Technology news

As Texas deals with the fallout from Harvey and the Caribbean braces for the impact of Hurricane Irma, two more hurricanes continue to grow in the Atlantic. The storms are being fueled by warm waters in the Atlantic, which intensifies the hurricanes by providing more energy.Hurricane Katia is forming in the Gulf of Mexico with winds of 75 miles per hour, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has put out a hurricane warning for the Mexican state of Veracruz. It’s re

Finding a great note-taking app is like finding the perfect pair of jeans. They’re hard to come across, but once you do, you’ll always stick with them. The same goes for the best smartphone apps. Some people might still prefer the old, foolproof method of taking notes with pen and paper, but this is the mobile era, and having one good note-taking app on your phone can save you constant hassle. And for students heading back to college, the right notes app can keep you organized and on

While Android phone makers seem to be giving up on Android Wear, traditional fashion brands only seem to be embracing it more. And you know what? It might be one of the best things for the future of the smartwatch. Michael Kors’ new Sofie and Grayson smartwatches are not just good-looking watches, they’re all-around solid gadgets. I had my concerns. Last year’s model, the Dylan, wasn’t quite to my taste. The design was nice – which is ultimately what matters for a

The US House of Representatives passed a bill today that could accelerate the rollout of self-driving technology. The Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution Act, or “SELF DRIVE” Act, quickly cleared the House with unanimous support, and now moves to the Senate. If it passes there, it could become the first national law for self-driving cars in the United States.
The overarching goal of the Self Drive Act is to establish a federal framework for the r

A Russian company that created fake accounts and pages purchased $100,000 worth of advertising during the US election last year, the company said. The Washington Post reported that Facebook traced the fake accounts to a Russian “troll farm” that has a history of promoting Russian propaganda. The ads began running in the summer of 2015, Facebook said, and a small number of them mentioned candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.Other ads promoted posts focused on polarizing issues,

If you’ve ever wanted gradient-style colored comments to match your colorful statuses, Facebook is conducting a test right now to bring the rainbow to you. Currently, only a select few users can see the test, and it appears to only work on mobile. Colorful status updates first came to Facebook’s Android app last December, and Facebook recently adopted the feature on WhatsApp.
You can likely foresee the many ways that colored comments could go wrong. Just imagine people going on a vic

Representatives from Facebook today informed congress that it inadvertently sold advertising space to Russian operatives seeking to influence the 2016 US presidential election. The social network, after investigation, was able trace $100,000 to a “troll farm” in Russia. Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos released an official statement detailing the investigation process: In reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May

Samsung Display makes the best smartphone OLED screens in the world, as evidenced most recently by the Galaxy S8 and Note 8. So it makes total sense that Apple is putting a heavy reliance on the company to supply displays for the upcoming top-tier iPhone set to be announced on Tuesday, which will herald Apple’s shift to OLED technology for its flagship smartphone. According to the well-sourced KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Samsung’s position as the one and only supplier of displays for t

Google is trying to attract Microsoft Azure customers over to its Cloud service in an unusual way: by sending free Chromebooks to Azure customers as part of its pitch to convince them to switch over to Google Cloud, as reported by Petri.Cleverly, the Chromebook is actually part of Google’s approach. The laptop is intended to be used for a Google Hangout, with a Google Cloud representative pitching Azure users on the advantages of Google’s platform.Photo: PetriAlong with the Chromeboo

With the Category 5 Hurricane Irma, now one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic, on its way toward the Caribbean and possibly the southeastern tip of the US, a little-known walkie-talkie app has shot to the top of Apple’s App Store. The free app, called Zello Walkie Talkie, lets your phone communicate as a two-way radio so long as you have a network or Wi-Fi connection. What makes it useful is that it allows immediate voice communication to others in a shared channel,

When you file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, you should be prepared to wait. There’s nothing efficient about the system enacted in 1966. And when you’re requesting a detailed breakdown of the video games housed in Guantanamo Bay’s library, you should be prepared to wait a little longer. It’s hard to imagine this is high on the priority list. When an inquisitive journalist made a FOIA request in 2014, he probably didn’t expect it to take three years. A

Twitter.com launched its Night Mode feature on desktop today, although the feature has yet to roll out to all accounts. The feature has already been available on iOS and Android since last year.
To enable Night Mode on desktop, click on your profile photo, then select Night Mode, which is the last option and has a moon icon. Activating Night Mode turns Twitter’s usual white screens and cheerful light blue into a beautiful Tumblr-like navy blue and fills up the moon icon with blue. To disab

To mark yesterday’s global launch of online shooter Destiny 2, developer Bungie teamed up with Japanese dance choreographers Furitsuke Kagyou Air:man to deliver three minutes of subculture appreciation in the form of an extended and increasingly ludicrous Guardian dance-off. The video starts off with what looks like a passable live-action television trailer, like the very one Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts produced for Bungie’s English-language marketing launch last

For decades now, practically every NASA mission has had its own signature patch: a rounded emblem to symbolize the purpose of the agency’s flights into space. It’s a tradition that many others in aerospace have adopted, too, including the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), a nonprofit that oversees the National Laboratory on the International Space Station. Each year, CASIS releases a themed mission patch for the lab, and this year’s seal showcases a few fa

Twitter today rolled out Night Mode for its desktop site. We’ve known it was coming since a Twitter spokesperson confirmed it was testing the feature last month, but now it seems to be rolling out more widely. You can now enable night mode on https://t.co/fuPJa3nVky! 🌙 Also available on Twitter for iOS and Android. https://t.co/9AjOwcv3Zn — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 6, 2017 To access Night Mode on desktop, click your profile image on the top right corner of

