Technology news

The ZTE Nubia Z17 may be the most powerful phone to come out of China yet. The phone — which is being touted by human statue and face of ZTE, Cristiano Ronaldo, in press images — is packed with high-end parts, including a ridiculous 8GB of RAM:
5.5-inch 1080p display
Snapdragon 835 processor
8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage
Dual rear cameras (23MP +12MP), 16MP front camera
Android 7.1.1 Nougat, 3,200mAh battery, Quick Charge 4+
The Z17 is only the second phone to come with 8GB of RAM, an

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella all said today that they remain committed to the environment and clean energy initiatives in the face of Trump’s decision to withdrawn the US from the Paris climate coalition.Though many voices around the world, including politicians and representatives from numerous corporations and countries, have expressed extreme concern over Trump’s decision, Pichai, Nadella, and Zuckerberg are three of the m

Square Enix is trying to sell Hitman developer IO Interactive, but the studio hasn’t pulled the plug on its bold live content strategy.
IO announced a series of new missions and a big update for Hitman. On Friday, the studio will launch two new Escalation Contracts, which are a pack of quests that feature a similar structure but stack in complexity each time you play them. The Spaggiari Subversion will take players back to the beloved Sapienza map while The Asya Attunement will have y

After President Donald Trump announced that the US would no longer honor the Paris climate agreement, three states have announced they’re rebelling.New York governor Andrew Cuomo, California governor Edmund Brown Jr., and Washington state governor Jay Inslee said they’re forming a coalition of states committed to fighting climate change. The move basically formally shifts the responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the federal government to the local level.“I a

ANALYSIS: President Trump announced he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, a move that will weaken efforts to fight climate change and raise tensions in an already uneasy relationship with technology companies that have vocally opposed such a move.
In a speech delivered in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said withdrawing from the accord would “protect America and its citizens” and that he would seek new negotiations for terms more favorable to the U

Walmart’s 200 “Walmart Academy” training centers are all planning to incorporate virtual reality by the end of 2017, after an earlier pilot program. The limited curriculum is being produced by Strivr, a company previously known for helping NFL players train through VR. New Walmart employees will put on an Oculus Rift headset and enter different real-world scenarios, during which they’ll be asked to make simple choices based on what they see. Eventually, Strivr and Walmart

GUEST: Two and a half years ago, President Obama called on the FCC to classify broadband internet as a utility. It joined a small club that you know well: electricity, gas, and running water. And now this club may be welcoming yet another new member. Is artificial intelligence the newest utility? Are we witnessing the dawn of AI being as ubiquitous as running water?
Six years ago, Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen wrote that “software is eating the world.” Well, now A

The race to be the first to deploy autonomous vehicles is on among carmakers, emerging startups, and tech giants. Amid this constant news cycle of deals and drama, the purpose of all of it can get lost — or at least a bit muddied. What exactly are these companies racing for?A $7 trillion annual revenue stream, according to a study released Thursday by Intel. The companies that don’t prepare for self-driving risk failure or extinction, Intel says. The report also finds that over half

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is stepping away from his roles on two of Donald Trump’s advisory councils following the president’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. Musk announced the news in a Twitter post shortly after the president’s statement at the White House.
“[I] Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” Musk wrote. He had previously been a member of

VB LIVE: Slow load times and big file sizes will kill your app—especially outside North America. How do you deliver rich content and still have happy users? Join our latest VB Live event, where we’ll take a deep dive into best practices for both the mobile web and apps.
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You have one chance to make a good first impression when a user downloads your app, and too many games are blowing it. Of course, you’re eager to show off your gorgeous graphics, your sli

YouTube is taking new steps today to get a handle on content that might offend advertisers or, conversely, prevent a YouTube creator from monetizing their videos. Several major brands left the platform’s ad program recently to avoid being linked with hateful and offensive videos. Many creators were upset when videos started to be de-monetized.YouTube has promised to give advertisers greater control over where their ads appear and to give creators a better sense of what they need to avoid i

For a few minutes on August 21st, the Moon will completely block the Sun for anyone watching the skies along a 70-mile-wide swath of North America from Oregon to South Carolina. The rest of the continent will get to see a partial eclipse lasting a few hours. The big event is being called the Great American Eclipse. But, for anyone looking to not actually be on American soil for it, well, you can apparently watch it from sea.The Royal Caribbean cruise company is pitching a “brag-worthy adve

Lyft published its first diversity report today, revealing numbers that were slightly better than its rival Uber and the tech industry as a whole. The numbers come as Silicon Valley is facing criticism and numerous lawsuits concerning rampant sexual harassment and an overall lack of gender and ethnic diversity. But does it support the recent claim by Lyft’s president that the app company is “woke?”
Not exactly. Lyft published its report as part of an Obama-era White House pledg

