Technology news

There are some things that don’t belong in 2017, and a brand-new phone running Android Marshmallow is at the top of that list (well, near the top). Blu, the company that can’t stop producing mid to low-range smartphones, has released its latest device, the R1 Plus. The specs are mediocre at best, but given the $160 price tag, that’s totally acceptable:5.5-inch 720p display
1.3 GHz quad-core Mediatek 6737 processor
32GB of storage
3GB of RAM
13MP rear, 8MP front camera
4,000mAh

Earlier this month, one Eugene Romanovsky posted a YouTube video showing off his 20-year-old Suzuki Vitara. Watch it and be amazed by the capabilities of a 96-horsepower engine: I hope that altered Jurassic Park footage falls under fair use. Of course the top comment is that the commercial must cost more than the car. I checked Kelley Blue Book, the accepted pricing guide for used cars. I used the “Buying this car” option, and put in everything I knew about the car from the commerci

Artificial intelligence is not the savior of mankind.
All of the intelligence we program into an interface — a speaker like Amazon Echo, the chatbot you use at work, or a car that drives on its own — has to be tested in the real world by actual human beings, and until those tests are perfected, it won’t be saving anyone. Even then, this computer entity is really an extension of the human mind, isn’t it? An AI is only as smart as the humans who create and program it &mdash

Nintendo chief Tatsumi Kimishima announced last night that the Japanese game company will not hold a large-scale press conference again at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June in Los Angeles.
That’s par for the course for Nintendo, which also didn’t have a large in-person press event last year. I think it’s a little sad and probably a bad move, considering it has a new console this year in the Switch, and all of its competitors are going to do their events. If Nintendo doe

After creating Tesla, setting the Hyperloop in motion, and trying to send more people to space, Elon Musk is now working on a boring company. And by boring, I mean creating holes in the ground. Musk has teased this new venture – literally called the Boring Company – for some time now; its current goal is to help stop LA traffic by creating a network of underground tunnels that everyday cars can used. Yesterday, a SpaceX employee posted a photo of the machine – dubbed ‘Na

Open source big data company Cloudera is now, finally, a public company. Today the company traded for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), after filing to go public last month.
In 2014, when Intel made a major investment in Cloudera, the latter was reported to boast a $4.1 billion valuation. Other investors include Greylock Partners and Accel Partners.
Today, after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) closed, the company’s stock price settled at $18.10 — up 1.7 percent

Marvel has partnered with Doritos to make a limited edition Guardians of the Galaxy 2-branded bag of chips, complete with a makeshift tape deck playing the film’s soundtrack. Good news for chip fans and movie fans, as far as we can see, right? But Marvel fans who were eager to snatch up a bag on Amazon today have so far been disappointed.Doritos never announced a specific time when they would be made available for purchase, but the afternoon has dragged on and on with no sign of the world&

Google’s Chomecast is making its way to a whole bunch of new devices today as Onkyo releases a firmware update adding support to AV receivers and speakers under its various brands.That includes Onkyo’s own branded gear, along with Integra and Pioneer, which are owned by Onkyo and also have products included in the update. Once installed, users will be able to easily stream music from Chomecast-enabled smartphone apps, as well as use Google Home and Google Assistant to start playing m

With the launch of Switch — a device that combines a home console with a portable tablet — you might think that Nintendo would be moving on from the 3DS line of handhelds. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Just last night, Nintendo announced the New 2DS XL, a $149.99 device that sits between the budget-focused 2DS and the more robust New 3DS XL. And according to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé, the company will continue to focus on the platform for t

California regulators will soon be able to test select Airbnb hosts to determine whether they’re discriminating against users of the app based on race, according to The Guardian. The state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing announced a first-of-its-kind agreement with Airbnb yesterday, which will apply fair housing testing — something that traditional housing providers (landlords) have long faced — to the home-sharing service.Airbnb has for years grappled with cl

