Technology news

TV series are shaped by the format of TV network programming — half-hour or one-hour blocks, with or without space for commercial breaks, depending on the network. But more and more people are watching them on mobile phones and tablets, while TV companies are becoming more and more closely intertwined with mobile carriers. So what does the marriage of TV and smartphone look like? AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson offered some hints in a speech this week.
At JPMorgan’s Global Te

Microsoft is today officially launching its Xbox Game Pass, a $9.99 Netflix-like service for gamers. Well, if you subscribe to Xbox Gold, anyway. For those not familiar, Xbox Game Pass allows you to play “over 100” Xbox One and 360 games for your $10 fee. That list of games will constantly change, with some games entering and exiting the pool over time. But unlike services like PlayStation Now, Game Pass isn’t simply streaming video footage through an internet connection.

Netflix is becoming a comedy juggernaut, showing just how much the network has grown compared to its competition. Variety reports that the company is working with Ellen DeGeneres for a standup special. The effort would be DeGeneres’ first special in 15 years, and adds fuel to the argument that Netflix is now the new go-to for top-tier comics.
“It has been 15 years since I did a stand-up special. 15 years,” DeGeneres said in an official statement. “And I’m writing it

Sweden has listed its public parks and beaches on Airbnb to promote its national policy on free-roaming. In a collaboration with VisitSweden, the country’s official tourism site, Airbnb has listed “the entire country” on a separate portion of its site, “to make this home available to everyone.” Sweden’s philosophy of “Allemansrätten,” allows anyone to experience Swedish nature without having to pay: The freedom to roa

There are lots of drones out there that can do all sorts of things like fly around, take pictures and video, or even lift a human. But how many can swim?Meet the Splash Drone 3, the latest drone from SwellPro. It’s fully waterproof, and while it can’t quite swim, it can float, which is pretty neat. It’s actually an updated edition of the original Splash Drone, which the company released two years ago, but this model adds a redesigned gimbal with a new 4K camera, stronger motors

Science fiction never had a problem with plopping magical floating orb robots into a scene. But now that real drones exist, it's become fashionable to put real-ish drones into sci-fi movies, books, and video games whenever the writers are straining for a modicum of plausibility.
The latest example is the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming, where Spider-Man has a cute little Spider-Drone built into his suit, which he can presumably deploy to solve Spider-Man-type problems.And of course you can buy a

Worker safety at Tesla’s flagship auto plant have been called into question again — this time in a report that analyzes three years of federal records — as the US automaker tries to fend off attempts at unionization and undergoes a rapid expansion to produce the Model 3, an electric vehicle for the masses.Worksafe, a worker safety advocacy group found injury rates at the plant were well above the industry average in 2014 and 2015, according to its independent review of work-rel

Ancient Chinese and Persian medical texts — and modern anecdotes — suggest that cannabis is useful for treating seizures. Research has been scant, but a new study of cannabidiol, a molecule in cannabis, has given some credence to these claims. Kids with a severe form of epilepsy had 39 percent fewer seizures per month after taking the substance, also called CBD. Three people stopped having seizures altogether.In a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, research

Facebook’s plan to seed the service with television-like shows now has some names behind it. BuzzFeed and Vox are among the media companies that have signed deals with the company to create short-form series, according to Reuters. The shows, which were originally expected to debut next month, are now expected to arrive closer to the end of summer.
Reuters reports there will be two types of shows: 20- to 30-minute shows that Facebook will own outright, and 5- to 10-minute shows that will be

Changes are on the way to Sony’s smartphone lineup. The company is discontinuing its Xperia X and Xperia X Compact lines of devices, which it considers “premium standard” (midrange), Sony announced at its investor conference, according to XperiaBlog.Sony has decided to shift its focus to its flagship devices, and says it will launch at least two new devices that fit into that category before the end of the year under the Xperia name. Given the trend of smartphones and Sony&rsqu

American air travel is miserable in almost every possible way, from increasingly onerous security procedures to the threat of literally having your teeth knocked out. But based on the video above, I’m going to cling to the notion that things are better in New Zealand, because airlines there are apparently busy figuring out how to let flight attendants read your emotions with augmented reality.
The project is a collaboration between Air New Zealand and Dimension Data, using the Microsoft Ho

