Technology news

Donald Trump Jr. loves his children so much that he doesn't actually look at them all day. 
The father of five was pictured sitting at his desk in Trump Tower, contemplating his fate in a New York Times article earlier this week about his meeting with Senate investigators over his ties to Russia. 
On Saturday, however, Twitter noticed something odd about the photo, taken in February. I, too, casually arrange photographs of my 100 children to face outwards so I can only see the bac

There has been a series of revelations about the next iPhone that Apple is expected to unveil next week, and a new leak of iOS 11’s Golden Master helps confirm some rumors that the next iteration of the Apple Watch will have LTE connectivity.The revelation doesn’t come as a huge surprise: there’s been reports that the wearable will come with built-in LTE this year. It’s also rumored that Apple will release two versions: one with LTE and one without. If true, the LTE-enabl

Electronics retailer Best Buy will no longer sell security software from Russian internet security company Kaspersky Lab after concerns that the company could be unduly influenced by the Russian government.
This summer, the Moscow-based cybersecurity company has faced a series of allegations that it could be influenced by the Kremlin. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in May, the heads of the six major US intelligence agencies all said that they wouldn’t be comfortable with th

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the Toronto International Film Festival.
In 2009, comics writer Joe Kelly and artist J.M. Ken Niimura produced one of the year’s best graphic novels: I Kill Giants, the action-packed story of a defiant, troubled 5th grader obsessed with her private war against giants. Kelly plays it coy with his readers throughout the book: Barbara Thorson&rsquo

GUEST: In the past few years, blockchain has developed an unrivaled reputation as the next big thing for the decentralized internet. Startups have absorbed billions of dollars from traditional funding and token sales to develop software and proof-of-concepts that employ blockchain to fix many of the problems that riddle centralized online services.
But will blockchain tech see mainstream adoption?
Blockchain promises it can protect us against DDoS attacks and data tampering, prevent voter fraud,

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the Toronto International Film Festival.It’s always possible that John Woo could have played the doves straight. The Hong Kong director behind action classics like Hard Boiled, and A Better Tomorrow (and later American movies including Face/Off, Broken Arrow) has turned the image of doves flying across the screen during a firefight into a signat

The 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show press previews officially begin on Tuesday, but the hype is already in full swing. In a trend that’s taken away some of the show floor thrill,several automakers have revealed images of their new concepts and production vehicles ahead of the media fray. Based on what’s been revealed thus far, the general theme veers toward electric cars — in all shapes and sizes.For German automakers, Frankfurt means kicking up the heat for the hometown crowds, and

GUEST: Dropbox’s likely IPO is set to be one of the largest offerings of the past few years, but the key question is whether the world’s largest cloud-storage company will go public at a valuation above its last primary round.
As successful as the company is, it’s quite possible the company’s IPO – which could raise more than $300 million – could wind up as a down round.
While mutual funds have recently lowered their valuation estimates for Dropbox, SharesPost

While the hurricanes popping up in the Atlantic has captured everyone’s attention, the Sun has had its own active week as well. A total of six solar flares have erupted from the same active sunspot since Monday — including the largest flare the Sun has produced in its current cycle.
Sunspots are cool, dark regions on the Sun’s surface with strong magnetic fields. These solar phenomena pop up on the Sun from time to time, sometimes relatively frequently. In fact, the Sun has a r

Apple looks set to introduce a special “iPhone X” on Tuesday, to mark 10 years of the handset. We’ve seen a number of leaks about the hardware and its features, but everyone has been calling it the iPhone 8 so far. It looks like Apple is about to launch its top-tier phone as the iPhone X, if the latest leaked firmware is accurate.
iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith has discovered references to iPhone X that are linked directly to the D22 codename with a bezel-less display. It

I love how Sofia Coppola keeps turning to period pieces to explore the lost, dissatisfied women her films are almost exclusively about. Her latest, The Beguiled, goes back to the American Civil War and uses the era's strict gender roles to put women at a boarding school into a tense situation as they all try to manipulate — and get manipulated by — an injured male soldier.
The setup leads to some excellent suspense and a really nice contrast of how different characters (a widow, a si

GUEST: Last June I wrote about Portugal’s thriving scaleup ecosystem, which is growing twice as fast as the European average. Since then, I’ve actually relocated my VR startup to Portugal and so have an even better view of the ecosystem now.
I wrote last year about how the country’s capital, Lisbon, successfully turned its economic troubles into an opportunity to reinvent itself as a European hub for creative and tech startups. Scores of accelerators, incubators, coworking

