Technology news

After months of hand-wringing over Facebook’s role in the 2016 election, the company has finally laid out its response. Over 13 pages, a report today details a comprehensive plan for dealing with what Facebook calls “information operations”— any sustained attempt by an organized force to distort public discourse. The report frames those campaigns as one more undesirable activity on Facebook — akin to spam, malware, or harassment.It’s a canny and interesting do

The game industry’s digital revolution is marching along smoothly.
The worldwide digital gaming market grew 7 percent year-over-year in March, according to research firm SuperData. This brought it to a new high of $8 billion. This continues a trend of growth in the digital gaming sector, as more gamers buy software via online stores and make in-game purchases. The mobile segment alone grew 13 percent year-over-year.
SuperData also released a chart of the 10 highest grossing digital ga

The dating app Feeld, previously known as 3nder and commonly known as “Tinder for threesomes,” has just announced a Slack integration. Oh boy.According to the Feeld site, the bot works like this — just open a direct message conversation with Feeld and @-mention someone you “have feelings for.” For them to find out that you did that, they’ll have to initiate a conversation with the bot and mention you. Otherwise, Feeld promises, your secret dies in Slack. It do

Right now the most powerful ARM-based computers available to consumers are Chromebooks. The Raspberry Pi is a great deal and all, and a fully functional $35 Linux desktop, but it's vastly less powerful than what most of us would deem acceptable for web browsing and actual work.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Every flagship phone released these days has performance challenging that of a ultraportable laptop, at least in pure processing speed, and Huawei has just made the relatively obvious c

Facebook is bringing the Lite version of Messenger to over 100 countries around the world today. David Marcus, the head of Messenger at Facebook, posted the announcement on his Facebook page. The company highlights Lite’s compatibility with older phones, but as Abhi pointed out, the app also helps people who have spotty internet connections. Originally, Facebook said the app would be available in 150 more countries, but outlets who’ve viewed the list say the actual number

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said during an earnings conference call that higher average selling prices for the first quarter drove the company’s financial results.
Earlier today, Intel reported earnings that beat analysts’ earnings for the first quarter ended March 31. Revenues for the quarter were $14.8 billion and non-GAAP earnings were $3.2 billion, or 66 cents a share.
“The first quarter marked a great start to the year,” said Krzanich. “Q1 was up 7 percent ov

Business Insider reports that Anthony Levandowski, an Uber executive in charge of the company’s self-driving group, is stepping away from his role amid allegations that he stole 14,000 documents from Waymo before taking his current job. Business Insider obtained an email in which says he will continue to work at Uber, but will no longer be involved in LIDAR-related work.Levandowski is staying on at Uber
Instead, he’ll focus on operations and security. Eric Meyhofer is being named the

GUEST: Do bot metrics change over time?
One question that still comes up after 2.4 billion messages at Dashbot is around buttons versus free-form communication, especially as platforms add more app-like functionality.
We first wrote about this after processing 70 million messages.
Let’s take a look at the latest insights.
A guy walks into a bar… and clicks ‘hi’?
The beauty of conversational interfaces is they enable users to communicate naturally in free form &mdash

Apple today started rolling out the fifth beta version of iOS 10.3.2, a point update to iOS 10.3 that will be going out to everyone in the next few weeks. After making the beta available for developers to try out, Apple is now also releasing it for public beta testers.
This comes just three days after Apple pushed out the fourth public beta of the mobile operating system update, which itself arrived a week after the third beta.
Apple isn’t flagging any major changes in today’s update

Numerous government reports have predicted that NASA’s next big rocket, the Space Launch System, won’t be ready in time for its first launch in 2018 — and now months of speculation have finally become reality. NASA is going to push back the vehicle’s inaugural flight, potentially to some time in 2019, according to one of the agency’s top officials. It’s another major delay for NASA’s human exploration program, aimed at sending astronauts into deep space

The FCC put out its draft proposal for reversing the 2015 net neutrality order today, and the oddest thing about it may be how little the commission has thought through what to do with basic internet protections.
Rather than undoing the net neutrality order wholesale, the FCC is essentially splitting it up into two parts: one part undoes the legal authority used to implement net neutrality — a classification known as “Title II” — and the other part asks whether or not it