Sports sedans are the exact opposite of a self-driving car.
You hold on for the ride — you would never let a computer control your steering.
And yet, in a recent test of the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, it became obvious that there is more tech under the hood, in front of the fascia, and in the rear exhaust than any Toyota with a few LIDAR sensors. If you’re even mildly interested in technology and innovation, this is a car to study, to dissect, and to appreciate — from behi

Elon Musk wants to build intricate underground roadway systems beneath the country’s biggest and most sprawling urban centers. It may not be his most ambitious idea; let us not forget the plan to colonize Mars and turn humans into cyborgs. But The Boring Company, as the tunnel idea is called, is still pretty outrageous. For evidence, look no further than this brief concept video posted to YouTube today.It shows a near-gridlocked, red Telsa-looking automobile weaving its way to the side of

Amazon is trying to make its Alexa voice assistant sound more humanlike. Up until now, the female-sounding voice maintained an even, monotone cadence whenever speaking, but with Amazon’s new Speech Synthesis Markup Language that the company introduced this week, Alexa can whisper, vary its speaking speed, and bleep out words. Developers can also add pauses, change the pronunciation of a word, spell a word out, add audio snippets, and insert special words and phrases into their skill.
Amazo

Amazon announced this week that it’s integrating new features into Alexa, which will allow developers of Skills to make it sound more expressive and human. Alexa now supports Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), which allows developers to control the tone, timing, and emotion of its voice. With this update, Alexa will whisper, emphasize, and even bleep inappropriate words if the developer chooses. As Amazon says, “These SSML features provide a more natural voice experi

One of 2016’s biggest games is still growing.
Blizzard Entertainment revealed today that Overwatch, its class-based team shooter, has surpassed 30 million players since launching in May of last year. The game has caught on with a huge audience on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 thanks to its dynamic combat and fascinating characters, and Blizzard has kept a huge chunk of that audience coming back by regularly updating the game. It also doesn’t hurt that the core mechanics o

Mac DeMarco, the reigning lovable goober of indie rock, has announced a new contest for members of his fan club: who can write the best fan fiction about Mac?Whoever submits the best piece between May 1 and August 15 will win a drawing of themselves with Mac, made by artist Stefan Marx. The drawing will appear in the next issue of the Mac DeMarco fanzine.Today’s contest announcement comes along with the debut of a new song, as well as a profile in The New York Times in which reporter Joe C

Blizzard’s team shooter Overwatch has added another 5 million players, for a total of 30 million worldwide, in the last three months. That might not be so remarkable of a milestone for the World of Warcraft creator, which makes some of the world’s most popular and enduring online games. What is interesting is that the growth rate for Overwatch — a title not even a year old that retails for around $40 and has no free-to-play component whatsoever — is not slowing down... at

The NSA has stopped collecting messages sent from US citizens that cross international borders and mention foreign intelligence targets, according to a new report in The New York Times. The controversial practice, made public by Edward Snowden in 2013, allowed the agency to collect emails and other messages that mention a foreign intelligence target, even if neither party is subject to surveillance and one of the parties is a US citizen (and thus subject to constitutional protections against unw

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs, ahead of its May 2 event next week. The main addition is My People, a feature the company originally talked about in October 2016 when announcing the Creators Update, but ultimately delayed to later this year.
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 o

Merriam-Webster just added the word ‘sheeple’ to its dictionary, defined as “people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced :  people likened to sheep.” You know who are often called sheeple? Apple fanboys – the ones who follow the crowd and buy whatever the company sells, no matter how useless, overpriced, or unoriginal (can you tell I’m a PC guy?). Naturally, they made a perfect example for the term in the dictonary: Apple&r

Spider-man has a convoluted history in film. First, there was the Toby Maguire-led version in Sam Raimi's trilogy. Andrew Garfield took up the mask for another pair of films, before Tom Holland brought the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: Civil War. The character is getting his own film in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is set to come out on July 7th, 2017. Follow along for all the latest news, trailers, and commentary.Continue reading…

