Technology news

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We’re looking for two people, one in San Francisco and one in New York, who love covering the business of technology but are not infatuated with it. Reporters with a critical eye, an ability to develop sources, and a knack for breaking news.
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YIIK: A Postmodern RPG (or Y2K) is a surreal role-playing game from developer Ackk Studios and publisher Ysbryd Games. It draws inspiration from Japanese RPGs like the heartwarming EarthBound and ultra-stylish Persona, resulting in a pop culture oddball that stands out in a genre that’s replete with swords and sorcery. It’s slated for release later this year for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Wii U.
In a hands-on demo at the Ele

From the moment I saw it, I was instantly enamored with TRVL. The brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Jochem Wijnands, TRVL is a sort of mashup that turns each user into a travel agent with the potential to earn money for their recommendations. Think of it as TripAdvisor meets Airbnb and Skyscanner. Travelers, Wijnands says, are the best source of information for other travelers. And while the typical tourist spends hours scouring the web for information, TRVL puts all this information at your fin

In case you were lucky enough to miss Bethesda’s tepid showing at E3 2017, blockbuster RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is getting yet another re-release. This time, it’s coming out, at least in part, in VR. If this were the first, or even the second time that Skyrim has resurfaced, I might not bat an eyelash. But since its release in 2011, it’s been re-released three times: for current gen consoles in 2016, and VR and Nintendo Switch this year. Hey Bethesda? I&r

When was the last time you bought a laptop  that lasted as long as advertised, especially if its a PC? Probably not any time recently. Problem is, manufacturers continue to insist on using video playback to measure battery life. That is, frankly, nonsensical; video playback is literally one of the most efficient things a modern processor can do, and using it to measure battery life creates wildly unrealistic expectations for the average consumer. In my experience, modern laptops only last

If you’re at your keyboard, look down at the keypad and try to enter the input to perform the shoryuken dragon punch from Street Fighter. If you did it right, you would have hit 6, 2, and then 3 — or, in other words, June 23.
That’s right! Move over hashtag Mar10 (March 10 for Mario) and hashtag May the Fourth Be With You (for Star Wars day) — it’s time for another dubious brand holiday with 6/23 for Shoryuken day. To perform a Shoryuken, you have to move your

Earlier this week, Snapchat introduced Snap Map, an opt-in function that allows you to share your location with your friends on a map. Snapchat’s introduction video to Snap Map, seen above, focuses on sharing the location of posted Snaps to Our Story, which is public, and could be useful for, say, seeing a collection of Snaps from a particular event.
But what Snapchat doesn’t tell you in the video, or in the app, is that if you aren’t careful, Snap Map will broadcast your exact

The Wolfenstein video game story is quite disturbing. It’s built on a fictional alternative history, where the Nazis won World War II. By 1961, they have crushed all opposition and corrupted American culture with “Nazification.”In 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order, the American hero BJ Blazkowicz awakens from a coma and helps lead the opposition to the Nazis by gunning them down at every turn. The first-person shooter was one of the finest of the year.
Now the developer,

SpaceX has successfully launched and landed a recycled Falcon 9 rocket for the second time. The rocket’s first stage — the 14-story-tall core that houses the fuel and the rocket’s main engines — touched down on one of the company’s autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from a launchpad at nearby Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s the 12th time SpaceX has successfully landed one of these rocket stages out of 17 attempts, and the seven

Last year, Google opened up a program called “Posts on Google,” which let big companies and celebrities feature content in a carousel in search results. And today, Google is opening that up to local businesses, allowing them to directly inject things like daily specials, events, products, and more to results for when customers search for the business, as noted by TechCrunch.The new posts show up below the company card in search results, where information like the location, phone numb

ANALYSIS: SpaceX is planning to launch a Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage that has previously been used to deliver satellites into space. The launch — carrying the first geostationary communications satellite in Bulgaria’s history – is expected to be deployed around 12:10 p.m. PT and will be streamed live on YouTube and a site SpaceX has set up here.
The first-stage rocket was used to launch an Iridium satellite in January. The Bulgarian satellite will be deployed into geosta

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is one of the most popular games in the world right now, and it is making more money every day thanks to its viral appeal livestreaming video services. It’s is also coming off its first appearance at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo industry and fan event) in Los Angeles, where Microsoft revealed the Battle Royale-like online shooter will hit Xbox One later this year with support for the powerful Xbox One X coming later in 2017. While that will

HTC today released a video of some new features coming to Edge Sense, the headlining, squeeze-your-phone-to-do-something feature of its U11 smartphone. The examples shown include Google Maps (which automatically zooms in when you squeeze), Google Photos (same thing), Calendar (change to a different view with a squeeze), and the ability to end calls by — you guessed it — squeezing the phone.I don’t know about you, but my response to every single one of these new functions was &l

ANALYSIS: BlackBerry shares fell as much as 12 percent after the company said its revenue fell short of analyst expectations. Revenue fell 43 percent to $244 million, the company said, below Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $264 million.
Despite the revenue decline, BlackBerry managed to post a net profit of 2 cents a share, above the break-even forecast of analysts.
CEO John Chen has been trying to engineer a turnaround at BlackBerry by moving away from its long-declining handset busin

