Technology news

Militaries around the world have eyed 3D printing as a cost and time-effective resource for future missions, whether it’s printing up replacement parts for warplanes, grenade launchers, or meals for soldiers. Recently, the US Navy has partnered with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop a proof-of-concept submersible that was printed in under four weeks.The idea of printing up weapons or vehicles is something out of science fiction, but this is something that the military could begi

GUEST: There’s an open secret that everybody knows, but nobody can really talk about. And more likely than not, it’s affecting your career growth.
Most employees are used to company social media policies, which set guidelines for employees looking to post on social media, write blog posts, or otherwise communicate with the public – whether or not the communication is related to the company. We normally accept these policies as just another part of corporate life, assuming that

In Plastic Girls, a short film from German director Nils Clauss, robotic mannequins have sentient thoughts like, My smiles bring comfort, Money comes easy for me, and You have to work hard and follow rules. The seven-minute short is Clauss’ attempt to comment on the intersection of commerce and objectification in robotic mannequins in South Korea.
The film gives the mannequins a narrative as employees of small businesses, but as ones who must always be smiling and submissive. Clauss’

This week, Apple announced that it would be unceremoniously killing off the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle, two of the last vestiges of the iPod era. While the nano may have been the spotlight product (quite literally stealing the show from the Motorola ROKR when they were announced alongside one another), the shuffle has always been a sort of black sheep in the iPod family, remaining frozen in time while the rest of Apple’s lineup leapt forward into the future.An iPod distilled down to th

Niantic Labs threw a big event in Chicago last weekend to celebrate the first year of Pokémon Go, only to run into cellular data congestion and server issues that made the game unplayable for many attendees. Now, the company has announced that it’s delaying several planned European events to ensure that trainers will be able to play the game.In a blog post, Niantic said that its delaying two sets of events planned for Copenhagen and Prague (August 5) and Stockholm and Amsterdam (Aug

So, let’s say you need to give a turtle an erection. There’s a quick and easy way to do it, a new study has found. It’s a seven-inch, variable-speed silver bullet vibrator. Yes, that kind of vibrator.
Turtle sexing is key for research purposes, and also for conservationists who are trying to pair mates. The easiest way to do that is to summon forth an erection, according to findings published in the journal Acta Herpetologica.
erections seem like the kindest way
You see, determ

Simcoach Games makes training games that show people how to do certain kinds of jobs, and those games can sometimes lead people to adopt new careers. That ability to change lives is why CEO Jessica Trybus and vice president Eben Myers have made more than 150 titles over 12 years.
Their company is one of Pittsburgh’s many tech and gaming startups, and it is a spinoff from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where Trybus is a professor in practice. Her com

YouTuber Kevin Kohler, aka The Backyard Scientist, has done all sorts of weird, amazing, and also probably dangerous things in the name of science and needing an excuse to set things on fire. Though he’s played with metal plenty in the past — from pouring molten aluminum in a watermelon to dropping an iPhone in a homemade foundry filled with molten metal — for his new video he’s created a combination of wholesomeness and danger even greater than that of lawn darts: a squi

Earlier this month, LG sent out invitations for an upcoming event expected to reveal the company’s flagship LG V30 phone on August 31st. It now looks like consumers will be able to get their hands on one soon thereafter: Android Authority reports that it’ll first go on sale in South Korea on September 15th, and in the US on the 28th.
Android Authority says that its reviewed internal documents that lay out the timeline for the phone’s release: it’ll be announced on August

China famously blocks censors the internet within the country, preventing its citizens from accessing websites such as Facebook or Google, and has pushed companies to register their App stores with government regulators or remove content that it deems illegal. Now, it appears that Apple has purged its Chinese App store of major VPN apps, according to The New York Times.As a result of the country’s online censorship, many citizens and visitors have turned to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

When Star Trek Discovery begins airing later this year, it’ll bring some new changes to Gene Roddenberry’s world, including an overarching, serialized story, rather than an episodic season. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, former showrunner Bryan Fuller explained that his original pitch for the show was even more ambitious: an anthology that would to do to Star Trek “what American Horror Story [did] for horror.”According to Fuller, his vision would begin with a

GUEST: Just as summer’s sear leads to winter’s freeze, the unchecked growth of ad blockers (30 percent increase last year) will lead to a comeback in banner ads.
The reason comes down to why most people install ad blockers in the first place. It’s not for ideology — an obsession with privacy or an anti-capitalist bent — it’s a cost-benefit calculation. The price of an ad blocker is a free, two-minute download, and the benefit is less friction while browsing th

GUEST:
With Bitcoin and the blockchain, life continues to be damned if you do and damned if you don’t. On August 1, if you hold any bitcoin, then you’ll receive the equivalent in a new cryptocurrency called “Bitcoin Cash.” The reason why is messy, but you can think of it as a kind of dividend.
There’s a catch. If your Bitcoin is held on certain platforms, including the largest one, Coinbase, then you won’t receive your due. That’s because for reasons pol

