Technology news

Among news of an iOS 11 update and the unveiling of the HomePod smart speaker at Apple’s WWDC conference, you might have missed the new Business Chat, which will connect businesses with customers on iMessage. More details on how Business Chat actually works will be announced Friday (watch this space).
“Using Business Chat, your customers can get answers to questions, resolve issues and complete transactions on their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch,” reads the WWDC session descrip

Since Ustwo stealth launched Monument Valley 2 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, it’s rocketed to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store.
It’s too early to tell if Monument Valley 2 will overtake its predecessor, but it’s off to a dynamite start. According to market analyst Sensor Tower, broad brand recognition and a large fan base led to Monument Valley 2 reaching No. 1 in paid apps four times as fast as the original game. It’s also the

Optoma is looking to popularize 4K projectors with its latest products, the $1,999 UHD60 and the $2,499 UHD65, which launched earlier this week as two of the cheapest 4K projectors on the market.In particular, the UHD60 is the first 4K projector available that breaks the $2,000 price barrier, and while that may still seem like a lot of money, it’s actually a pretty good deal for a projector that supports 4K resolution and HDR video. Also, unlike the UHD65, which is meant for professional h

Legendary car designer Henrik Fisker released some new images today of the forthcoming EMotion, an ultra-luxury electric vehicle with a range of 400 miles and a top speed of 161 mph. The images more or less track with the rendering Fisker released last year: sleek, aerodynamic lines; a low-slung hood; and a tapered back end. But the designer’s company also revealed some new details about the car that could help revitalize Fisker’s reputation in the EV market.The EMotion is Fisker&rsq

A tectonic shift for PC gaming is here — at least for developers and publishers.
Steam Direct is launching June 13. This is the new service for submitting games to Valve’s PC-gaming platform. With Direct, anyone who meets a basic set of criteria to determine legality and appropriateness can launch a game on the massive online store by paying a $100 per-game fee. In preparation for this launch, Valve has also cut off submissions and votes for Direct’s predecessor, Steam Gre

Google’s open-source machine learning project Tensorflow is probably used all the time for helpful things that advance the cause of mankind or something. But in my experience, what it has been best used for is making horrifying auto-generated images out of simple line drawings. I’m referring to edges2cats, which turned any line drawing into a cat. It was a whole thing! Everyone was trying it out, then posting pictures of really demented cats to Twitter for others to laugh at.Today th

OnePlus is set to announce its OnePlus 5 flagship on June 20th, and today Android Policereleased a supposed image of the device that it says should be accurate. From the picture, we can see the device might launch with a dual-camera system and, well, that’s kind of it. Oh, it’ll also maybe be available in black to start, which would be different for OnePlus. The 3T wasn’t initially available in black.We don’t have many details about the guts of the phone, other than the f

PRESS RELEASE:Funding will be used to scale investment marketplace, accelerate national expansion, and further grow teamNEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 6, 2017– Cadre, an online investment marketplace providing access and insight into institutional quality alternative assets, today announced a $65mm Series C financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional participation from Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital, Ford Foundation, General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures

Patrik Karlsson, a 33-year-old ad designer living in rural Sweden, has been running the tiny but beloved site This is Not Porn for more than seven years. The site has a simple premise — it’s uh, not porn. It’s a collection of candid celebrity photos, all vintage, and all obscure enough to make the site a veritable goldmine for anyone who wishes they had the personal time to sift through Tumblr, hit the web’s many open photo troves in earnest, or work their way through eve

There’s no disguising Transformers: Earth Wars’ success: The mobile real-time strategy game has more than 10 million downloads so far, and just in time for its one-year anniversary.
Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at market researcher Sensor Tower, notes that Earth Wars’ download numbers aren’t stellar when compared to Machine Zone’s epic success Mobile Strike, which garnered more than 71 million downloads in its first year. However, 10 million downl