Instagram is rethinking the way you share on the platform. According to a report by The Verge, the company is testing a feature that allows you to share photos with just a limited group of friends – and Instagram will be a lot better for it. Currently, you have little in the way of privacy controls on Instagram. You can either make your account public and share with everyone, or make it private so that all your photos are only visible by the people you approve. That doesn’t allow fo

As a salesperson, you have one thing on your mind: closing as many deals as possible. Regardless of how much time you put into the sales process, it all comes down to the “final push.” This is when you negotiate, discuss the finer details, and do whatever it takes to close the deal. There is nothing more stressful than this. Have you struggled to close deals in the past? Are you wondering what you’re doing wrong? By reviewing your past strategy, you can make changes to help bo

SPONSORED: Presented by IBM
A recent report by Skyhigh Networks stated that the average organization used a whopping 1,427 cloud services in Q3 of 2016, representing a 23.7 percent growth over the same quarter in the previous year. These numbers clearly illustrate the extent of the shadow IT problem. Cloud services provide several advantages of improved agility, productivity, and user experience, but they also represent significant risk for the IT and security teams.
Across the 20,000 cloud serv

OPINION: Arguably the most bizarre news this week is that Tesla is talking to labels about its own music streaming service. At first glance, this makes very little sense. So let’s try to unpack this, starting by looking at the only thing Tesla has actually said about the rumor.
“We believe it’s important to have an exceptional in-car experience so our customers can listen to the music they want from whatever source they choose,” a Tesla spokesperson told Recode. “Ou

Google will stop its long-standing practice of scanning the contents of individual Gmail users for advertising purposes, according to a report from the Financial Times. The practice, something Google has done nearly since the launch of its email service, allows the company to digest the contents of email messages and use them to deliver targeted ads within Gmail itself.Google is trying to convince more businesses to use its cloud services
Users are allowed to opt out, and Google also reserves th

Jennifer Fonstad, cofounder of Aspect Ventures and a seasoned venture capitalist, admits she’s more of an introvert than an extrovert. But when it comes to networking with Silicon Valley insiders, she’s a pro. Her advice: Don’t be afraid to ask.
Fonstad offered her advice at the Catalyst Conference in San Francisco this week in a fireside chat with Christina Passariello of the Wall Street Journal. The event was staged by Girls in Tech, a nonprofit group supporting women in

The enhanced version of Call of Duty 4 is now a standalone title — at least on PS4. Today Activision announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered will be available on Sony’s console on June 27th for $39.99. The game — which features the same story campaign and multiplayer maps as the 2007 original, but with updated visuals — was previously available bundled with special editions of last year’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. As of now, however, there&rsquo

Activision said that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered will go on sale as a stand-alone video game on the PlayStation 4 on June 27.
The exclusive release means PS4 fans will be able to get the game in stores or via download on the PlayStation Network for $40, while other platforms will follow at a later time. The game includes the full campaign and the 16 multiplayer maps from Modern Warfare, all remastered with high-definition visuals. Modern Warfare Remastered shipped in the deluxe

Google built an empire by collecting your data to sell ads, but soon one of Google’s more intrusive methods of data collection is coming to an end.
In a blog post this morning, Google says it will cease scanning Gmail inboxes to personalize ads sometime “later this year.”
The change mirrors how Google’s “G Suite” service for businesses already works — if you or your company pays for Gmail, Google says it never used your inbox to personalize ads.
That doe

Hello, and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Final Fantasy XIV suffered a DDos (distributed denial-of-service) attack, Blizzard announced plans to make duplicate item drops in Overwatch and Hearthstone less of a pain, and Injustice 2 got off to a strong sales start.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: The 12 best games of E3 2017
Sea of Thieves should go into Early Access on PC and Xbox One right now
AR/VR Weekly: Virtual reality takes

A widely used method to find oil and gas for offshore drilling can kill tiny sea creatures that are key for feeding many marine animals like shellfish, fish, and even whales. And the impacts on these tiny, drifting creatures — called zooplankton — are seen in an area much larger than previously thought.The study, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, adds to the body of evidence that the loud noises produced during oil and gas exploration can disrupt marine life &mda

2017 has been a big revival year for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show got its start in the late 1980s, moved to Comedy Central for half the 1990s, and closed out the decade on the Sci Fi Channel before its 1999 cancellation. But this year, it returned with a new series on Netflix. And for fans who miss the retro spin of the show — an odd tale of a janitor held hostage by mad scientists and forced to watch bad movies — Twitch is airing a marathon of “classic” episode

Yesterday afternoon, popular gadget reviewer Marques Brownlee tweeted out a link to an article on a Tesla fan site of new leaked photos of the upcoming, hotly anticipated Model 3 electric car. “Yo Tesla Model 3 looks better and better in every leaked photo,” Brownlee tweeted. “Gotta love the incremental updates.”Tesla Model 3 Exterior and Interior (while super charging)
But the next day, Brownlee woke up to find that his tweet had been removed and replaced with this messa

