Technology news

GUEST: The current chatbot renaissance has provided a revolutionary new way to connect consumers with brands and with each other. That said, chatbots are still in a bit of a growth phase. Bot makers are still learning how to make their bots successful, and users are still getting a grasp on what bots can do and how to use them.
One of the big challenges for many bot makers is how to emulate human conversation in their chatbot’s responses. Some bots entirely miss the mark, offering the

Essential’s debut smartphone has received approval to run on Verizon, meaning it’s now supported by all four major US carriers. Sprint was the device’s launch partner, so it of course had support, and both AT&T and T-Mobile gave tacit support ahead of the phone’s launch.
But Verizon, for some reason, said it couldn’t guarantee that the Essential Phone would work and that the phone still had to clear a certification process. Evidently it’s now done that, wi

If you have one of the many smartphones that isn’t getting updated to Android Oreo, there’s still a way for you to try out several of its most noticeable features.
Action Launcher, one of the many apps that let you customize Android’s home screens, is now able to bring three of Oreo’s launcher features to older phones: notification dots, adaptive icons, and restyled app shortcuts. They’re supposed to work on phones going back to 2014’s Android Lollipop.
I inst

GUEST: When startups need money, they typically roll out their slide deck to the usual suspects: VCs, angels, or friends and family.
Increasingly, though, more tech and biotech entrepreneurs are looking beyond those traditional sources and seeking capital from what might seem to be an unlikely suspect: their competitors, also known as “strategic investors.”
Strategic investors are operating businesses, typically in the same industry as the startups they are investing in. Therefore, t

GUEST: “Alexa, what time is my next train to work?”
“There is a 20-minute delay. The next train departs from Berlin Central Station at 9:42 and will arrive at Westkreuz at 9:54.”
“Alexa, please email Janet and Tim to say: Sorry, my train is delayed. I’ll be 10 minutes late for our meeting, can we start at 10:10 a.m.?”
Conversational interactions like this one will undoubtedly be part of our future. Tech giants like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft ar

Following Google’s lead earlier this year, Bing has added fact checking tags to search results.
A fact check label might now appear below results from Snopes, PolitFact, and other fact checking organizations, making it much easier to see their ruling on any given claim. Rather than having to click into the link, the site’s verdict — true, false, or somewhere in between — will now be pulled out into the search preview.
False stories still show up unadorned
The feature shou

Earlier this year, I read the first installment of Martha Wells’s Murderbot series, All Systems Red, a novella about a dour, cranky security robot that would rather watch soap operas than interact with people. Oh, and it murdered a bunch of people on an earlier assignment. Next year, Wells will be back with a new installment of the series, Artificial Condition.
In All Systems Red, Murderbot is tasked with protecting a group of scientists on a distant planet, and discovers that another miss

GUEST: The creation and rise of cryptocurrencies can be tied directly to the 2008 financial crisis. Released in 2009, Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology was viewed, and marketed, as a way to stabilize the rampant culture of speculation that plagued Wall Street, particularly with derivative and bundled offerings. But what has taken hold in the cryptocurrency market place in recent years stands in stark contrast to these early utopian promises. Instead, a new batch of nefarious inves

California legislators tried and failed to push through a bill that would have restored the internet privacy rules killed by Congress and the FCC earlier this year.
The bill, introduced in June, didn’t manage to make it to the floor for a vote on Friday, which was the last day of the state’s 2017 legislative session. Instead, it remained stalled in committee and was ultimately shelved, placed in the “inactive file” without being sent out for a vote.
ISPs and internet comp

I've mostly skipped all the big Marvel movies, since I haven't been in love with the few that I’ve already seen. But the other week, I had some time to kill and was staying at a hotel across from a movie theater, so I went to go see Spider-Man: Homecoming. And for the first time, I found a Marvel movie that I really liked.
I know I'm pretty late to Homecoming at this point, but it's just a whole lot of fun — and even a couple weeks later, there are a few jokes that I keep laughing at

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.
Film festivals are a great opportunity to spot trends, and at 2017’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, a wave of movies emerged tackling the issue of gender discrimination and the struggle for women to be heard in a world dominated by men. A gothic love story doesn’t necessarily se

