and vacation days, and post photos of the animals they have taken into a Best Buy with them.
There are dogs. Photo by jayshock89 / RedditPhoto by pbm9 / RedditPhoto by swoodrow79 / RedditThere are cats.Photo by ndemerson / RedditThere are ducks.Photo

Microsoft is bidding farewell to Windows Vista, more than 10 years after it first debuted. Support for Windows Vista ends today, meaning users will have to move to a more recent version of Windows to remain secure. It’s the end of an era for an operating system that arrived late to the market with widespread criticisms.
Codenamed Longhorn, Windows Vista was originally supposed to revolutionize Windows with a new file system and user interface. Microsoft’s development of Longhorn spir

I laughed at Apple’s wireless AirPods when they were first announced. I sat on Twitter and shared the same jokes as everyone else, and never dreamed they’d be in my ears. “They look stupid,” I thought, and everyone seemed to agree. It’s with much regret that I’m now using AirPods as my headphones every day, but I still think they look stupid. Others do too, apparently, because people keep staring at me as if I’m from outer space.
I tried a pair during a

Indiegogo has a long and unhappy history of being the internet's home for misbegotten and specious health gadgets, and its latest addition is no exception. The TrimX electrical fat stimulator promises to target the most stubborn fat deposits on your body and essentially blast them away with gentle waves of electrical current (and regular exercise). It's just like the litany of ab-firming belts from the likes of Slendertone — which the US FDA clears only for therapeutic use and not weight l

3D-printing may not be the home phenomenon many hoped for, but the technology continues to find a place in the world of industrial manufacturing. Reuters reports that Boeing will start using 3D-printed titanium parts in the construction of its 787 Dreamliner jet airliner. These are the first 3D-printed structural components to be approved by the Federal Aviation Authority, says manufacturer Norsk Titanium, and could eventually save Boeing up to $3 million in construction costs on each jet built.

Pick-up lines so rarely seem like a good idea, but if you really can't meet new people without sidling up to them at a bar with a pre-packaged line, at least you've got a new excuse if one of them bombs — "a robot wrote it." Research scientist Janelle Shane has trained a neural network framework to generate its own pick-up lines, feeding it a dataset that included existing lines, and training it to look for patterns.
Most actual pick-up lines are obscene or aggressive
Shane's neural networ

Two things in this world can make life meaningful. 1) Having the strength to forge your own destiny; to live by your own rules, and not be swayed by the whims and wishes of others. And 2) Really sticking it to some stranger on the internet. When Twitch streamer CirclMastr spent two years grinding through Final Fantasy VII to get Cloud and Barrett to level 99 before even facing the first boss, he achieved both.As reported by Kotaku, this incredible, mind-numbingly boring feat was carried out in o

Fujifilm’s Instax range of instant cameras is hugely popular, but most models only take credit card-sized rectangular photos. If a report from the usually accurate FujiRumors is to be believed, however, next week could see a major shakeup to the line: square photos. That’s right, like Instagram. And, well, Polaroid.
There are apparently two Instax Square cameras planned: the SQ and the SQ10. The SQ seem to be pretty much what you’d expect — another chunky plastic instant

After Apple hit Qualcomm with a barrage of lawsuits earlier this year, the chip maker is countersuing Apple right back. Qualcomm today filed its Answers and Counterclaims to Apple’s January lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California. The full details of the suit can be read in a 139-page document (PDF) released by Qualcomm, but the company has five key complaints — including the claim that Apple deliberately didn’t use the full potential of Qualcomm chips in iPhone 7

Google has published a new response to Department of Labor claims that it systematically underpays its female staff members. The statement once again denies that any pay gap exists within the company, explaining the “gender-blind” way the company makes its salary calculations, which it says is based on “role, job level, job location as well as current and recent performance ratings.”
Once a salary is calculated by analysts — who Google says have no access to the gen