Technology news

HP has canceled plans to build out a line of Windows phones due to Microsoft’s general disinterest in continuing to battle Google and Apple on mobile. Nick Lazaridis, president of the EMEA regions at HP, told The Register that HP decided “it doesn't make sense” to continue making Windows phones because Microsoft “decided on a change in strategy” and is now “less focused” on Windows mobile.
Last year, HP waded into the Windows phone world with a high-end

REVIEW: Earlier this week at an event where about half a dozen new devices made their debut, Google introduced the Home Mini smart speaker to the world.
Since the holiday season is the number one time of the year to buy a smart speaker, Home Mini and Echo Dot sales will likely spike in the months to come. But which speaker is better?
Home Mini won’t be available in stores for another two weeks, but VentureBeat got ahold of one early. Here’s how the Home Mini and Echo Dot match up.
So

GUEST: The “digital divide” usually refers to the gap between those who have access to good internet connections and technology and those who do not. For example, students in rural schools that lack bandwidth and who don’t have access to high-speed internet at home do not perform as well academically as students who have access do.
The digital divide is improving, but it isn’t quite gone yet. Currently, 85 percent of the country has access to broadband internet (25 Mbps o

Western Digital has made a massive 14TB hard drive, but it’s only being sold to data centers. The new Ultrastar Hs14 is the world’s first 14TB hard drive, according to Western Digital, and the company says it will have transfer speeds of up to 223MiB/s in both SATA and SAS formats.The new helium-filled drive is more efficient, according to the company, with twice the sequential write performance of its predecessor. It should also be highly reliable, with an MTBF (mean time between fa

On Wednesday, Google unveiled two new versions of the Google Home speakers: the Mini, which is priced to compete with the Amazon Echo Dot, and the Max, which is positioned at the luxury end of the market, similar to Apple’s HomePod. Both the Max and the HomePod are set to come out in December. So how do these smart speakers stack up against each other? With most of these products still unavailable in retailers until November or December, we can’t determine the best smart speakers in

Electronic Arts announced today that mobile role-playing game Galaxy of Heroes will get its first character from Star Wars: The Last Jedi sometime in December before the film releases December 15.
EA clarified that this will be character that is already available in Galaxy of Heroes but in their Last Jedi garb. So expect something like Luke Skywalker in his long beard and robes or Rey with her hair down. Additions like this can keep players engaged with the mobile game. The cross-promo

PRESS RELEASE:Marketing optimization leader closes Series B funding led by Foundation Capital with participation from Safeguard Scientifics and Cervin VenturesREDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–October 5, 2017– QuanticMind, the data platform for intelligent marketing, today announced that it is raising a $20M Series B funding round led by veteran venture firm Foundation Capital, with additional participation from Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE) and Cervin Ventures. QuanticMi

BlackBerry is preparing to release its second all-touchscreen smartphone in as many years. After releasing the DTEK50 last year (which is actually produced by TCL, as all Blackberry devices are these days), the company is getting ready to release the BlackBerry Krypton. Now, Evan Blass has leaked the first image of the upcoming device.Photo: Evan BlassAs for the specs on this, it’s still unclear what TCL has planned. Rumors say it’ll have a 1080p display, a midrange Snapdragon proces

Google Cloud customers now have access to much more powerful compute instances, the company announced today. It’s possible for users to rent virtual machines with up to 96 virtual CPUs and 624GB of RAM.
They’re based on Intel’s Skylake Xeon Scalable processors, and customers can purchase three prebuilt virtual machine shapes with 96 processors and varying amounts of memory. In addition, users can adjust the amount of memory available using Google’s custom machine types fe

After working on the feature for several months and testing the waters with a private beta, yesterday Sonos announced that its customers are now welcome to try controlling their speaker with an Amazon Echo device. There are some obvious limitations with the way things work right now that you’ll want to know up front. First, you can’t play anything from Spotify using Alexa. That’s likely to change in the coming weeks, but it’s not there today. Other services like Apple Mus