A legal group has asked Donald Trump to unblock users who have offended him on Twitter, saying that the blocks violate the First Amendment. In a letter, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University argued that Trump’s Twitter account was a public forum, and banning users from viewing or engaging with his tweets suppresses free speech. “The President must not be allowed to banish views from public discourse simply because he finds them objectionable,” writes Knigh

Preorders are now open for Microsoft’s new Surface Pen, which the company announced last month alongside the new Surface Pro. The pen costs $99.99, and for now, it appears that only the platinum version is available. You can’t click through on the preorder button on the black, blue, or burgundy versions, and Microsoft just says they’re “coming soon.” The platinum version has a June 15th release date.
The new pen speeds up the inking experience to the point that ther

Last fall, Anki — a company mostly known for its connected toy cars — released Cozmo, an AI-powered toy robot that has the personality of WALL-E built inside. The $180 robot was meant to be a new kind of toy that lets kids and developers experiment with what they can build from a toy’s SDK, using machine learning and facial recognition to interact with Cozmo as if it’s is a real pet.
Today, Anki announced that it’s expanding Cozmo to international markets, including

Mountain Dew is throwing its money into the emerging market for esports with the sponsorship of three squads: Team Dignitas, Splyce, and Team SK Gaming. These new partnerships will provide fans with exclusive content and access to some of the best players and celebrities in the world via the Mountain Dew Twitch channel.
That’s going to give a lot of exposure and more money for the esports stars. It’s important for the industry, which market researcher Newzoo predicts will grow f

Apple has allegedly added support for lossless FLAC audio files in iOS 11, according to reports from Reddit users who have installed copies of the developer beta, spotted by The Next Web.Per the Reddit thread, FLAC files can be synced to an iOS device through iCloud Drive, then accessed through the new Files application, which will allow for local playback of the high-quality audio files directly on the device. If true, it would mark the first time that Apple has offered support for the popular

(Reuters) — Uber Technologies fired more than 20 people following an internal investigation into sexual harassment claims, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Bobbie Wilson, an attorney at Perkins Coie LLP, gave Uber’s more than 12,000 employees an assessment of the firm’s investigation, the report said.
Uber was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Back in 2014, MIT debuted CityHome, a solution for tiny living spaces with the ability to pack several home necessities into a single, movable modular unit. Today, the concept — now renamed Ori Systems, after the Japanese art of origami — is available for preorder at $10,000 in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and other major US and Canadian cities.
A collaboration between Fuseproject’s Yves Béhar and MIT Media Lab, Ori Systems, comes in two sizes, “O

Ninja Theory announced that Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice will debut on the PlayStation 4 and PC on August 8.
Expectations are high for the ambitious game, which features realistic graphics for the body movements and facial animation of its main character, Senua. It is also interesting because of the story about the Celtic warrior, who is dealing with the personal and real demons of insanity.
Preorders are available now for the midsized game, which is $30 and is only available as a dig

Facebook Live videos are now able to include closed captioning, Facebook announced today, granting more access to the hearing impaired. Closed captioning has been on the agenda for Facebook since April when it was first alluded to at its annual F8 developer conference.
“With this update, publishers using the Live API can now add CEA-608 standard closed captions to Facebook Live broadcasts, opening up those videos to audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing,” Facebook produ

PRESS RELEASE:New home care treatment for patients with psoriasis, vitiligo and eczemaSAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 6, 2017– Clarify Medical, Inc. today announced that it has received FDA Market Clearance for the Clarify Medical Phototherapy System, the core technology of its Clarify Home Light Therapy service, which it plans to offer to patients in November. Clarify’s proprietary technology allows patients with chronic skin diseases to receive UVB phototherapy in their

WhatsApp users with iPhones will soon be able to add filters to photos, videos, and GIFs, one of three changes to the popular app announced today.
Filters available at launch for iOS users of WhatsApp include pop, black and white, cool, chrome, and film.
WhatsApp Albums and Reply Shortcuts were also announced today.
Albums are formed automatically each time four or more photos or videos are shared in a conversation. The album will then appear as a tile in conversations. The automatic g

