Technology news

On the heels of the Model 3 launch last week, Tesla says it is still growing sales of its Model S and Model X amid a soft luxury car market. But boasts of growth don’t make up for the amount of cash the company has burned through to get Model 3 launched by its end of the year target.The automaker issued its latest quarterly earnings report Wednesday, claiming 22,026 Model S and Model X vehicles delivered for a total of 47,077 through the first half of 2017. That’s about 6 percent off

NBA 2K17 has come out on top as publisher Take-Two Interactive’s top-selling sports game ever, selling more than 8.5 million copies.
In an earnings report today for the first quarter of fiscal year 2018, Take-Two noted that the basketball title NBA 2K17 was one of the largest contributors alongside titles like Grand Theft Auto Online to net sales, which grew 28 percent to $348.3 million. Players are also spending more money than ever on the NBA 2K series, as consumer spending for the title

GUEST: Albeit small, Baltimore’s startup community is a thriving one. Just 45 minutes outside of the District, the city’s innovation scene is rich with opportunity and talent.
Maybe that’s why Baltimore is one of the most successful places working with Venture for America, a two-year salaried fellowship program that matches recent college grads with startups in 18 different cities.
Josh Russakis, VFA Director of Baltimore, said the city has a 68 percent retention rate of a

GUEST: In October 2016, when a truck delivered a shipment of beer in Colorado without a human driver at the wheel, the question stopped being if automation is changing jobs forever. It is. Beyond blue-collar workers, every single job category will be affected as AI and machine learning technologies advance. Currently demonstrated technologies could automate as many as 45 percent of the activities people are paid to do today. So what will the jobs of tomorrow look like?
Among these professions, a

In its second-quarter earnings report today, fitness-tracking company Fitbit said that its long-awaited smartwatch, which we’ve reported has been delayed due to production issues, will be available by this holiday season.On the earnings call, chief executive James Park said that Fitbit’s new smartwatch will have health and fitness tracking features, will have GPS, will be be water resistant up to 50 meters, and will offer cross-platform compatibility as well as “multi-day batte

Earlier this month, social game developer Zynga shut down Mafia Wars, the mobile reboot of the original web game that soft-launched back in April. In a call today with GamesBeat, CEO Frank Gibeau says that the reason was because it wasn’t meeting performance expectations. On the other hand, the publisher is continuing its commitment to the mobile action strategy title Dawn of Titans, which despite great player reviews is still somewhat middling in the Apple App Store and Google Play charts

Grand Theft Auto V has been out for almost four years, but its online component is still Take-Two‘s big money-maker. In fact, Grand Theft Auto Online just had its best quarter yet.
Take-Two noted today in its earnings report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2018 that Grand Theft Auto Online exceeded net sales expectations and was the single largest contributor to recurrent consumer spending. GTA Online is an open world multiplayer game where you can earn digital cash through playi

Mozilla has launched a new website that makes it really easy to send a file from one person to another. The site is called Send, and it’s basically the Snapchat of file sharing: after a file has been downloaded once, it disappears for good.
That might sound like a gimmick, but it underscores what the site is meant for. It’s designed for quick and private sharing between two people — not for long-term hosting or distributing files to a large group.
Files are encrypted and disapp

Just as in Q1, Zynga broke some of its own records in Q2, generating $179.9 million in revenue in the mobile market.
“We saw record mobile bookings up 33 percent year-over-year. Our mobile audience is also up, 28 percent year-over-year, which is terrific,” said CEO Frank Gibeau in a phone call with GamesBeat. “Usually that’s been the bugbear that’s got everybody is revenues can be growing but audience is down. We’re actually seeing more people are playing our

In what could trigger a shake-up in the mobile ad business, Zynga has chosen Unity Technologies as its exclusive mobile game advertising partner.
Zynga decided to adopt the Unity Ads rewarded ads platform, which could simplify its mobile game advertising and improve its game experiences for players. For Unity, snaring such a big customer could create a snowball in its favor, prompting other publishers to do the same.
The partnership gives Zynga access to Unity’s multi-publisher advertising