This week, there are a number of great deals on tech, specifically with entertainment items such as speakers, headphones, and TVs. eBay is selling two Samsung 4K smart LED TVs (one 48.5-inch and one 65-inch) at good prices, and there are also several deals on various Amazon devices (Echo, Tap, Kindle, and Fire TV stick).
If you’re in the market for a new pair of headphones, the Status Audio CB-1 is back down to its all-time low of $63 — some of the best headphones under $100.Headphon

GUEST: “Hey, I’ve got this great idea for a startup! You live in Silicon Valley, can you help me get venture capital funding?”
This is a common request that I get from people that live outside of Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, raising money is hard regardless of if you want to start a company in the Midwest or Silicon Valley. Can I get funding based off of an idea? Nope… Can I get funding based off of a business plan? Nope… Can I get funding if I have an app built

As Hurricane Irma bears down on the Florida peninsula this weekend, MIT’s Urban Risk Lab has launched RiskMap.us, an open-source platform that will track flooding in southern Florida. The project is being piloted to provide updates in real time to citizens and emergency planners, and allows for people to submit reports via Twitter, Facebook, or Telegram.The system uses a chatbot that users can message directly through any of the three social media sites, which sends users a link that will

Huawei has brought its latest fitness tracker, the Band 2 Pro, to the US after announcing the device back in July. The Band 2 Pro features the usual slate of fitness band features like a heart rate monitor, notifications, GPS, and a sleep tracker, along with a few extras that may make it a bit more appealing.There’s a running coach feature that can be personalized for your training program, or if you’re running a race that can measure things like your VO2max and your recovery time. T

Science fiction author Jerry Pournelle passed away earlier this week after a sudden illness at the age of 84. He helped popularize the military science fiction genre with novels such as Janissaries and The Mercenary, but is also credited with a major milestone: the first author to write a novel entirely on a computer.Pournelle wrote on his blog on Thursday that he had come down with a cold and the flu while attending DragonCon in Atlanta, Georgia, and his son Alex confirmed his passing last nigh

A radio is an essential part of any emergency preparedness kit, whether it’s a regular radio or an National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Weather Radio (or, ideally, both). But in an age where we’ve got cellular technology and smartphones with capabilities that far exceed what radio can do, why do we still rely on such old-school tech for relaying information in an emergency?Simply put: radio travels way farther than an LTE broadcast. That makes it much easier to get a signa

When Samsung’s Note 8 smartphone launches on September 15, it will be accompanied by a new version of the company’s Gear VR headset, made in partnership with Oculus. This latest iteration doesn’t boast any new features, but Samsung did say that it was the only version of the device the Note 8 would support.
Yesterday, however, we received a tip from Josue Feliciano, who says he got a Note 8 early through Verizon. Feliciano upgraded from the Galaxy S8+, which was

Apple’s big September event doesn’t start until Tuesday, but leaks are giving us a good idea of what’s going to be announced. While we’ve already seen a lot about the iPhone 8 thanks to various HomePod firmware leaks, a newly leaked final build of iOS 11 contains even more about the unannounced iPhone. 9to5Mac reports that the iPhone 8 (or whatever Apple calls it) will include a “Face ID” unlock that will likely replace Touch ID.
Face ID
Face ID is referenced

 French startup Linxo just raised $24 million (€20 million) from three financial institutions — Crédit Agricole, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa and MAIF. The company is building a sort of Mint for the French market. Banking apps suck in France. Most of them are just a wrapper around a mobile website. It takes them years to adopt new features, such as fingerprint readers, widgets and more. And… Read More

Most of Alexis Kennedy’s games gaze into the crystal ball of madness, and Cultist Simulator is no different. He’s best known as the founder of the indie studio Failbetter Games, where he created and wrote text-heavy titles like Fallen London and Sunless Sea. A little over a year ago, he left Failbetter to form Weather Factory, and Cultist Simulator is this studio’s first game. It’s raising funds on Kickstarter now and met its goal in a little over 12 hours.

(Reuters) — Apple Inc has sought to stop Western Digital Corp from taking control of Toshiba Corp’s chip business by threatening not to buy its products in the future, people with knowledge of the deal said.
Apple, which uses Toshiba’s NAND flash memory chips in its iPhones, is concerned about losing pricing power if Western Digital is running the operation, the sources said on Friday.
However, if Western Digital remains a minority investor in the business, Apple, a top custome