Technology news

This evening, when you finally sit down after a long day at work, you owe it yourself to have a beer and relax. If you lived in the future your refrigerator would understand this, it would empathize with you, and it would bring you an ice-cold beverage. It would probably even offer you cheese and sausage, depending on the availability in your particular home. Chances are, and this is just a guess, your refrigerator isn’t going to do that when you get home from work. Not because you’

GUEST: Because voice assistants represent essentially the pinnacle of consumer-grade machine learning, keeping an eye on Siri, Cortana, and Alexa as they evolve should prove fascinating. They’re already changing the way we work and play, including those of us pursuing higher learning. But how?
As you’ll see below, Siri seems limited compared with some of the others. It’s true that Apple has so far kept Siri on a short leash — but it’s done in the name of p

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) recently filed a brief in which the organization decided the first amendment should take a back seat to protecting its talent. Taking issue with IMDb’s policy of revealing the ages of actors and actresses, SAG filed a brief in District Court last month to prevent the website from disseminating publicly-available information. Ageism is a real thing. In the tech world, for example, 30 was once considered over-the-hill. But as companies matured, their founders a

A tiny cat island in Japan made a delightful promotional video in a sweet, earnest request to get Ed Sheeran to come visit. It’s sort of like the modern equivalent of a siren call, but with sleepy cats. Getting shipwrecked on this island wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to the Irish singer, who is a noted cat lover and has previously visited Japan’s cat cafes to serenade its residents.
The video, which politely starts by addressing “Mr. Ed Sheeran,” goes on to

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has shared another picture of his company’s new space suits, this time showing off a full-body shot of what the outfit will look like. Shared on his Instagram, the image shows someone wearing the suit while standing next to a Crew Dragon capsule, the vehicle that SpaceX is building to take NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
It’s the second glimpse of SpaceX’s space suit that Musk has g

Instagram appears to be testing a new feature that Stories users are going to love. As it currently works, Stories is the ephemeral feature stolen from made popular by Snapchat. Users upload photos and videos, add stickers, scribbles, or text in a “story” that disappears after 24 hours. But a new version spotted by some lucky users appears to stretch Stories, allowing you to add images from the last week, as opposed to just the last day. If you’re lucky enough to have it, you&

Credit reporting agency Equifax’s July data breach leaked information on 143 million US-based people, almost half the country’s population. But if you want to be part of a class action lawsuit that was recently filed against the company, accepting its free identity protection service might make things harder. That’s because Equifax’s terms of service force users to settle complaints individually, using a common and widely criticized legal clause. This clause might not app

EXCLUSIVE: A new startup is trying to upend the balance of power among AI companies with what it sees as a new approach to providing machine intelligence for video footage.
Ambient.ai launched today with the promise of providing developers with a way to determine the contents of a video automatically through the application of deep learning. The company’s technology processes video and can then provide captions for its contents, ranging from broad context about what’s taking place in

The Syfy channel has spent most of summer 2017 doubling down on the idea that it should be the go-to place for geek culture with an extensive rebranding effort. One of its latest efforts has been launching a podcast called Origin Stories, which features a wide range of personalities from the science fiction and fantasy world, hosted by former Mythbusters star Adam Savage.
Syfy is known for its genre shows like The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica or low-budget B-films like Sharknado. But the net

The Note brand is still going strong despite Samsung recalling and discontinuing Note 7 devices last year for battery explosions. The company today announced that more customers in the US have preordered the Note 8 than any other Notes it has ever sold in previous years during the same time period.
Note 8 preorders went live on August 24th and the device is one of Samsung’s most expensive smartphones to date, starting at $930. It’s unapologetically pricey, though Samsung did attempt

I started biking on a regular basis last summer. On almost every business trip, I’ve arranged to use a bike as a way to stay in shape or to commute around a city. And I’ve taken countless bike-camping trips, most of them in my home state of Minnesota.
Last year, during a visit to the Mountain View area in California, I witnessed a bike accident for the first time. It didn’t look overly serious — but then again, getting hit by a car when you’re on a bike is always se

Malaysia temporarily banned Steam across its territory today allegedly in response to one game that violates its religious-and-racial-unity laws. That ban has ended, but some of the nation’s internet service providers are still blocking access to Steam. The game in question is Fight of Gods, which is like Street Fighter, but instead of Ryu and Ken who play as religious figures like Jesus and Buddha (although Ken is my god).
“Right now, players in Malaysia can access the games th