A new update to Google Photos will now let you archive photos from the main feed and hide them away, helping you declutter and privatize some personal photos. First spotted by 9to5Google, all you have to do is hold the photo(s) and hit the “...” menu on the right side to bring up the archive option. Later, when you want to revisit those photos, you can find them on the left side menu under a separate folder.
While it might not seem as buzzworthy as, say, Instagram’s implementat

Facebook is introducing a couple of changes today that make it easier to spot trending topics and the coverage around them. First up, there’s a bit of a visual redesign. Previously, clicking on a trending topic would highlight a story from one publication, and you’d have to scroll down past a live video section to view related stories. Facebook is replacing that system with a simple carousel, which does a better job of showing you different coverage options. To be cle

Being a parent is one of the most wonderful feelings in this world. Seeing a child grow imbibing different skills is the dream of every parent. While living this dream, most of the parents fail to teach their child certain entrepreneurial skills that can help them in leading a successful life in future. It is very important to develop the entrepreneurial mindset in children at early ages. Kids learn things at tender age quickly. They have enough time to implement and experience what they have l

The FCC recently posted a notice about a proposed piece of legislation that would, essentially, roll back the Open Internet Order of 2015, which established the concept of net neutrality. These are publicly available documents, and you can read them for yourself. Of course, the documents are also wordy and complicated, so I’m going to distill them down into something we can all understand here. Here’s what such proposed legislation would mean for the internet—and for the futur

As quietly as it came, community site Imzy is shutting down after just over a year of operation. @imzyhq 3/3 – But for today, I am heartbroken to say, that @imzyhq is shutting down. https://t.co/JQBxXxPisCThanks for the support everyone. — Dan McComas (@kickme444) May 24, 2017 Imzy was created by former Reddit employees Dan McComas and Jessica Moreno as a safer, friendlier version of the popular community site. This approach doesn’t seem to have served Imzy well in t

Today, Facebook announced an update to its Trending Topics section that will make the list of news stories easier to parse on mobile with a more diverse list of sources. Now, when you click on a news topic from the search bar on an iPhone, you’ll get multiple stories from different outlets that can be swiped through in a carousel format, as well as the standard posts from friends and prominent celebrity and public figure pages you follow. The company plans to roll the redesign out to Andro

I don’t like going to hospitals. I’m always wondering about what kind of bacteria are floating around and what pathogens I’m going to pick up. Well, my abstract fears have just gotten a little bit more real. A new study shows what kinds of organisms you encounter in hospitals — and how patients and the hospital rooms they’re in exchange these organisms with one another.
Researchers took thousands of samples from a hospital in Chicago for two months before it opened

For fans, the Far Cry series is known for beautiful sprawling locales, heavy weapons, and strong voice acting performances. But it’s also notorious for continually sending players to “exotic” nations, and encouraging them to murder the local people of color. Previous settings include the islands of the South Pacific, an unnamed African country, an Asian-Pacific archipelago, and a fictional country tucked into the Himalayas. Far Cry 5 will be presented next month at the annual E

Pokémon GO developer Niantic has discovered an insidious new way to ruin a cheater’s day: give them stuff they don’t want. First spotted by the Pokémon GO subreddit The Silph Road, the changes rolled out last weekend. This new approach flags a cheater’s account, “shadowbanning” them so that they can still play — they’ll just only be able to see common Pokémon. Scanners show Pokémon GO players where ra

Polar’s latest fitness tracker is the A370, and like the company’s other wearables, it’s capable of fitness tracking, heart rate monitoring, and sleep tracking. In an upgrade from the previous model A360, which only took heart rate readings during active exercise, the A370 continuously senses your heart rate every five minutes.Continuously senses your heart rate every five minutes
And... that’s basically the update. Otherwise, it’s a pretty well-rounded fitness band

We’re only a few short months away from the return of Game of Thrones, and after months of speculation and teasers, HBO has finally released a full trailer showing off some of what we can expect from the new season.
In short: Queen Cersei is rallying troops for battle, Jon Snow is preparing for war in the North, and of course, Daenerys and her dragons are finally making their way back to Westeros with an eye on the Iron Throne.Game of Thrones is set to return for its seventh season on July

For the last few years, the US military has been looking to make an entirely new hypersonic spaceplane — one that can be reused frequently over a short period of time to deliver multiple satellites into orbit. And now the Department of Defense has picked Boeing to turn that spaceplane into a reality. DARPA, the agency that tests new advanced technologies for the military, has picked Boeing’s design concept, called the Phantom Express, to move forward as part of the agency’s Exp

