Technology news

Here’s a 1 percenter problem: I have both an Amazon Echo and a Google Home in our apartment, and so I could theoretically use whichever one is better. In a lot of ways, I think the Google Home is better: it sounds nicer, it works with my television, and it knows a lot of personal information that I haven’t bothered to try to make available on Amazon’s Alexa.
But I usually just go with Alexa, because “Alexa” is way easier to say than “OK Google.”
Rishi Ch

CBS debuted a full trailer for Star Trek: Discovery today, showing off a clip stuffed with plenty of Federation action, spaceships, and a ton of new characters, in a story set a decade before Captain Kirk and Spock ventured out in the Enterprise.The trailer opens with Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham walking across a desert planet. There, Georgiou tells Burnham that it’s time for her first command, and we jump to scenes on

One of the biggest challenges facing developers right now is the simple fact that the vast majority of people just don't download that many new apps. 
Google might have a solution: Android Instant Apps, which will allow people to use an app without ever having to download it from the Play Store. Instant Apps are now open to all developers, the company announced Wednesday at its I/O developer conference.
SEE ALSO: Google's new AutoDraw wants to make drawing easier for everyone
First introduc

It’s simple enough to earn extra money selling stuff online, but you’ll want to determine the ideal venue for your goods. Selling Grandma’s vintage tea cozies is a different endeavor from offloading your old stereo system. 
We’ve rounded up some of the major online marketplaces along with tips about their audience, style and fees.
Online sales and auctions
There’s a handful of major online auction and sales sites, and as you’ll see, some charge

We'll admit, we were a liiiiiiittle concerned about Star Trek: Discovery after Bryan Fuller exited the series as showrunner and the premiere date was pushed from February to May, and then from May to... sometime this fall.
But CBS unveiled the first full length trailer for the new series at its upfront presentation on Wednesday, and while a good trailer doesn't necessarily signal a good final product, the footage was everything we expect Star Trek to be: action-packed, cinematic, stuffed with i

Clue helps women keep track of their menstrual cycle by allowing them to input information about when they have their period, how they’re feeling when they have it, their sexual activity, flow, and other notes. The idea is that with this detailed log, Clue can offer women a more thorough look at their fertility and how their period affects day-to-day life. Today, the company is building new functionality into its app that’s meant to help women understand how their birth control pill

Solar power is bringing light to remote villages across India. Rural residents, long disconnected from the grid, are increasingly using solar panels and battery banks to charge mobile phones, illuminate light bulbs, and keep refrigerators humming.
Advocates for rural electrification say solar "microgrids" can do much more. They'll boost a village's socioeconomic development by allowing kids to study at night, for instance, or by enabling residents to open local shops and use time-saving tools li

People say cats have nine lives, but we'll always be shocked by what some cats manage to live through.
Like Ringer, a cat who somehow survived for two months under the floor of a house that had burned down.
SEE ALSO: Omar the long cat is really, really, really longChristine Marr, Ringer's owner, posted about the miraculous rescue on Facebook.
Two months ago, a fire destroyed Marr's home. While Marr and her dog Chloe were rescued from the flames, Ringer could not be found.
That is, until Marr mad

Another day, another opportunity for the internet to troll the Trump family.
President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka has been intensely involved in her father's presidency, while First Lady Melania has been pretty absent while living in New York. It's unclear exactly what Ivanka's role is, and apparently, the White House is as confused as the rest of the nation. 
Ivanka shared a photo of herself sitting at a table in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Wednesday. The meeting was about

She was talking about 2016, but Kylie Jenner was right— this is year of, like, realizing things.
All of us are realizing things, together, but in particular: Seth Rogen and his wife, actress and writer Lauren Miller are realizing things. Just look at this truly shocking realization:Me and my wife have recently come to the unsettling realization that @jtimberlake and @JessicaBiel are the better looking version of uspic.twitter.com/WvG047fE6q
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) May 17, 2017Yes,

Personally, I’ve always found one of the worst aspects of using a Nexus or Pixel smartphone to be getting stuck with Google’s bad, default emoji. Emoji intended to represent people look more like thumbs. Or, in the words of The Verge’s Megan Farokhmanesh, they resemble “normal emoji that melted.” Or Dots candy or something. I feel a slight anxiety when l include what should be a fun, cheerful emoji in my texts to friends who have iPhones or Samsung phones. which dis

I just spent some time with a small, early demo of the new home screen experience for Android O on TV. Even though it’s not fully working yet — some of the apps don’t open, and the Google Assistant isn’t running on it — it has a nicer TV UI than the other television devices I use every day.
Those TV devices: Apple TV and Chromecast. The latter, while convenient, has no on-screen UI at all, which is a problem if you’re trying to pick a show with somebody else.

