Technology news

How do you follow up a deal to bring a Foxconn plant to Wisconsin at an estimated government subsidy of $1 million per $54,000 job created?
If you’re Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, you start calling your state “Wisconn Valley.” Walker and Foxconn CEO Terry Gou coined the name together, according to what the governor said at the White House last week while celebrating the plant’s announcement. The audience clapped when they heard Wisconn Valley. Then Walker repeated the

After months of rumors that the next iPhone will be delayed, Apple has given a quiet cue to the contrary. In its earnings release today, Apple said it expects to see anywhere from $49 billion to $52 billion in revenue next quarter — a number high enough to indicate that an iPhone will launch on time. The quarter runs through September 30th, so we should expect to see an early September iPhone event and a launch a week or so thereafter.
An iPhone 7S could launch first
Tim Cook hinted as muc

 Apple had a semi-blowout quarter — though, really, the story is about what’s happening in the next quarter — sending the stock to an all-time high. The big jump means Apple is now a company worth more than $800 billion. It seemed not too long ago that Google might have a fair shot at being a bigger company than Apple when it comes to its market cap, but now Apple is on a… Read More

For the last month, an interesting photo has been floating around Twitter. It captures a museum piece identified as a “spinning toy with animal heads” from Mesopotamia’s Isin-Larsa Period, produced sometime between 2000 and 1800 BCE. And with its tripartite shape and hole in the center, it looks a whole lot like a modern fidget spinner.
The comparison has been irresistible. Yesterday, Wired senior associate editor Arielle Pardes jokingly declared it “proof that there are

Hackers have figured out how to turn an Amazon Echo into a live microphone. First reported by Wired, the attack requires physical access to the device, is limited to pre-2017 Echoes, and would be difficult to deploy at scale. But when successful, it would allow hackers to pull a live feed of all audio within range of the device, even if the wake word hasn’t been said. The method could also allow hackers to remotely retrieve authentication tokens and other sensitive data from the device.
Re

Apple’s business has been producing record-setting revenues and profits for years now. But in the second quarter of last year its blistering period of growth came to an end. Today the company posted its third quarter earnings, and it’s clear Apple has found a way to restore some of the lost momentum. Revenue grew about 6 percent year over year, and profit was up 12 percent over the same period in 2016.Leading the way was Apple’s iPad sales, which were up 15 percent from last ye

Snap is still trying to get into the drone business. After reportedly buying LA-based drone company Ctrl Me Robotics earlier this year, Snap is now looking at another drone maker: China-based Zero Zero Robotics. The Information reports that Zero Zero contacted Snap when looking for funding. No asking price was provided to the publication, although the drone company had previously raised $25 million. Zero Zero Robotics chief executive Meng Qiu Wang denied the news while Snap declined to comment.

Snapchat’s latest experiment involves college reporters. In recent months, Snap has asked several college newspapers to make stories for its Discover section, according to a report from Business Insider. The stories are similar to the ones created by publishers like The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and Vice, except they’ll be unique to certain colleges.
A Snapchat spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the company soft-launched the college publisher feature this past spring. The stori

Kurt Kelty, director of battery technology at Tesla, has stepped down from his post just days after the company’s lavish party to celebrate the delivery of the first Model 3s, Bloomberg reports. Kelty, who has worked at Tesla since 2006, led Tesla in forging partnerships and battery cell material sourcing at the company’s Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. He was also responsible for the overall performance of Tesla’s batteries.“We can confirm that Kurt Kelty has left the com

After Walmart’s embarrassing error and resulting cancellations, Nintendo has put an official timeframe on when consumers can expect to preorder the SNES Classic: it’s happening later this month. “We appreciate the incredible anticipation that exists for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition system, and can confirm that it will be made available for pre-order by various retailers late this month,” the company posted on Facebook today. The conso

Lyft is partnering with Amtrak to help train passengers get to and from the train station. The new deal will let you book a car with the ride-hailing service from within Amtrak’s mobile app. If you’re a new Lyft rider, using the promo code “AMTRAKLYFT” grants you $5 discounts on the first four rides, regardless of whether they’re booked through the Amtrak app. Lyft says its service reaches 97 percent of all Amtrak riders in the US.
Lyft and Uber want to control how

The internet was abuzz about sperm last week, thanks to a new study that revealed an alarming drop in sperm counts for men in Western countries. Does this mean men are becoming infertile? Will we have problems having babies? It’s not time to panic — at least, not yet.To be clear: the findings are worrisome. The researchers dug through thousands of studies from around the world, and found that for men living in Western countries sperm count has plummeted by between 50 and 60 percent s