Apple has made the Apple Watch Nike+ Series 3 available for purchase today. As pointed out by 9to5Mac, you can pick up the Watch — which comes with a special Nike sport band or loop — online and in Apple Stores as well as at Best Buy, in both GPS and LTE variations.It may be a bit tough to get your hands on the LTE version online, however: every model is shipping in three to four weeks. You can still purchase the GPS models and have them delivered this weekend, but if you’re lo

In 2015, Russian agents stole highly classified NSA materials from a contractor, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. It’s a major breach of internal security, made possible after the contractor transferred the materials to his home computer in violation of known security procedures.Even more alarming is how the foreign agents became aware of that violation. According to the report, the hackers seem to have identified the files — which contained “details of how

Aerospace giant Boeing announced today that it would acquire Aurora Flight Sciences, an aviation and aeronautics research company that is one of a handful of firms that have partnered with Uber in an effort to develop a network of “flying taxis.”
Based in Manassas, Virgina, Aurora specializes in autonomous and robotic aircraft. The company has flown over 30 unpiloted flights since its founding in 1989. Boeing says the acquisition will be key in the aerospace company’s further d

GUEST: Technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of the classroom and our children’s education. Kids are increasingly using tablets and other digital appliances, and coding is becoming part of the standard curriculum around the world.
As we speak, artificial intelligence and virtual reality are positively transforming education — not only regarding how children learn but also how teachers teach. As chess legend Garry Kasparov said in a recent TED talk, “Human plus machine

After months of hinting, Vice President Mike Pence finally made it clear today that the Trump administration will direct NASA to land humans on the Moon and establish a more permanent presence on the lunar surface. It's a return to the vision of President George W. Bush, which was deferred when President Obama reoriented the space agency toward a journey to Mars.
Pence made the administration’s intentions known in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, as well as a speech he gave during the inaugura

Eleague announced today that it is once again holding a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major championship. The event will take place at Boston University’s Agganis Arena from January 26 to January 28. Teams will be competing for a $1 million prize pool.
Eleague will broadcast all of the competition online at Twitch and on cable through TBS. Turner, which owns that station, also runs Eleague. It was one of the first major companies from traditional TV to get into the esports game. El

Significant spoilers ahead for the 1982 Blade Runner and its 1968 source material.Ridley Scott’s original 1982 film Blade Runner has been so visually influential that its special effects still look state of the art, in spite of the clunky analog computers and the women’s goofy 1980s helmet-hair and enormous ‘80s shoulder pads. Scott’s smoky, run-down retro-noir setting, full of ceiling fans, rusting clunky future-tech, and ramshackle Asian marketplaces, has been spliced i

Essential has released another update to address what is by far the weakest element of its debut smartphone: the camera. As 9to5Google notes, this latest attempt is a two-prong approach, as the company has simultaneously released a new firmware update for the phone itself and updated the Essential Camera app in the Play Store.The latest version of the camera app promises to “eliminate shutter lag for one-off captures.” That delay when shooting even a single photo has been a major ann

Do you enjoy the sensation of petting a cat or dog, but hate the unconditional love and the fact that they have heads and limbs? Japanese company Yukai Engineering has unveiled the solution to this classic conundrum with Qoobo: a soft, round cushion with a robotic tail that reacts to strokes, just as a loving pet would.“Tails: a communication tool that doesn’t require words,” the demo video begins. It goes on to show everyone who might find peace with the “cushion-tailed

Remember Zunum Aero? The electric jet startup backed by Boeing HorizonX and Jet Blue Technology Ventures? (It’s okay if you don’t; it’s been pretty quiet since coming out of stealth mode earlier this year.) Today, the company is putting forward a clearer vision of how it intends to shake up the aviation world by offering a closer look at the 12-passenger, hybrid electric jet that it hopes to have ready to fly by 2022.Flying requires an incredible amount of energy
A quick caveat