The Google Pixel is often considered to have the very best camera around thanks to some truly effective software processing. Now you can get that same processing on almost any recent Android flagship. While you’ve been able to sideload Google’s Camera app for some time, the actual processing that gives the Pixel it’s beautiful photos is still exclusive. Called HDR+, the technology not only increases dynamic range, like traditional HDR modes, but reduces noise and improve color

Binary trading is a financial option for trading asset prices in financial markets such as Stock or Forex Exchange and betting without necessarily purchasing the asset. In this aspect, industrial players have a monetary alternative of either seeking a payoff that has nothing at all or some fixed fiscal amount. The two major forms of binary options entail the cash-or-nothing and the asset-or-nothing alternatives.  The two are distinguished such that, for the cash option, some fixed amount o

Animated science fiction show Futurama is coming back to life as special podcast episode that will reunite the show’s cast and writers. The audio drama ties in with the mobile game Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow, and will premiere on Nerdist September 14th.The app is a tie-in game released earlier this summer from mobile game studio Jam City which puts players through a new story with the show’s characters. The podcast will take off from the game’s story, and as a bonus, all of t

You don’t have to spend any money in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to get the full gameplay experience after purchasing it for its $30 price on Steam, but I’ve had a good time doing so. I’ve also had fun making some of my money back through the Steam Marketplace, where I can sell digital items to other players. This dynamic has added to my enjoyment of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, even though I don’t think I’ve ended up with any items that I particular

Yesterday, Equifax announced that hackers stole half of the US population's Social Security numbers in what will likely end up being one of the worst data breaches to ever affect the country. If you're one of the victims, you might consider freezing your credit. Here's information on how to do that, and what it entails.
How do I know if my data was stolen from Equifax?
Equifax built a website for the data breach where you can type in your name and the last six digits of your Social Security numb

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 is a giant phone with a ton of features, but one of its most prominent ones is its new dual-camera setup. This system, which includes two 12-megapixel cameras with different focal length lenses, lets you take either wide-angle or zoomed-in pictures.
TheNote 8’s camera also lets you mimic the blurred background that you can get with a larger, DSLR camera. This can be cool for portraits, close-ups, or anything else where you want your subject to stand out from t

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off unseating Apple as the second-largest smartphone OEM, Huawei is gearing up for the launch of its annual Mate flagship smartphone lineup — the large-screen handsets that once occupied the now-defunct “phablet” class of devices. Thanks to marketing material shared with VentureBeat by someone familiar with the company’s plans, two of this year’s models — codenamed Alps and Blanc — are coming into focus.
The current Mate lineup, which de

When I initially spoke to Sophia Mahfooz, I was mostly interested in her new promotion within Girls in Tech (GiT), a non-profit focused on getting women around the world a chance at proper STEM education and employment. She had recently been appointed Chief Operations Officer, and was now responsible for GiT’s female-only pitch competition, AMPLIFY. Mahfooz has a pleasant English-accented voice, and she’s very easy to both listen and talk to. When I mention a favorite true crime wri

This week’s news that a Russian firm linked to the Kremlin bought ads during the US presidential election came as a surprise. Facebook found thousands of ads, placed at a cost estimated at $100,000, generated by accounts tied to a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency. The impact of Russian political ad spending, which may have violated US law, is devilishly hard to sort out. While $100,000 can buy thousands of ads, the Trump campaign alone spent an estimated $90 milli

GUEST: In the world of university endowments, everyone wants to be Yale.
That’s because over the past two decades Yale’s investment officers have consistently generated market-beating returns by shifting a large portion of the university’s $25 billion endowment away from traditional stocks and bonds and into alternative investments such as private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital.
Instead of the 4 percent to 5 percent that most institutional investors allot to these sor

Scientists have figured out why bats crash into buildings: smooth, vertical surfaces like window panes throw off their navigation systems, basically keeping them from “seeing” those obstacles.The findings, published this week in the journal Science, help explain why injured or dead bats are often found near buildings. The study also shows yet another way that humans are altering the environment in a way that hurts wildlife.Video: Stefan GreifA group of greater mouse-eared bats.Bats,

IBM is blazing a trail when it comes to how robots interact with humans. The company recently upgraded its Watson AI with a ‘Tone Analyzer’ service that allows it to understand nuance and tone of text. By analyzing word choice, emoji use, and context the AI is learning to understand how we talk to each other. There are thousands of companies doing work in the AI space right now, but most of it happens in the background. It’s one thing to teach an AI how to find what you’

