Technology news

The British government today issued a new set of guidelines designed to encourage automakers to make vehicles cybersecurity a priority.UK Transport Minister Lord Callanan says that as autonomous and connected vehicles are increasingly used on British roadways, minimum protections should be established to protect consumers from cyber attacks, whether it’s controlling personal data, or taking control of the vehicle remotely. The goal is to provide “all parties involved in the manufactu

A team of Italian Tesla owners have established a new “hypermilling” record, driving a Model S 100D 1078 kilometers (about 670 miles) on a single charge. The record beats one that set by a Model S P100D that drove 560 miles on a single charge in Belgium in June 2017.Hypermiling is a technique used to conserve gas (or in this case, electricity) which involves driving at a low, consistent speed with minimal use of the vehicle’s brakes. Following word of the June record, Tesla CEO

An investigative report claims that Kik Messenger, an instant messaging app popular with children and teenagers, has become “the defacto app for grooming children online,” in part due to its ease of access to minors.
Kik Messenger is a free instant messaging service from Kik Interactive, a Canadian tech firm founded in 2009. Since then, it has gained over 300 million users and reaches 40 percent of teenagers in the United States. The report is a collaboration between British investig

Just last month, Faraday Future scrubbed its ambitious plans for a $1 billion megafactory in Nevada. Now, the electric vehicle startup has found a new location for the production of its car of the future: a 55-year-old former Pirelli factory in Hanford, California which has been mostly empty since 2001.The property, now known as Hanford Business Park, is about 200 miles north of FF’s Los Angeles headquarters. It’s owned by a US-based real estate development and investment firm called

GUEST: “Daddy!”
I was working from home, talking to a colleague on the phone about writing this post.
“Daddy!”
Ryan, six years old and the second youngest of my four children, had something important to say: “Daddy, am I old enough to be the banker in Monopoly Empire?”
“Of course you are.” Back to the call.
Balancing being a great parent and a great worker is really hard. I have four children and a wife who works in a big job. I eat most of my dinn

When Samsung released its Galaxy S8 smartphone earlier this year, it did so with an unfortunate design choice: the fingerprint scanner was placed on the back, right next to the phone’s camera. It looks as though that placement might stick around for a while longer, based on a report from KGI Securities.9to5Google writes that KGI released a new report that claims that Samsung is going to keep the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, at least for now. Samsung is apparently ready to

GUEST: Being a technology enthusiast who relies on a smartphone daily, I thought that I will get lost on a recent trip to China without Google Maps. But the lack of Google services in the country is only half the problem now for foreign visitors: China also recently banned VPN and forced App Store China to remove VPN applications.
The good news is, things aren’t as scary as they seem. If you research solutions before your trip, you’ll survive just fine. And to save you some work, her

Gaming is better with friends. And gaming is important at Facebook. Those are the takeaways that Brian Boland, vice president of publisher solutions at Facebook, wanted to give to game developers at the Casual Connect event in Seattle last week.
While Facebook’s audience is much broader than games, but it is in touch with a lot of gamers. More than 800 million players connect via Facebook, and 450 million people are connected to the Facebook pages of game developers. And Instant Games on F

 The GhanaSat-1―Ghana’s first satellite―began its orbit recently, with a little help from some friends. The cubesat, built by a Ghanaian engineering team at All Nations University, was delivered to NASA’s International Space Station in June on a SpaceX rocket that took off from pad 39a at Kennedy Space Center, a NASA spokesperson confirmed. The GhanaSat-1 deployed into orbit… Read More

Razer’s Chroma lighting system is a great way to add and sync lights between all your gaming gear, whether it’s a Razer laptop, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, headphones, or even a cup holder. If you’re a fan of Razer’s illuminated accessories, you’ve been mostly out of luck when it comes to adding Chroma-controlled lights to a desktop gaming PC.
The Razer Chroma Hardware Development Kit solves that, by offering Chroma-compatible LED light strips that you can add to yo

The BBC announced on Thursday that it is changing its branding guidelines to BBC Sport, and that it is using the update to start rolling out a new font that will be used across the broadcaster’s portfolio of TV and digital platforms. The new typeface is designed specifically to be seen clearly on mobile devices, and will save the broadcaster money.
The in-house font is called BBC Reith, and is named for the broadcaster’s founder, Lord Reith. Colin Burns, the BBC’s Chief Design

