Technology news

What are you hoping to get out of your career? A hefty 401k? A six figure salary? Nice Christmas bonuses? If you’re like most Millennials, you likely just want to be satisfied with the work you do and the company you do it for. Job satisfaction is a result of a variety of aspects coming into play. Primarily, job satisfaction comes when employees feel that they are in a trusting and respectful environment. Job satisfaction also goes hand in hand with job security, as well as the potential

RadioShack, the 96-year-old electronics store that’s gone bankrupt twice in the last decade, is still here — and a new business just ensured it’ll still be here a little while longer. Talk about a blast from the past. According to Reuters, Kensington Capital Holdings, a single family office from Boston, assumed ownership of the chain with a $15 million bid. According to Reuters‘ sources, the new owners will license the brand back to the company that currently operat

Apple released its newest security update today in the form of iOS 10.3.3. As is standard, the update patches multiple vulnerabilities, including some that could have allowed for remote code execution, aka an attacker doing things on your device that you don't want and without your knowledge. This time around, Apple has also patched a bug that would have let attackers execute code on devices' Broadcom Wi-Fi chip, which could let them seize control of the device.
The bug, known as CVE-2017-9417,

GUEST: American physician and surgeon William J. Mayo, one of the founders of the famed Mayo Clinic, stated, “The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life, the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician.” Emerging applications of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as medical research trends, suggests that we are moving toward fulfilling medicine’s aim and achieving its ideal.
Health care organizations appear to be preparing themselves for the nex

 The TechCrunch Summer Party is a thing of tradition and we hope you can make it out this year. As in years past we’ll gather on the spacious grounds of August Capital in Menlo Park and enjoy an evening of cocktails and the spirit of entrepreneurship. The deck around August Capital’s office is large but cannot hold all of Silicon Valley, so tickets are very limited and released on… Read More

Moon Hunters was released on Xbox One today, becoming the first “co-op personality test” on the console. It’s actually a video-game, not a test, and it doesn’t seem to tell you anything about your own personality. In spite of itself though, Moon Hunters is a beautiful game that weaves a compelling story. The game is a short adventure that has players hack and slash through a tale broken into five parts. Each ‘telling’ of the story, or play-through, adds to th

In an effort to explain how dogs evolved into the brazen, adorable mooches we know and love, scientists have identified a few genetic mutations that may be behind their friendly personalities. The new research is part of a broader push to understand dogs’ mysterious origins, and to explain just how they became our best furry friends.Somehow, dogs have evolved to like being around humans
Somehow, dogs have evolved to like being around humans. In return for their exuberant, slobbery affectio

GUEST: If your WordPress site uses third-party plugins, you may be experiencing data loss and other problematic behavior without even knowing it.
Like many of you, I’ve become quite attached to WordPress over the past 15 years. It is by far the most popular content management system, powering 28 percent of the Internet, and still the fastest growing, with over 500 sites created on the platform each day. Considering myself well versed in the software, I was surprised to discover — whi

Microsoft is partnering with Johnson Controls to build a thermostat. The software giant unveiled the new GLAS thermostat in a YouTube video today. It’s built by Johnson Controls, makers of the first electric room thermostat. It appears that GLAS will include a translucent touchscreen display that will allow owners to alter room temperatures, check energy usage and air quality, and see calendar information.
GLAS will run on Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT Core operating system, and will ha

Yes, I am writing about the PlayStation Vita in 2017. Sony’s latest (and likely last) portable system was never a huge hit. But now, four years after its 2013 launch, it’s unpopular and kind of old. Despite the random odd release here and there, the system is all but dead. And I’m one of the few who mourns its demise.
I play my Vita almost every night. Mind you, I never cared much for Sony’s lame attempts to bring its big PlayStation franchises like Killzon