When the developers at Nintendo began concept work on Arms, a new fighting game coming to the Switch later this month, they weren’t sure what kinds of characters it should include. Early on, they toyed with the idea of featuring familiar Nintendo faces like Mario, Link, and even the Wii Fit trainer. But the key to Arms is right there in the title: it’s a game where characters possess extendable arms that they can use to hit faraway opponents. Twelve-foot-long arms didn’t mesh w

PRESS RELEASE:Agile Development Team Leads The Pack with Innovation at the Intersection of Fashion and TechnologyBOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 6, 2017– Spreadshirt, the self-expression global e-commerce company, unveils their latest and most innovative design tool. It was fully developed based on customer preferences; making it super intuitive and fun to create personalized clothing and accessories. This cutting edge design tool enables everyone to personalize a product right fro

Livestreaming platform Twitch is a serious fan of esports and takes its esports fans seriously, too. After renewing its partnership with DreamHack in March for the ninth year in a row, it’s now announced an exclusive broadcasting partnership with professional esports team Optic Gaming.
While some might associate esports with multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games like League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm, Optic primarily plays first-person and third-person shooters. Fo

Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, is one of the game industry’s finest speakers. We’ve interviewed him before, and we know he is passionate about virtual reality and augmented reality, and his company has published the groundbreaking VR game I Expect You To Die.
But Schell is very skeptical about predictions that VR will grow fast. He gave a talk about his predictions for VR and augmented reality

Databricks is giving users a set of new tools for big data processing with enhancements to Apache Spark. The new tools and features make it easier to do machine learning within Spark, process streaming data at high speeds, and run tasks in the cloud without provisioning servers.
On the machine learning side, Databricks announced Deep Learning Pipelines, which are designed to make it possible for data scientists and AI novices to implement neural nets in their big data processing. It provide

Battleborn had the misfortune of coming out around the same time as Overwatch. A new payment model could finally help 2K’s team shooter stand out.
Gearbox announced today the studio’s Battleborn is getting a free-to-play option. This will bring more players to the game, which came out last May for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
2K published Battleborn a bit before Overwatch, Blizzard’s team-based shooter that became a huge hit and has more than 30 million players. GamesB

Cowboy Bebop, one of the best known anime of all time, will be adapted into a live-action TV show from Tomorrow Studios, Variety reports. Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok screenwriter Chris Yost will pen the series, while Sunrise, the studio behind the original show, is attached to executive produce.Cowboy Bebop originally aired in 1998 in Japan as a 26-episode series, though its late night run on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2001 helped buoy it to success in the United States. S

Major tech companies and nonprofit groups have signed on to a “day of action” next month to protest the FCC’s planned rollback of net neutrality rules.Protest set for July 12th
Organized by nonprofit group Fight for the Future, the protest will include Amazon, Etsy, Reddit, Mozilla, the ACLU, and several others, who have all agreed to show their support for net neutrality on July 12th. In 2014, a similar list of companies agreed to post banners on their websites showing support

PRESS RELEASE:Turbonomic Hybrid Cloud Management Platform Accelerates Public Cloud Migration and Lowers Monthly Cloud Bills by 30 Percent News Highlights Turbonomic today announced major advancements to its hybrid cloud management platform, unleashing the elasticity and scale of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure public cloud environments With today’s news, Turbonomic is the first to unify the monitoring and automation of workloads on-premises and/or in AWS and Azure environment

Today, Amazon announced that it’s offering a discount on Prime membership for US customers participating in a number of government assistance programs. Anyone with a valid Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, which disburses funds for programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), is eligible for Prime’s discounted monthly price of $5.99. Prime’s normal price is a $99 a year, or a monthl

Later this month, Nintendo will launch Arms on Switch, a fighting game with an eclectic cast of characters reminiscent of Blizzard’s megahit shooter Overwatch. While the games are built on different genres, one key similarity between the two is the variety of their rosters. That was by design.
“As this is a game where characters fight each other, we thought that it was extremely important to have this kind of diversity for the players,” explains art director Masaaki Ishikawa, &