The Interactive Advertising Bureau released its annual report yesterday on the state of the digital ad market. The numbers looked stunning for Google and Facebook, not so rosy for everyone else. The two tech giants accounted for more than three-quarters of all the growth across the industry. And that momentum showed up today in Alphabet’s first quarter earnings.Revenue at Google, which comes from things like search ads, display ads, and advertising on YouTube videos, came in at $24.75 bill

Gaming is still a solid business for Microsoft even if it isn’t seeing massive gains.
The company reported the results of its fiscal Q3 today, and it revealed that it generated $1.928 billion in revenues from Xbox and Windows 10 gaming. That is up 4 percent year-over-year, according to Microsoft. An ongoing shift to digital for many consumers, purchasing games and other items through online stores instead of the local GameStop of Walmart, and the continued strength of Xbox Live were the pr

Microsoft has published its Q3 fiscal 2017 earnings report, and the company has made $4.8 billion in net income on $22.1 billion in revenue. Both revenue and profit are up from the same period last year, and the company's Office and cloud products continue to help generate big parts of the overall revenue.
Unsurprisingly, Surface revenue is down this quarter. Microsoft has not significantly refreshed its Surface Pro or Surface Book line, and Surface revenue has dipped 26 percent as a result to $

Microsoft today reported earnings for its third fiscal quarter of 2017, including revenue of $23.6 billion, net income of $5.7 billion, and earnings per share of $0.73. The company’s Intelligent Cloud and Productivity and Business Processes operating groups countered the decline from its More Personal Computing unit.
In Q3 2016, Microsoft saw $22.1 billion in revenue, net income of $5.0 billion, and earnings per share of $0.62. For Q3 2017, analysts had expected Microsoft to earn $23.6 bil

Intel reported earnings that beat analysts’ earnings for the first quarter ended March 31. Revenues for the quarter were $14.8 billion and non-GAAP earnings were $3.2 billion, or 66 cents a share.
The earnings come at an interesting time for the world’s largest chip maker, which faces competition from Qualcomm in mobile, artificial intelligence from Nvidia, and core PC microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices, which just launched its speedy Ryzen desktop processors.
For the first

Google’s umbrella company Alphabet brought in $24.75 billion in revenue and $7.73 earnings per share in the first quarter of 2017, according to the company’s earnings release out today.
Analysts expected less from Alphabet: about $24.19 billion in revenue and $7.40 earnings per share.
Here are some key numbers from Alphabet’s Q1 2017 report. 99 percent — The chunk of Alphabet’s revenue that came from Google

In disclosing its financial results for the first quarter of this year today, ecommerce company Amazon said that its Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud business brought in $890 million in operating income on $3.66 billion in revenue during the quarter.
That means AWS revenue was up 42 percent year over year. For context, that’s down considerably from the 64 percent revenue growth figure from a year ago. AWS revenue growth has fallen for the past seven quarters now.
Above: AWS revenue g

SPONSORED: Presented by Intel
Virtual reality (VR) is a big-buzz topic in gaming today, but a lot of questions remain about what direction the genre will take, and how it will evolve. Attendees of the upcoming GamesBeat Summit 2017 will get a highly educated perspective on VR’s future thanks to a presentation from Kim Pallister, director of the Intel Virtual Reality Center of Excellence in Oregon.
The Virtual Reality Center is part of the Intel Client Computing Group, which, according to P

Google is back at it, adding stuff to Google+, its 6-year-old social network. Today Google said it’s dropping a new card called Topics into your home stream. It provides links to pages containing posts on subjects that Google thinks you might be interested in, as well as relevant collections and communities.
“Today, there are already hundreds of Topics available in English, Spanish and Portuguese, covering everything from black-and-white photography to hiking and camping. So whether

Amazon released new features today to give the developers of Alexa skills the choice to add more excitement to Alexa’s voice, and the ability to speed or slow her pace — or even whisper.
The new feature is available to Alexa skills makers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany and is delivered via Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tags. Like Alexa skills, Google Assistant actions can also be created using SSML.
Other SSML tags introduced for Alexa developers today include an

GUEST: One of the best things about Microsoft’s Cortana in comparison to other voice-activated personal assistants is it really tries to make it all about you. It remembers your preferences, likes, dislikes, and even your work schedule in an effort to get to know you.
Cortana can be used for many purposes, but among the most useful is setting it up to make your daily commute easier and more enjoyable. Here are six quick things you can try to turn Cortana into the personal driving assistant

