Technology news

A new team communication app called Twist has a way for people to get more done at work: fewer notifications.
Created by Doist, the team behind productivity app Todoist, Twist’s biggest differentiator is that it’s based on asynchronous communication. With an interface that feels more like a message board, Twist has channels, which then contain threaded conversations underneath. The threads are meant to encourage in-depth conversations versus one-line interactions, and every response

A 1000 person survey on issues relating to privacy has revealed that smart devices pose too much risk for the elderly to trust. Survey respondents aged over 65 said that virtual assistants, TVs, and gaming systems weren’t worth it, rating them a 7.9 on a ten point scale from ‘less bothersome’ to ‘more bothersome’. The survey was conducted by Safehome an organization that provides information on home security. The respondents — all over the age of 18

Riva Audio is best known for its Bluetooth speakers, but earlier this month, the company released its new multi-space wireless speakers much later than originally planned. The WAND series is comprised of two speakers: the Arena and the Festival. Both include multiple ways to play music, including Wi-Fi, DDMS, Spotify Connect, AirPlay, DLNA, Bluetooth, and Chromecast. The more expensive Festival has an optical input, too. You can also distribute analog inputs over Wi-Fi to other speakers. For com

Apple is asking music labels for a reduction in the revenue rate it pays out from its music streaming service, according to sources close to the situation. Apple is renegotiating its licensing deals for Apple Music and iTunes with the three major music labels, which expire at the end of the month. The negotiations were first reported by Bloomberg.
According to sources, the negotiations with Apple are not as contentious as past and ongoing negotiations with Spotify have been. While the deal is mo

Everything old is new again. Old, in this case, is the NES classic that introduced many of us to gaming. New, is a recently re-designed level using HoloLens that allows players to become their favorite fictional Italian plumber through the power of augmented reality. Developer Abhishek Singh recreated a single level of the classic game and played it in New York’s Central Park. He did it dressed as Mario himself, but I’d assume that part is optional. Over the course of about a month,

If you’re a Virgin Mobile USA subscriber and are looking to upgrade to the latest and greatest Android device, I have some bad news for you. The Sprint-powered carrier has decided to go all-in on Apple products. If you want a phone, your only options are the iPhone 6, 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 7 and 7 Plus. God forbid you want a phone with a headphone jack when you need to upgrade in a couple of years. To prove just how serious the company is about this new strategy, Virgin Mobile is offering

Come with me, if you will, back to 2009: the ninth year of the third millennium and the year Owl City released its hit song “Fireflies.” “Fireflies” eventually reached the No. 1 slot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, in part because it presented the world with a new scientific conundrum: can fireflies hug?
Here’s the lyric that started it: “Cause I'd get a thousand hugs / From ten thousand lightning bugs / As they tried to teach me how to dance.” Yesterday

A Russian software company, ironically named Coptersafe, is selling modifications to help consumers get past government- and military-enforced no-fly zones.With mad flying
In recent years, the US government has cracked down on unauthorized drone flights. As a response to the warnings and fines imposed by the law, drone maker DJI has put a number of safety measures in place, including geofencing and setting limits on speed. A statement on the Federal Aviation Administration website encourages peo

Starting this fall, students at the University of Michigan will have access to an entirely new form of transportation in the form of this adorable, completely autonomous shuttle bus.The university plans to deploy two of the shuttles, manufactured by French startup Navya, to service a two-mile route between the Lurie Engineering Center and the North Campus Research Complex on Plymouth Road. The shuttle can carry a maximum of 15 passengers, and lacks a steering wheel or pedals. The vehicles are be

The retro gaming market is having a bit of a Renaissance lately, thanks to Nintendo’s NES Classic console and the ever-expanding industry dedicated to re-creating, refurbishing, and resurrecting nostalgia-fueled products of the past. Hardware maker Retro-Bit is a big part of this community — the company makes classic console controllers, adapters, consoles, and USB emulators. It even revealed an all-in-one Game Boy cartridge-compatible gadget called the Super Retro Boy earlier this y

With July 4th coming up, you’ll want to make sure you can eke the best out of your phone’s camera for those nighttime fireworks. Though phones vary in quality and features significantly, there are still some general tricks – both technical and common sense – you can pick up on to maximize image quality in low light. Technical primer: Understanding exposure Before we begin, you should understand the two main variables affect exposure (how bright the image appears) on your