GUEST: There’s an oft-cited quote of Walt Disney’s: “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Were he alive today, it would be interesting to see what he’d make of – and with – modern virtual reality (VR) systems.
All VR requires a basic core functionality: The ability to deliver an environment that matches perception. In the simplest VR, a view is presented to the user. If they look down, they see an image of the floor. Look up, they see sky. Done

Game of Thrones has never been about giving readers or viewers what they most want. Its author and screenwriters prefer to build fan expectations, then overturn them for narrative impact — and sometimes for pure shock value. And yet we fans maintain hope that at least a few of the characters will reach a satisfying, well-deserved ending. That’s why there’s Game of Thrones Hope Chest, a new weekly poll where we put all our hopes together in one place. We aren’t asking what

Amazon has long had ambitions for autonomous package delivery, but before drone delivery can go into wider use, there’s some obstacles to overcome. Recently, the company has filed for numerous patents, from a drone beehive placed in populated areas to dropping packages with parachutes to a massive airship. Business Insider spotted a new patent filing: one for a network of mobile workstations based on boats, tractor trailer trucks, trains, or other vehicles, which can be driven to areas of

Mobile virtual reality is hard, and it isn’t growing as fast as predicted. But Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm is sticking with it. His company launched the Bait! on the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream VR headsets.
Palm, whose company is based in Stockholm, Sweden, made the trek to Seattle last week to speak at the Casual Connect USA event. His efforts in VR have been watched closely because Bait! has been downloaded more than 2 million times, perhaps more than any other VR t

Let’s face it: people are awful. They’re stupid and forgetful and do terrible things like leave pets and children in hot cars. Safety experts say that an average of 37 children die in locked vehicles every year. And while there is no obvious solution to this particular aspect of humanity’s chronic wretchedness, there are some new safety features coming out soon that can hopefully help prevent these types of tragedies from happening.Starting in 2018, the new Nissan Pathfinder wi

FEATURE: Mixi Inc.’s Monster Strike is a mobile juggernaut in Japan. It frequently ranks among the top-grossing mobile apps on both Android and iOS, boasts over 40 million downloads (in a nation of 127 million people), and it has spawned a devoted fanbase who watch an anime adaptation, go to special Monster Strike-themed live events, and even attend concerts featuring the game’s music.
But despite runaway success in its home country, things haven’t been as rosy for Monster Stri

Mindfulness has become a flourishing industry, worth some $1 billion, and now, a New York production company called m ss ng p eces (the spaces are deliberate) has launched VR meditation experiences, including one that puts users straight into a guided session, reports Fast Company.
The experience was produced by the company, along with Jack Kornfield, the founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. Ari Kushnir, m ss ng p eces’ founder, was a fan of Kornfield’s po

GUEST: There’s a race heating up in the world of artificial intelligence, and it involves smartphones, consumers, and voice. Voice-activated smartphone apps use a combination of artificial intelligence, cloud-based natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning to power their services. And with all the buzz around apps like Siri and Alexa, it’s clear that tech giants are competing for consumer attention in yet another area.
While voice-activated services currently occupy a s

GUEST: Artificial intelligence is all over the news, with tech titans arguing over whether it is a force for good or bad. An equally important question is whether AI will further stratify society, creating a world of haves and have-nots.
AI is already impacting multiple industries and will take over many blue collar and white collar jobs in the coming years. The speed and severity with which this happens will determine the enormity of the challenge for the U.S. and other countries around the wor

GUEST: If you’re a gaming company seeking an edge over the competition, you’re probably also a big fan of game analytics. At the same time that you are measuring your regular MAUs and DAUs, CPIs and CTRs, you’re also measuring LTV, CAC, and of course ARPU, no matter what platform you’re on.
But rather than knowing that your CTR is low, wouldn’t you like to know why it’s low? And, of course, don’t you also want to be able to identify which players are lik

Last month RED announced its $1,200 Hydrogen One Phone, which was described as the “world’s first holographic media machine.” Today, we’re finally getting an early look at the device itself beyond the previous teaser mock-up image thanks to a video from tech-focused YouTuber Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD.
In the video Brownlee describes the multiple different prototypes of the device that he got to see, touch, and hold in person. One was just a physical design mod