Technology news

GUEST: Chatbots bridge the gap between messaging and application frameworks. Users no longer need to install multiple apps or visit numerous web pages to get things done or to access information. The way people live and work is rapidly changing as a result.
However, the incorporation of chatbots into daily life is not all sunshine and rainbows. A few serious, even dark, questions arise. What are the security implications of commercial chatbots for the regular consumer on Main Street? Are th

That YouTube video that you love is downloading pretty slowly; however, it’s not the video you want, no! You are in love with the tune. How the artist hits the high notes just melts your heart. And truly you have to get the feeling sometime. Which way do you go? An MP3 is often a cool option. But how do you convert this video into an MP3? Here is a simple guide that provides you with an all inclusive solution. Step 1 To convert MP from YouTube video you have to start by opening the best w

A lot of people swore by Yahoo! Pipes. The site was a side-project that was never part of Yahoo’s core business, but had die-hard fans nonetheless. The service allowed people to combine data from sources, easily applying filters and manipulations through a visual programming language, almost like Scratch. When Yahoo discontinued the service in 2015, it left its loyal users scrambling for alternatives. Most fled to IFTTT and Zapier. One new service that wants to pick up the mantle dro

Microsoft’s Lumia 950 and 950 XL landed with a flop when they launched about a year and a half ago, but perhaps the response to them would have been a little bit better if Microsoft had stuck with its more ambitious original vision for the two devices. On Friday, Windows Central published concept images and video of both phones, indicating that Microsoft had initially planned to outfit the 950 with support for smart covers, a stylus, and edge gestures.
The most interesting element here is

It’s been a rough few days for British Airways. On Saturday, the iconic British flag carrier experienced a serious IT meltdown, which resulted in planes being unable to take off, and passengers unable to check into their flights. This global outage is bad news for British Airways. The airline is expected to be on the hook for £150 million (roughly $192 million) in compensation to passengers who had their bank holiday weekend plans disrupted. So, what caused it? British Airways

Neill Blomkamp is embarking on an experimental filmmaking venture that he’s calling Oats Studios. The District 9 and Elysium director released a trailer for some of the studio’s upcoming projects, which will be released to Steam in the next couple of months.The trailer opens with a shot of an overgrown Eiffel Tower, as a voiceover explains that aliens have come to exterminate humanity. The trailer then shows off quite a bit more: a woman shooting an alien in a red-lit corridor, Ameri

Fans have been waiting up to seven hours to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout. But you can enjoy parts of the ride for free right now thanks to a handful of videos uploaded the YouTube.
The new ride, which controversially replaced Tower of Terror in Disney’s California Adventures theme park, opened this weekend. But in recent weeks, some members of the press had a chance to preview the ride, including one person who rode it a whopping 16 times in the course of a day and a half

Forget about dishing out 10 bucks for a fidget spinner at your local convenience store: Someone has built a virtual simulator you can spin all you want entirely free of charge. Developed by designer and developer Mike Bodge, FFFFidget is a web-based interactive simulation that lets you toy around with a virtual fidget spinner as if it was the real thing. The app is fairly simple: All you need to do to get the toy moving is open the website and mimic a spinning move with your mouse cur

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy ride was open to the public for the first time ever this weekend — and the public was very excited about it. Lines for the ride were more than five hours long, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with some on social media saying the wait time climbed to seven hours at certain points throughout the day.The ride, called Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout!, opened on Saturday, and photos posted on Twitter show huge lines twisting around t

Every parent thinks it’s healthy for their kids to play outside. I want it for my kids, my parents wanted it for me, and my grandparents wanted the same for my parents. Right now, it’s a hot topic among parents that mobile phones are turning kids into zombies who tune out and do nothing else but play games and chat. Parents introduce ‘screentime’ and have long discussions with each other about handling their kids’ screen addiction and how to get them to go out

Ransomware is a type of malware that impairs the functionality of a computer (for example, by encrypting files on the hard drive), and then demands the victim pay a ransom in order to return their system to normal. It’s frighteningly common. The term ‘Ransomware’ first entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2012. We have seen several ugly and dangerous permutations of it, including CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, and most recently, WannaCry. But it’s not the cash cow you pro

Microsoft is quite open about its reasons for continually refusing to add USB-C to its line of Surface computers; the company just doesn’t think the multi-functional port is mainstream enough yet. But that doesn’t mean people don’t want it, as Eve-Tech CEO Konstantinos Karatsevidis will tell you. And he should know — his startup’s new convertible computer, the Eve V, had its spec sheet determined by the votes of thousands of crowdfunding backers.
What does the resul

Nothing you do in business ends up meaning more than establishing solid, respected relationships with your customers. That can be tougher than it sounds when you take into account all the time, effort and careful execution it takes to cultivate those relationships. By learning how to use the business management app Salesforce, you’ll be well on your way to streamlining your contacts and meeting their wants and needs more quickly and efficiently. Right now, you can find out why companies l

Hannes Sommer, a young Austrian artist with a very cool Instagram account, recently posted a video depicting every major Game of Thrones death in hand-drawn pop-up book form. Though “Every Death” videos are pretty common for popular TV series, and particularly for Game of Thrones, which boasts dozens of major character deaths per season, this one required an impressive amount of work. Plus, it’s actually fun to watch.Sommer illustrates each major character with a detailed ink d

I’m getting married later this year. While I’ve paid for a professional photographer to document the day, I’m conscious that my friends and family will be there, taking their own photographs with their cell phones and cameras. Cell phone cameras have improved significantly over the past few years, to the point where they produce shots that are actually frameable. These will inevitably be shared across a variety of platforms – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Hello Shoto

