Technology news

If you’re an American citizen, and you don’t like the fact that Congress just voted to remove laws preventing your ISPs from selling your information, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin has a simple solution for you: don’t use the internet. Sensenbrenner was taking questions in a town hall meeting, and one of the attendees asked him about the internet privacy laws he voted to roll back. Specifically, they asked why internet service providers should be treated the sa

First there was the Segway, which promised to revolutionize cities but mostly changed the life of mall cops and tour guides. Then the hoverboards arrived, which were great except for how sometimes they explode. And then there was nothing new for a little bit.
"The inverted pendulum has been thoroughly mined for personal transportation innovations!" we sighed contentedly to ourselves.
But what we didn't expect was Üo, which was spotted by Gizmodo earlier today.Short for Über-ball, Ü

Airbnb today announced a new set of mandatory security measures, including multi-factor authentication, it’s implementing to prevent account takeovers. Now, for the first time, Airbnb will require both hosts and guests logging in from new devices to verify their identity with a second account, either via SMS or email. A vast majority of other social and communication apps use multi-factor authentication, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, making Airbnb a bit of an outlier to have gon

A company called Catalyst is launching a bunch of AirPods cases today. They’re cases for cases called Catalyst Case for AirPods. Creative naming, I know, but at least you’ll never forget what they’re designed to do.The water and drop-proof cases are made of silicon and include an opening at the bottom for your Lightning cable. They come in a bunch of colors, like blue, purple, white, and glow in the dark. Why do you need a glow-in-the-dark, waterproof AirPods case? For deep sea

It looks like Delta has seen what happened with United Airlines' overbooked passenger fiasco and is making some serious changes to its compensation policies — serious as in way more cash monies to entice volunteers to give up their seats on oversold flights. 
SEE ALSO: Unsettling video captures United passenger being forcibly removed from overbooked flight
The Associated Press reported Friday that an internal memo from Delta shows gate agents can now offer up to $2,000 in compensatio

Think you're Hello Kitty's biggest fan? Step aside, because your fandom has nothing on this world record holder.
Masao Gunji, a resident in Yotsukaido, Chiba, Japan, holds the Guinness World Record for most Hello Kitty memorabilia with an incredible 5,169 items lining the walls, tables, and floors of his bright pink home.
SEE ALSO: Sanrio fans rejoice! There's a new cafe where you can gorge on Hello Kitty sweets
With the help of his wife, Gunji built his extraordinary collection over the course

Google is ending support for a widely used browser benchmark after determining that the test had actually become detrimental to web performance.
The benchmark, called Octane, has been widely used since 2012 by developers trying to assess how well a browser runs JavaScript, a core component of the web.
But as browsers got better and better at taking the test, Google saw something start to happen: “we began to notice that JavaScript optimizations which eked out higher Octane scores often had

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs — this is the second build since the Creators Update was finalized. The Windows Subsystem for Linux has gained serial device support, but there are no other new features beyond that.
Windows 10 is a service, meaning it was built in a very different way from its predecessors so it can be regularly updated with not just fixes but new features, too. Microsoft has released many such updates, including three major ones: Novembe

The fast and the furious? That’s the situation that comes to mind when your teen driver punches the accelerator on your new sedan … and you get furious.
There’s no way to know if you loan out your car to someone for an afternoon, either — say, to help a friend in a pinch. Maybe few of us are that willing to let someone drive a brand new car, but then again, if you’re the person who buys the car and someone else is the primary driver, it would be nice to set limits.

Battery life is an inherently squishy topic. It's hard to be precise when measuring, because there are so many variables at play. That said, battery life is hugely important, and it's worth optimizing anything that can be optimized to get more hours and minutes out of our laptops. Specifically, browsers are huge RAM hogs that drain most of a laptop's battery on a given day, and the major vendors are aware of this.
What does all this mean? More bakeoffs!
We were treated to an entertaining back-an

The connected car revolution is taking place in fits and starts. With a recent 2017 Subaru Impreza test, the car itself was a little on the jerky side as well — but in a good way.
There are two cameras mounted on either side of the rear view mirror. For some reason, they are “color” cameras even though the adaptive technology in the car uses sensors and can detect lane markings and other cars. (My guess is that even a robot sees obstructions better in color.) The feature is cal

National parks in the US are already seeing the effects of climate change — glaciers are melting, whitebark pines are under attack by pests, and wildfires are eating away at acres of land across the US. What will happen to our treasured parks by 2050 if we don’t address climate change?
That’s the question at the heart of an art project by Hannah Rothstein, a 31-year-old painter and illustrator living in Berkeley, California. Rothstein reworked historical national park posters t