About three quarters of all honey worldwide is contaminated with pesticides known to harm bees, according to a new study. Though the pesticide levels were below the limit deemed safe for human consumption, there was still enough insecticide in there to harm pollinators. The finding suggests that, as one of the study authors said, “there’s almost no safe place for a bee to exist.”Scientists analyzed 198 honey samples from all continents, except Antarctica, for five types of pest

When Stardew Valley first came out early last year, I was intrigued. Here was a game that brought back the supremely chill spirit of the Harvest Moon series, games where you could live out a quiet life as a farmer in a small town. But I didn’t have much interest in playing the game on PC, and when it was later ported to consoles I found myself without much in the way of free time. Deep down, I knew I would like the game, but I kept skipping over it — and I’m glad I did.
Today S

A second founding executive has left ailing electric car startup Faraday Future. The Verge has learned that Tom Wessner, the head of Faraday Future’s supply chain management, resigned from the company yesterday. FF has confirmed his resignation.
Wessner was one of the five initial executives brought in to run specific parts of the company by its cofounders Nick Sampson, Tony Nie, and Jia Yueting in 2015. Another, Alan Cherry, left in August. And like Cherry, Wessner once worked at Tesla. T

It’s the first week of October, and the time has come to welcome all the best fall traditions: pumpkin spice lattes, middling-to-good horror films, and Halloween festivities taking over social media. Spooky Twitter names are back, baby!
Some users choose to swap their display names into the scariest thing they can think of, like “emotional intimacy” or “facts.” But the best SpOoKy swap turns familiar names into deliciously cringey Halloween puns: Ahhlice, Deadrick,

Last month, Hulu earned its stripes as a legitimate TV powerhouse with a bevy of Emmy wins for The Handmaid’s Tale, but that doesn’t mean the streaming service is staying away from comedies. It also doesn’t mean that those comedies won’t make yours truly cry a little bit.
I’m referring to the trailer for Future Man, Hulu’s upcoming series that follows a janitor and hardcore gamer (played by The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson) who is drawn into a time-trav

Do the specs matter on a new smartphone? Google wants you to think it doesn’t matter as much anymore, and I can see some logic in that view.
To the casual user, what matters is whether the phone responds to voice commands, processes the information, and even just sits on the table and looks cool while you do other things. At the same time, we all know the specs do matter — and Google took great pains to cover the specifications on the new Google Pixel 2 phone.
But what’s really

One of the main appeals of Stranger Things was its close focus on paranormal events in the show’s stand-in for small town America: Hawkins, Indiana. With season 2 approaching, Netflix has released a viral video of a conspiracy theorist trying to tie the events of season 1 into much larger ones.The short video has the look of a 1980s-era slide show, one that tries to connect Will Byer’s disappearance, supposed death, and discovery to much larger international events. The narrator brin

Early in September, Amazon canceled two pricey original dramas: Z: The Beginning of Everything (about Zelda Fitzgerald) and The Last Tycoon (based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel). The cancellations are part of a new programming shift at Amazon Studios, bent on emphasizing television series with “global appeal” — that is, finding the next Game of Thrones hit. But while Amazon Studios seems to be almost flailing with finding a cohesive programming slate, one aspe

Yesterday, Google announced the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, two phones I’ve been excited about for a while now. They have big screens, a delightfully playful design sensibility, and what promises to be a fascinating upgrade to the previous Pixel’s best-in-class camera.
They also don’t have headphone jacks.
Predictably, my Twitter replies exploded. Last year I wrote a piece calling the removal of headphone jacks from phones “user-hostile and stupid” in the lead-up to the

Netflix has given a series order to Raising Dion, an adaptation of a short film and comic book by Dennis Liu, Variety reports. The comic book is about a seven-year-old boy who discovers his talent for telekinesis after the death of his father. Soon after, Dion’s mother realizes that they’re being trailed by a group of mysterious men in suits.“We haven’t seen this type of superhero story before — an origin myth full of imagination, wonder and adventure, all grounded

