Technology news

It's been a bit of a rough day if you enjoy using the internet. Google Docs experienced a widespread phishing attack, sending the internet into panic. Now WhatsApp has been down for more than an hour, and users of the popular Facebook-owned messaging service have turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations and finish off the panic over the Google Docs attack.
Unfortunately, it looks like WhatsApp gave up providing useful status reports on when its messaging service is down a few years ago. What

It's been a bit of a rough day if you enjoy using the internet. Google Docs experienced a widespread phishing attack, sending the internet into panic. Now WhatsApp has been down for more than an hour, and users of the popular Facebook-owned messaging service have turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations and finish off the panic over the Google Docs attack.
Unfortunately, it looks like WhatsApp gave up providing useful status reports on when its messaging service is down a few years ago. What

Less than three months after its introduction, WhatsApp’s generic take on Snapchat stories now has 175 million users, Facebook said today. That’s a healthy number of users for the communication app, which has more than 1 billion users around the world. And it suggests Facebook’s strategy of cloning Snapchat across its entire suite of products is having its desired effect — halting Snapchat’s growth around the world,while also opening up valuable new surfaces for adv

Google Docs users were hit by a widespread phishing attempt earlier today, allowing a sophisticated attacker to obtain contact lists and access Gmail accounts to spread spam messages widely. In a statement to The Verge, Google has confirmed it has now fixed the phishing attack. “We have taken action to protect users against an email impersonating Google Docs, and have disabled offending accounts,” says a Google spokesperson. “We’ve removed the fake pages, pushed updates t

When Nintendo first announced the Switch, one of the biggest selling points was the console’s massive potential for local multiplayer. It featured heavily in their trailers and ads, showing off ideas like a group of friends gathering around for a couple rounds of virtual basketball or a girl showing up to a party with the portable console. In a world where current-gen consoles offer far fewer games that allow you play side by side with friends on a couch, Nintendo seemed to be offering a g

Just a little over a month after Facebook added reactions to Messenger, the same feature has now extended to comments. Because why bother commenting on a comment when you can just click the “Heart” emoji? What is communication even? Words? What are those? (Insert “Haha” emoji here.)
Unlike the implementation on posts and Messenger, the emoji seem to crowd and overlap a bit especially as more reactions are added. To add a reaction, just hover over the Like button and see y

I remember my mom buying me a “lap desk” as a child. If you aren’t familiar with the term, they’re padded flat surfaces that sit in your lap; you can work from bed! What a novelty. Obviously these lap desks have evolved since I was young. There are now dozens on Amazon designed to hold not only your phone and tablet, but also your paper books and in some cases your laptop. The future is bright, y’all.
Today, we came across the Tab LapDesk, which is particularly puzz

 Tesla today re-affirmed that the production of its next car, the Model 3, would begin in July — and that the company had $4 billion in cash-on-hand heading into the second quarter this year. Both of those are going to be critical as Tesla heads into the back half of the year, which reported its first-quarter earnings today. The company has gone to market multiple times to raise… Read More

Nintendo has announced its downloadable content plans for the upcoming Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, and it’s going to hit you hard in the wallet: either $44.99 for a season pass, or $51.95 if purchased separately.Given that Shadows of Valentia costs $39.99, that makes either DLC option more expensive than the base game, something that even games with price $50 season passes like Star Wars: Battlefront, Call of Duty, and Battlefield 1 have yet to accomplish.That price gets you f

Alex Kipman, one of Microsoft’s top technical fellows, believes the age of the smartphone is over. “The phone is already dead,” says Kipman, in an interview with Bloomberg. “People just haven’t realized.” Kipman reportedly believes that a mixed reality device like HoloLens will replace the phone, but he hasn’t shared his exact predictions for the timeframe of when the supposedly dead smartphone will be replaced.
It’s not surprising Kipman would pic

Bipeds keep getting better. Instead of slow, heavy, and terrain-sensitive humanoids like ASIMO, researchers are building lightweight and agile bird-like robots, such as Cassie. The better the designs are mechanically, the less power and smarts are required to keep the robot upright. This is a virtuous cycle that's an encouraging sign that some of these biped research projects might actually be useful someday.
The Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Florida just unveiled its Planar Ellip