GUEST: Automation. From assembly lines to cubicles, this word strikes fear into the heart of workers the world over. However, automation’s effect on creative professionals (and designers in particular) is somewhat unclear: While some writers warn of a day in the near future when computers will automate creativity, still others hypothesize that creativity may be our best (and last) defense against the widespread loss of jobs.
So which will it be? Should designers fear the machines? Or

Abylight Studios wants to turn the Nintendo Switch into a sculpting studio with Qbics Paint, a 3D modeling and sculpting game that’s slated for release later this year.
Abylight has experience developing casual games with an educational spin, such as Musicverse: Electronic Keyboard, which turns the Nintendo 3DS handheld into a virtual keyboard along with video tutorials for beginners. Its Music On series for the Nintendo DSi involves more gameplay, incorporating Guitar Hero-style

Scientists can now move a mouse’s whiskers, ears, and a paw using just electrodes on the outside of the animal’s head. This new method can stimulate deep parts of the brain without surgery and — if it pans out in humans — it could be very helpful for people with neurological conditions like Parkinson’s, depression, or epilepsy.
The brain has surface regions located near the skull and deep regions further inside, such as the motor cortex, the area of the brain that c

My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated classic about two young girls and the friendly spirit-monsters near their new home, is getting turned into a theme park. Chunichu Web reported yesterday (in a piece translated by Anime News Network) that Studio Ghibli plans to let fans explore Totoro’s world in a park set to open in Japan in 2020.
Totoro!
The attraction will be built in Echo Park, located in Nagoya, Japan’s Aichi prefecture. According to Variety, Studio Ghibli produ

The Wachowskis’ Sense8 has been canceled by Netflix after two seasons and one holiday special. Cindy Holland, VP of original content at Netflix, confirmed the cancelation in a statement published on the platform’s press blog.This marks Netflix’s second major series cancelation in as many weeks, with Baz Luhrmann’s incredibly expensive musical drama The Get Down (season 1 had an estimated budget of $120 million) canceled last week. Luhrmann cited a personal conflict betwee

After a lot of speculation, Korean automaker Hyundai finally pulled the wraps off of its first mass-produced electric bus this week. It’s called the Elec City. It has a range of 180 miles, thanks to a 256kWh battery pack, according to Hyundai. A report from the Yonhap news agency says the bus can also be fully charged in just over an hour. The company plans to launch the bus in 2018.While that’s more than double what had been rumored for Hyundai, it’s still a far cry from the m

Once upon a time on Mars, there was a crater that had a massive lake that may have hosted life. Now researchers are saying that a whole variety of organisms could have flourished there. Sure, that life was probably just microbial, but this is another exciting step toward understanding just how habitable Mars may have been around 3.5 billion years ago.
Petrified mud that was once at the bottom of the lake suggests that, at the time, the lake had different chemical environments that could have hos

Facebook is overhauling how its photo albums work to let users drop in virtually any post from the social network to save for posterity. This includes of course photos and videos, but now text posts and check-ins as well. The company is also making it easier to add friends as contributors to create shared albums, and adding the ability to display a “featured album” prominently on your profile. The idea is to turn the sometimes forgotten photo albums feature into a way to store memori

Rockstar knew what it was doing when it made Grand Theft Auto V’s logo look like cash.
Mat Piscatella, an analyst at market research firm The NPD Group, revealed in a tweet today that Grand Theft Auto V is the best-selling game in the U.S. since it began tracking such data in 1995. This is based on revenues, not copies sold. Total sales for this open-world shooter passed 80 million worldwide in April.Grand Theft Auto V is the #1 best-selling game in the US (since NPD began t

It’s now easier to create charts from data stored in Google Sheets, thanks to a new feature added Thursday. Users can open up the Explore tab and type in the sort of chart they want, and the software will produce it for them. For example, typing “bar chart of revenue and profit” is supposed to generate exactly that.
The feature uses machine learning to parse a user’s text input and translate that into a chart. It’s designed to make it faster for people to create vis

Google has paid security researchers millions of dollars since launching its bug bounty program in 2010. The company today expanded its Android Security Rewards program because “no researcher has claimed the top reward for an exploit chain in two years.” Right. Well, the program has only been around for two years — a Google spokesperson confirmed that nobody has ever claimed the top reward.
The Android team is making two bug bounty increases today. The reward for a remote explo