Yesterday, Sonos announced its first smart speaker, called the Sonos One. The speaker is nearly identical to the company’s Play:1 — except it has microphones and Alexa — and they’re both currently priced the same, so it’s not surprising the Play:1 is now on sale. As pointed out by Windows Central, you can pick up a Sonos Play:1 on Amazon right now for $140, which is $60 off the regular price.What’s more surprising is a sale on the Sonos Play:5, the top-tier sp

Harman Kardon officially unveiled its Cortana-powered speaker earlier this year, and it appears it will be making its way to stores soon. An early Microsoft Store listing has been spotted by WalkingCat on Twitter, and it prices the speaker at $199. If the pricing is accurate, then Microsoft’s Amazon Echo competitor will cost $100 more than the base Echo, and $50 more than the Echo Plus or Google’s Home.That extra cost might be related to a bundled six months free Skype calling to pho

Moment is bringing support for its add-on camera lenses to the Pixel 2. After Google’s announcement yesterday, Moment announced two cases for the phone that include slots around the camera to screw in its line of mountable camera lenses, which let you add wide, fisheye, macro, and telephoto lenses in front of the existing camera glass to get new effects (and potentially, better images).
A good option if you already planned on getting a case
This isn’t Moment’s first support for

Ubisoft is stepping its defense against Vivendi’s hostile takeover attempts. The video game publisher, one of the giants of the industry, announced today that it granted a mandate to an investment services provider to buy back up to 4 million of its own shares. It can do this from today until December 29.
As of September, Vivendi had about 25 percent of voting rights, while the Guillemot family (which owns Ubisoft) has about 22 percent. If Vivendi goes over 30 percent owners

“Electrification” has long been a buzzword in the automotive sector. Now, GM has decided to raise the stakes with the announcement that it’s planning “an all-electric future.” In the next 18 months, the company will introduce two new electric vehicles. By 2023, it will introduce another 20.
“GM is taking this strategy because our customers are moving in this direction,” said Pam Fletcher, executive chief engineer of global electric and autonomous vehicle

PRESS RELEASE:Company’s cloud-based and Artificial Intelligence-powered ECG analysis solution assists healthcare professionals in screening for heart diseases.PARIS & SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–October 5, 2017– Cardiologs Technologies announced today that it has raised $6.4 million in a Series A financing with a syndicate of life science and technology investors (Idinvest, ISAI, Kurma Partners, Partech Ventures) and with continued support and participation from cur

Netflix is raising two of its pricing tiers for US subscribers beginning next month, Mashable reports. The standard tier, which allows subscribers to watch on two screens at once, will be bumped up from $9.99 to $10.99 per month. The premium tier, which is available in Ultra HD and allows users to watch on up to four screens, will go up from $11.99 to $13.99. The Basic $7.99 per month plan will remain the same.
“From time to time, Netflix plans and pricing are adjusted as we add more exclu

Scheduling a product event on the very same day as Google might not have been the wisest move on the part of Sonos, as yesterday’s brand new Sonos One speaker quickly took a backseat to Pixel gadgets. But the device still marks a big moment for Sonos. After more than a year of talking about the importance and convenience of voice control, the company finally delivered a new product based around it — even if from the outside it looks (and sounds) identical to the Play:1. For the nitpi

Google’s Pixelbook is the revived image of a high-end Chromebook, a top-shelf version of a Google laptop running ChromeOS that’s meant to stand shoulder to shoulder with devices like Apple’s MacBook or Microsoft’s Surface Laptop.
The Pixelbook starts at $999, which isn’t exactly cheap by Chromebook standards, especially when considering that that price doesn’t include the $99 Pixelbook Pen stylus. But if you can work with Chrome OS — something that gets