Technology news

Chris Pratt can't shake being pitted against the three other white men named Chris (Evans, Hemsworth, and Pine) who happen to be in the same profession as him. It's gotten so bad he's taking online quizzes, as one does, to find himself.
On Sunday night, the actor took an "Are You Chris, Chris, Chris, or Chris?" quiz, and the good news is he got the answer "Chris." The bad news? It wasn't the right Chris.
SEE ALSO: Chris Evans sums up the difference between Barack Obama and Donald Trump in one sa

BMW is close to rolling out wireless charging on one of its cars — and this time, it doesn’t involve phones. That feature is already there, but being able to wirelessly charge your car is new.
It really is a big charging pad for a 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid. The BMW pad connects to a 220-volt outlet, then the sensors on the car show you where to steer so the vehicle can communicate with the charger, as shown in this video.According to BMW, the 9.4kWh battery in the 530e can be

Who really has control over the bots? In a recent interview, both Bill Gates (in a bit of a confrontational mood) and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella (who seemed more even-keeled than ever) talked about maintaining control over technology, about how humans will build bots and use AI that is beneficial to humanity, and that the imminent threat of AI is overplayed — it won’t happen anytime soon, if at all.
In the interview, Gates specifically mentions Musk:
“The so-called

When a robot falls over, it usually can't get up — at least not without difficulty. To address the trouble of downed robots, scientists are taking a cue from the natural world, examining how click beetles right themselves after taking a tumble. 
Researchers at The University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign found that the insects often topple over, but have a natural self-righting mechanism that robots could emulate. The team published their research online on Monday and also presented

If you’ve ever wondered what a middle-aged Batman with a dad bod might look like, this young artist has got you covered.  
Reddit user, knittymcknitpants uploaded some photos of her 11-year-old daughter's wonderful Batman drawings Monday, much to the delight of everyone who saw them. 
SEE ALSO: Batman's sweet new ride from 'Justice League' shows just how far he's come as a team player
They feature Batman lounging around a beach wearing suspenders, a cape and the hero’s icon

GUEST: Fueled by the exponential proliferation of big data, advances in AI have grown with unprecedented speed over the past decade. Programming AI is no longer an arduous process of building it line by line. Rather, AI is able to learn by itself, from itself. And the market has taken notice. In 2016, the enterprise market demand for AI-related products reached more than $8 billion.
AI promises to transform business. Except … it hasn’t. From chatbots to BI and digital assistants, th

Netflix is going to start partnering with airlines to provide them with its mobile streaming technology. This will start next year as part of an effort to get airlines to provide better in-flight Wi-Fi, according to a report from Variety. The reasoning is simple from Netflix’s perspective: the better in-flight Wi-Fi is, the more passengers can use it to watch Netflix while on planes.Netflix has, over the years, already had to develop better bandwidth technologies for streaming video on mob

Earth is round. I know it. You know it. Bill Nye knows it. 
But still, in 2017, many flat Earth truthers still are denying what has been known as scientific fact for centuries. 
They draw in a famous crowd. Several N.B.A. stars (including Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving) have openly voiced their conspiracies. Now, rapper B.o.B. is using his public platform to prove his suspicions about the existence of the "curve" once and for all.
SEE ALSO: How do Flat Earth truthers explain th

It looks like WhatsApp has joined similar apps and websites pushed behind China's online censorship efforts, the so-called "Great Firewall."
On Monday it appeared the messaging app had been blocked throughout the country, according to the New York Times. The app joins other Facebook-owned apps censored by the Chinese government: Facebook and Instagram.
SEE ALSO: Why Apple plays China’s censorship game
Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009, so that's nothing new. But WhatsApp had sl

Microsoft's widely maligned "Duke" controller is coming back, but it hasn't been clear why the Xbox maker would do such a thing... until now.
Let's back up. At E3 2017 in June, Microsoft announced a partnership with Hyperkin for the Duke re-release. There was a video teaser and everything.
SEE ALSO: The U.S. Navy will use Xbox 360 controllers aboard nuclear-powered submarines
Last week, Seamus Blackley — one of the architects of the original Xbox — tweeted out a photo of Hyperkin's n

Lyft is updating its app for drivers, adding features like 24/7 phone support in English and Spanish, and a “destination” option that lets some drivers pick up fares on their way to and from work.Lyft’s driver app, which first debuted back in May, is being updated to allow drivers to connect with a customer service representative at the touch of a button. Lyft says it made the decision to add costly 24/7 phone support after listening to feedback from drivers. A common complaint