People are taking advantage of Steam's trading card system by creating fake games, collecting cards from those games with bot accounts, and selling them to collectors for profit. Valve is not having it anymore.
Valve announced Tuesday that new games put on the Steam store won't dole out trading cards to players until Valve is confident that the game is being bought and played by legitimate users. Once a game reaches a "confidence metric" based on an unspecified "variety of data," developers will

A lot of people turn to search engines when they’re looking for work, so today the world’s biggest search engine announced Google for Jobs. The project aims to leverage Google’s advanced machine learning capabilities, sorting through millions of job listings to better match opportunities with candidates.Right now Google isn’t planning to start hosting its own job listings. It is collecting them from third parties like Facebook, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Monster, and ZipRecruit

Facebook is following Europeans without telling them, and it might one day cost them a giant chunk of cash. 
For now, the company is dealing with minor fines and not-so-nice press in both France and the Netherlands for allegedly violating user privacy. 
SEE ALSO: Instagram Direct update is Facebook's latest attack on Snapchat
The French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés fined Facebook around $167,000 for violating the French Data Protection Act, accord

Some people earn miles using their credit cards, others do it by actually flying somewhere. Today, Delta has added Lyft to its rewards program so you can accumulate miles from a service you might use more regularly — at least, more regularly than air travel.
To earn frequent flyer miles, Lyft users can link their account to Delta’s SkyMiles program from a dedicated website. The system works a lot like a credit card program: you earn one mile for every dollar spent on Lyft. At launch,

After a year of incubation, Android Instant Apps are finally ready for the world. Originally announced at last year's Google I/O, Instant Apps are a way for developers to offer a lightweight version of their Android app without requiring a visit to the Play Store. You just click a link in your web browser and all of a sudden you're using a real Android app, with all the power that implies — other than a few safety restrictions. A few Instant Apps were made available in January as a trial r

Today, after months of speculation and four years after the last season, Netflix announced that Arrested Development will return for Season 5 sometime in 2018. 
And I really don't want it.
Now, I absolutely love the first three seasons. I started watching the show live in the beginning of the first season in 2003 (yes, I'm an #OriginalFan), and it quickly became one of my favorite television comedies ever — and I've watched a lot. The ridiculous characters so well portrayed, the rapid

LaVar Ball was a top Twitter trend again on Wednesday, but this time because he said something actually offensive. 
Because of course he did. Because this is what the tawdry love affair between LaVar and the media has been leading up to all along — a chance for outrage, a chance for righteous indignation, a chance to tear him down when he never should have been built up like this in the first place. 
On Wednesday, LaVar served that chance up on a silver platter. 
SEE ALSO: S

Twitter unveiled a new set of privacy and data controls today that allow users to see and control how advertisers target them on the platform. The company explains in a blog post that it’s expanding individual access “to give you the most transparent access to your Twitter information to date, including demographic and interest data, and advertisers that have included you in their tailored audiences on Twitter. Each category of data will be clearly marked, and you will be able to vie

When the ShadowBrokers first published the code for EternalBlue — an NSA exploit targeting Windows’ file-sharing protocol — researchers knew it was a bad bug. But most had no idea of the scale of the damage that would be caused by the vulnerability.Much of that damage has only become visible in recent days, as a ransomware program dubbed “WannaCry” locked up computers from the UK’s National Health Service to the Russian Ministry of the Interior. Some of the da

A new team of superheroes shows children with disabilities how unstoppable they really are.
Team Supreme, an animated cartoon concept by Atlanta native Josh Leonard, features a cast of superheroes with disabilities who band together to take on various bad guys. Each member of Team Supreme has an individual superpower that makes them a key part of the group — and those powers are tied to their disabilities. 
SEE ALSO: 7 activists tell us the best thing about being autistic
"I chose to

