Technology news

The latest version of Google Chrome (version 60, if you’re counting) is now available forWindows, Linux, and Mac — but the most interesting update for Mac is the addition of Touch Bar support for the newest models of MacBooks, as spotted by 9to5Mac. Chrome 60 now allows Touch Bar users to customize Chrome shortcuts by adding, removing, or rearranging buttons as they please.You can find this setting by making sure your Chrome version is updated, then heading to View > Customize Tou

President Trump says he’s finally gotten somewhere in his years-long crusade to get Apple to build more products in the US. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal today, Trump said that Apple CEO Tim Cook called him and committed to build “three big plants, beautiful plants” in the United States.
For now, there’s no detail beyond that. Apple declined to comment to the Journal and hasn’t responded to our own request for comment.
If Trump’s statement is co

USB-C has long been touted as the universal standard that will save us all, a single port that can charge your phone, your laptop, your tablet, your Bluetooth speaker, and even your Nintendo console, all through a single common port.Sadly, the future of charging isn’t quite that simple, with different voltage requirements, specifications for data transfer and power, and more all making it vastly more complicated to ensure that when you plug something into a USB-C port it will actually work

Android users will no longer be able to blame emoji for misunderstood texts. Developers working on updating their apps for the upcoming Android O release can now build in support for "emoji compatibility," which will prevent emoji from showing up as blank boxes when a user isn't running the most current version of Android with updated characters. They'll instead display the emoji through the support library. Google published a piece on how people can incorporate this feature into their apps. Alt

When Atsushi Hashimoto was a kid, he loved role-playing games. He’d settle in front of the television for hours, controller in hand, lost in quests full of magical spells and powerful evils. He was particularly enamored with the works of Squaresoft, now known as Square Enix, the developer behind 16-bit classics like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. As he grew older, classic-style Japanese RPGs largely went out of fashion, replaced by a combination of big-budget action games and smaller mo

Jason Chaffetz, who stepped down from his Utah seat in the House of Representatives last month, still absolutely hates the idea of non-wealthy Americans having smartphones. Today, the former Republican lawmaker posted an Instagram photo of an apparently homeless person near Times Square, snidely noting that the person was “streaming video on a phone.”
The last time we checked in on Chaffetz, he was suggesting that people show “self-reliance” by buying health insurance ins

(Update 5:20pm: All sold out).Missed out on the NES Classic? Already eagerly looking forward to being disappointed by not being able to purchase a SNES Classic this fall? Well, don’t give up hope just yet. ThinkGeek (which is owned by GameStop) has just put up one last batch of the NES Classic on its website.There is a catch, though
There is one catch, though: ThinkGeek isn’t selling the mini retro console as a standalone item for the usual retail price of $59.99. Rather, there&rsquo

Missed out on the NES Classic? Already eagerly looking forward to being disappointed by not being able to purchase a SNES Classic this fall? Well, don’t give up hope just yet. ThinkGeek (which is owned by GameStop) has just put up one last batch of the NES Classic on its website. (Update 3:35pm: The bundles are live!).There is a catch, though
There is one catch, though: ThinkGeek isn’t selling the mini retro console as a standalone item for the usual retail price of $59.99. Rather, t

If Facebook is planning to make a smart speaker, it should really reconsider.
A report in Digitimes today says that Facebook’s Building 8 research group is developing a smart speaker with a 15-inch touch panel. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of this: Digitimes has a mixed track record on tech rumors; supply chain sources can misidentify projects or describe early tests that don’t make it to market; Facebook doesn’t have a voice assistant yet; and a 15-inch screen on

Motorola just formally announced the newest addition to its collection of Moto Mod add-ons, a 360-degree camera that magnetically attaches to the back of any of the Moto Z series of devices.I had a few minutes to try out the new Mod, and it more or less works pretty much as advertised. The white back case isn’t much thicker than Motorola’s other wireless charging add-ons — except for the giant, two-sided camera that sticks out of the top. The module is probably a little bit too

As Uber stumbled from a series of self-inflicted scandals, Lyft’s business continues to grow. Bloomberg reported today that Lyft’s gross bookings, the revenue earned by its drivers, grew by about 25 percent to $1 billion in the second quarter from $800 million in the previous period. That’s a faster growth rate than Uber, which expects its gross bookings to increase in the “mid-teens” for this quarter, Bloomberg said.The news that Lyft’s business is picking up

Netflix announced today that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, will be developing a medieval animated adult fantasy called Disenchantment. It’s scheduled to begin streaming on Netflix in 2018.The series’s protagonist is a young, “hard-drinking” princess named Bean (Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson), and her two male companions are a “feisty elf” named Elfo (Nat Faxon) and a demon named Luci (Eric Andre). While both The Simpsons and Futurama

Adobe is finally planning to kill off Flash once and for all. Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari have all been blocking Flash over the past year, but Adobe is now planning to remove support for it fully by the end of 2020. “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats,” explains an Adobe spokesperson.
A number of gaming, education, and video sites still use Fla