For an apocalyptic wasteland, Fallout 4 is quite colorful. Its vista often contrasts the vibrant red and oranges of settlements with a clear blue sky. It isn’t safe, but it’s hardly frightening. Fallout 4 modders l00ping and TreyM intend to change that. Their new creation, via Kotaku, sucks up the figment of the world, and replaces it with muted neutrals and haze.
A horror mod, Pilgrim - Dread the Commonwealth is inspired by the film The Witch. But its focus on gothic horror and spoo

Stretch is not your ordinary ride-sharing service. It is a bit like Uber – except that it offers rides in limousines entirely free of charge. But here’s the catch: Unlike Uber, Stretch has only one car available and it could be literally anywhere in the United States at this moment. The unusual app was co-founded by friends James Potter and Bart Proost earlier this year, when the two set out on a quest to become the first people to visit all 48 contiguous states voyaging around

What’s your favorite thing about watching a film? Is it when one of the characters says a number (no years!)? If so, I have the labor-intensive and otherwise illogical supercut for you. “100 Movies 100 Numbers 100 Seconds” is exactly what it says, and the editor (username ThorC1138), explains “I’ve always wanted to do one of these.”This comment refers to the fact that this style of supercut isn’t exactly original. 10 years ago, a YouTuber with the userna

Think of the Sega Nomad as the Nintendo Switch of 1995. The hardware was conceptually audacious, a chunky portable that played the cartridges of Sega’s home console, the Sega Genesis. And with its AV output, the Sega Nomad could quickly and easily connect to a television.However, unlike the Switch, the Nomad never found its audience. Blame the battery life: a trio of AAAs promised, at most, three hours of play. 22 years later, modder Catch 22 on NeoGAF has remedied this problem.
Catch 22 a

Sofia Coppola won the award for best director at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday for her new film, The Beguiled, a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film of the same name.
This makes her the second woman in the festival’s 71-year history to take home that prize. The last was Russian director Yuliya Solntseva in 1961, who won for her dramatic retelling of grassroots resistance to the Nazi movement in the Soviet Union, Chronicle of Flaming Years.In her acceptance speech, Coppola reportedl

Donald Trump’s Twitter feed isn’t good for much, except perhaps as a psychological case study of what happens when you mix hubris, insanity, and unfathomable power, and drip-feed it to the world 140 characters at a time. One person trying to make the most of this undrained swamp is Allyson Kapin, co-founder of Rad Campaign, a social change web agency. Her latest project, WeCanResist.It, lets you turn The Donald’s tweets into donations for non-profits and charities opposin

When Disney aired an Oscars commercial promoting Pandora: The World of Avatar earlier this year, attention turned towards the Na’vi that appeared at the end of the spot. I originally assumed it was a bit of uncanny valley computer-generated effects work, and then I learned that the creature was actually real — a next-generation audio-animatronic made by the team at Walt Disney Imagineering.
I had the opportunity to see the character, known as the Shaman of Songs, during a press previ

Speak to any designer of modern gadgets and you’ll hear plenty of frustration with the creative constraints imposed by having to build ever-thinner, ever-lighter devices. There’s just not much room for flair and expression when the thing you’re building is thinner than a pack of gum. But Asus has found a sliver of space to assert its design uniqueness by blasting the edges of its new ZenBook Flip S and ZenBook Deluxe laptops with a lick of glorious golden color.Asus ZenBook Fli

An image of Samsung's new stretchable prototype display was everywhere last week. Now we've got split-screen video of the 9.1-inch OLED in action. Unlike the flexible display wrapping around the Galaxy S8, for example, Samsung says that its stretchable display has the elasticity to bend in two directions with up to 12mm of travel, before returning to its original shape like a rubber ballon.Samsung calls it “next-generation technology” that might be applied to wearables, most obviousl

Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and the CEOs of 12 other tech companies have called on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to not pass “discriminatory legislation,” as state lawmakers continue to debate a so-called “bathroom bill” that would affect transgender students.In a letter to Abbot dated May 27th, the executives said the “passage of any discriminatory legislation” in Texas would be “bad for our employees and bad for business.” The letter, as first report

Asus just finished its Computex Taipei 2017 press conference, and in a surprising departure for the Taiwanese company, it was totally straightforward. That’s right, there were no weird tablets or dubious home robots this year, and no-one said “selfie” on stage even once — there were just a ton of new laptops. Here are all of them!
ZenBook Flip S
The Flip S is the “world’s thinnest convertible,” according to Asus chairman Jonney Shih. It’s 10.9mm th

Asus, purveyor of the world’s finest arachnid overlord wireless router designs, has gone back to the drawing board and come up with a new look that’s much friendlier to humans. The antenna-less Asus Blue Cave offers "smooth Wi-Fi [and] smart protection," which in geekier terms means support for AC2600-class dual-band operation, powered by Intel’s latest Wi-Fi chipset, and Trend Micro protection for "every connected smart device on the network, including IoT devices." But really

The Trump administration may expand a current laptop ban to cover all international flights to and from the US, the head of homeland security said this week. In an interview with “Fox News Sunday”, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said airlines face a “sophisticated threat” from terrorists seeking to bring down US-bound flights, though he noted that a final decision on expanding the ban has not been made.“That’s really the thing that they’re obsess

On the eve of Computex, Taiwan’s big showpiece event where PC makers roll out the latest and best implementations of Intel CPUs, mobile rival ARM is announcing its own big news with the unveiling of a new generation of ARM CPUs and GPUs. Official today, the ARM Cortex-A75 is the new flagship-tier mobile processor design, with a claimed 22 percent improvement in performance over the incumbent A73. It’s joined by the new Cortex-A55, which has the highest power efficiency of any mid-ran