Roads aren’t the stagnant strips of concrete and asphalt they appear to be. They’re constantly changing. Traffic lights are added and removed, stop-and-go intersections turn into roundabouts, a typically quiet street turns into a construction zone. It’s happening everywhere, all the time.Human drivers might be able adjust to this dynamic environment, but autonomous vehicles need extra help. They need maps. But not just any old map will do, say the three founders behind Lvl5, a

Teen Wolf will head into its 10th and final season at the end of the month, but MTV isn’t going to let one of its most successful scripted shows die that peacefully. The network and Teen Wolf showrunner Jeff Davis are considering allowing the series storyline to run off into a serialized podcast, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The podcast is the idea of new MTV president Chris McCarthy, who was hired last fall to revamp MTV’s slate of TV shows and revive its cultural impact. Mc

Today, Elon Musk suggested that SpaceX will abandon its plans to land the company’sDragon capsule on Mars — a mission the company had been aiming to do as early as 2020.SpaceX will not fully develop the landing technique it was going to use to land the Dragon on Mars. Known as the Red Dragon mission, the capsule was meant to lower itself to solid ground using engines embedded in its hull, and then touch down gently on landing legs in a method known as propulsive landing. But Musk sai

The original Google Pixel had somewhat divisive looks, but if recent leaks are anything to go by, the second version will appeal much more to the masses. Now a render based on those leaks gives us a good idea of just how sleek it might be. YouTube Channel Concept Creator took a stab at creating 3D models of the device, including some possible shades and two-tone color configurations. While there’s nothing to suggest Google will use these specific colorings, chances are there will at least

Oracle customers can now start deploying the company’s software-as-a-service applications in their private data centers with an update to its Cloud at Customer portfolio announced today. The changes will allow businesses to rent hardware that runs the same enterprise resource planning, human capital management, customer experience, and supply chain management applications that are available through Oracle’s public cloud services.
In addition, Oracle expanded the platform-as-a-se

It was an unusual sight: Democrats and Republicans gently ribbing each other, giggling, and vowing to work closely together on legislation that is said to be vital to the health and safety of Americans. Of all the things that could bring both parties together in this era of rank partisanship, who would have thought it would be self-driving cars?The convivial atmosphere in today’s hearing by the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection, which was to mark-up a package o

French fashion house Balmain is releasing its own version of Beats Powerbeats 3 Wireless earbuds and Beats Studio Wireless over-ear headphones. If you're like me — which I hope you're not — your mind immediately went to the Kardashians after reading "Balmain." Congrats! You've successfully been conditioned to associate the two brands with each other. And, of course, keeping with the Balmain / Kardashian connection, Kylie Jenner is the face of these new Beats products. The entire land

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center is in the process of uploading hundreds of videos of rare test flight, launch, and landing footage to YouTube and the agency’s website. It’s all part of a continued effort to better open access to NASA’s archives, as well as help inform the public about the types of research and record-setting milestones the agency achieves each year across various fields of aerospace engineering.About 300 out of a total 500 clips have been uploaded

Apple was granted a new patent this week, one that’s particularly interesting given Apple’s upcoming HomePod and rumors of a wirelessly charging iPhone 8: an iPhone dock that could have Siri and a wireless charger built in.
The patent, officially for a “Smart dock for activating a voice recognition mode of a portable electronic device,” is pretty broad. It covers a dock that could recognize that an iPhone had been placed into it and activate a microphone that could listen

 Om Malik, the venerable entrepreneur, writer and now investor, joined TechCrunch editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino for our second episode of The TechCrunch Podcast. In 2006, Malik turned his personal tech blog GigaOm into a business to track the tech industry. In that time he watched the industry evolve rapidly with the pace of innovation. But there’s a problem with that pace, he says,… Read More

GUEST: After processing over 7 billion messages at Dashbot, we took a deeper look into the languages with which users communicate. As we’ve mentioned before, it’s important to look at the messages users are sending to your chatbots. The beauty of conversational interfaces is that users say exactly what they want from the bot — and what they think of it afterwards. Examining the messages and taking action on them can help improve the engagement of your chatbot.
In the

