Technology news

Firefox, which was revamped in June with a speed boost, is going for the gold here. Its latest version, Firefox 55, is set to come out on August 8th complete with VR support. Firefox will be joining the ranks of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, which also added web-based VR functionality this past year.Web-based VR on Firefox will be available for all Windows users who have an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headset. It’s something that has been in the works for Mozilla for a while, using a stand

Coach is a fashion brand that has been making Apple Watch bands since June 2016, which the company has periodically refreshed with new styles, colors, and designs. Given that the fall season is fast approaching, it’s only logical that Coach would update its offerings with new fall colors to match your fall ensemble (assuming you’re the kind of person who buys seasonal watch bands, anyway.) Haute Écriture has the full rundown on what exactly is new in Coach’s lineup, if y

When Pixel XL 2 leaked last month, I was glad to see Google had done the smart thing and shrunk the ginormous wasted bezels. Unfortunately, it seems the company isn’t giving the smaller Pixel the same treatment. GSMArena appears to have gotten a hold of a couple leaked images of the device, and it looks… unremarkable. At lease Google managed to fit some stereo speakers in there, but that’s still no excuse for the massive bezels in 2017. Huawei’s Mate 9 manages to have a

Phone hype starts early for every brand, and this post's for you, LG fans. The company employs Joseph Gordon-Levitt to host annual creative competitions that often involve participants filming something with an LG phone. This year, the two entities are collaborating again, and the recent video submissions feature an unreleased device we can only assume is the LG V30, which is likely going to be announced on August 31st. Shout-out to Droid Life for first spotting the phone.
This year's competitio

Last week, residents of Arlington, Virginia, were stunned to see an unmarked, gray Ford Transit van tooling around town without a human driver behind the wheel. According to ARLnow, the vehicle was spotted driving through the Courthouse and Clarendon neighborhoods with nary a soul in the driver’s seat. Some speculated the van was part of Virginia Tech’s recently approved autonomous driving tests, and were content to leave it there. But then the story got even weirder.On Monday, NBC 4

Audible and Cesar Millan have teamed up to make a free guide to playing audiobooks for your dog. Millan, who has made a famous career of advising people on how to train and care for their dogs, has now turned to using audiobooks as a means of maintaining calm in dogs who are home alone waiting for their owners to return. Some dogs who are home alone tend to experience separation issues and have trouble staying relaxed.
The free guide is called Audible for Dogs. Millan also made a curated rotatin

Uber board member and co-founder Garrett Camp today, in a company email, attempted to lay-to-rest rumors that ousted CEO Travis Kalanick was being considered for a come-back. In the email, according to a Recode report, Camp states: Our CEO search is the board’s top priority. It’s time for a new chapter and the right leader for our next phase of growth. Despite rumors I’m sure you’ve seen in the news, Travis is not returning as CEO. We are committed to hiring a new world

Over the weekend, an anti-diversity manifesto written by a Google employee went viral both within the company and outside of it, drawing harsh criticism from both present and former Googlers. But some agreed with the document, and alongside muted agreement from pockets within the company, the author seems to have found louder supporters in a more familiar place: the online right.
The author’s name first surfaced in right-wing blogs early this morning. (The Verge has decided not to publish

A vast majority of the trusted tips and tricks we employ when crafting a custom password actually make us more vulnerable to hackers, according to the expert who popularized the tips back in 2003. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, former National Institute of Standards and Technology manager Bill Burr admitted that a 2003 document he authored on crafting strong passwords was misguided. “Much of what I did I now regret,” says Burr, who is 72 years old and now retired.Burr&

Venmo is super useful for sending money to friends, but the toughest part may be actually finding them in the app. I personally have had the frustrating experience of not actually knowing my Venmo username on several occasions. The company is now working to make that process even easier by following in the footsteps of apps like Snapchat by adding custom QR codes that you can use to add a friend, as noted by TechCrunch.QR codes are generated automatically in the latest update
The QR codes are ge

Over the last few months, YouTube has been rolling out a series of new guidelines about which videos are able to make money through advertising. You need to have 10,000 total views on your channel before you can start making money off ads. You can’t make money on YouTube with hateful or incendiary content. And you can’t make a quick buck off the inappropriate use of family-friendly characters. (RIP Spider-Man peeing on Elsa.)The result has been a dip in income for some creators, who

Bitcoin is a great technology, right? It is decentralized, it’s cheap to transact, and no government or central bank has control over it. And one other thing, its value seems to be skyrocketing, which means it might be a good time to jump on the bandwagon and use it both as an investment and as a means to transact. Don’t convert your entire life savings to crypto just yet. While Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have already become mainstream, there are still some challenges ahead.

Aerospace startup Rocket Lab says it knows why the first test launch of its small rocket failed to reach orbit in May. The failure had nothing to do with the rocket itself, but instead the mission was terminated early because of a problem with ground equipment supporting the launch. Now that Rocket Lab knows what happened, the company says there’s an easy fix and will take corrective measures so the failure doesn’t happen again.
the company says there’s an easy fix
The May test

Pilotless flight might be in our future, but according to a new study by Swiss bank UBS, consumers are not quite ready to embrace it.
Out of the 8,000 people surveyed for the report, more than half said they were unwilling to travel in a pilotless plane, even if the price was cheaper. Overall, only 17 percent said they would be likely to take an uncrewed flight, but that percentage rose to 27 percent when reducing the sample size to those aged 18–24, and 31 percent with those aged 25&ndash

Pilotless flight might be in our future, but according to a new study by Swiss bank UBS, consumers are not quite ready to embrace it.
Out of the 8,000 people surveyed for the report, more than half said they were unwilling to travel in a pilotless plane, even if the price was cheaper. Overall, only 17 percent said they would be likely to take an uncrewed flight, but that percentage rose to 27 percent when reducing the sample size to those aged 18–24, and 31 percent with those aged 25&ndash