Niantic has fought back against Pokémon Go cheaters in a variety of ways. From outright banning them to using more interesting methods, like only allowing them to catch the worst pokémon. Basically, the company has zero tolerance for players who use assistant apps that help track pokémon or trick the game. Today, the developer expanded its punishments with another unorthodox measure: players who use third-party services that “circumvent normal gameplay” will be m

German police are cracking down on what they perceive to be threats, coercion, and incitement to hatred in online posts. Yesterday, police raided 36 people’s homes over social media posts that allegedly contained hateful content, according to a press release from the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany.
The police say that most of the accused posted politically motivated content, but one incident involved someone attacking the sexual orientation of a victim. The raid was arranged as

World renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is urging the nations of Earth to resume sending manned missions to the moon. He wants us to engage in another space-race – one that will serve as the catalyst for our eventual migration to a second Earth-like home planet. Professor Hawking spoke to the crowd at the Starmus Festival yesterday in Norway: We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may

Humanity has revered creativity throughout time, from the ancient Greeks to modern-day painters, poets, and web designers. It’s one of those ineffable things that’s extremely hard to define but you absolutely know it when you see it. It’s also the driving force for so many of us, to the point where we’ve created an entire category of worker that just called “creative.” But while creativity might seem like magic, it’s definitely a good kind of magic and

Amazon and Nike have partnered to help the apparel maker sell its shoes on the e-commerce giant’s website as a way to curb counterfeiting, according to Bloomberg. The deal is a big win for both companies. It gives Nike a better grip over regulating the sale of knockoffs from third-party sellers and official products bought wholesale by unlicensed distributors on Amazon.com. On the other end, the deal gives Amazon a sizable new source of revenue in the apparel and footwear market, both impo

Recently, both Starz’s American Gods and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale wrapped their debut seasons. Both shows have been acclaimed for their focus on relevant political issues, such as women’s rights, the spread of fascism, and the dangers of religious extremism. But what makes both shows pressingly important in 2017 is that they’re driven by a single focus: demonstrating the danger in the creeping normalization of a hostile ideology.
On their faces, both shows share s

Sega exited the video game console business nearly 20 years ago, but the company still retains some of the industry’s most iconic characters and beloved classic catalogs. That explains why Sega decided to put resources toward an all-new initiative it’s calling Sega Forever. Announced earlier this morning, Sega Forever is the new banner with which the publisher will reissue games from its backlog on iOS and Android, starting with five titles to be released tomorrow in the US. A new ti

For the last year, the Curiosity rover has been studying the surface of Mars with more independence than ever before, saving human time and energy. The partly autonomous exploration is also helping people sidestep the constraints of working across vast distances in space.
This new capability is powered by software called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, or AEGIS. It allows the rover to control its own use of ChemCam, an instrument that learns the chemical composition of ro

Last April, several episodes of the fifth season of Orange is the New Black were leaked online. New testimony reveals it all started due to outdated computer software and the fickle whims of extortionist hackers. According to Variety, a collective calling themselves The Dark Overlord cracked the computers of Larson Studios, an audio post-production company that has worked on Orange is the New Black, among other shows. The studio was randomly targeted by someone who realized one o

Maybe you’ve never embarrassed yourself online, and that’s great. Congratulations! But two years ago I wrote over 2,000 words explaining why I was sure that A Song of Ice and Fire fan favorite Lady Stoneheart would be appearing in the season 5 finale of Game of Thrones. Then, a year later, I wrote 2,000 more, explaining why she was definitely going to show up in the finale of season 6. Both arguments were based on hints from HBO promotional material, pre-announced episode titles, act

Virgin Mobile USA announced today that it will offer an iPhone-exclusive cellular plan that offers unlimited data, text, and calls for $50 a month. The partnership with Apple marks Virgin as the first iPhone-only carrier in the US.
Called Inner Circle, Virgin is offering the deal for $1 for the first year (which only slightly follows its parent company’s offer of a free year of service to switch). To qualify, customers need to purchase an iPhone from either Virgin or Apple. After the first

Travis Kalanick’s fate was sealed the moment Susan Fowler hit “publish.”
To be sure, Kalanick wasn’t ousted last night as the CEO of Uber solely because Fowler, an ex-Uber engineer, went public with her explosive account of sexism, harassment, and mismanagement. But her blog post will come to be seen as the spark that ultimately lit the fuse.“Susan's post was clearly the catalyst that started it all,” said Harry Campbell, a former Uber driver who now blogs abo

Game of Thrones returns with season 7 on July 16th, and to build maximum hype, HBO has dropped another trailer today. A compilation of the show’s remaining characters as they prepare for the great war ahead, it features what you’d expect: violence, dragons, and A+ costume design.The trailer puts a large spotlight on Sansa, who appears to be taking an even more prominent role this season. Petyr Baelish narrates the opening, warning “Don’t fight in the North. Or the South.