Google’s Project Sunroof, which estimates whether homes get enough sunlight to switch over to solar power, is launching in Germany today. It’s the first time Sunroof has expanded outside the US, where it finally reached all 50 states earlier this year after launching in 2015.
But as with its US coverage, Google’s estimates don’t reach all — or even most — homes in Germany. Its coverage is limited to densely populated areas, like Munich and Berlin. Google says

Slack is rolling out an improved search experience today bolstered by sophisticated machine learning, the company said. The feature, which was built by the company’s year-old search learning and intelligence group, is designed to help users find relevant channels and subject matter experts more quickly than traditional search. It represents a move by the company to extend its lead in team collaboration software as stiff new challenges emerge from giants including Microsoft, Facebook, and G

Last fall, Chinese company DMG Entertainment bought the rights to Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, a huge, interconnected epic fantasy world that includes some of the author’s best-known works. Now, DMG is using VR to pitch the story and world to potential buyers.The company is reportedly spending “seven figures” to build the 15-minute VR session, according to Variety. It’s apparently based on the first book of Sanderson’s series The Stormlight Archive, T

Distracted driving is obviously a problem, and lots of software and phone companies have attempted to solve it. Samsung, for example, just released an auto-reply app that’ll send people a response when a phone owner is driving or biking. Now car manufacturers are attempting to fix the issue, too.Nissan thinks integrating a Faraday cage directly into a car’s armrest could be the magic fix. The compartment, known as the Nissan Signal Shield, would block all cellular, Bluetooth, and Wi-

The trailer for The Dark Tower dropped early this morning, giving us our first glimpse of the long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s epic series. But this film isn’t your typical adaptation, where the movie is largely based on the novel. This movie is actually a kind of sequel to the entire series, and there are bigger plans beyond just a film franchise for the story.So, what’s the deal with this project? And what can we expect when the movie hits in August?
So what is The D

Maven, General Motors’ car-sharing spinoff, is launching a new product aimed at drivers in the gig economy. For $229 a week, someone who’s interested in driving for Uber, Lyft, Instacart, GrubHub, or a handful of other on-demand services, but doesn’t own a vehicle, can rent a Chevy Bolt through a new service called Maven Gig.The weekly price includes insurance, maintenance, and electric vehicle charging. Maven is officially partnering with Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, Instacart, and Ro

SoundCloud has announced a new feature called The Upload, an algorithmically generated playlist based on a user’s listening habits. If that sounds familiar, that’s because the idea hews close to the highly celebrated and heavily trafficked Discover Weekly feature from Spotify. The Upload is available starting today in the Discover tab on the web version of SoundCloud and in the Search tab in the company’s iOS and Android apps. Photo: SoundCloud
There are two big differences bet

This summer marks 10 years since Martha Stewart started her lifestyle blog, The Martha Blog: The Official Martha Stewart Blog. It’s about Martha’s life, her family, her friends, her peafowl, and her desire to organize the 500 bottles of wine in her cellar. It’s also about Martha’s skills: at cooking, decorating, gardening, hosting, organizing, tweeting, crafting, farming, and caring for peafowl. Oh, and the act of blogging itself — arguably the dominant expertise of

Houzz, the home decor company that combines professional renovation services, design ideas, and furniture shopping into one app, just rolled out an update to its iOS app that includes 3D imaging features. That means that users can now place a virtual furniture item or accessory in a room and get a sense of how well it will fit or look in the space before buying.The company previously offered a “View in My Room” option in the mobile app that let users affix a digital object to a space

After multiple, high-profile incidents of violence recently unfolded on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said in an announcement today that the company will add 3,000 people over the next year to work on reviewing videos and other flagged reports.
“If we're going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly.”
“If we're going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly,” Zuckerberg writes. “We're working to make these videos easier to report so we can tak

Hulu has renewed The Handmaid’s Tale for a second season, Variety reports. The news comes just one week after the series premiere, which, according to Variety, was Hulu’s most-watched series premiere ever. The show, which is set just beyond present day, has drawn praise from critics for its representation of a totalitarian universe where women have been stripped of their rights.Handmaid’s part II
The series, which stars Elizabeth Moss, is based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 n

The camera-based shopping feature of Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant has started rolling out to Verizon versions of the Galaxy S8. Almost two weeks after finding out that Verizon variants of the phone were missing the Amazon-powered point-and-shop feature, today users can tap the Bixby Vision icon in the camera app to trigger an update from the Galaxy Apps store.
The rollout brings the Verizon version of Bixby up to the same level of functionality found on other networks, which means it&