Self-driving trucks aren't just for hauling beer anymore. Now they can also haul garbage. 
Not to be outdone by the likes of Uber and Waymo, Volvo has now outlined one of its own autonomous vehicle projects in Sweden: a self-driving garbage truck. 
SEE ALSO: Mercedes-Benz is coming after Uber with autonomous robo-taxis
Like Uber Freight, the project is another effort to extend self-driving technology beyond just shuttling people around in self-driving taxis. 
There's still plenty

New York City hopes an app can help it reduce homelessness.
Around 62,000 homeless people live in New York City, and the city's "demand for shelter" has shot up 79 percent in the last 10 years. But the city's government — along with community organizations Project Hospitality and BronxWorks — hopes an app will help them get a better handle on why the homeless population is growing, and how they might begin to reverse the trend.
The app, as Wired reported, is called StreetSmart. It's

There’s something to be said about a game that is frustratingly difficult — at points terrifyingly so — but that somehow doesn’t deter you from wanting to play it. 
Prey, a sci-fi game shrouded in mystery from the start, is one such game. 
SEE ALSO: 'Prey' exploit lets players break the game
At first, it feels impossibly difficult. There’s no way you’ll survive enemies that can kill you in two hits. There’s no way you’ll ever have enough

Competitive CrossFit is coming to your Facebook.
SEE ALSO: Facebook responds to brutal crime video: 'We know we need to do better'
CrossFit and Facebook announced a new deal for the social network to stream live events from the fitness company. The new partnerships starts this Friday with the CrossFit Regionals and includes at least 40 live shows throughout the year, Sports Business Daily reported Wednesday. 
Facebook will host at least eight hours of each day's programming from both the Ea

Wednesday's most interesting bit of NFL news was broken by .... Gisele Bündchen, naturally. 
The supermodel wife of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady revealed that her husband has had multiple concussions during his career, including one suffered last season. 
But this isn't just gossip from a celebrity family — it's actually big news, for a couple reasons. 
SEE ALSO: After NBA glory, demons haunt NYC basketball legend Kenny Anderson
First, Brady has reportedly

Google said today that we’re going to start seeing appliances show up with support for the Google Assistant, and two companies are already launching integrations: LG and GE.
Both companies are updating their existing lines of connected appliances so that they can be controlled through the Google Home and Assistant. Supported appliances including fridges, ovens, washers and dryers, an air purifier from LG, and an air conditioner and water heater from GE.
Amazon beat Google to this type of i

Google wants their Android operating system on as many phones as possible, even ones that may not currently be able to support it. 
To that end, Google announced at its annual I/O developer conference a lighter version of Android called Android Go. It's a scaled-down version of the popular OS specifically designed for users with less than 1GB of internal memory on their devices. 
SEE ALSO: Android O: Everything you need to know
"We’re excited about seeing more users come online f

It was May 24, 2016. It was a "normal" release day for Blizzard Entertainment in one sense: nobody realized at the time that Overwatch was about to become a global sensation.
On the eve of the hit game's first birthday — and with a mysterious "Anniversary Event" rapidly approaching — I sat down for a chat with Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan.
SEE ALSO: 'Overwatch' celebrates its first birthday with an anniversary event
Given the year he's had, you'd think Kaplan would come off as a li

Google wants to play matchmaker, but for job seekers and talent hunters.
Google announced on Wednesday a new job-oriented search tool that will use the company's advanced "machine learning" technology to provide personalized results.
It's not just for people. Google teased the new tool as a good way for candidates to find jobs, but also for companies to find the right people. With Google for Jobs, we'll use machine learning to help people find jobs, and make it easier for companies to find

Google is making it easier for low-powered devices to run Android smoothly – and its doing so by releasing a new version of Android altogether. Say hello to Android Go. It’s basically a lighter version of Android O, with several optimizations for lower power devices. Some examples of the optimizations thrown out during the keynote: Google’s main apps will have a lighter versions that use less memory, storage, and data. A streamlined Android kernel. Chrome’s dat

