Technology news

Much of the conversation about machine learning taking jobs focuses on the future, but Microsoft boasted its cloud service has already managed to claim one human’s position. The Custom Decision Service, which the company introduced at its Build conference last month, took over at one of Microsoft’s customers, according to Jennifer Chayes, a distinguished scientist at the company’s research arm.
“One of the startups, they were really pressed for funds, got rid of thei

GUEST: America has more than 6 million vacant jobs, yet the country is “facing a serious skills gap,” Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta recently said. And last week his boss, President Donald Trump, said he wants to close this gap by directing $100 million of federal money into apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeships in the U.S. are generally known for training workers for blue collar jobs like plumbers or electricians, but with a little tweak, they could be the path to lucrative,

GUEST: In the past few years, we’ve seen industries become upended and disrupted by the “sharing economy.” This new landscape is built on personal connection, identity, a focus on tangible experiences, and personalized services available at the tap of a button.
You’ve definitely heard about the sharing economy giants, and have likely used some of them already. Whether you ordered a custom-made gift on Etsy, stayed at an Airbnb on short notice, completed a chore with TaskR

Airbnb is getting ready to launch a new premium service meant to attract higher-paying travelers, according to Bloomberg. This tier will try to lure new customers who have yet to try the platform because they prefer the amenities that come with upscale hotels.
This is the first time upscale properties will be segmented into their own category, and Bloomberg’s sources say the included listings will be officially inspected by Airbnb to make sure the homes meet designated standards and will o

Asus launched a new VivoBook S, the S510, today that features a seventh-generation Intel Core i7 processor, runs Windows 10, and is designed to look nearly identical to the MacBook Air. The laptop weighs only 3.3 pounds and has 7.8mm-thick bezel.
Here are the specs:
15.6-inch Full HD, 1920 x 1280 display
Either Intel Core i7-7500U or i7-7200U processor (depending on model)
8GB of RAM
Ports: USB-C, USB Type-A, USB 2.0, HDMI, headphone jack
Up to 1TB of storage (depending on model)
Windows 10 Home

I got to play around 40 minutes of Super Mario Odyssey at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) trade event in Los Angeles last week, and while it was a blast overall, the best part is that each moment is often bursting with surprises.
Above: A visual delight.Image Credit: Nintendo
As always, Nintendo has put an excruciating amount of effort into tiny details for its upcoming Switch platformer, which is due out on October 27. My favorite example of that is the transition from the 2D retro platf

Google is launching a new, more limited cinematic VR format that it hopes will be almost as accessible as regular YouTube videos. It’s called VR180, a collaboration between YouTube and Google’s Daydream VR division. And it’ll be produced with a new line of cameras from Yi, Lenovo, and LG, as well as other partners who meet VR180 certification standards.
As the name suggests, VR180 videos don’t stretch all the way around a viewer in VR. They’re supposed to be immersi

The eighth annual VidCon starts today, and all eyes are on YouTube, the world’s biggest platform for online video. It’s been almost two years since the company announced Red, its subscription service, and began creating ad-free original content that would exist behind a paywall. While the company hasn’t shared any hard subscriber numbers yet, it’s made clear that its bet on original programming is only going to grow. The audience is massive enough. The company announced t

VB EVENT: MobileBeat 2017 is not here for the dreamers — it’s built by the doers. And this year they’re getting the spotlight, too. We’re offering the MobileBeat stage to the established brands that aren’t resting on their laurels — the ones who have plunged head-first into hands-on, results-oriented, ROI-blasting AI, while everyone else is still standing on shore.
Sound like you?
Then let us know and you may get a spot in the lineup. In this dynamic brea

The FCC today proposed to add the “Blue Alert” to the US Emergency Alert System which will notify the public of nearby suspects or threats to their communities’ law enforcement officials. The Blue Alert was introduced in 2015 after two New York City police officers were ambushed and killed while on duty.
modeled after the Amber Alert
The proposal seeks to make the Blue Alert, currently active in 27 states, a consistent, nationwide system that each state and local agency can ado