Google made a big deal out of its new Assistant when it launched alongside the Pixel and Home. The company has since brought the Assistant to other Android devices, but now it’s launching a preview of the Assistant SDK so developers can start to add it to their own hardware. To show off the new SDK, Google partnered with Deeplocal to create a colorful mocktail mixer powered by the AI; just tell it what kind of drink you want, and it’ll serve it right up. I want one: If you want to c

Razer claims that its new mouse outperforms “every other wireless gaming mouse” on the market, and it is positioning this new device at the high end of the price spectrum as well as a viable option for pro gamers.
The company is launching the Lancehead and Lancehead Tournament Edition gaming mice today for $140 and $80, respectively. The Lancehead is a wireless mouse that uses what Razer is calling “Adaptive Frequency Technology,” where the radio receiver jumps from chann

Facebook revealed today that it’s receiving more government information requests than ever before — but that it’s also taking less content down. The company today released its Global Government Requests Report, which shows the number of request officials have made to Facebook for user data. The report also includes the number of items restricted or removed for violating local laws. It reads very similarly to Twitter’s transparency report released earlier this year.

Computer scientist Andrew Ng once described the power of contemporary AI as the ability to automate any mental task that takes a human “less than one second of thought.” It’s a rule of thumb that’s worth remembering when you think about Amazon’s new Echo Look — a smart camera with a built-in AI assistant. Amazon says the Echo Look will help users dress and give them fashion advice, but what other judgements could it make?Think about it. If you pass a stranger

REVIEW: A few months ago HP went ahead and released a new version of its very good 13.3-inch Spectre x360 convertible laptop with a 4K Ultra HD display. A screen this fancy was previously only available on the 15.6-inch Spectre x360.
Lenovo’s 13.9-inch Yoga 910 and Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 are both available with 4K displays, and now HP has a proper answer.
When you find a 4K video you want to watch, the HP delivers, without taking up a huge amount of space, and without costing you an ex

If you installed AMD’s new Radeon software today, you probably noticed a new icon on your Windows desktop.
Above: Hey there, little guy!Image Credit: GamesBeat
AMD launched the latest version of its Crimson ReLive Edition software, which features support for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III and a 7 percent increase in performance for the new RX 580 GPU. But this update also adds a web shortcut icon to your desktop that takes you to the signup page for publisher Bethesda’s ongoing Qu

Netflix’s Casting JonBenét is the closest you’ll get to a JonBenét Ramsey documentary that doesn’t carry the stench of exploitation and sensationalism. That’s because it’s not really a documentary, and it’s not about JonBenét.
The second documentary feature from 32-year-old Australian director Kitty Green, the film is more like a hybrid between a piece of community theater and magical realist documentaries like Alma Har'el’s Bombay B

Apple is working on a Venmo-like money-transfer service, according to a report by Recode – and perhaps even its own debit card. Rumors have been floating around about an Apple Money-transfer service since 2015; now it seems the company is making another push in the space. Unfortunately, it seems the service would be limited to people on Apple’s ecosystem, perhaps only from iPhone to iPhone. That would make it extremely-not-useful if you have any friends that owe you money

News has been dribbling out for a couple months now about Elon Musk’s new tunneling venture, the Boring Company. Today, a SpaceX employee posted a photo on Instagram (which was first spotted by Business Insider) of the actual machine that will be boring Musk’s tunnel.A few months ago, Musk told Bloomberg that he already has a boring machine. Its a 2015 model nicknamed “Nannie” that’s 400 feet long and weighs 1,200 tons. Whether this a photo of Nannie or not is still

The state of NASA’s space suit supply looks bleak in a new report from the space agency’s auditor. NASA is still “years away” from having a new space suit ready for future deep-space missions, the report claims, even though the agency has invested close to $200 million on space suit development since 2007.Meanwhile, NASA seems to be running out of the space suits it does have for the astronauts on the ISS. Only a fraction of the original space suit supply for the station

Scientists found DNA from ancient humans in the soil of caves — even when there were no bones uncovered at the site. The research shows that, even when no fossils are around, sediments inside caves can tell us which early humans were present where and when. This information is key for understanding the evolution of our human ancestors.
The study, published today in Science, describes a highly sensitive technique for analyzing ancient DNA. The technique was used to study sediment from seven