Christopher Nolan, director of high-concept blockbusters like The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar, and famous defender of the old-school institutions of film, went on a bit of an anti-Netflix rant during an interview with IndieWire today.
“Netflix has a bizarre aversion to supporting theatrical films,” he told IndieWire’s Eric Kohn. “They have this mindless policy of everything having to be simultaneously streamed and released, which is obviously an untenable mod

Amazon’s Treasure Truck, a truck loaded with daily deals and trendy products, is finally expanding to other US cities. The truck has been limited to Seattle, Amazon’s hometown, since it was first launched 2016, a year after it was announced.Since its launch, the Treasure Truck has served as a guerrilla marketing tactic for Amazon in Seattle, complete with cosplayers, an occasional free bag of chips, and a football star behind the wheel. In order to be in the loop on what the day&rsqu

Samsung’s new voice assistant Bixby has finally arrived, and unfortunately, it was accompanied by sexist descriptions for its male and female voice options.
Under “language and speaking style” in the Bixby menu, as several have pointed out on Twitter, the female voice was accompanied by descriptive tags such as “chipper, clear, and cheerful,” while the male voice was described as “assertive, confident, and clear.” After it was spotted and dissent circula

A thick tendril snakes its way across a desk. It turns sharply, heading up to wrap its single, tube-like appendage around a valve that moves slowly under its pressure. Though it looks like the work of a sentient vine, it’s actually a robot: a soft, plant-inspired creation that “grows” as a form of movement.Plants adapt to their surroundings in clever ways. They sprout around, or sometimes through, physical obstacles like brick and wood; they rise in the direction of light sourc

Zynga has teamed up with MGM Television to develop a primetime TV show based on Zynga’s Words With Friends puzzle game.
There’s a trend to combine games with TV game shows, and it’s either a brilliant way to do cross marketing — or a doomed effort to save TV as millennials go online for their entertainment.
Zynga is experimenting with new platforms to broaden the reach of Words With Friends, much like Activision Blizzard’s King division is doing with its new Candy C

New data released this week by the DC District Court shows a massive increase in sealed court orders demanding location or internet data, as first reported by The Washington Post. The number of orders increased seven times over during the last three years, reaching 1,136 orders in 2016.The orders include requests for historical cell site information from carriers — essentially your cell provider’s records on the location of your phone — as well as broadband providers’ rec

Hoverboards are still a thing, apparently, and they're still terrible. Researchers at IOActive have found that security oversights in the Ninebot by Segway miniPRO hoverboard could allow an attacker to remotely track hoverboard riders, circumvent safety locks, remotely execute code, and even take over the machine.Thomas Kilbride, embedded devices security consultant at IOActive, tested his Ninebot over eight months and found that exploiting even a single vulnerability could yield full control of

Nintendo is releasing Splatoon 2 for the Switch this Friday. Alongside that ink shooter, the publisher is also planning to introduce its new online app that enables players to group up and voice chat when in multiplayer matches. And it turns out that playing online without that app is a real pain.
We’ve put some time into Splatoon 2, and reviewer Mike Minotti thinks the series is still fresh now that it has migrated from the Wii U to Nintendo’s newest hardware. What is not so fresh i

Today I watched a YouTube video of a Roomba rolling and tripping its way through an obstacle course. The video was shot during a student robotics challenge at UC Berkeley, and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect when you hear the phrase “Roomba obstacle course.” So what stuck out to me wasn’t the little machine failing to complete simple movements, but the background noise: the person shooting the video, or maybe the person behind them, is laughing. Loudly.
I

Hulu is getting its hands on the streaming rights to a new lineup of shows, including every episode of How I Met Your Mother, MASH, NYPD Blue, and Glee. Episodes for these shows are expected to be added to the service over the next few weeks.Unlike NYPD Blue or MASH, shows like How I Met Your Mother are currently available to stream on Netflix. The addition continues to push Hulu closer to the expansive offerings of its biggest competitor, though the service still has a ways to go in terms of me