Alphabet’s life sciences spinoff, Verily, has developed a health-tracking watch that will be used in observational and longitudinal health studies, the company said in a blog post today.
Appropriately named the Study Watch, the watch has a simple, sleek look and has “multiple physiological and environmental sensors, designed to measure relevant signals for studies spanning cardiovascular, movement disorders, and other areas,” Verily said. It has a low-power, e-paper-like displa

In it’s ongoing battle with false news, Facebook is taking an old-fashioned approach: putting ads in newspapers. The ads are appearing in French publications the Le Monde, Libération, and Le Parisien, among others. Each ad has ten tips, advising readers to check story sources, dates, and facts wherever possible — common sense, you’d think. The choice of country wasn’t made at random; France is set to hold its presidential election later this mo

The Trump administration has said it will not be releasing White House visitor records, and the site the Obama administration created to host them, Open.gov, has been officially discontinued. According to Time, White House officials say that the choice stemmed from “the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.” Now, visitor logs will be kept secret until five years after Trump has left office.
Obama started releasing visito

Yesterday, news broke that Nintendo would be discontinuing its miniature NES Classic console. The sad news streak continues today with confirmation that the Japanese version of the NES Classic, the Nintendo Classic Mini Family Computer (aka, the Famicon Classic,) will also be ending production.The Famicom Classic was similar to the NES Classic, offering a lineup of 30 retro games, although it featured a design based off the original Famicom — the Japanese version of Nintendo’s first

The first long-awaited teaser for Star Wars: The Last Jedi is here. But while this tantalizing two minutes of footage has finally given fans the first glimpse of the upcoming sequel, it’s as deliberately vague as the various teasers for The Force Awakens were. Yes, the cinematography is beautiful. The flashes of Rey’s training are intriguing, and the few brief seconds of space battles are thrilling, but there’s almost no context for anything that happens in it.
The Star Wars fr

The Switch is beating expectations.
Research firm SuperData revealed today that its analysis shows that Nintendo has sold 2.4 million Switches during its first month of release. The home console/portable hybrid launched worldwide on March 3.
SuperData now projects that the Switch will sell 7.2 million consoles in 2017. That is up from its original forecast of 5 million units, showing that this is a better start than the research group was expecting.
Industry-tracking firm The NPD Group noted yes

If you rocking a Kaby Lake or Ryzen chip in your PC, it’s probably time to upgrade to Windows 10.
Microsoft will no longer push updates to your PC if you are running Windows 7 or 8.1 with the latest chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm (as Ars Technica first reported). The company had announced that it would pull the plug on updating those legacy operating systems for modern CPUs, and it explained that this is because the chip manufacturers designed their silicon specifically for Windows 10

The dust has settled, the reviews are out, the BIOSes are patched (somewhat), and AMD's new Ryzen CPU is a serious contender to be the heart of your next PC. To that end, I’ve put together some advice on how to build a PC with this new AMD architecture, which I hope can get you started.
I haven't built a Ryzen PC yet, but it's absolutely on my to-do list, and I've been doing some digging to figure out what's the best blend of price and performance. I'm open to suggestions, so feel free to

In the highly-anticipated first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we get a lot of glimpses into the saga’s next chapter. Rey is training in the ways of the Force with Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To. General Leia is still leading the resistance. Kylo Ren is alive and angry, and the First Order, despite a crushing defeat at the end of The Force Awakens, is still terrorizing the galaxy.Most importantly, we hear Luke speak for the first time, and he hints at a newfound relationship with the For

Apple today received a permit to test a self-driving car on California highways. This, in case you’re wondering, is the self-driving car reports suggested Apple was scrapping. Apple is testing autonomous vehicles in California https://t.co/BOWryzcNOH pic.twitter.com/f2ZxneV9qb — kif leswing (@kifleswing) April 14, 2017 ‘Project Titan,’ as Apple called its autonomous car program, had an ambitious plan to compete with the likes of Google, Tesla and others as Sili

The first trailer for The Last Jedi has arrived, and it looks pretty amazing. There’s a lot going on in it: Rey training with Luke! Space battles! Kylo Ren looking pissed! It’s enough to give us a taste of the next Star Wars film, but doesn’t reveal more than is necessary.The trailer opens with what at first looks like a star field, but quickly reveals itself to be rocks on Ahch-To, the planet where Rey found Luke living by himself. It’s a neat visual trick. LucasfilmThat