Turn on an Amazon Echo Look and you’ll be delighted with a range of news headlines and silly videos worth watching. This morning I saw a baby kangaroo’s first steps and a dubstep motorcycle battle. One thing you won’t see on the resting screen of the Echo Show is an invitation to try some of the roughly 15,00 skills in the Alexa Skills Store.
That’s likely because even though the Echo Show came out a month ago, only a handful of skills have made the change from being audi

Spying on a jellyfish isn’t an easy task. Jellyfish are hard to see, fragile, and, worst of all, they’re gooey. Those traits make it tough to stick a tracking tag on them. But thanks to glue, suction cups, and cable ties, scientists are finally able to watch what jellies are up to beneath the waves.Jellyfish are an important food source for hundreds of fish and endangered sea turtles. But they can also be a nuisance when their populations balloon and the stinging creatures wash up on

GUEST: If you’ve been following the Bitcoin scaling efforts lately, you already know that the Bitcoin blockchain forked yesterday, giving birth to a new currency called Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The event was surrounded by quite a bit of uncertainty over how well the new currency would perform. Would it flatline for lack of support? How would it hold value compared to Bitcoin proper?
Well, that uncertainty remains: The currency came out of the gate valued at around $300, surged earlier today to

This morning, a company called Hyperloop One made history. Nearly four years to the day after Elon Musk first published his plans for the system, the company set a new hyperloop speed record, logging nearly 200 mph on their test track outside Las Vegas. It’s an impressive achievement by any measure, but it’s particularly impressive given how implausible the project originally seemed. When Elon Musk first announced his plans, few observers would have predicted that a workable prototyp

GUEST: As it relates to technology, the private aviation industry has been flagging lately. While some industries — health, retail, manufacturing, automotive — have adopted machine learning in recent years and used it to transform their businesses, our sector has fallen behind.
What the private aviation industry specifically lacks is machine learning technology to streamline workflows, business processes, customer procurement, and financial settlements. Midway through 2017, however,

Microsoft is giving its Windows Console (Command Prompt) a color overhaul. Windows 10 testers will be able to try out the new color scheme in a new build (16257) that will available later today. Windows Console's legacy blue is getting a subtle change to make it more legible on modern high-contrast displays, alongside color changes to the entire scheme.
It’s a minor change, but if you’re familiar with the Windows Console then it’s a welcome addition that developers have been as

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the New York Asian Film Festival.
The Japanese film Happiness is like a dark car driving by slowly in the shadows. As it moves closer, it hardly sheds any light. Then, a window rolls down, revealing a face, staring out at the audience. In a flash, the car is gone, leaving nothing behind but a fleeting impression.Similarly, the film doesn’t expla

Verizon has a new rewards program out this week, called Verizon Up, which awards users a credit for every $300 they spend on their Verizon bill that can be redeemed toward various rewards.
Customers will be able to get rewards such as “Device Dollars toward your next device purchase, discounts on an accessory, or partner rewards,” along with other surprise offerings and first-come, first-serve ticket opportunities, which all seems like a nice occasional thing to get for regularly pay

DJI's Spark drone is designed to fit in the palm of a user's hand, and it can be controlled by gestures. You can maneuver the drone in any direction, call it home by making a big Y above your head, or have it follow you at a distance. Now, the drone is getting additional functionality. DJI is issuing a software update today that'll let users start and stop recording video by raising their arm out to the side at a 45-degree angle to the ground.
The China-based company is also expanding what users

Twitter has updated its SDK (software development kit) for the Unity Engine. The free tool makes it possible for developers to implement Twitter features into their games.
For example, you could tweet out a new high score or other achievements. The Twitter Kit also lets players log into their Twitter accounts inside a game.
“It makes it easy for your users to log in and compose Tweets from right inside your games, and for you to access the Twitter API for login and social integrations,&rdq