Don't challenge this cat to a game of Hide and Seek, as you will surely lose. 
Our furry friend Loki the cat was caught on camera climbing into a dresser drawer it opened itself.
It's pretty freaky, actually. We can see how a cat might learn to open a drawer, but we're mystified as to how a cat could learn to close the drawer from the inside!
Just another sign that cats will rule us all one day. Read more...
More about Watercooler, Video, Cats, Culture, and Web Culture

No, there are no typos in that headline. 
Cosby will soon be embarking on a tour of "town halls" to educate young men about how to avoid and handle sexual assault allegations, his representatives, Andrew Wyatt and Ebonee Benson,  said Wednesday on Good Day Alabama, a morning news show on Birmingham, Alabama FOX affiliate WBRC.
The announcement comes at 4:50 in the below clip.WBRC FOX6 News - Birmingham, ALWyatt said, with a chuckle, “This issue can affect any young person, especi

We could all use a hug sometimes, but nobody wants a hug from Sen. Ted Cruz.
Actress Alyssa Milano is known to get pretty political on Twitter, so it's surprising that Ted Cruz walked himself into this embarrassing situation, but then again, it's Ted Cruz. 
Milano sent her 3.14 million followers a digital group hug on Tuesday, asking all to get in on the action. But when Cruz tried to get in on the action, things got weird. 
SEE ALSO: Surprise, no one wants to be Ted Cruz's Secret Sant

Some Uber employees — including a few managers — are circulating a petition that calls for the reinstatement of Travis Kalanick, who was forced to resign as CEO earlier this week. The petition, which was first reported by Recode and BuzzFeed, speaks in glowing terms about Kalanick and calls for supportive employees to “revolt this!”Also making the rounds is a letter to the company’s board that includes the signatures of over 1,000 employees asking for the return of

A new Netflix-funded Star Trek series is coming to CBS this fall and it has us feeling some type of way. New characters, new missions, and new frontiers to explore – beam us up, Scotty!
Set a decade before the original series, Star Trek: Discovery will follow the crew aboard the USS Discovery as they fly through the cosmos to discover new civilizations.
Although September feels like light years away, that doesn’t mean we can’t start to prepare. Make the countdown to the premie

GUEST: Have you ever wished you had a personal assistant to help you find a new job or move up in your career? Well, now you can have one, thanks to the chatbot.
Chatbots know how to interact with people, because they either follow a human-composed set of rules or learn how to communicate via artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Bots that follow rules are more limited and can only answer things they’ve been programmed to understand. They won’t recognize anything that someone di

So... you know how everyone's been saying wearables are on the way out, or already dead? 
You should probably call off the funeral. If new projections pan out, the market for the gadgets is heating up, and it's only going to get hotter.  
Research firm IDC's latest wearables report estimated that global wearable vendors will ship a whopping 125.5 million devices this year, a 20.4 percent increase from the 104.3 million units thought to have shipped in 2016. But this year is just the st

Being lucky enough to get one of Hearthstone‘s rarest cards should make you feel great, but getting one you already have is infuriating. Blizzard is going to fix that.
Starting with the next Hearthstone expansion (which we don’t know anything about, including when it will drop), you will no longer be able to open a duplicate Legendary card when unwrapping new packs. Instead, Blizzard is guaranteeing that any Legendary you get will be one you don’t already own from that set.
Car

No one will ever mistake Donald Trump for Machiavelli, but the current president probably thinks of himself as a political magician.
On Thursday, just after the U.S. Senate had unveiled their draft of the American Health Care Act, aka "Trumpcare," the Tangerine Dream in the White House decided it was a great time to throw the internet into a tizzy.With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea...
— Donald

China is tightening its control over internet content. Yesterday, the government reportedly told three websites — Sina Weibo, iFeng, and ACFUN — to stop streaming video and audio content that apparently were “not in line with national audiovisual regulations and propagating negative speech,” according to the Financial Times.All three sites lack a license to stream content, China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) says.