OPINION: You know when you’re wrestling someone significantly bigger and you realize they can simply sit on you? It doesn’t matter what Snap is scheming, Facebook this week showed that it has figured out how to throw its weight around.
Instagram announced yesterday that Stories is now used by 200 million people daily. The latest figure we have for Snapchat is 161 million daily active users, meaning Instagram Stories has effectively overtaken the copied app.
To be clear, this doe

The moment you’ve been waiting for since you saw The Force Awakens way back in 2015 is finally here: we now have our first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. And what a teaser it is. Much like the early teasers for The First Awakens, it hardly reveals anything at all about the plot, yet still manages to turn up the hype to 11. I wish more trailers were as restrained as these. Anyway, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and watch it:

Stories are dead. Long live Stories. Instagram announced earlier this week that its Stories feature has over 200 million daily users. As my colleague Napier pointed out, that’s at least 40 million more than Snapchat’s last reported number. I think we can safely say Instagram and Facebook have Snapchat beaten. 158 million active users is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s worth noting that Snapchat’s meteoric growth slowed considerably when Instagram Stories rolled out.

Bose has launched a pair of new Bluetooth speakers, the SoundLink Revolve ($199) and Revolve+ ($299). They both feature aluminum, cylindrical designs and — like the popular UE Boom line — play 360-degree, omnidirectional audio. Bose is really promising a great listening experience from these; the company says the Revolve+ in particular is the best-sounding Bluetooth speaker it has ever produced. The SoundLink Mini II already offered some of the best sound quality from a portable Blue

We’re just 8 months away from the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but Disney and Lucasfilm had released absolutely nothing about the upcoming film — until today. During the highlight panel of Star Wars Celebration, writer-director Rian Johnson, producer Kathleen Kennedy, and a selection of the film’s cast took the stage to discuss what is in store for audiences in the continuing adventure of Luke Skywalker and Rey... well, Rey Somebody.
There was a lot to discuss — i

T-Mobile is already shipping Samsung Galaxy S8 orders, as first spotted by Phandroid and Android Forums.The company already said the S8 and S8 Plus would arrive by April 19th —two days ahead of other retailers — but it’s possible they now could arrive even sooner. Easter might mess with deliveries slightly, but still, the shipments are imminent. The company shipped the Galaxy S7 early, too.T-Mobile’s selling the regular S8 for $750, or $30 / per month for two years. As a

Apple is now permitted to test self-driving cars in California, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles site revealed today.
The DMV’s autonomous vehicle tester program includes a total of 30 companies, among them Tesla, Google, Uber, Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes — and now, Apple.
While Apple has never formally announced plans to release a self-driving car, the company’s efforts have attracted major attention — as unreleased Apple p

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Nintendo discontinues the NES Classic Edition, someone is making a mechanical version of Pong, and Overwatch gets a new cooperative mode.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: Silicon Valley, sci-fi, and games are coming together
GamesBeat Summit to delve into China’s role in the global game ecosystem
Is Minecraft going free-to-play? GamesBeat Decides
GamesBeat embraces our first love: PC gaming
Sc

A new name just showed up on California’s growing list of companies allowed to test autonomous vehicles in the state: Apple.Apple is testing autonomous vehicles in California https://t.co/BOWryzcNOH pic.twitter.com/f2ZxneV9qb— kif leswing (@kifleswing) April 14, 2017To date, the tech giant has been infuriatingly secretive about it’s efforts to build a self-driving car, code named Project Titan. Apple has been working on Project Titan for several years, but has never formally ac

Back in January, we learned the title of Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, and got a spiffy, retro-looking poster to boot. Now, at Star Wars Celebration, we’ve got a new poster to go along with it.#TheLastJedi poster has been revealed. #SWCO pic.twitter.com/fqnf1bQtPu— Star Wars (@starwars) April 14, 2017The stark image of a lightsaber shooting up into the sky also bears a certain resemblance to the original teaser poster for Return of the Jedi.Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens on December 1

The Navy is banning all electronic cigarettes and vaping devices from its aircraft, ships, boats, and submarines after a string of incidents caused physical injuries to sailors. The Naval Safety Center reports that at least 15 “mishaps” occurred between October 2015 and June 2016, which resulted in sailors’ first- and second-degree burns and facial disfiguration from e-cigarette battery explosions.
"Nine of 15 reported incidents described the failure mechanism as explosive... T