Dozens of cases have been dropped since the emergence of two body cam videos showing Baltimore cops seemingly manufacturing evidence.
41 cases have been dropped
The controversy started last month, when a video released by the Baltimore public defender’s office appeared to show an officer, standing by two others, dropping a bag of drugs in a yard. The officer who dropped the drugs was put on leave while the two others were placed on administrative duty.The video led to an announcement last

For the first time, scientists in the US have successfully edited the DNA of viable human embryos using the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR. Gaining the ability to edit human DNA is the first step toward one day allowing scientists to prevent babies from being born with incurable diseases or disabilities. But further success with this kind of research is likely to raise the heated discussion on the ethical implications of genetically altering human embryos. The story was first reported last we

Tesla’s Model 3 is supposed to be the electric car that changes everything. Beautiful, high-tech, affordable: this is the car that is supposed to bring electric cars into the mainstream. But don’t expect to be driving one any time soon. If you’re not already on the 500,000-person long reservation list, you won’t be driving one this year. Or next. Or probably the year after.Thankfully, there are dozens of electric and plug-in hybrid cars that are available right now. And m

With investors ready to drive Apple’s stock to a new record high today, it’s safe to say they’re pretty satisfied with the results of the company’s earnings report yesterday.
The headlines are all about revenue growth, iPhone sales, and expectations for the next iPhone. But in the conference call with analysts yesterday, and the earnings release, the company revealed some interesting nuggets for Apple watchers.
1. Apple Watch: Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple Watch sale

Samsung is unveiling the Note 8 on August 23rd, and we already have an extremely clear idea of what it'll look like. Now, we might even know its specs. Today, VentureBeat’s Evan Blass published what he expects to see from the Note 8, going off of information from someone who was briefed on the device's configuration.
Here's what Blass' source says the device will have:
6.3-inch Super AMOLED display with 18.5:9 aspect ratio
162.5mm x 74.6mm with 8.5mm of thickness
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 pr

PRESS RELEASE:Frontline Education President & CEO Will Join Panelists from Galvanize and PluralSight to Discuss Education Technology & Digital LearningMALVERN, Pa.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–August 2, 2017– Frontline Education, an integrated insights partner serving more than 12,000 educational organizations and millions of educators, today announced that President & CEO Tim Clifford will present on the SaaS Disruptors: Learning & Training panel at the 20th Annual Oppenhei

Facebook will change its algorithm for the News Feed in the coming months to favor quicker-loading sites over slow-loading ones, the company announced today in a blog post.
Facebook will soon favor quick-loading sites
Facebook wields a huge amount of power over what sites get served to you in your News Feed, and now the company is adding another layer to that by taking site speed into account. According to Facebook, “Factors such as the person’s current network connection and the gen

Street lamps could be harming agriculture, according to a new study that looks at the effects of nighttime light pollution on pollinators.Pollinators are animals that fertilize plants by bringing pollen from one to another. The number of pollinators has been going down worldwide, but most research has focused on daytime pollinators like bees. There’s been very little published about nighttime pollinators, like certain moths and beetles, until now. For a study published today in Nature Ecol

For the first time ever, an exoplanet located 880 light-years away was found to have a stratosphere — a layer in the upper atmosphere where the temperature increases the higher up you go. The discovery may help astronomers refine the techniques that could lead to the discovery of alien life on other exoplanets.
The planet, described in a study published today in Nature, is called WASP-121b. It belongs to a class of exoplanets called hot Jupiters — worlds that are so big and hot that

Over the years, Facebook has made many changes to its News Feed algorithm. Now, the company is taking a page out of Google’s book: Facebook is updating its News Feed algorithm to show more stories that load quickly on mobile and fewer stories that might take longer to load. The update will roll out “gradually over the coming months.”
Google has spent the past few years obsessing with how best to optimize its mobile search experience. In fact, the company unveiled the open sourc

