Technology news

Microsoft is officially unveiling Windows 10 Pro for Workstations today. While the operating system was originally rumored back in June, Microsoft is providing the full details on the special edition today. As expected, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations is primarily designed for server grade PC hardware and true power users. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations scales up for machines with a high number of logical processors and large amounts of RAM.
The software giant is making four major changes to Wi

Fidget spinners have exploded onto the gadget scene over the past few months — not just in the growth sense of the word, but quite literally. That’s why the US Consumer Product Safety Commission today released guidelines for both manufacturers and consumers on how to have a safe time around fidget spinners, particularly ones that contain metal and / or batteries.
For consumers, the CPSC recommends that fidget spinner users avoid playing with them around their faces or putting them in

Former Google engineer James Damore, who was fired for distributing a memo suggesting women are not biologically suited for certain types of work, is now branding himself as a brave truth teller. In what appears to be his new Twitter account, Damore can be seen wearing a shirt with the word “Goolag,” a play on “Google” that means to suggest the Silicon Valley search company is something like the infamous Soviet camps where prisoners were worked and starved to death as par

President Donald Trump said that he intends to declare a national emergency on the opioid crisis — the administration just needs to work on the official paperwork. This is the first time that a national emergency has been declared a long-term public health crisis, so it’s not clear how exactly it will help fight the opioid epidemic."The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially, right now, it is an emergency," Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey

Snapchat reported its second quarterly earnings as a public company today. It grew its user base and revenue, but not as quickly as investors had hoped. And its losses continued to widen. As a result, the share price, which had already dipped well below the IPO price, continued to slide in after-hours trading, falling more than 11 percent.Snap said its daily active user base was up by 7.3 million people from last quarter, an increase of 4 percent. That puts its total at 173 million, likely a lit

It’s been a tumultuous week for streaming services. Netflix officially entered the publishing world, Disney announced it’s pulling its content off Netflix and launching its own service to stream the company’s content, and NBC revealed that it’s shutting down its struggling comedy streaming service SeeSo. Put those three stories together, and they underline a trend we were seeing even before Netflix entered the content-creation business back in 2013: streaming services are

Amazon has held talks directly with the owners of major venues in the US about potentially entering the business of ticket sales, according to a report from Reuters. If Amazon were to proceed, it could significantly disrupt an industry that is largely dominated by Ticketmaster. But as an alternative to competing, Amazon has also considered partnering with Ticketmaster on a ticketing effort. Those discussions “have stalled over who would control customer data” according to Reuters.The

The characters on Game of Thrones are multidimensional and ever-changing, but what happens when we categorize them by... beauty and goodness? That’s the really odd challenge that The New York Times recently gave to its readers. It asked fans to set aside the fact that Game of Thrones subverts traditional definitions of “good” and “bad” at every turn, and ignore that the majority of the show’s performers, as required by their line of work, are pretty much all a

Benchmark Capital, one of Uber’s most influential investors and largest shareholders, is suing former CEO Travis Kalanick for fraud, according to Axios. The complaint, which was filed in Delaware court, accuses Kalanick of “fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.” It’s the latest sign that, despite Kalanick’s recent resignation from Uber, the company continues to find itself immeshed in Kalanick-related chaos.
Benchmark, which was an early investor i

Axios reports that it has obtained a memo that was sent to SoundCloud’s current shareholders on Tuesday, indicating that a pending reorganization proposal is “do or die” for the music streaming platform.
According to Axios, the memo requires shareholders to accept or reject a reorganization proposal by the end of Friday. If the proposal is accepted, then a new cash infusion ($169.5 million at a $150 million valuation prior to the investment) from boutique merchant bank The Rain

In an effort to make pig organs safer for humans, scientists have successfully edited the animal’s genome to deactivate viruses that could be harmful to people. The research is an important step forward in the quest to make pig organs safe for transplantation — a dream that has kept scientists busy for decades and has the potential to save thousands of lives.
The researchers, including famous Harvard geneticist George Church, used the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and the sa

B&O Play often delights us with unique colors for its products, like its tangerine-colored H4 headphones. And today, the company announced that in honor of the fall equinox, it'll be releasing some headphones and portable speakers in various moody new shades. Who doesn't commemorate the seasons changing with new gadgets?
The collection includes the P2 portable speaker, the wireless H4 headphones, the H5 earbuds, and the A1 speaker. They're being released in shades of purple, brown, and dark