Last week, Amazon gave Chicago Bulls shooting guard Dwyane Wade his own boutique of sorts. “Bringing my style game to @amazonfashion with my own online store,” said Wade in an Instagram post blasted to his 9.2M followers. Wade’s Amazon hub houses a suite of brands he’s collaborated with — Mission activewear, Stance socks, Tie Bar accessories — as well as his own sneaker label, Way of Wade. It doesn’t sound revolutionary, but creating a shop strictly made

In nature, because water is a polar molecule, it naturally forms clusters that end up being about 1 micron in size. These water clusters are absorbed easily throughout the digestive system into the blood.  In the blood, some water molecules that are loosely bound to these large clusters are pulled off for use in cells. The large clusters themselves are too large to enter a cell. Cells struggle to get adequate water molecules by robbing them from passing large clusters. Hydrozomes (a new na

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission voted to start a proceeding to repeal the 2015 network neutrality rules and the legal authority underlying it, Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. The rules ensure that internet users can access the online content and services of their choosing without interference from ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter.
Yesterday the FCC made its final proposal to repeal the rules public. This document, known as a Notice of Proposed Rulema

"Vroom vroom" is a special sound only cars make, but now you can hear it every time your laptop boots up if you buy this new Mercedes-Benz special edition Vaio Z for the Japanese market. To make sure you grabbed the correct Vaio Z, the one that's only for car lovers and makes car noises, there's a picture of a car on the lid, a Mercedes logo on the trackpad, and a few other hidden Mercedes logos elsewhere on the laptop that probably only people who saw The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in th

Michael Crichton passed away in 2008, but his work has only become more popular since. A revival of his Jurassic Park franchise broke global box office records, while the HBO adaptation of his original film Westworld became one of 2016’s most exhaustively discussed TV shows. Until this month, Crichton’s work has lived on as inspiration. That changes with Dragon Teeth, one of the author’s unfinished novels, which was published by his estate this month. A fun thriller that echoes

 Circle Media, the company behind Circle with Disney – a device that helps parents enforce their home’s internet rules and restrictions – has raised $10 million in Series A funding, the company announced this morning. The round was led by early stage venture fund Relay Ventures. There was another private equity investment in the round, but the parties didn’t want to… Read More

 Dave Asprey, the man famous for encouraging Silicon Valley execs to put butter in his special blend of coffee, has raised another $19 million to keep on doing just that. His company and lifestyle brand Bulletproof 360 claims to make coffee free of something called mycotoxins, which is, basically, mold and can make you very ill if ingested. Asprey says about 75 percent of other brands are full… Read More

I'm weirdly obsessed with lighting. I automated the lights in my home way before companies like Philips made it easy to do so. Now I find myself wanting to add lighting to family picnics at the beach or camping getaways. Traditionally, I'd have opted for propane-powered lamps, or a rechargeable light like the Hue Go if I wanted to get fancy. But what I really want is something super compact and versatile that can easily be tucked into a backpack. That's when I stumbled upon a few portable lighti

 GREE Ventures, the Singapore-based VC firm connected to Japanese games firm GREE, has closed its newest $67 million fund for early stage investments in Asia.
AT-II — the firm’s second fund — sees GREE Ventures spread its focus of deals in Japan and Southeast Asia to cover India for the first time. The fund has so far made 10 investments across Asia, which includes New… Read More

Garmin is expanding its action camera lineup into the world of 360-degree video. Today the company announced the VIRB 360, a waterproof spherical camera packed with bleeding edge specs. The new camera offers features that most other 360-degree cameras lack, but that comes at a price: the VIRB 360 will cost $799 when it goes on sale in June.The VIRB 360 shoots spherical video at up to 5.7K, and it can take 15-megapixel stills, good enough to make it one of the highest-resolution consumer 360 came

Last year, it was reported that Jon Stewart was developing a shortform animation series for HBO, as part of a four-year deal he signed with the network after leaving The Daily Show. Now, as The New York Times reports, that project has been shelved.
In a joint statement provided to the Times, Stewart and HBO said they “have decided not to proceed with a shortform digital animated project,” citing “technical issues in terms of production and distribution that proved too difficult