Microsoft today updated Microsoft Teams with four classroom features “designed to help schools achieve more together.” The new functionality, previously limited to a select few in private preview, is now available to all Office 365 for Education customers worldwide.
Microsoft Teams launched worldwide in March as part of Office 365, meaning it was only for businesses. A week later, the company made Teams available in Office 365 Education so faculty, staff, and students could also use

GamesBeat 2017 will take place at San Francisco’s beautiful Fort Mason on October 5 and October 6. And we’re delighted to announce our next five speakers.
They include Paul Bettner, CEO of Playful; Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable; Bill Roper, chief creative officer of Improbable; Tim Chang, managing director at Mayfield Fund; and Ramez Naam, science fiction writer and author of the acclaimed Nexus series. You can save 20 percent on registration with our Save20 discount code.
Above:

EXCLUSIVE: Samsung is making preparations to launch its most expensive cellphone yet, telling partners that its Galaxy Note8 will retail for €999. The 6.3-inch device, with the same edge-to-edge, 18.5:9 aspect ratio AMOLED display as in the Galaxy S8 lineup, will be unveiled in the second half of September, an individual briefed on the company’s plans told VentureBeat.
At nearly the same size as the 6.2-inch Galaxy S8+, for the first time in its seven-year history, Samsung is counting

Putting together a website means answering a lot of questions. What type of layout should the site have? How should users navigate? What added graphics or animated elements would you like to see incorporated? For WordPress users, choosing the website theme that works best for you answers literally dozens of site creation questions with a single button push. For a decision that important, you can secure access to beautifully crafted and dazzlingly original WordPress themes with this lifetime sub

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has released a statement announcing that the commission has granted OneWeb approval for US market access to launch a network of internet-beaming satellites into orbit. OneWeb, which is backed in part by Richard Branson, has been working on providing broadband internet via satellite since 2000, when it acquired the satellite spectrum formerly owned by SkyBridge.
OneWeb plans to launch a constellation of 720 low-Earth orbit satellites using non-geostationary satellite orbit (

Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch, the follow-up to her acclaimed 2014 vampire love story A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, is set in a world that feels like a Lana Del Rey song made flesh. In a dystopian version of the Texas desert, one-armed, one-legged gunslinger Arlen (model Suki Waterhouse) tries to find a home for herself on the edge of civilization. Arlen’s world is full of broken TVs, giant boomboxes, AK-47s, booty shorts, crinkled July Fourth decorations, ceaseless ecstasy-f

One of the most beloved features Google implemented in Photos was the ability to back up your image collection only while charging. But it seems Android users are in for a bitter disappointment as the company has officially ditched the functionality in the latest version of the app. A litany of irked users flocked to the official Google support forums as well as some other smartphone communities to complain about the missing feature. While some initially speculated the issue could simply be the

Alright, it’s time for me to make up my mind. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big game trade show in Los Angeles, took place last week and I’ve got a good sense for the big games coming this year. I’ve thought about it and come up with my list of my favorite games from the show. I’ve also got a few observations about trends and some comments about some of the games that didn’t make the list.
I did see some repeats. Days Gone, God of War, Sea of Thieves,

Instagram has begun testing a way to share posts with a more limited group of friends. Called favorites, the feature attempts to improve on earlier social network friend lists, encouraging users to post more often by giving them more control over their audience. If it rolls out broadly, the feature could turn Instagram into the default place to share for more groups of friends — and reshape the social dynamics of Instagram in the process.
Before Instagram developed favorites, users tried t

YouTube TV will expand to 10 more cities across the US, the company announced yesterday. The OTT service will expand to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit, Houston, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne, Phoenix, and Washington, DC.
The expansion comes two months after the launch of YouTube TV, which is currently only available in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The slow rollout is due to the fact th

Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been booted from the upcoming Han Solo movie — right in the middle of shooting — over creative differences with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and screenwriter and Star Wars creative legend Lawrence Kasdan. Ron Howard has reportedly stepped in to fill the void, but he’ll need to pick up where Lord and Miller left off, without much runway to do it.
The Han Solo movie is one of the most high-profile projects in Hollywood, the first

Ryozo Tsujimoto didn’t set out to create a Monster Hunter game aimed at Western audiences. It’s more like he stumbled upon the idea. Four years ago, Tsujimoto, who serves as producer on the upcoming Monster Hunter World, sat down with his development team at Capcom’s Osaka headquarters to brainstorm just what the next Monster Hunter should look like. Their first goal was to create a game for the modern generation of consoles. This was a big shift for a series that, despite debu

Here we go, another classic episode of The Vergecast. There were a lot of little things that happened this week, and we wanted to discuss them all, so Nilay, Dieter, and Paul go through their list of hits on the site.Also, to continue our weekly summer interview series, Nilay sits down with culture reporter Kaitlyn Tiffany to talk about her recent piece on Tumblr’s relationship with the fight over net neutrality.There’s so much in between all of this, so listen to it all, and you&rsq