We finally have a few more details about RED’s forthcoming $1,200 Hydrogen One smartphone, thanks to a video that Marques Brownlee just posted to YouTube. RED let him take a look at a few different prototypes of the phone: a non-working unit that represents what the final phone will look like, one that shows off the phone’s new “holographic display,” and a third that was a full, separate camera module with its own lens and sensor.
Overall, this was still just another big

EXCLUSIVE: As Samsung prepares to announce its stylus-equipped Galaxy Note8 on August 23 in New York City, information about the phone has begun appearing at a more frenzied pace — though not all of it is accurate. According to a person briefed on the device’s final configuration, it will be spec’ed as follows.
The main body of the IP68-certified handset, also evident in recently published renders, is a near doppelganger of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ introduced in the spring. In fac

The BBC has been working with Microsoft to develop an experimental version of its popular iPlayer service. British iPlayer users can access a range of on-demand content provided by the BBC — funded by the UK’s TV License — and a new experiment is trying to guess what you’d want to watch by listening to your voice.Using a special voiceprint, the BBC’s iPlayer service can let you log into the service with just your voice and then sit and listen for other people in the

Services has become the rising star of Apple’s business. But the reasons behind its explosive growth are complex.
During the company’s earnings call yesterday, Apple CFO Luca Maestri tried to explain the numerous moving pieces that propelled Services to grow 22 percent during the quarter ending June 30, compared to the previous year. Services is Apple’s second-largest business behind iPhones and now well ahead of iPad and Mac sales.
Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that Services on its

Telltale Games announced today that the first season of Minecraft: Story Mode is coming to the Nintendo Switch on August 22. Meanwhile, the second episode of the second season is hitting PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, iOS, and Android on August 15.
Telltale has been creating episodic, story-based games for some of the biggest brands in entertainment, including Batman and Game of Thrones. It also works with smaller brands, like the comic series The Wolf Among Us, which Telltale has announced a seco

Nexon is continuing to seek out developers in the West, and it’s latest partnership is with Finnish indie studio Grand Cru. The two are teaming up on the mobile title Battlejack, a fantasy role-playing game with battle mechanics based on the card game Blackjack. There’s no release date yet, but it’s slated to launch on iOS and Android this summer.
Battlejack features turn-based combat, and players can assemble their own party of heroes. When the heroes attack or use their

As I explored the claustrophobic corridors of the space station Tacoma, I couldn’t help but think of a sprawling suburban home in Portland. In 2013, Tacoma developer the Fullbright Company released the seminal Gone Home, a breakthrough game that further cemented a genre disparagingly called “walking simulators” as a valid style of interactive storytelling. It wasn’t the first such game, but Gone Home’s poignant, personal tale, combined with its dense and lifelike Pa

Every now and again, a movie trailer comes along that really grabs your attention. It’s not just the visuals that flash by on-screen or the actors that make it stick in your head — it’s the music. More often than not, it’s music that’s been commissioned for the trailer, composed by people like Frederick Lloyd. Over the last couple of years, he’s been responsible for the trailer music for some of Hollywood’s biggest films.You’ve probably heard his w

Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 341.6 million smartphones worldwide last quarter, down 1.3 percent from the 346.1 million units in Q2 2016. A contraction is a rare enough occurrence in the smartphone market. And yet all five of the top vendors — Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi — gained share.
In Q2 2017, the South Korean company once again shipped more smartphones than any other vendor. Samsung’s American counterpart managed to ship just over half of that nu

We’ve known Vizio would be updating its Google Cast-enabled TVs with its new SmartCast UI for a while now, and today that update began to roll out to the company’s 2017 P-Series and M-Series models. (The company says that additional sets, including the E-Series, will be updated later this summer.)The Chromecast functionality is still there, too
SmartCast’s launch officially marks the end of Vizio’s short-lived experiment in creating a smart TV without apps. The company&rs