Uber's first employee, former CEO, and current head of operations, Ryan Graves, is stepping aside from day-to-day activities at the company to focus on his role on Uber’s board, according to a company-wide email that just went out.“In the past 7.5 years of building Uber, I’ve learned so many different lessons, one of which is the fact that people who embrace uncertainty and change have the best grip on reality,” Graves writes. “In the middle of September, I’ll

A price increase is on the way for Canadian Netflix users, with new users facing the charges immediately. CBC News reports that the service’s basic and standard plans will both now cost a dollar more ($8.99 and $10.99, respectively) while premium users should expect a two-dollar increase. Current subscribers should also expect equivalent price hikes in the coming weeks.Netflix, which offers several different streaming plans in basic, standard, and premium tiers, has raised its prices befor

Wisconsin’s plan to treat Foxconn to $3 billion in tax breaks in exchange for a $10 billion factory is looking less and less like a good deal for the state. In a report issued this week, Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau said that the state wouldn’t break even on its investment until 2043 — and that’s in an absolute best-case scenario.
How many workers Foxconn actually hires, and where Foxconn hires them from, would have a significant impact on when the state&rs

Microsoft is officially launching its Xbox Live Creators Program today, to let developers directly publish games to the Xbox One or Windows 10 PCs. The first games are available today from a special section in the Xbox Store named “Creators collection.” Only nine games are available right now, but the hope is that indie developers will publish basic titles that can be played across PCs and Xbox One consoles.
Microsoft has simplified the certification process for Creators collection g

The UK is so into football/soccer that a British indie developer recently released a game inspired by the fact that it’s impossible to escape football/soccer. You would think, then, that it’d be the perfect market for the latest ridiculous PS4 controller cooked up somewhere in Sony’s halls. And yet.
Here are some things about the “Limited Edition PlayStation F.C. DualShock 4 wireless controller”:
It’s blue
It has a penalty area on the touchpad
It says “P

Chinese vendors are facing backlash for selling customized photos and videos featuring African children via Chinese online marketplace Taobao. As reported by Beijing Youth Daily, these photos and videos have recently become popular as a way to deliver messages for birthdays and other meaningful occasions. They can be purchased for as little as $1, similar to services offered on freelance marketplace Fiverr.
The photos can be ordered from any number of Taobao vendors, and show young children from

Uber and Lyft talk a big game about the end of personal car ownership, but they’ve always lacked hard evidence to back up their claims. Now a new study has been released that lends some credibility to their futuristic predictions.
The study, compiled by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, and Columbia University, focused on Austin, Texas, where ride-hail services like Uber and Lyft pulled services last year due to a local or

The gamepad controller for Motorola’s Moto Z line of smartphone is going on sale August 25th for $79.99. That seems pretty expensive, and unfortunately for those who’ve been awaiting the snap-on accessory, you’ll only have one place to get it: Verizon Wireless. The carrier has an exclusive lock on the mod, which connects directly to the Moto Z via the pins on the back of the phone for reliable and lag-free game controls. It’s available to preorder now and goes on sale Aug

 Filecoin, the much-anticipated cryptocurrency that will eventually power a distributed file storage system, is opening its ICO today at 12pm PT / 3pm ET today.
Last week Filecoin concluded a much talked about “advisor” sale that brought in a total of $52M from ~150 investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Winklevoss Capital and about 100… Read More

Consumer Reports is stripping its “recommended” badge from Microsoft’s entire lineup of Surface PCs because the hardware was found to be “significantly less reliable than most other brands.”In a survey of 90,000 tablet and laptop owners, Consumer Reports found that roughly 25 percent of Surface users have encountered “problems by the end of the second year of ownership.” Those problems include freezing, unexpected shutdowns, and touchscreen response issu

It was always a bit weird to wait for your Uber driver and then suddenly receive a text from an unknown number. “Where are you?” Often the driver would skip the anonymous text altogether and just honk their horn until you got the hint. (Literally while I’m writing this, a black car driver is leaning on their horn outside my apartment.) Like all tech companies desperately trying to smooth out modern life’s rough edges, Uber has a new solution: in-app messaging.
To send a m