On June 8th, K-pop icon G-Dragon released EP Kwon Ji Yong, his first solo work in four years. Unfortunately, there’s a snag: it’s ineligible to chart as an album in his home country of South Korea.
South Korea’s Gaon Chart, operated by the Korean Music Content Industry Association (KMCIA) has two ways for artists to chart: the Gaon Album Chart, which ranks physical album releases, and the Gaon Digital Chart, which ranks singles based on an aggregate of downloads, streaming, and

Google Glass just got an update — its first since 2014. The update isn’t anything big, but the usual bug fixes and performance improvements are mentioned, according to Google’s support site.
Google did add Bluetooth input device support (see: keyboards and mouse) for some reason. My working theory is someone forgot to push the update three years ago, and pushed it live yesterday hoping no one noticed. Or maybe Sergey Brin still wears his Glass but wants to use a keyboard with i

Broadcasters on Twitter’s live-streaming app Periscope can now make money directly through the service. The company today is introducing Super Hearts, a set of virtual goods that users can send to their favorite broadcasters as a show of support. The hearts closely resemble “cheering,” a paid form of commenting on Amazon’s rival broadcast platform, Twitch. If successful, Periscope’s Super hearts could attract more broadcasters to the platform — while giving Tw

Most of us think “perfect” memory means never forgetting, but maybe forgetting actually helps us navigate a world that is random and ever-changing.So say two neuroscientists in a review published today in the journal Neuron. The argument is that memory isn’t supposed to act like a video recorder, but instead like a list of useful rules that help us make better decisions, says study co-author Blake Richards, a University of Toronto professor who studies the theoretical links bet

Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind is continuing to partner with new UK hospitals, announcing today that its Streams app will be used by the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust. This is the first time that Streams has been introduced outside of London. The app doesn’t use artificial intelligence, but sifts data from patients’ medical records to warn doctors and nurses about upcoming health problems.According to a statement from the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust,

Samsung is likely releasing a new outdoor camera soon, judging from a Best Buy page that lists the device. The retail store says a “SmartCam Indoor/Outdoor 1080p Wi-Fi Network Surveillance Camera” is “coming soon.” It’ll cost $199.99. We’ve reached out to Samsung for confirmation on when it might be released and will update when we hear back.This new camera’s features, at least from what I can tell, are the same as the company’s more expensive, alr

Roborace is an effort to create a completely autonomous racing competition, one that will supposedly run alongside all-electric racing series Formula E. That’s an extremely ambitious challenge, but the company recently ticked off an important milestone: the development version of the car did a full-speed lap of the Formula E track in Berlin, Germany.
Over the last year and a half that we’ve known about Roborace, the company has been documenting the incremental progress being made in

eBay announced today that it will now offer a price-match guarantee with its competitors, including Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and other online retailers, if savvy customers are willing to look around.
The price match guarantee only applies to eBay’s Deals section; excludes auction items, among other categories; and is only for US residents. As with many price-match programs, the policies seem pretty strict. If a customer buys a product for a cheaper price at one of the listed competitors,

Let us pause for a moment in praise of the person who shot this 10-second clip of a runaway New York City bus flying in reverse down a darkened Brooklyn street last night. It is a masterfully (albeit serendipitously) shot short film.According to a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the incident occurred at approximately 12:45AM on Wednesday in Brooklyn. The driver of the Q58 bus parked on Myrtle Street, but apparently failed to secure the parking brake. Suddenly free to

Sega is bringing some of its best retro games to your smartphone. Today the company announced a new service called Sega Forever, which is essentially a lineup of classic games from the company that will be available on both iOS and Android. Each game will be available for free — you can pay $1.99 to turn off ads — and will include modern features like cloud saves, Bluetooth controller support, and online leaderboards. (Sega notes, however, that you can still play each game offline.)