YouTube is arguably having its best and worst year. The company recently announced that more than 1.5 billion people log in and view videos each month, putting the service second only to Facebook in terms of global scale. Its revenues are estimated to be growing at upwards of 30 percent each year, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has repeatedly highlighted the company as a key contributor to the search giant’s overall financial success. It’s even got a new look.
At the same time, YouTube

Just days after the unreleased, unofficially announced GoPro Hero 6 Black appeared in the wild for the first time, another one has now popped up at a Best Buy in Canada, and with detail. These new pictures, sent in by a tipster, seem to confirm that GoPro’s new camera will carry over the the Hero 5 Black’s design (which means it will be waterproof up to 33 feet out of the box) and will offer spec bumps across the board.The most major of those will be that the camera can now shoot 4K

Digital photo frames have been around for a while, but PhotoSpring — with its ability to store thousands of photos and videos for families to share with, for example, elderly relatives — shows how far they’ve come.
PhotoSpring has created a tablet-like device with a 10.1-inch IPS screen. The Wi-Fi connected device can store at least 15,000 photos in its 16-gigabyte version, and it can store about 30,000 photos on its 32-gigabyte version. The screen has a resolution of

Mid-September is typically a slow time for deals, as Labor Day promotions have come and gone and there’s not a lot of sales happening. This week we rounded up 12 deals that we are excited about, including several laptops under $1,000.
Computing
HP 8th Generation Intel Products: Get $100 off all 8th gen Intel devices, including the Spectre and ENVY x360 laptops, with code 8GEN100. Deal ends September 23rd.
Apple 13.3-Inch MacBook Air (Mid 2017) is $100 off at B&H (now $899).ASUS 14-Inch

GUEST: During the 2016 election, President Donald Trump ran on the idea that small towns in America have been left behind. He understood that, while overall economic indicators suggest recovery from the Great Recession, many parts of the country are still struggling to create jobs. He tapped into the frustration felt by the Heartland fighting to make ends meet while those in large coastal cities and major tech hubs seem to thrive.
While Trump proved almost uncannily good at diagnosing what ails

It’s been almost a year since the Google Pixel made me put down my iPhone and transformed me from a Google apps user on Apple hardware to a pure Google acolyte. In the grand tug of war between mobile religions, I’m now pulled in the direction of Android, and I can’t express much regret about it. But Apple has just made official its biggest redesign and rethink of the iPhone ever, and so I was definitely curious about the iPhone X and the future it paints for the Apple ecosystem

On paper, Netflix's American Vandal sounds like a Funny or Die skit that would be amusing for about seven minutes before the joke wore out its welcome. Full disclosure: I almost dismissed it for precisely that reason, before sitting down to watch the season when Netflix made it available for review.
The show is described by the streaming service as "a half-hour true-crime satire that explores the aftermath of a costly high school prank that left twenty-seven faculty cars vandalized with phallic

A mysterious illness has been striking people associated with the US Embassy in Cuba — and a secret sonic weapon is rumored to be the source. Over the past year, diplomats in Cuba have experienced an unusual collection of symptoms that range from hearing loss, vertigo, and nausea to concussions, CBS News reported.Yesterday, the mystery grew even more complex when the Associated Press reported that the number of US victims has climbed to 21 people. Canadian diplomatic households were affect

Which cat is the top cat? You're about to find out.
Using the same complex (kind of) algorithm we used for our dog ranking, we have ranked 30 of the world's most popular cat breeds from thirtieth-best to first-best. 
And the absolute best part? Zero cats will care that we did this — or that we are alive at all.
SEE ALSO: Just 23 great photos of cats standing on two legs
Of course, if you want to adopt a cat, be sure to check out your local shelter first. The cats there might not be ce

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If the recent solar eclipse piqued your interest in stargazing, here’s some good news: the wonders of the solar system are on display on nearly any given night, and most of these wonders do not come with a risk of permanent eye damage.
SEE ALSO: Illuminate your wardrobe with a skirt that actually lights up
You don’t even need any fancy equipment. In fact, with a small, simple telesc

Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.
There were few things more satisfying to your childhood self than hearing that sharp thwack as a flung rubber band hit its target, the latest victory in your rubber band battle against an older sibling.
You might be too old for that sort of horseplay now — or hey, maybe you're not (no judgment here) — but you won't be able to resist the old-school style of the Model PPK an

South Park returned to our screens this week, and if you’re a fan of the show with an Amazon Alexa then it was... interesting (spoilers ahead). Cartman, ever the prankster, starts the show’s 21st season off by triggering a virtual Amazon Alexa, and adding disgusting items to its shopping list. If you watched the show in the same room as your Alexa then the on-screen antics would slowly fill up your Amazon shopping list with some gross items.
Later in the episode Cartman returns to ev

We’re expecting to find out more about HTC’s Vive-branded standalone VR headset in a few weeks’ time, but it looks like the name has already surfaced online.
Lets Go Digital has uncovered two filings from HTC for a ‘head mounted display’ named Vive Focus. One is from the European Union Intellectual Property Office while the other is from the United States Patent And Trademark Office. Both applications were filed last week and, as far as we know, the only new he

“Justice is blind.” It’s a wonderful concept that represents an even-handed legal system that is impartial and objective in equal measure. But there’s no denying the fact that the justice system is deeply flawed. So, could Artificial Intelligence provide the answer? Yes, in the end, but not yet. We can see the problems in the legal system. The courts are jammed with appeals, cases get thrown out on technicalities and each and every day we see outrageous stories of a judg

Mouse and video gaming settings can make or break your Counter-Strike: Global Offensive experience, so it’s very important to ensure you have settings that are right for you. It’s also important to recognize that the only way to know these settings and their suitability to you is to play CS:GO and try out each setting.
Here, we will look at the mouse and video gaming settings of five different CS:GO professionals, and we will compare them to see what each means to each player’s

(Reuters) — As the U.S. Congress moves quickly to pass the first federal law governing self-driving cars, some state and city officials are pushing back over fears that the measure will limit their ability to regulate vehicle safety at the local level.
The debate highlights the challenges of rolling out a new technology that does not fit neatly into an existing regulatory framework. States traditionally regulate the driver while the federal government regulates the car, but that division o

Some sad news out of Jamaica: the world's oldest person has died. 
Violet Mosse-Brown was 117 years old, born on March 10, 1900, in Jamaica.
The prime minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, posted about Mosse-Brown's death Friday evening.
SEE ALSO: New study shows that researchers probably won't create 'designer babies' anytime soon
With her death, Japanese 117-year-old Nabi Tajima is now the known oldest human on the planet. She was born on Aug. 4, 1900, in Japan, a few months after Mosse-Br

You know that guy in your News Feed who just got a car and won't stop posting pictures? 
Facebook finally has a solution for you. It's testing a "Snooze" button that allows users to temporarily unfollow individuals, pages, and groups for periods of 24 hours, a week, or 30 days. 
SEE ALSO: Download this: Why Facebook's app looks so different
We can already hear the sighs of relief from around the world as millions of wedding photos, baby videos, and "Happy Birthday" messages disappear f

Let the onslaught of terrible Halloween costumes begin.
Each year, there's a new wave of Halloween costumes, you know, to keep up with the times. Sometimes they're really great, mostly they're terrible.
In celebration of the rise of the term "Fake News" thanks to Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump, Yandy.com has released a sexy fake news costume. Apparently NOTHING gets to escape being sexy-ified at Halloween. 
SEE ALSO: There's a Sexy Jon Snow costume because Halloween is comingImage:yandy"Sp

John Legere just tweeted out that T-Mobile will not be putting a cap on data speeds for the Apple Watch Series 3. Responding to customer “frustrations” about T-Mobile’s original plan to limit data on Apple’s smartwatch to 512kbps, Legere now says that upon the device’s release next Friday, customers will be getting full 4G LTE speeds.Adding an Apple Watch to your T-Mobile One plan still costs $10 extra per month. But this is definitely an improvement over what seeme

VB LIVE: What if your message was always relevant, and you could continuously optimize for the strongest results and the biggest bang for your buck, but with dramatically reduced risk? Agile marketing can do that for you. Join our upcoming VB Live event to learn how to integrate Agile seamlessly into your marketing strategy.Register here for free.
Software developers invented the Agile Manifesto to tackle complex software development projects — and marketers can apply that framework to the