Fans of virtual reality felt a punch to the gut this week as AltspaceVR announced it would hold its last social VR gathering on August 3 and then shut down.
AltspaceVR was a social space in VR where people could gather in environments that resembled virtual worlds. They could create their own avatars and chat with friends. As such, AltspaceVR was like a harbinger of what the world would look like as a virtual society. Facebook followed up with its own version of social VR chat, while others &mda

Apple’s new iPad Pro just came out a few months ago, and already you can get the 10.5-inch for $50 off at B&H and Staples. But this doesn’t last for long — the deal ends tomorrow — so act fast if you’ve had your eye on it.
Our other favorite tech sales of the week consist of three good headphones (including Massdrop’s Sennheiser 650 mentioned last week, priced at $200 for three more days) and a great deal on the Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphones. There’s

This week, one of Bitcoin’s largest and most notorious coin exchanges was brought down by law enforcement — and police and prosecutors are now beginning to explain why. On Thursday, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Alexander Vinnik — thought to be the operator, or one of the operators of Bitcoin exchange BTC-e — charging him with 21 counts of money laundering and other related financial crimes. The counts range from operating an unlicensed money tr

No less than three people discussed the ending of Rogue One in front of me in the week after the movie came out. So between that and the film's lukewarm reviews, I kind of just figured I'd wait for it to start streaming on Netflix.
Now that the movie is finally available, I'm glad I waited. Rogue One has a lot of cool ideas about how to build out the Star Wars universe, but it falls short in the one way that matters most: building fun, interesting characters.
For the most part, the film pretty m

My Verge colleague Sean O’Kane put it well when he wrote that the Tesla Model 3 interior doesn’t look like any car you’ve ever seen. It’s stunningly austere, with a smooth strip of wood across the dashboard that looks like it was carved straight out of a bamboo stalk; zero instrumentation behind the steering wheel; and none of the usual interior handles: the glovebox is opened via virtual button on the display, and you exit the car by pushing on a small button on the door

Last night electric car-maker Tesla hosted a Model 3 “handoff” event for employees at its factory in Fremont, California, giving 30 select employees production-ready vehicles ahead of the car’s official launch in ... well, we’re still not quite sure when. Around 2,000 employees, along with press and other guests, gathered at the evening event to hear Tesla chief executive Elon Musk share more details about the long-awaited vehicle, which is Tesla’s first mass-market

Creativity is a term thrown about the workplace all too often. It bounces off the walls, flying over the heads of employees, and often fizzles out in a corner, without always having made the desired impact. It’s no wonder then, many employees switch off as soon as they hear the word. 80 percent of people feel pressured to be productive rather than creative at work and most people don’t even believe that they are creative in the first place. However, imaginative thinking can improve

Earlier this year HTC became an official partner with Google in producing a Daydream-based standalone VR headset under the Vive brand. Today, HTC announced it is producing a similar device for the Chinese market powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset. It looks like it will access HTC’s storefront, called Viveport, to get to virtual worlds rather than Google Play.
These standalone systems are designed to be far more convenient than Rift and Vive because they don’

Adobe Flash, the multimedia software that gave us everything from chintzy pre-mobile video games to atrocious restaurant homepages, just got its death sentence. Or the next-closest thing, as Adobe announced that it will “stop updating and distributing the Flash Player,” and expects it to be officially extinct by the end of 2020. Flash isn’t, um, popular — its security vulnerabilities have made it a favorite of hackers &mdas

This might take a little getting used to.
After months and months of anticipation, Elon Musk has finally answered almost all of our questions about the Model 3. But there's one aspect of the electric car that might take a little more adjustment: there is no key for the Model 3. 
SEE ALSO: We finally know what the inside of Tesla's Model 3 looks like, and it's stunning
To be clear, this is not the same as the "keyless" systems, which require some kind of key fob, and it's not the app-enabled

(Reuters) — What looms over businesses as far flung as car repair, lab equipment and swimming pool gear? In a word, Amazon.
Almost 700 U.S. companies have reported quarterly results so far this earnings season, and the e-commerce titan’s name has popped up on roughly one of every 10 earnings conference calls so far. And the retailers whose lunch has long been eaten by Amazon.com Inc haven’t even reported yet.
In all, Amazon has been raised either in passing or with some urgency

This is how an electric car should feel. Hell, this is how all cars should feel.
Those were my initial thoughts after test-driving one of the very first Tesla Model 3 all-electric cars to roll off the assembly line Friday before the company's big reveal. 
That exhilarating, yet short-lived experience, started inauspiciously. In fact, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I mean, it's just a sedan, right?
From a distance, the Tesla Model 3 looks like most other small sedans on the road.
SEE ALS

Tesla’s handover ceremony of the Model 3 tonight was an affecting moment for CEO Elon Musk, whose casual authenticity has emerged as a distinct tech keynote style. The Model 3 is the first mass market electric car Tesla has made so far and 30 were delivered to employees tonight.
Musk quavered a bit when he spoke of the 300,000 people who have put down deposits for the Model 3. “That really matters to us. We really care. We’re going to do everything we possibly can to get you th