If your big problem with headbanging was always that there wasn’t enough reward in it, Japanese electrocore metal band Crossfaith has a fix for the problem. The group has a website that lets you headbang to its music while it tracks your movements through your webcam. The interactive site was launched to promote Crossfaith’s new EP, Freedom. The goal is to headbang continuously while listening to Crossfaith’s music, and at the end of what feels like a tremendously long song, th

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. The following review comes from the New York Asian Film Festival.
Fabricated City, directed by South Korea’s Park Kwang-Hyun, opens with a scene within a scene, a fabrication inside a reality. That reality comes crashing down just as quickly as viewers acclimate to it, revealing a third fabrication. By the end, the situation has gotten even more complicated, raising t

It’s a common occurrence: you’re a little buzzed from happy hour, so you call an Uber home. And just as the driver pulls away after dropping you off, you realize you left your phone inside the car. Previously, all you had to do was log on to your Uber account from a friend’s phone or a web browser, contact the driver, and according to Uber, coordinate a “mutually convenient time and place to meet” to get your phone back.Part of Uber’s “180 days of change

Last week, Verizon was caught and subsequently admitted to throttling all video traffic on its network. And today, the company is finally addressing the potential net neutrality issue.
In a statement to Broadcasting & Cable, Verizon said that its actions represented “reasonable network management,” which is an exception carved out under the 2015 net neutrality rules. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer

TiVo is likely planning to release a voice-controlled remote in the coming months, if an FCC filing is any indication. Dave Zatz first spotted the filing, which includes photos of the device. Most prominently, we can see a big, blue microphone button, as well as the addition of a Netflix button. This new remote is a long time coming. TiVo has a keyboard remote (the Slide Pro) and a companion Android / iOS app that works as a remote, but other companies like Roku, Sony, Dish, and Amazon have alre

Motorola's smartphone with the nearly indestructible screen is back — and now it's on every major US carrier. Today the company is announcing the Moto Z2 Force, the successor to last year's Verizon-exclusive Moto Z Force. It goes on sale August 10th and preorders begin today.The Moto Z2 Force is the closest thing to a flagship phone that Motorola has released this year, and it’s got all the hardware specs to show for it: inside is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM, and

Motorola previously announced a new 360-degree camera Moto Mod at an event in Ghana earlier this month, and now, the company has announced that the Moto 360 Camera will be available for $299.99 on August 10th, alongside the just-announced Moto Z2 Force Edition.360-degree 4K video at 24 fps
The Moto 360 Camera will be compatible with the entire Moto Z family of smartphones, including the Z2 Force Edition. The Mod features two 13-megapixel cameras on the front and rear of the module, allowing for

Ransomware victims have paid more than $25 million in ransoms over the last two years, according to a study presented today by researchers at Google, Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. By following those payments through the blockchain and comparing them against known samples, researchers were able to build a comprehensive picture of the ransomware ecosystem.Ransomware has become an almost unavoidable threat in recent years. Once a system is infected, the progra

Today, Facebook announced quite a few updates to its 360-degree live video platform to make it more accessible to both creators and viewers. Most notably, you can now view live-streamed 360-degree video on Facebook in up to 4K resolution, helping increase the fidelity of streams for viewers who have a capable monitor and creators who have powerful enough streaming gear.Those streams are also now accessible in virtual reality, if you’d rather watch the 4K video on a Samsung Gear VR or Oculu

Lyft has partnered with Taco Bell to launch “Taco Mode” a feature in the ride-hailing app that will let you hit the drive-through at a Taco Bell and get a free Doritos Locos Taco. Yes, Lyft has made drunk ordering bad tacos from the back seat an official marketing opportunity.
According to TechCrunch, the partnership will offer passengers an in-car menu, free food (other than the Doritos Los Taco), and “swag” to entice you to choose Taco Bell over other late-night food op

In the race to get AI working faster on your smartphone, companies are trying all sorts of things. Some, like Microsoft and ARM, are designing new chips that are better suited to run neural networks. Others, like Facebook and Google, are working to reduce the computational demands of AI itself. But for chipmaker Qualcomm — whose processors account for 40 percent of the mobile market — the current plan is simpler: adapt the silicon that’s already in place.To this end the company

The UPS store at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas has stopped printing services for hotel guests who offer up a file on a USB or via a link, reports security news site CSO. The extra precaution comes ahead of the Def Con Hacking Convention which is held at the famed casino from July 27th–30th.
“Due to the DEF CON Hacking Convention, we will be accepting email print jobs with attachments only. We will not accept USB prints or any links. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the

I badly need a new computer. The last time I bought one was in the summer of 2011, not long after the MacBook Air’s first (and only) redesign. It was perfect timing: my last MacBook, the white plastic kind, had wiring literally sticking out of it after taking a spill. And Apple had just dropped the Air’s price down to $1,299 — the same price I believe my original MacBook had cost.
It’s now six years later, and Apple is hitting that pricing sweet spot again in a big way. N

Giphy is launching another GIF-creation tool today, and the big hook is that there’s nothing to install. Its latest tool is on the web and designed for mobile, so you can just visit the site and start creating a weird GIF. I uploaded a photo of my cat, and I’m sorry to say that I’ve turned it into the GIF you see above.
The mobile GIF Maker site offers the same kind of irreverent experience that Giphy’s other GIF-making tools do. You can take or upload a photo or video an