The world of Dots is about to get bigger — and more mysterious. Today game studio Dots announced that it’s working on a fourth game called Wilds. But right now the developer isn’t revealing much about its next project — the announcement comes in the form of a live-action teaser that doesn’t show any of the game itself. “The idea of the video was to create a manifestation in the real world of what it felt like to play this game,” says studio CCO and origi

Ecobee officially announced its newest smart thermostat today — the Ecobee4 — and, as we expected, it includes a built-in microphone and speaker for Alexa functionality. It also includes a touchscreen and companion app, so you don’t have to rely on voice controls.
Because Alexa already has a bunch of skills, owners can use the Ecobee4 to set a timer, play the news, or control other devices. The thermostat also works with Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, and IFTTT.
The Ecobee

It certainly took long enough, but the first full trailer for Marvel’s The Defenders has finally arrived. Everything that Netflix’s superhero series have been promising since 2015 — immortal enemies, street-level fisticuffs, and plenty of explosions — is finally coming to fruit, as Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage team up to save New York City from the Hand, a resurrected Elektra, and a brand-new enemy in Sigourney Weaver.
The Defenders, starring Charlie

(Reuters) — Microsoft Corp’s announcement of a suite of new education products on Tuesday shows the company’s determination to reverse a major shift that has taken place in U.S. classrooms in recent years: for most educators and school districts, Google’s Chromebook is now the computer of choice.
The Chromebook has gone from a standing start in 2011 to wild popularity in the market for education technology, which tech companies have traditionally viewed as a critical way

In 2016, the National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records about Americans’ phone calls, despite Congress passing a law the previous year — the USA Freedom Act — intended to curb bulk surveillance. These records are comprised of metadata about calls (which includes time, duration, and the numbers of both recipient and caller) and their collection was revealed in an annual transparency report, published on Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Inte

This wearable electronic device melts to nothing if you pour vinegar on it — and that’s by design. With 50 million metric ton of electronic waste projected for 2018, scientists at Stanford University created a biodegradable wearable that wouldn’t sit in the junk drawer or junkyard for the rest of eternity, once the next generation of FitBit came along.The biodegradable semiconductor is made out of a molecule found in tattoo ink
The result is one of the lightest, thinnest electr

Sure, you've heard a gazillion meme-y covers and remixes of Smash Mouth's inimitable 1999 classic "All Star," but another one won't hurt, will it?
Please enjoy this version, voiced by a cacophony of animals. It's courtesy of the genius editors at YouTube channel Insane Cherry, who ever so happen to specialise in animal-themed cover songs.
Bork bork! This meme will never die! Read more...
More about Animals, Videos, Video, All Star, and Smash Mouth

Groupe PSA, which owns European car brands Peugeot SA and Citroën, will team up with self-driving startup NuTonomy to test autonomous SUVs in Singapore later this year, the two companies announced today.The partnership represents a major new player in the world of self-driving cars. After acquiring General Motors’ Opel and Vauxhall brands for $1.4 billion last month, Peugeot is on track to become Europe’s second biggest carmaker behind Volkswagen. And NuTonomy, a spinoff of MIT,

AI startup Bonsai has raised $7.6 million to grow its platform that simplifies open-source machine learning library TensorFlow to help businesses construct their own artificial intelligence models and incorporate AI into their business.
Bonsai also announced today the opening of an early access program to build and deploy AI models with the Bonsai platform. The platform will focus on AI for fields like robotics but will also use AI to increase efficiency in supply chains in&n

Boys, who needs 'em.
Especially when you've been accepted to Harvard, of all places, as Minnesota teen Priscilla Samey was. She was also accepted into six other Ivy League schools, including Yale, Princeton, and Columbia University.
SEE ALSO: This teen's $15 homemade prom dress is better than many Met Gala looks
But she couldn't find herself a date for prom (what's wrong with people?), so she decided to take her acceptance letter and kiss it for a photo. And we love it. 
"Couldn't find a ma

If you love your multi-monitor setup, LG's got a great new device for you.
As reported by AnandTech, a new press release on LG's Japan website shows a massive new monitor that can support up to four displays at a time. 
The 4K device—labeled the LG 43UD79-B—measures an impressive 42.5 inches, larger than many televisions. LG previously also made a huge 38-inch ultra-wide monitor that the company claimed is the world's largest.
SEE ALSO: Gamer frustrated with his team smashes his