Russian authorities blocked Google for about three hours on Thursday. 
And while this may seem like a familiar story — another instance of an authoritarian government blocking major internet sites — this brief Google blockage may have been a true blip, according to The Moscow Times
SEE ALSO: Homeland Security confirmed Russians targeted nearly half the U.S. for election hacks
Roskomnadzor, an internet regulator that controls the flow of mass communication and informati

Gaming is reaching a point where its most bleeding edge technologies are challenging to demonstrate to a remote audience. At last week’s E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo gaming trade event) in Los Angeles, PlayStation VR and the Xbox One X’s 4K HDR gaming struggled to translate to gamers watching livestreams at homes. But that’s the kind of problem that has frustrated audio companies for years.
That’s why I was glad that I checked in on Creative (the Sound BlasterX g

Airbnb is testing a feature that should have existed ages ago: split payments.
Currently, if you book an Airbnb for a group of people, one person has to charge the entire expense, and if there’s a need to collect payments from other parties, well, that’s on you. Now, as reported by The Next Web, Airbnb is testing a function with a small group of listings that allows payments to be split up to 16 ways beforehand.
Airbnb has been rolling out several updates this year to make the servic

JetSmarter, a Florida startup that offers a subscription service for air travel on private planes, is being sued by former employees who alleges the company failed to pay thousands of hours of overtime. The lead plaintiff, Grace Lamey, worked as a shuttle experience manager, dealing with things like reservations, boarding, and handing out food and drinks.Lamey’s lawsuit alleges that during the three years she worked for JetSmarter, she and other employees regularly worked more than 65 hour

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor will cost you just $4 as one of the highlighted deals during Steam's annual Summer Sale.
The (almost) two-week sale kicked off on Thursday, June 22, and will be running until July 5 at 1 p.m. ETMordor is the first day's big highlight, but it's hardly alone.
SEE ALSO: Valve's wild VR controller solves a big problem with virtual hands
Also in the "omg how is it so cheap?" category are Mafia III ($14.79), most of the Call of Duty series (many titles — including

Facebook announced a massive change today. CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared the company with nearly 2 billion monthly active users has a new mission statement: Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. The old mission was “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
Facebook may have a tweaked, slightly different mission, but it still has a lot of work to do to address some of its failings. Last week, Facebook

In a new developer update, Overwatch lead designer Jeff Kaplan detailed changes coming to Blizzard’s hit team-based shooter. Players will be able to bookmark their own highlights while they play the game, and they can also export them as videos. Meanwhile, Blizzard is promising that loot boxes will soon give out fewer duplicate items.
Overwatch has been a huge hit for Blizzard since its release in May 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It already has over 30 million players. Quality

Chance The Rapper is backtracking so hard.
SEE ALSO: Chance the Rapper adds ASL interpreters for an inclusive concert experience
In a tweetstorm Thursday morning the independent artist apologized to Dr. Dre for his "Be Encouraged" tour set that includes a backdrop mocking and satirizing major record labels, including Dre's Aftermath Entertainment label. (He called it "Can't Do Math Entertainment.")Meanwhile at Chance The Rapper's tour..pic.twitter.com/VHbu1TclKI
— RESPECT. MAGAZINE (@RESPE

"How to get a job at:" is a series of interviews with hiring managers at companies in order to provide specific and useful insight into... well, how to get a job. Read the first installment here.
Imagine standing on the red carpet of the Met Gala, photographing Rihanna’s ensemble and immortalizing this moment for years to come. That’s just another day in the life for photographers at Getty Images. For the Getty Images team, photography is the purest form of communication –&ndas

Exoskeletons can be incredibly useful, giving people extra strength or the ability to move freely when injured or disabled. But augmented performance comes at a cost, and users usually have to put in more effort while wearing these prosthetics. Scientists are trying to fix this: they have developed a new system that actively saves the user’s energy by adjusting the exoskeleton to their body’s natural movement.
Now, the idea that exoskeletons consume additional energy may seem a bit c

Scientists may have just cracked the mystery of why bird eggs come in all shapes and sizes: it has to do with the bird’s ability to soar up in the sky — and the body changes wrought by years of evolution.
Egg shapes are incredibly diverse among bird species: hummingbirds lay eggs in the shape of Tic Tacs; owls make globe-like eggs; and sand pipers lay pointy eggs shaped like raindrops. But how did different egg shapes evolve, and why?
Through the years, scientists have come up with m