Starburst wrapper bracelets were the DIY trend back before rainbow loom bracelets took over, and we're not too proud to admit that we both wore them and made them, forcing our friends to open their Starbursts slowly in order to keep the wrapper pristine.
Whether you partook in the Starburst jewelry craze or not, artist Emily Seilhamer is about to show you up with her own Starburst-related project. It took her four years and 10,000 wrappers to create a fully wearable Starburst dress.
SEE ALSO: Pe

A hungry bear with an appetite for dog food tried to steal a meal from a California bed and breakfast.
Diana Chase, owner of the Pine Mountain Inn, opened her garage to find a bear knee-deep in a huge bag of dog kibble. 
"What are you doing?" Chase can be heard asking the bear. 
Moments later, the bear retreats with the dog food and tries to make a getaway. Chase follows, ordering the bear to drop the food. Eventually, the bear does exit the garage without the food, and Chase is able

Celebrating graduation is the perfect time to be over the top. Decorate your car, fire that air horn, take corny pictures. 
Or you can do what this guy did and airbrush your girlfriend's graduation picture to the back of your shirt.
SEE ALSO: The songs that take us back to the last days of high school, by class year
San Diego State University grad Kira was completely surprised when her boyfriend, Jaquan, showed his support in the best, most extra way possible by showing up to her graduation

Everyone knows how useful GPS is for navigating the world outdoors, but what about indoors?
At its Google I/O developers conference, Google announced a new technology called Visual Positioning Service (VPS), a Tango-enabled mapping system that uses augmented reality on phones and tablets to help navigate indoor locations.
SEE ALSO: Google's Project Tango finds a new home in the classroom
Imagine holding up your Tango-ready phone inside of, say, a large warehouse-like store like Lowe's or Ikea, a

Google announced at today’s I/O conference that it was working on a new kind of a Daydream VR headset, one which would work without a phone, a PC, or any kind of cable. New #Daydream standalone headsets from partners like @htcvive won't require a phone or PC. #io17 pic.twitter.com/7TpYPJGEdU — Google (@Google) May 17, 2017 We were afraid Google would forget about Daydream, but luckily that’s not the case. The new Daydream headset would be a self-contained machine that can be u

Google Photos is coming to the real world. At its I/O keynote today, Google announced a new Photo Books feature, which is exactly what it sounds like: it lets you print physical picture albums from your Photos app. But this is Google of course, so AI is involved. Rather than simply letting you pick and choose images (which you can nevertheless still do) Photo Books is able to automatically create photo albums based off of your best images. After all, one of the biggest hurdles to printing

Google announced at its I/O event today that it’s making Photos more social with Suggested Sharing and shared libraries. Suggested Sharing will prompt you to share photos based on the people in them. Photos will have a new Sharing tab, and will send notifications prompting users to share photos. Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Photos, also showed how the users who receive the shared photos will also be prompted to share related photos of their own based on shared faces or location.

If you’re the type of person who can seemingly never get to Inbox Zero, let alone actually reply to every message, Google has an update for you. At its I/O event today, the company announced that Smart Reply – a feature to creates automated responses based on email content and your writing style – is coming to Gmail on Android and iOS. Smart Reply first launched for Google’s Gmail offshoot, Inbox, as well as its newest chat app, Allo. It works pretty decently too, as lon

Google's image-recognition AI just got way smarter.
The company announced a new computer-vision platform, Google Lens, which could give our smartphone cameras even more power.
SEE ALSO: Google's new AutoDraw wants to make drawing easier for everyone
CEO Sundar Pichai showed off Google Lens with an innocuous image of a little girl playing baseball, taken from behind a chainlink backstop. It was a cute pic — but the criss-crossing metal of the fence in the foreground was a bit of a bummer.&n

At its I/O keynote today, Google announced that its Google Assistant is now available on iOS. The news had been rumored earlier this week, so its not terribly surprising. Google hasn’t specified whether it’s via its a new app or if its just integrated into the main Search app – most likely the latter. And of course, Google doesn’t have the native integration Siri has on iOS devices, so it won’t be nearly as convenient as Apple’s native tool. Still, Googl