OPINION: As VentureBeat’s News Editor, I don’t have time to read every single one of our guest posts. My focus is on breaking stories and everything that stems from them. Every once in a while though, I check out what some of our contributors have written. Sometimes I learn something new and sometimes I’m vehemently opposed. This is a case of the latter.
Technology entrepreneur Umberto Malesci argued this week that highways should isolate self-driving cars in special smart lane

Yesterday, someone spotted one of Apple’s newly licensed self-driving cars puttering around in Silicon Valley, and — surprise! — it was a white Lexus RX450h. This wasn’t a total shock — after all, Apple registered three Lexus SUVs with the California DMV for autonomous driving earlier this month.But the extent of Lexus’ popularity among those conducting self-driving experiments is pretty amazing. Not only is Apple using the luxury car brand as a platform to te

Last night Nintendo made a surprise announcement: a brand-new piece of hardware is launching this summer in the form of the New Nintendo 2DS XL. That will mark the third major hardware release for the company in the span of nine months: the now-discontinued NES Classic Edition released in November, followed by the Nintendo Switch in March. The one common theme between these devices — and even the older Nintendo 3DS — is that they’ve been incredibly supply constrained of late, m

Microsoft was supposed to ship contact integration with its Windows 10 Creators Update, but the software maker mysteriously delayed the feature. While we’ve been waiting to see when it would appear, Microsoft is now testing it with its latest preview build of Windows 10 (16184). The My People feature allows Windows 10 users to pin contacts to the taskbar, and access chat apps and conversations easily. It’s a major change to the taskbar user interface, and one that will require a lot

Just when you though the mobile operating system flame wars of yesteryear had at last subsided, think again. This morning, Merriam-Webster gleefully tweeted a new addition to its online dictionary: “sheeple,” or “people who are docile, compliant, or easily influenced.” You might not immediately draw a connection to one particular proclivity over another, but Merriam-Webster takes the liberty of quoting CNN technology columnist Doug Criss.“Apple's debuted a battery c

Steve Arhancet, also know by his alias LiQuiD112, has seen esports grow from its infancy over the past decade. A former professional gamer, he is now co-CEO and co-owner of Team Liquid, one of the most successful esports teams in the industry.
Esports is expected to grow from $696 million in 2017 to nearly $1.5 billion by 2020, according to market researcher Newzoo. And Arhancet is positioning Team Liquid to be one of the leaders.
In September, 2016, Team Liquid was bought by Axiomatic, a compan

Emojipedia revealed on Twitter that users can now search for tweets and usernames with specific emoji. They chose to announce it by making fun of people using the fax machine emoji. 🆕 ✨ Twitter now supports emojis in 🔍 search. Here are people using the 📠 fax machine emoji for some reason pic.twitter.com/MWO6BrN4sk — Emojipedia 📙 (@Emojipedia) April 28, 2017 Naturally I had to search for every emoji available on my iPhone’s keyboard. I can&rsquo

Iam8bit is selling Persona 5’s big ol’ soundtrack as two separate vinyl versions to admire and then carefully tuck away into your dusty collection. First up is the $100 “Essential Edition,” a 4-record LP that is a curated list of the game’s most popular songs, rather than a definitive collection. For that, you’ll need to grab the Deluxe Edition, six records spanning 110 songs for $175.
The music itself is a cool mix of jazzy, upbeat tracks, but what the collec

If you’ve been on Twitter the past couple of hours, you may have heard of something called Fyre Fest, and you may have heard that it’s already a disaster, even though it technically wasn’t supposed to start until today. The music festival, which was billed as a luxury experience in the Bahamas, has been “fully postponed,” which is fancy festival speak for “canceled.” The ticket holders who made it to the fest are currently stranded on the island of Exuma

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Nintendo reveals the New 2DS XL, the PlayStation 4 hits 60 million sold, and Star Wars gets a match-3 puzzle game.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: How Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency changed games
PC Gaming Weekly: Why we think PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is special
Watch VR horror game Wilson’s Heart disappoint Conan with its lack of sex
How Bravely Default’s epic s

Activision unveiled the trailer and other details of Call of Duty: WWII this week. In this year’s Call of Duty installment, you’ll return to the roots of the series, playing a soldier in a squad in the 1st Infantry Division in the U.S. Army in the Second World War.
The game looks amazingly realistic as an unflinching yet respectful portrait of the sacrifices soldiers made in combat during a distant war. Joe Salud, art director, put a lot of effort into coming up with that art style.