Virtual reality makes you feel like you’re in another world. But as soon as you try to use your hands, the illusion breaks. That’s why ManoMotion has used computer vision technology to create a low-cost way to inject your hands and the gestures you make into animated scenes in real time.
The company is releasing a software development kit (SDK) today that provides developers and users with the tools to incorporate hand gestures into animated applications for virtual reality, augmente

Qualcomm loves its charging standards, which have become just as much a selling point for its Snapdragon chipsets as the processor power. Now, just a mere six months after announcing Quick Charge 4, which boosted charging times and safety considerably over its predecessors, Qualcomm is introducing the new Quick Charge 4+ standard.
Unlike previous standards, which required a new chipset, 4+ is something device and accessory manufacturers can implement by adding three enhancements to Quick Charge

Intel and market researcher Strategy Analytics have applied their collective brainpower to the impact of self-driving cars, and they’re predicting that we’ll see a “Passenger Economy” emerge from all of the services targeted at people while they are no longer driving their cars. By 2050, Intel and Strategy Analytics made the astounding prediction that the passenger economy will have a $7 trillion economic impact.
The companies estimated that the passenger economy (se

Motorola has announced the Moto Z2 Play, a successor to last year's sleeper hit Moto Z Play. Much like its predecessor, the Z2 Play is a midrange smartphone with a 5.5-inch display and compatibility with the Moto Mod accessory platform. It will sell for $499 and will be available from Verizon or unlocked from Motorola’s website this summer.
In addition to the Z2 Play, Motorola revealed four new Mods for its Z line of smartphones: the JBL SoundBoost 2, the Moto TurboPower Pack, Moto Style S

Fender is planning to enter the crowded Bluetooth speaker market this summer with two devices: the Newport and Monterey. The portable, cheaper Newport model can last up to 12 hours on a charge and features two full-range drivers and a tweeter. It has a built-in microphone so you can take phone calls, as well as a USB port for charging other devices while it’s in use.
The larger Monterey includes two woofers and two tweeters. There’s no battery inside, so it has to be plugged in at al

We now have a release date and price for the Connect Home, Samsung's attempt to marry a router with a SmartThings hub. The unassuming Samsung Connect Home is meant to sit out in the open to blanket your home in a mesh of Wi-Fi for data, and Zigbee and Z-Wave for wireless control over all your compatible home automation devices. Samsung Connect Home goes up for preorder at BestBuy.com starting Sunday, June 4th, and will be sold in a variety of configurations.
For large homes up to 4,500 square fe

Today Plex is taking the wraps off its first live television offering: Plex Live TV, now available in beta. Combined with Plex DVR, the Plex platform is even more compelling for people hoping to cut the cord from their cable company. With today's announcement, Plex is now a one-stop shop for live and recorded television, in addition to personal videos, images, and music, accessible from just about any device with a screen.
In addition to a Plex Pass subscription, Plex Live TV requires a digital

Misfit has launched a new tool that lets users personalize their wearables more easily. M.Y Misfit lets customers change the color, strap style, and material of a range of Misfit products, with the company claiming that a total of “600 unique possible combinations” are available. Colors include Jet, Rose Tone, Silver, Midnight, and Champagne, and strap styles range from leather to silicone to paracord.The new tool works with the following Misfit products:Shine 2 — the original

So you’ve just come across an amazing GIF. Ridiculous! How could someone make such a weird face? But now you’re left with one big question: where’d it come from? Usually, you’d have to do a reverse image search, or leave a comment and ask, but now Giphy has a much more elegant solution: just click the GIF and have it switch over to the source video. Then, you can watch exactly where it came from.
This new feature is launching in a very limited capacity. For one, it’

If a nuclear-tipped missile were hurtling toward the United States, would we be able to stop it? Maybe, if we were very lucky. But some experts warn that the United States’ missile defense system isn’t as reliable as people might think.Right now, a constellation of sensors and 36 interceptor missiles make up the ground-based midcourse defense system, or GMD. It’s intended to act as insurance against a small-scale nuclear attack from North Korea, or possibly Iran, according to t

This evening, SpaceX is set to launch another one of its Falcon 9 rockets from Florida, sending cargo and supplies to the International Space Station for NASA. It’s an otherwise routine launch that will include one of SpaceX’s signature rocket landing attempts afterward. But it wouldn’t be a SpaceX mission if the company didn’t try something completely new: tonight’s launch will be the first time that SpaceX reuses one of its Dragon cargo capsules — one that&r

 There’s been a whole lot of talk about initial coin offerings (ICO), company fundraising events based around the sale of cryptocurrencies, but not much in the way of action until yesterday. That’s when web browser maker Brave, founded by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, raised $35 million from its ICO — and it did it in less than 30 seconds, too.
ICOs operate by selling… Read More