OPINION: Samsung really has outdone itself. Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, or Galaxy Note8, I don’t care. When it comes to the screen, Samsung wins.
Samsung has, of course, made beautiful screens for years. It is widely considered the best in the business, to the point where other companies don’t even bother and simply use Samsung screens, in everything from smartphones to TVs. This is largely a result of experience and expertise. Keep in mind that Samsung Electronics is part of the larger S

Brand loyalty used to be a race to the top and once you got there you were relatively assured you’d stay there for the foreseeable future. Now brand loyalty is on shaky ground thanks to how easy it is to find and purchase new brands. Consumers are no longer limited to what is on the shelves in their local stores. You can literally find over 6,500 listings for dish soap on Amazon. Whatever nitpicky little thing you don’t like about your current dish soap – whether the commercia

When YouTube introduced HDR playback on compatible TVs nearly a year ago, we lamented the fact the feature wasn’t available on mobile devices. Fret no more: YouTube is rolling out the feature to a select few devices starting today. If you’re not familiar, HDR video is similar to HDR photography in the sense that it allows for a greater range of tones between the brightest and darkest parts of an image. However, it requires an HDR screen to display the full range of tones. Said scree

PRESS RELEASE:Popular social relationship manager delivers people and company details enabling Android users to cultivate relationships in authentic ways at scaleSANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–September 8, 2017– Nimble, the award-winning pioneer of Social Sales and Marketing CRM, today launched a freemium add-in for Microsoft Outlook on Android. The Nimble Contacts add-in delivers people and company business insights on any contact in Outlook, including broad social profi

PREVIEW: Not every game I saw at Gamescom was a cartoon platformer. I also got a good preview of Descenders, a new free-riding bike game from Dutch studio RageSquid and the new Manchester, England-based publisher No More Robots.
The cool thing about it is the speed. The game lets you engage in extreme downhill biking with high-end 3D graphics. Each level that you play in the game is procedurally generated, so it’s a new experience every time you get on the track. I saw the game at the

This week saw the biggest public breach in the history of credit reporting, as Equifax reported a hack affecting as many as 143 million customers. The hack exposed Social Security numbers, birthdays, and, in some cases, even credit cards. The attackers gained access as early as May, so the data has now been circulating for months. For years, experts have said you should assume your Social Security number and birthday are already available on criminal marketplaces — and with more than half

EXCLUSIVE: Collecting customer opinions, market research data, and feedback is fairly easy online. You install one of a dozen widgets and set some questions, then wait for the responses.
But getting a multichannel view of survey data, including offline sources, is a harder proposition.
Today, Survata has launched its new survey tool that promises to solve this problem. More importantly, it gives marketers access to a trove of self-reported data, which offers insights that can’t be gathered

Hello, and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, Blizzard is nerfing some of Hearthstone’s strongest card, we pick our favorite Mario spinoffs, and Knack 2 is surprisingly good!
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: Our Cuphead runneth over
PC Gaming Weekly: Wet Hot Battlegrounds Summer
GTA Online’s ‘Battle Royale’ mode reveals why PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds works
Why triple-A devs are going indie (and why in

Google will soon be rolling out design changes to its user-facing privacy and security dashboard, in an attempt to make it more touchscreen-friendly and more clear to users which Google products are storing their data.In other words, Google is giving you a new spoon with which to scoop up the ocean of data that exists out there in the Google-sphere. But, hey: it’s the little things.In a blog post published this morning, Google said that its main user dashboard, which launched in 2009, has

Google is rolling out a refreshed privacy and account data dashboard, “redesigned from the ground up” with a specific focus on touchscreen devices.
To recap, the Google Dashboard was born in 2009, serving as a central repository that displays data from all the Google products you use, including Gmail — for example, how many emails you’ve sent and received — Google Docs, search history, YouTube views, location history, and more.
Since 2009, much has changed not

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are now working together to develop a more secure solution for two-factor authentication.
The companies seem to be looking for a way to replace traditional text messages as the method for verifying whether someone is trying to log in to an online account. What they’ll replace it with is unclear, but the companies’ announcement seems to say they’ll have a solution ready sometime next year.
Two-factor authentication (sometimes called two-st

As Hurricane Irma barrels toward Florida, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is preparing its facilities to withstand the monster storm. Located at Cape Canaveral on Florida’s east coast, KSC is NASA’s biggest spaceport, supporting all of the agency’s past human spaceflight missions and many commercial satellite launches. It’s close to the middle of Irma’s projected path and is expected to experience major high-speed winds this weekend.Fortunately, KSC is built to ha