In an effort to further appeal to business travelers, Airbnb today announced that it has added a new search function that can filter listings down to ones that are “business travel ready.”Image: Airbnb
Airbnb defines this as listings for an entire home or apartment that come equipped with high-speed Wi-Fi, a desk, toiletries, 24-hour self-check-in, and contain five-star reviews in more than 60 percent of the listing’s feedback. Additionally, the listing’s host must have a

President Donald Trump just signed an executive order aimed at expanding offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans — and maybe even in the Pacific Ocean. The move, which is expected to lead to litigation in the courts, is the latest attempt to dismantle President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy. Last month, Trump began the process to halt Obama’s cornerstone plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions. And on Wednesday, he signed another executive order that

Nintendo just announced its new clamshell 2DS XL, but there's already a special edition version announced for Japan. The New 2DS XL Dragon Quest Liquid Metal Edition — it's actually a 2DS "LL" in Japan, and the name is in Japanese, but this is a fair translation — will ship in a bundle with Dragon Quest XI in July.Look at the cute metallic Slime face poking out of there! He just wants to be your metal friend, while you farm him mercilessly for EXP.
My favorite limited edition 3DS so

The mysterious reddish tint might not be the only issue Samsung is experiencing with its smash-hit Galaxy S8 flagship. Numerous users are reporting their all-new handsets are randomly restarting by themselves. While it remains unclear what could be causing the glitch, it appears the issue persists in both the standard S8 and its slightly bigger S8+ sibling. Concerned owners have taken to Reddit, the XDA Developers forums as well as the Samsung US Community page to complain about the issue. Acco

Cloudera started trading on the New York Stock Exchange this morning at $17.80 per share under the stock symbol $CLDR.
The big data company priced its IPO last night at $15 a share, above its original range of $12 to $14 per share. At that $15 price, the company is reportedly worth about $2 billion.
As we wrote last month, Cloudera’s big focus is Hadoop, “open source software for storing and processing lots of different kinds of data.” One of Cloudera’s key comp

You should read more. We’ve all said it to ourselves. You hear about a great new book and you think, “I should pick that up.” Then life happens. Before you know it, that book is on a list of hundreds of titles under the category, “I wish I wasn’t so busy so I could get to that book.” For those of us too busy to crack all the books we’d like to read (which is basically all of us), a lifetime subscription to Instaread (now just $49.99 from TNW Deals) may

Mario fans aren’t just making their own levels. They’re making Nintendo happy.
Nintendo revealed that Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS has sold 2 million copies in its financial report for the fiscal year ending in March 2017. The game, which has players creating their own Mario stages by dragging and dropping tools via a touchscreen, came out on the 3DS in December.
Super Mario Maker first came out for the Wii U in 2015. It was one of the few bright spots in the struggling sy

After being given the cold shoulder by a hashtag-using public, Uber has finally taken the hint and given users the ability to delete their own account. This new option — which should roll out in the next few weeks — comes in the wake of #DeleteUber, where dozens if not hundreds of users got rid of their accounts following numerous scandals. While doing that, they discovered deleting your Uber account was frustratingly obscure. Up until this point, the only way to delete your account

Ed Balls is more than just a man with a funny name. He’s a walking, talking cautionary tale. Six years ago to this day, the former Labour party minister tried to search for his name on Twitter. Don’t judge – we’ve all done it. Mortifyingly, Balls mixed up the search box with the one you compose tweets in, resulting in this. Ed Balls — Ed Balls (@edballs) April 28, 2011 If it was anyone else, it would go unnoticed. But Ed Balls is a well-known British politician, an