The Eta Clock is a new Kickstarter project from a startup called DC Creatives that works with a smartphone app to show you the locations of your friends and family members, using a fun, clock-style interface.So basically, it’s a real, functional version of the Weasley family’s magical clock from the Harry Potter series. And — putting aside the fraught social issues of needing to know your family member’s locations — it’s kind of amazing that it exists. While i

Robin Sloan’s debut novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, was a charming look at Silicon Valley culture set in a San Francisco that almost felt like an ideal version of our own. Sloan’s city is a place where the sun feels a little bit brighter, the companies a little less evil, and where secret clubs, improbable bookstores, and delightful characters can be found around every corner.A second course of the best parts of Penumbra
Sourdough — Sloan’s second novel, wh

Last week, we got a peek at the interior of Apple Park’s Steve Jobs Theater, albeit one covered in plastic and under construction. Now, Bloomberg’s resident Apple reporter says he has more details about exactly how things will work under the structure’s giant silver roof.
The previous photos, coupled with two blueprints tweeted by Neil Cybart, gave a general understanding of how the flow would work. The images showed a lobby area that extends a story below ground, accessible vi

There’s a reason why Apple’s successes and failures always seem to surprise some people. It’s a company of secrets. The business behind the iPhone is beyond selfish when it comes to sharing ideas. Sure it’s fantastic for consumers who love the combination of cutting-edge software, hardware, and design that has become Apple’s trademark. It’s a shit deal for everyone else though, especially robots. According to a Wall Street Journal report Apple has only publis

Tech recruitment is a big business, and there are no shortages of job sites. Companies spend huge amounts of money trying to find the brightest and best candidates, while engineers dedicate hours poring over Indeed and Craigslist in search of well-paying, yet fulfilling work. Key Values is a job site, but it treads a path not followed by its rivals, as it emphasises corporate culture above all else. Job listings, for example, don’t actually list salaries. Instead, they talk about what emp

By now, almost everyone knows what Harvey and Irma are, but why do hurricanes have names in the first place?For a simple reason: it makes communication easier. In the past, people identified hurricanes based on latitude and longitude. But a bunch of numbers can be a mouthful and also get confusing when you’re trying to pass information to so many different sources. Names are far more memorable and distinctive, which makes them more convenient to use to get the word out quickly, according t

In the broad plot details, Andrés Muschietti’s 2017 Stephen King adaptation It is astonishingly close to Rob Reiner’s 1986 Stephen King adaptation Stand By Me. In both movies, a group of pre-adolescent kids run around the outskirts of a small town, bonding during the long summer days and nights. In both movies, one of those kids has a terrifying abusive father; another has recently lost a brother, and his shell-shocked parents have mostly abandoned him to his own devices.The c

Smartphone sales have been invariably dominated by two players for several years: Samsung and Apple. But Huawei has slowly been catching up and has now surpassed Apple to become the world’s second largest smartphone maker, according to Counterpoint Research. The firm has tallied up sales up to July, when Huawei just barely passed Apple’s sales. Of course, this is likely a very temporary victory, as Apple is set to unveil the iPhone 8 (which may be called the iPhone X or Edition) nex

For the first time ever, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has spotted electrons being fired down into Jupiter’s atmosphere at up to 400,000 volts. That’s an enormous amount of energy that gives rise to the planet’s glowing auroras. These incredibly high voltages, however, are only spotted occasionally — and that’s raising questions about what exactly is behind some of the planet’s most vivid glows at the poles.The discovery, detailed in a study published today in

The BBC is known for producing radio plays, but the format is about to get a high-tech twist: a new experiment by the broadcasting company will turn traditional audio dramas into interactive stories.One new radio play — a comedy / science fiction story titled The Inspection Chamber — will work similarly to a choose your own adventure book or game. Listeners will hear a chunk of the story, and then be presented with a choice of what should happen next. It was developed by the BBC&rsqu

After 55 years, James Bond still turns heads everywhere he goes. This time, the parties interested in the suave spy are Amazon and Apple. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the two tech companies are the latest entrants in the race to buy 007’s film distribution rights. Several studios have been fighting for the right to the franchise since Spectre released in 2015, the same time Sony’s distribution contract ended. Despite his age, James Bond remains as hot a ticket as e

Social network Gab.ai, known as an anything-goes haven for the far-right, is seeing blowback from the past month’s online white supremacist crackdown. CEO Andrew Torba writes that last week, domain registrar AsiaRegistry told Gab to take down a post by the founder of neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. Torba complied, but in the process, he set off a debate over the platform’s “free speech” bona fides — and the state of moderating online hate speech.
Gab promotes itself as

Grocery stores are feeling the squeeze after Amazon slashed prices at Whole Foods last week. Kroger, the third largest grocery chain in the US, finds itself in the unenviable position of trying to find profits while engaging in a price war against a foe whose pockets run far too deep to beat. The first sign of trouble was when Kroger started announcing voluntary buyouts and slowing store growth. Now the company is reportedly scrambling to come up with a long-term plan to deal with Whole Foods a

Vendors relying on Mastercard’s Internet Gateway Service (MIGS) for processing online payments ought to double-check every transaction before they send out items to customers: There is a critical flaw in the system’s validation protocol and it appears the company is completely ignoring it. Independent security researcher Yohanes Nugroho has stumbled upon a glaring flaw in the MIGS protocol that allows hackers to spoof the payment system and trick merchants into accepting invali

A new Symantec report details a sustained and sophisticated campaign to hack into more than 20 power stations in the United States and elsewhere. Dubbed “Dragonfly,” the campaign has been active in some form since 2011, but Symantec identifies a surge in activity beginning in late 2015 and continuing through the present. Dozens of utilities were targeted in the spring and summer of this year, including many in the US.
First reported by Wired, the latest round of attacks is more invas