Verizon has discontinued its Wear24 smartwatch only four months after its release. Android Police first spotted the takedown, and Verizon separately confirmed the news to The Verge. If you try to navigate to the watch's initial landing page, you'll be redirected to a support page for the wearable.The Android Wear 2.0 device launched in May for $350. We didn't think it was very good, and clearly it didn't sell well. At the time, we pointed out that the actual hardware was mediocre, including the

Some of the milestones in technology pass as mere tremors, while others sound like a loud thunderclap cracking the sky. In terms of the grand scale of all things tech, after Bill Gates announced this past weekend that he is using an Android phone, you could say that there’s been a slight tectonic shift, as though the plates below the surface of the planet are adjusting.
It’s no small surprise. Microsoft stopped emphasizing mobile operating systems some time ago, releasing Nokia (acqu

Baidu is trying to make it easier for tourists to get around in China, Japan, and English-speaking countries. According to Nikkei, the Chinese web company and search giant is developing a gadget that will be able to listen to someone speak in one language and then immediately repeat it back in another language.
While that’s something various phone apps can do, Baidu’s translation device — which doesn’t have a name yet — may have some benefits. For one, it wouldn&rsq

Baidu is trying to make it easier for tourists to get around in China, Japan, and English-speaking countries. According to Nikkei, the Chinese web company and search giant is developing a gadget that will be able to listen to someone speak in one language and then immediately repeat it back in another language.
While that’s something various phone apps can do, Baidu’s translation device — which doesn’t have a name yet — may have some benefits. For one, it wouldn&rsq

LG and Comcast announced that they will be bringing Comcast’s Xfinity TV Partner app to 2017 and 2018 LG webOS Smart TV models sometime in 2018, letting customers get live Comcast cable directly on a smart TV without a set-top box.
LG TV owners will also be able to cloud DVR recordings from their other Comcast boxes through the app, too. Rollout is still a ways out: Comcast isn’t even planning on running a beta of the new app until sometime in early 2017, and there’s no estimat

GUEST: According to a report conducted by TechCrunch, only 7 percent of partners at top VC firms are women. While there is an apparent gender divide amongst male and female VCs, a new study shows that women are better investors than men. The big investment firm Fidelity found that female investors outperformed men by 0.4 percent in the past year. The firm also discovered that female investors outdid men last year when generating a return on their investments.
Female VCs are also being recognized

Amazon and tech training app Codeacademy have collaborated to create a series of free courses. Available today, the courses are meant to train developers as well as beginners how to create skills, the voice apps that interact with Alexa.
Since opening Alexa to third-party developers in 2015, more than 20,000 skills have been made available in the Alexa Skills Store.
Among the four free courses being offered, the two available today are “Build Your First Alexa Skill” and “C

The undead army is hungry, and I made it my mission to feed them during last Friday’s PUBG Family Dinner livestream. Each week, GamesBeat brings people from the game industry together for matches in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on our Twitch channel. As always, we let viewers join in, and this time they served as my obedient horde of zombies.
The zombie mode in PUBG is an option in the custom-game setting that enables up to eight players to gather weapons and resources like normal w

Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” is officially the No. 1 song in the country, beating out Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. This makes her the first solo female rapper to top the chart since Lauryn Hill in 1998 and only the fifth female rapper to ever have a No. 1 hit.Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” had been sitting at the top of the charts for 16 weeks when the lead single for Swift’s Reput

A chunk of ice four and a half times the size of Manhattan fell off an Antarctic glacier. This marks the second time in two years that a huge iceberg has calved from the area. The break-off could speed up the loss of more ice, eventually eating away at a barrier that prevents land-based ice from flowing to the sea.
The Pine Island Glacier is located in West Antarctica, and has been one of the largest contributors to sea level rise on the continent, since it’s been losing ice at an accelera

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million American citizens remain almost entirely without electrical power — but it’s not because their power plants are blown. The problem is that roughly 80 percent of transmission lines, which take power from the plants to distribution centers, are down. Nearly all the local power lines that run to residences and businesses have likely also been destroyed.
“We really should think in terms of rebuilding at this point.&rdq