Summer is in full swing, which means that there’s plenty of time to grab a book and head outdoors to enjoy the sun and warm weather, at least here in Vermont, where the outdoor temperatures haven’t quite topped 90 degrees yet.
I helped cover San Diego-Comic Con in July, and the long flights to and from California gave me some premium free time to dig into a couple of books that have been on my to-read list for a while. While I was there, I also picked up two books that I’ve bee

Facebook is currently developing a “video chat device” designed for use in the home, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The product, which could be announced next spring, includes a large touchscreen, wide-angle camera, microphones, and speakers. In concept, this sounds very similar to the Echo Show that Amazon recently released to build out its lineup of home-based hardware. It also lends added credibility to a similar-sounding rumor that surfaced in July.Facebook’s vid

A little after 8AM ET today, Bitcoin was split into Bitcoin Cash, an alternative cryptocurrency, in a chain split that had been anticipated for months. The split, called a “hard fork,” comes out of a bitcoin group’s desire to combat high transaction fees and a bitcoin size limit that made mining larger blocks invalid.This has a nuanced implication for Bitcoin owners. If you own Bitcoin and control your private keys, the same private keys can be used to spend your newly minted B

Back in April, ride-hailing app Gett acquired “driver-friendly” ride-hailing app Juno, and the merger so far has been nothing short of messy. In June, drivers filed a federal class action lawsuit against the apps after Gett killed Juno’s equity program with drivers — an ownership incentive that had initially made many warm up to the new service. Now, the Gett app has been pulled from app stores for users in the United States.
Did Gett shut down? App says it needs an updat

 Firefox is due for a comeback. A lot of the work the team spent on refactoring core parts of the browser is starting to pay off, and, while its market share continues to decline (especially on the desktop), Firefox today feels faster and leaner than it has in a long time. And today is a good day to give Firefox a new try because the team just launched three new Test Pilot experiments that… Read More

VSCO is getting into video. Starting today, the photo filtering company is beginning to introduce video editing capabilities to its flagship app. Naturally, they’ll revolve around filters. But there’s one big downside: the video features are only being given to paying subscribers. TechCrunch first reported the update.
For now, at least, editing seems to be limited to coloring and grading an image. So you’ll be able to apply filters and tweak aspects of a video like contrast and

Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is now rolling out on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, fulfilling a promise Google made earlier this year. Google announced the news last night, although it said on Twitter that it would take time to reach all S8 and S8 Plus owners. The expansion is a major boost for the Daydream platform, which first launched last year for the Google Pixel.
Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus users could already use VR apps with Samsung and Oculus’ $129 Gear VR, but no

Microsoft today announced a new Xbox Wireless Adapter, for connecting an Xbox controller to your Windows PC, that is much smaller than the previous model. The old adapter looked to be about two times the size of a regular USB thumb drive, making it cumbersome and bulky protruding chunk of plastic and circuitry.The new adapter, however, is 66 percent smaller, the company says. It looks no different than your standard modern-day thin USB stick. Like its predecessor, the new adapter supports up to

Microsoft is planning to add native eye tracking support into Windows 10. The new support is primarily designed to help those suffering from neuro-muscular diseases like ALS and other disabilities to control the various interface elements in Windows 10 without a traditional mouse and keyboard. This ranges from gazing at apps to launch them, or using an onscreen keyboard to glance at characters and type out words.
Dubbed Eye Control in Windows 10, the new feature will require hardware like Tobii&

 Pinterest is one of the industry’s most fascinating companies — going from a simple digital collage to one of the leaders in image recognition and visual search, of all things. That feeds into the company’s hope of helping its users — more than 175 million strong — discover things they didn’t realize they were interested in and finally decide to do… Read More

Of all the voice-controlled, virtual assistants I have access to across the various devices I own and use, I converse with Amazon’s Alexa the most. Alexa wakes me up in the mornings, turns my lights on and off, lets me know when my pasta is cooked, keeps tabs on my grocery list, and tells me what tomorrow’s weather is going to be like when I’m planning my outfit. It’s not that Siri, Google Assistant, or Cortana can’t do the same things — they certainly can &md

We now know what the ancestor of today’s flowers looked like, thanks to scientists who used computer models to re-create the plant that lived 140 million years ago.Before now, we didn’t understand much about the origin of most of today’s flowering plants, called angiosperms. (Angiosperms account for about 90 percent of all plants.) This is partly because flowers don’t preserve well, so fossils are rare. For a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, res

Luc Besson’s latest film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, is clearly the culmination of a long-simmering passion. Besson has talked at length about how the comics that served as his source material were among his only avenues of entertainment in childhood, and how he became addicted to them, even though they were only released at the rate of two pages a week. While his movie adaptation stumbles over characters and plot, it does excel at capturing the look and feel of the world