I am not very good at drawing things. To date, I can draw a cartoon koala after making it the sole focus of practice during a middle school art class, but that’s basically it.Olli is a new photo and video filter app from Tinrocket (which has released a number of similar products) that gets around my inability to draw by turning my selfies and snack pictures into seemingly hand-drawn works of art. It’s a nice effect when used for still images, but it’s not really something that

Typography enthusiasts likely already know how to identify fonts by name, but it’s always useful to explore visually similar fonts when you feel like changing up your options. Design consultant firm IDEO’s Font Map helps you do exactly that, with an interactive tool that lets you browse through fonts by clicking on them and seeing ones nearby that look similar, or by specifically searching for fonts by name.IDEO software designer Kevin Ho built the map using a machine learning algori

Atlus is walking back its previous restrictions for streaming Persona 5. Where players were warned before not to stream past the in-game date of 7 / 7, the publisher has since amended those rules to 11 / 19, the staring point of late-game content. It’s an improvement that still fails to fully address the wants of the community it’s serving.Since Persona 5’s release, developer Atlus has been very particular about what players are and aren’t allowed to share online. The Pla

I'll admit my bias up front: I think all-in-one PCs typically represent all the worst compromises. It's laptop-ish performance in a desktop form factor, without the upgradeability that a desktop tower offers.
But people buy them anyway, and Acer's new U27 seems like an interesting option. The standout feature is the "LiquidLoop" liquid cooling technology that allows the PC to be fanless. Fan noise can be a real problem for all-in-ones with higher-end specs, so I'm glad to see Acer fighting back.

Prisoners at Fort Dix in New Jersey were able to operate a ring of child sexual abuse imagery using smartphones, a cloud, and the dark web. According to NBC News, all five of the prisoners charged had been convicted of possessing and/or distributing images of child sexual abuse already — internet access is the last thing you’d want them to have. But one prisoner managed to buy a smartphone for $900, which he rented out at an hourly rate, according to another pris

I miss the days of transparent gadgets; my clear GameBoy Color was a prized possession. Apparently, YouTuber JerryRigEverything misses those days too, because he just painstakingly turned his Samsung Galaxy S8 into a gorgeous piece of transparent gadgetry. The DIY project isn’t exactly easy, involving paint thinner, lots of scraping, peeling, and even cutting off a few internal components, but I suppose that’s the price you pay for this kind of beauty. Needless to say, if you w

If it feels like everyone in the world has a presence online… well, you’re not far from the truth. Right now, about two billion people — nearly a third of the world’s population — are social media users. So it makes sense for savvy business professionals to market their goods and services where the people are… in the digital world. Understand how to get the most out of the online marketplace with a Complete Online Marketing Certification Bundle, available r

Choosing the best mouse for competitive gaming largely comes down to preference and just a few key specs, but there’s one consistent piece of advise you’ll hear from gamers: don’t buy a wireless mouse. At least, that was the thinking until relatively recently. Now Razer wants to prove wireless peripherals can operate on a professional level with its new $140 Lancehead mouse. See, though wireless mice are fine for everyday computing, they are notoriously unreliable fo

When is a VPN not a VPN? When it’s a heck of a lot more… which describes the package of services available through Windscribe. Right now, you can pick up this next step in the evolution of online security with a lifetime subscription – and take an extra $9 off your final price using the coupon code WIND9. That leaves your total at just $70 at TNW Deals. So, what is Windscribe? Well, it handles all your standard VPN duties–cloaking your web traffic an

This week, Walt took a week off from writing his column. However, we still have a brand-new episode of Ctrl-Walt-Delete for you! This episode focuses on what has been taking over the news in our world, Amazon’s newest product the Echo Look, Twitter’s revenue and growth, and the FCC’s plan to reverse Title II net neutrality.We’ve only got a few episodes left so take advantage of these new episodes while you can!We love your feedback on the topics of the show and suggestion

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special-event releases.
Buster’s Mal Heart, a thriller that’s being released later this month, has gotten buzz mostly for starring Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek. That’s partly because it’s an indie film directed by a relative newcomer, Sarah Adina Smith, whose feature debut was the 2014 drama The Midnight Swim. But it’s also because Buster’s Mal Heart defies easy