Blade Runner debuted 35 years ago, and that is far too long for us to go without a video game that let’s us inhabit the body of Rutger Hauer who played the replicant leader in that sci-fi classic. Thankfully, the wait is over. Observer is here from developer Blooper Team and publisher Aspyr, and it puts you in the skin of cybernetically enhanced detective with the voice and appearance of Hauer.
Observer launched last month on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and I’ve finally put in s

Harry Dean Stanton, a prolific actor with memorable roles in The Godfather: Part II, Alien, and Pretty in Pink, has died at age 91.
Stanton most recently starred as Carl Rodd in the 2017 mystery drama series Twin Peaks. He is also known for his television role as an evil polygamist patriarch in Big Love.
SEE ALSO: Len Wein, Wolverine co-creator, dead at 69, gets tribute from Hugh Jackman, others
Stanton's film career spanned over six decades, and he has received acting credits in over 100 movies

GUEST: Creating video games can be hard, and creating a fun and engaging experience is a real challenge. While there is no clear recipe for developing successful games, there are known ingredients. The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design is a book about using knowledge in cognitive psychology as well as guidelines and methodology from the user experience (UX) discipline to help game developers identify and understand those ingredients so they can craft their

Once a week, the most powerful people in the games industry get together for matches of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and if anyone knows how to get me invited to those YouTube influencer games, please DM me. In the meantime, we’re continuing our own weekly PUBG Family Dinner for the Battle Royale shooter, which has sold more than 11 million copies.
Here are the details:
#PUBGFamilyDinner streams live on GamesBeat’s Twitch channel as well as player channels. Follow GamesB

Last week, Nikon Asia released a list of 32 brand ambassadors spanning Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. People quickly noticed a glaring problem: it was all men. Apparently, in its search across multiple continents to find photographers to promote its new D850 camera, Nikon couldn’t find a single woman. 
Nikon is far from the only camera brand that’s guilty of this. Scan Cannon, Fuji or Sony’s ambassador list and the lack of diversity — especially when i

GUEST: Google announced new badges in its image search in August, just a day after Pinterest updated its app to make the visual search feature front-and-center. This summer’s activity comes a few months after Pinterest announced Pinterest Lens, which allows a user to take a photo of an object with their phone and see related objects in the search results. It also closely follows Google’s May announcement of Google Lens, which uses machine learning to do a real-tim

Finally, some PROPER RECOGNITION in the music industry! The Rick and Morty song "Terryfold"— an ode to, well, terryfolds — is charting on Billboard as a "Hot" rock song. Hot damn right it is."'Rick and Morty" song "Terryfold" debuts on Hot Rock Songs Chart https://t.co/8mQL1WdAY9
— billboard (@billboard) September 15, 2017The recent Season 3 episode "Rest and Ricklaxation," which aired on Aug. 27, low-key premiered the original song by the Seattle band Chaos Chaos featuring Jus

If you’re eager to put down $1,000 or more for Apple’s new bezel-less, OLED-equipped iPhone X, you’ll probably want to be awake and ready at the company’s preorder page come October 27th. As tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo explained in a note with KGI Securities, reported today by MacRumors, Apple’s latest smartphone, the most expensive one it’s ever made, will probably generate more demand than Apple’s supply chain can withstand, at least initially. That mean

Browsing the web is an integral part of most people's VROOM VROOM I'M A CAR COMMERCIAL AND NOW I'M IN YOUR BRAIN GOOD LUCK FINDING MY TINY MUTE BUTTON lives, but that process is frequently a jarring one complete with loud autoplay ads and video making it difficult to focus on what's in front of you. 
Google, however, has decided to do something about that. Starting in early 2018 will block autoplay video with sound on its popular Chrome browser. 
But what does this mean for the interne

Two of Equifax's top executives are leaving the company a week after a massive data hack compromised the personal information of 143 million Americans.
The credit reporting agency announced Friday evening that chief information officer David Webb and chief security officer Susan Mauldin would be "retiring" effective immediately.
SEE ALSO: This chatbot could help you sue Equifax
Notably, neither of the execs were among the three who raised suspicions of insider trading when they unloaded nearly $