Fitbit's rumored smartwatch is supposed to be available by the holiday season, which means we should not only have an official idea of what the device looks like soon, but also lots of leaks along the way. Today, Wareable published renders of the device that it claims will be the final version. The images look similar to a render that leaked in May. The watch will apparently be available in three color schemes: a silver case with a navy strap, a rose gold case with a blue strap, and a darker cas

The Pip-Boys are coming back. Today Bethesda announced a new “game of the year” version of Fallout 4, which will include the post-apocalyptic RPG along with all of its many expansions and add-ons. More importantly, the developer also revealed that it’s bringing back the Pip-Boy, a real-world version of the iconic wrist-worn computer featured in the games that works with your smartphone. The Pip-Boys will be available bundled with the new edition of the game for $99.99, and Beth

Luxury phone maker Vertu, which shut down its UK manufacturing operations in July, is auctioning off its back catalog of phones. The collection is listed on Bid Spotter, and is made up of 105 phones from the Vertu museum, with devices dating from 2002 models to 2015 ones. Bidding starts at £20,000 ($26,000), and some handsets in the lot are finished in 18-karat gold, titanium, and stainless steel, while others are set with diamonds. What else do you expect from Vertu?
The auctioneer, G J W

I've never been a big fan of astronomical events: there are just too many meteor showers or planet transits to keep up with, and a slightly larger Moon just doesn't do much for me. But I have completely shed my cynical attitude regarding the upcoming total solar eclipse. The more I learn about it, the more excited I am to see it — and to photograph it. I'll be heading down to Nashville, which lies in the path of the eclipse's shadow, so I'll have the opportunity to get an incredible snapsh

Blade Runner 2049 hits theaters this October, but if you’re looking for more grungy science fiction dystopia, there’s another Blade Runner-related project out there to check out: Slice of Life. In January, a group of Croatian filmmakers released a trailer for their fan film project, inspired by Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece. In order to complete it, they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign.
Director Luka Hrgović told The Verge earlier this spring that the film i

Ikea launched its smart bulbs and hub earlier this year with the promise of eventually supporting Google Home, Apple HomeKit, and Amazon Alexa devices. Now, it seems the company is following through on its word. First spotted by 9to5Mac, the retailer updated the bulbs' online listing to encourage users to download the most recent version of their app to use the various home assistants. "Make sure that you have the latest upgrade of TRÅDFRI gateway to be able to connect it with Amazon Alexa

Sonic Mania doesn’t just need to look the part — it needs to sound right, too. The upcoming game aims to bring the series back to its glory days, with pixel art and side-scrolling action reminiscent of the franchise’s 16-bit hits. But a large part of re-creating the feel of classic Sonic comes down to the music. Mania features bright, vibrant chiptune tracks to go along with its colorful, blocky world.
The soundscape is the work of Portuguese composer Tiago “Tee” Lo

After launching a well-reviewed and affordable 4K HDR TV with TCL, Roku is going back to low-cost TVs for the latest series of televisions that run the company’s streaming software. Today Roku and partner RCA are announcing a new lineup of HD Roku TVs. Three sizes are available: a 32-inch model costs $249.99, a 43-inch model is $379.99, and the top-end 50-inch model is $499.The 43- and 50-inch TVs are 1080p, with the smaller 32-inch size having a resolution of 1366x768. These are meant to

Former Google engineer James Damore says he has no regrets after circulating a controversial memo he wrote concerning the tech giant’s diversity policies. Damore was fired on Monday after a tumultuous 72-hours that saw his manifesto go viral online, with the document asserting that the gender gap between men and women in technology was due to biological reasons.
“It’s hard to regret it, just because I do believe that I’m trying to make Google and the world in general a be

Cords are today’s equivalent of yesterday’s ballpoint pens. We lose them, break them, and eventually, we leave them behind. They’re huddled in dusty, dark corners of airport floors, stained coffee shop tables, and swimming in strands at the bottoms of our bags, but when we desire them the most, we cannot find them as easily as we’d like. Without them we are frozen, helpless, limited. Cords are an instrument of communication, like pen to paper. Cords enable us to leave our