Smartphones’ GPS systems are going to start getting a lot more accurate. According to IEEE Spectrum, Broadcom is starting to make a mass-market GPS chip that can pinpoint a device’s accuracy to within 30 centimeters, or just under one foot. That’s compared to today’s GPS solutions, which typically have a range of three to five meters, or up to 16 feet away.
That relatively large error range is what can make it so hard for your phone to tell if you’re on a highway or

China has blocked WhatsApp, security experts confirmed today to The New York Times. Over the past few months, WhatsApp has experienced brief disruptions to service, with users unable to send video chats or photos. Now, even text messages are completely blocked, according to Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a Paris-based research firm that also monitors digital censorship in China.“Essentially, it seems that what we initially monitored as censorship of WhatsApp

VB LIVE: The better you understand your users, the more relevant your solutions will be — and the more likely they’ll bank with you instead of the next guy. Learn how AI technology and tools can help you deliver the future-forward financial solutions customers are looking for, when you join this VB Live event!
Register for free here.
“One of our big aha moments when we started Varo Money was discovering that about 70 percent of users are hands-off,” says John Vars, chief

Snapchat is rolling out a new feature on iOS and Android today that will transform your boring sky shots into pictures worthy of other social media platforms. TechCrunch reports that these “sky filters” will use augmented reality to add sunsets, starry skies, rainbows, and more to users’ pictures.The new filter is yet another step into AR from Snapchat. Earlier this year, users got access to its world lenses feature, which allows anyone to add features like a cloud or overly ha

It’s no secret that tech hubs like San Jose and Seattle are home to some of the highest-paying tech jobs in the country — but a new report shows just how stark the economic divide is between tech hubs and the rest of the country.
Today the Economic Innovation Group — a nonprofit research group backed by Sean Parker, Ron Conway, and Dan Gilbert — released a Distressed Communities Index. Using census data, the Distressed Communities Index determines how prosperous different

Facing mounting criticism, Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that Facebook will overhaul its approach to political ads, bringing more transparency to the process. Facebook users will soon be able to see who paid for an ad, Zuckerberg said, and when users visit an advertiser’s page, they will be able to see all of the ads that those advertisers are running. The changes were announced as lawmakers were considering similar regulatory measures.Online political ads have long been given less s

One of the many announcements at Apple’s keynote a couple weeks ago was that 4K movies would be added to iTunes at the same price as HD content. Previously purchased HD movies would also be upgraded to 4K for free, though for streaming only. In response, Amazon Video has drastically slashed the prices of its own 4K content to match iTunes.
As Pocket Lint notes, Amazon Video’s 4K selection is not only limited in comparison to Apple’s, but was incredibly expensive with purchases

The latest big update to Apple’s desktop operating system, macOS High Sierra, has just been released as a free upgrade for users. It’s available now in the Mac App Store. All Macs from 2010 and later are compatible with the update, and some MacBooks and iMacs released as far back as 2009 can also run it. For a thorough look at all the new features that make up High Sierra, definitely read The Verge review.
After installing this update, you won’t notice many significant outward

Apple today released macOS High Sierra, a week after iOS 11. macOS version 10.13 is now available on the Mac App Store as a free download.
During its WorldWide Developers Conference in June, Apple announced High Sierra, which then became available through a beta version for developers. The update brings refinements to the operating system to improve video performance, enable VR apps, and add new features to native apps like Safari and Photos.
Notably, High Sierra uses the Metal 2 framework to im

German blogger Carsten Knobloch says a reader sent him photos of the upcoming Sonos speaker that'll ship with Amazon's Alexa assistant built in. You can see it pictured above. Knobloch first published the images on his blog Caschys Blog. The leaked device lines up with what we already know about its UI.An FCC filing for a device features the same play / pause button and microphone icons in the same layout as this leaked device.Image: Zatz Not Funny!Now, because this UI image has already bee

Former Vice President Joe Biden is getting into recording daily news briefings as his next job. In short podcasts (three to 15 minutes each), Biden will introduce articles on anything from health care to climate change. The briefings will be available as an Alexa skill on the Amazon Echo and also on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Assistant.
The program is called Biden’s Briefing and will feature Biden-curated content from media partnerships with Axios, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post

GUEST: The startup environment is chaotic. Resources are limited and the hours are grueling. But it can also be one of the most rewarding experiences for an entrepreneur. They must get creative and think fast when it comes to building a team that will excel in this type of environment. The same is true in a presidential campaign.
Stephanie Hannon was the chief technology officer for the Hillary for America campaign and was tasked with building a team from scratch. In under 20 months, she bu