Microsoft is testing its first major Xbox dashboard overhaul with the company’s new Fluent Design. Xbox One Insiders on the alpha ring will get access to a new Xbox One dashboard at 6PM PT / 9PM ET today, and it looks like a solid improvement from the existing one. Once again, Microsoft is focusing on speed of navigation and removing the splash screens that occur when you switch from sections like home, social, and my games / apps.
The tabs in the guide are now ordered horizontally, and yo

A robotic sewing system will soon produce hundreds of thousands of shirts for Adidas, which could potentially change textile manufacture. The machine — called a “Sewbot” uses cameras and bots to cut and sew the soft fabric, a task which has eluded other forms of automation. Until now, the task was still best-suited to humans with sewing machines. According to Softwear: The machines use a combination of cameras and needles to track the placement of a fabric before sewing the ap

Some of the most talented indie game developers around are joining together for an especially retro-flavored release.
The five-person team — which consists of Derek Yu, Eirik Suhrke, Jon Perry, Paul Hubans, and Ojiro Fumoto — just announced a new project called UFO 50. It’s a collection of 50 unique 8-bit-style games, spanning what looks to be a huge range of genres, including platformers, puzzle games, beat ‘em ups, and even point-and-click adventures. The team says that

Apple doesn’t exactly endeavor much in social media, but that’s been changing of late. After a false start with Twitter, now the company is launching an Instagram account (@apple). Naturally, it’s meant to show off photos from the iPhone. Apple being Apple, the account is already growing at an impressive pace. It managed to build up 40K followers in about 40 minutes, and as of writing is sitting at a cool 80K. At that pace, it will likely hit one million followers within

You can tell we’re closing in on the announcement of a new Pixel by just how much the leaks have picked up in recent weeks. First, we got a render of a redesigned Pixel XL; last week, we got a first look at the smaller Pixel; and today, we’re getting yet another glimpse at an early model of the smaller smartphone.
GSMArena says someone sent in two photos of an early dev unit. One photo, above, gives us another look at the device’s front, where a few things stand out:A more rect

Remote work is all the rage, and the rise of internet-based companies to meet the (ever growing demand) is evidence of that. It seems like every day I come across a new company that is trying to help people live the “remote work lifestyle dream” of working from anywhere, at any time, in whatever way they please. And why not? A poll conducted in 2015 found that a full 68% of college grads would weight a potential job more favorably if the company allowed remote work at least some of

YouTube has added a new mobile-only feature that allows you to share a video with friends and chat about it in a private thread — all within the YouTube app. The function works like Android’s default Messages app: when you share a video with a contact (or multiple contacts as a group), you can chat about it without leaving the app, rather than having to start a new email or text message thread. Users can also respond to a video share with, what else, another video by pressing the ree

Scientists have created an algorithm that analyzes RF signals in order to monitor you in your sleep. It uses a device similar to a Wi-Fi router to determine everything from how shallow your breathing is to whether you’re having a dream or not. The study was conducted by a group consisting of researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Division of Sleep Medicine. MIT Professor Dina Katabi says: Imagine if your Wi-Fi router knows when you are dreaming, and can

(Reuters) — SoftBank Group Corp, a prolific investor in global technology startups, reported a sharp rise in quarterly profits and said it would be interested in parking funds in ride-hailing firms Uber Technologies or Lyft Inc in the future.
This is the first time Softbank has publicly indicated an interest in Uber, after having so far put funds into its rival Grab in Southeast Asia and China’s Didi Chuxing. Last month, a media report said Uber shareholders and its board were m

The disputes between Airbnb and the hotel industry continue to be an ongoing battle, but things escalated last week when an ad campaign backed by the Hotel Association of New York City suggested that short-term rentals could be used to host terrorists like Salman Abedi, the bomber behind the Manchester attack in May.
The 30-second ad, which features just text overlays and an ominous music, is a slideshow of photos from the Manchester bombing, as it was reported that Abedi had “massive pack

Building a successful business, online or offline, isn’t an easy task. Being an entrepreneur is a grueling task, and you have to be willing to work your ass off if you want to be successful. The BS ads flooding your Facebook newsfeed and all over YouTube hawking online courses and mentoring programs that promise the good life are not reality. Nobody has built a successful business without putting in real work. The only businesses these self-proclaimed gurus have built are the half-assed b

If we gave medals to our favorite phones, the OnePlus 5 (our review here) would have won Gold in the budget flagship category. Too you couldn’t actually but the phone in gold…. Until now. *Ahem* Terrible lede aside, the OnePlus 5 now comes in ‘Soft Gold,’ which is a subtler take on the blingy hue than most other manufacturers. It also comes with a white front, which is a nice change of pace from the complements the Midnight Black and Slate Gray. I normally think gold ga

It’s not your imagination. Initial coin offerings, or ICOs, have exploded this year.
According to Coindesk, companies worldwide have used the blockchain investment tool to raise an astonishing $1.366 billion in 2017. Between 2014 and the end of 2016, a total of $295 million was raised in ICOs.
For perspective, in the second quarter of 2017, startups in the U.S. raised $21.8 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association. In that same quarter, startups across all industries

OnePlus has announced today that the new OnePlus 5 can now be purchased in a gold color variant. Called “Soft Gold,” this version of the OnePlus 5 is available with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Unlike the midnight black and slate gray models, the soft gold OnePlus 5 has a white front instead of black. In addition, OnePlus will soon offer the slate gray model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Prior to this, the higher-end model of the OnePlus 5 was only available in midnight bl