Technology news

On June 29, we learned that Samsung, the creators of the Oculus-powered Gear VR headset, filed a patent in late December of last year for magnetic VR hand controllers. Based on the description in the patent and the accompanying concept image (embedded below), the controllers would be used to provide more visceral and accurate hand-tracking for the Gear VR.
According to the Abstract, the patent is for: “a method of controlling an electronic device, the method includes, based on a

GUEST: The internet is overflowing with tips on how to hack your health. From increasing cognitive function by drinking butter-spiked coffee to tracking sleep, stress, and activity levels with increasingly sophisticated fitness wearables, ours is a culture obsessed with optimizing performance. Combining this ethos with recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, it’s practically inevitable that the next frontier in achieving superhuman status lies in the rapidly developing field of br

This week was the iPhone’s 10th birthday, but if I’m going to be completely honest, I was one of the holdouts who didn’t get one until two years ago.
For years after the iPhone was released in 2007, I was a hermit who believed that I didn’t need material, worldly possessions. When my dad asked multiple times if I wanted to upgrade my dated LG VX5200 flip phone, I said no. My reasoning was that since it had a camera in it, my phone was already pretty cool.
Somehow, I survi

Phil Harrison was probably the tallest person at the Gamelab gaming event in Barcelona, Spain, this week. And that, along with his decades of gaming experience, gives him a great view into the past and the future of games.
Harrison ran research and development and first party worldwide studios for Sony’s PlayStation business. He left that position in 2008, and he began investing in game companies via London Venture Partners. In 2012, he became a corporate executive at Microsoft’s Xbo

In the wake of last week’s massive Petya ransomware attack in Eastern Europe, researchers are reaching consensus that the incident was a politically-motivated cyberattack. According to CNBC, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) recently put out a statement claiming that the attack was like done by a state actor or a group with state approval. The development means that the cyberattack could be viewed as an act of war, triggering Article 5 of the Washington Trea

GUEST: With nearly 30 years of experience in both operations and investing, I may have developed a few gray hairs, but I’ve also learned a thing or two about what an effective, well-run board looks like. I’ve gleaned most of this hard-earned knowledge from witnessing what not to do — too many boards are poorly organized, with investor syndication woes and an imbalanced composition of members.
Building a board is incredibly challenging, yet getting it right is critical to settin

Game of Thrones sound designer Paula Fairfield found herself explaining the basic function of her job at a Saturday morning Con of Thrones panel called “Bringing Westeros to Life.”
As part of Game of Thrones sound team — which includes the people responsible for music, dialogue, and sound effects like clanging swords and footsteps — she’s the one who does “the weird shit, all the fantastical stuff.” She invents the noises for dragons, direwolves, White W

From up above, I spotted the trio of Lamborghinis parked in formation. The unmistakable sharp, angular forms cast in red, white, and blue sparkled in the sunshine. My heart jumped as the helicopter descended onto the Poconos Raceway in Pennsylvania. The effect was as it was orchestrated to be — stunning and seductive. I was part of an effort to woo a small cadre of journalists on the attributes of the Aventador S, or at least to give us a glimpse into how some Lamborghini customers use the

Supercell is generating a ton of cash from its ongoing successful games like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. Most of the company is now owned by China’s Tencent. But rather than use its riches to expand its internal staff, the company believes in staying small, according to cofounder Mikko Kodisoja.
Supercell has just 240 employees, and most of them operate in small teams, or “cells,” of five or 10 people. I interviewed Kodisoja at the Gamelab gaming event in Barcelona this we

They stack up like old magazines in your doctor’s office. A new app, a dozen pictures from your weekend, a quick downloaded video or two… before you know it, your smartphone, tablet or laptop is awash in extraneous files that can ultimately slow your device down to a crawl. Get on top of that cyber-house-cleaning now by shipping files up to the cloud with a lifetime subscription to Degoo’s premium storage services. Right now, you can get 2 TB of cloud storage for on

This summer is shaping up to be packed full of SpaceX launches, with another one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets set to take off later this evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This time, the vehicle is tasked with launching a communications satellite into a high orbit for the company Intelsat. And it comes just a week after SpaceX’s “doubleheader” weekend, when it launched two rockets in just 49 hours.
Unlike most SpaceX launches lately, this rocket will not attempt a

Twenty years ago, Barry Sonnenfeld gave the world Men in Black, a science fiction comedy perhaps best remembered for its music video, featuring Will Smith dancing alongside a compute-animated space alien. But what I remember most fondly is a low-stakes scene with no special effects or pop songs. Tucked into the first act, the moment is brief, subtle, and to this day, I find it unrivaled in terms of charm and efficiency.Some setup: Men in Black begins with NYPD officer James Darrell Edwards III (

Apple’s new ARKit platform basically looks like HoloLens inside of an iPhone. All that’s missing is a controller-free interaction system. A new patent uncovered this week suggests that may be on the way, though.
Patently Apple has revealed a new filing from the company for a new 3D camera system with depth sensing capabilities used for gesture recongition. The system takes data from the reflected points of a light beam to “compute a depth map” of the area around it.

The Chevrolet Bolt EV, outfitted with General Motors’ self-driving electric car technology, has finally hit the streets. GM is about to become one of the first automakers to build and mass produce a self-driving electric car that you will actually be able to purchase and drive in the near future. Since January, the American multinational automaker has created 180 cars for testing purposes in places like San Francisco and Detroit.
With the help of Cruise Automation, GM has become the f

A very good, 11/10 app may soon be heading to an iPhone or iPad near you.
The term Dogmented Reality was first coined for a 2016 April Fools gag from Meta, but now it’s very much a real thing for some smartphone users. Follow the Dogmented Reality hashtag on Twitter and you’ll find scores of people touring the world with virtual pets that sit in our reality a little like you’ll find in other apps like Pokémon Go. The problem is that, just like those other apps,

GUEST: Of all the fields in the chatbot-crazed world, customer service is one of the prime targets for automation. virtual customer agents (customer service-focused bots, or VCAs) are intelligent systems able to understand what users ask via chat and to provide them with adequate answers. In the context of this article, when we talk about VCAs we mean systems that are able to understand natural language and texting and do not just operate in a rules-based multiple-choice environment. In short, t