Technology news

 TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Australia (Nov. 16 in Sydney) is approaching fast, and the fifteen finalists, selected from 272 applicants, have just received the good news. The names of those companies will remain under wraps until the day of the show, and over the next five weeks TechCrunch’s Battlefield team and our partner Elevacao will be working closely with the founders… Read More

A phony AdBlock Plus extension was listed in Chrome’s official Web Store up until today, with more than 30,000 people having downloaded it. Anonymous cybersecurity personality @SwiftOnSecurity called attention to the fake extension and pointed out that imposters, like this fake AdBlock Plus, continue getting through the Google's vetting process and into the store's listings. That presents an especially tricky situation for users who might not carefully check each extension’s develope

Microsoft almost beat Apple, Samsung, and Google to the punch when it comes to bezel-less, full-screen smartphone displays. Windows Central happens to have in its possession a rare Windows Phone prototype device, codenamed “Vela,” that was an early iteration of what would eventually become the uninspired Lumia 435.The device sports the now nearly ubiquitous edge-to-edge display style now being used by Apple’s iPhone X, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Note 8, and Google’s new Pi

 Microsoft signed an agreement with GE today to purchase every last bit of the wind energy from GE’s brand-new 37-megawatt Tullahennel wind farm located in County Kerry, Ireland for the next 15 years. This is a big deal on several levels. First of all, it means Microsoft will be using a clean energy source to power at least some of its cloud data centers in Ireland. That will likely result… Read More

With all the recent talk of AI posing existential risks to humanity and our privacy, Japanese company Omron is taking a softer, more innocuous approach. Specifically, with its table tennis robot Forpheus, which strives to pursue “harmony of humans and machines” by patiently teaching us how to play ping-pong.
Although ping-pong ball-pitching machines like TrainerBot exist, Forpheus can actually live up to the feeling of playing against a real opponent. First introduced in 2014, the fo

Tickets for Star Wars: The Last Jedi were supposed to go on sale tonight, following the premiere of a new trailer during Monday Night Football, but it seems that Showcase Cinemas is jumping the gun. CNET is reporting that tickets to the anticipated sequel are available now through the theater company’s mobile iOS and Android app.The Verge has confirmed that The Last Jedi tickets are currently available from Showcase, with screenings starting at 7PM on December 14th — a day before the

Hulu is dropping the cost of its cheapest subscription tier, with commercials, from $7.99 to $5.99 per month for new users. Variety reports that Hulu is attempting to build its subscriber base in advance of its new fall programming.
After the first year at $5.99 per month, Hulu subscribers will be bumped up to $7.99. As Variety points out, Hulu offered a similar deal for new subscribers last fall.
Last month, Hulu announced that it had budgeted around $2.5 billion for original programming in 201

Two new genetic analyses help explain the unexpected roles Neanderthals play in modern human life — influencing everything from hair color to mental health. The new research also adds to evidence that Neanderthals lived in small, isolated communities, while a third study suggests that early modern humans may have developed large social networks that facilitated the exchange of mates and ideas.The findings help explain what exactly Neanderthal DNA is doing in many modern human genomes, and

This fall, The Verge is making a choice. The choice is fear! We’ve decided to embrace the season by taking in as many new horror movies as possible and reporting back on which ones are worth your time. We’re calling this series Hold My Hand, as we look at films you might want to watch with a supportive viewing partner. Get comfortable, put the kettle on, check the closet for ghosts, then find a hand to squeeze until the bones pop.
Fall is a mood, obviously. The mood is a blaze of glo

Cruise, the self-driving startup acquired by General Motors last year, is now gobbling up companies of its own. Today, the company announced its plan to buy Strobe, a startup that makes LIDAR sensors that help autonomous vehicles “see” their surroundings.the whole LIDAR array reduced to a single chip
The particularly attractive thing about Strobe, according to Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, is that it has successfully reduced the LIDAR array down to a single chip, which will help reduce produ

Amazon just put the Echo Show on sale for the first time since launching in June, dropping the price on the screen-equipped Echo from $229.99 to $199.99.The timing of the sudden sale is particularly interesting given that, as Variety reported on Friday, sales of the Echo Show have noticeably dropped in the past few weeks after Google pulled YouTube support from Amazon’s smart speaker. A price cut could help boost sales on the Echo Show, despite the uncertainty around whether Amazon and Goo

The Trump administration announced today that it will take steps to repeal a federal policy that would have pushed states to abandon coal and switch to renewable energy. The move was long expected, and it’s likely to be fought in the courts by environmental groups and attorneys general from several states.
The announcement targets the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a core climate change policy passed under President Barack Obama that aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. &ld

The first iPhone with Face ID hasn’t even hit stores, but we’re already getting hit with a rumor about where Apple’s new facial recognition tech might turn up next. MacRumors and 9to5Mac report that the frequently reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has issued a note predicting that iPad Pro models released next year will include depth-sensing cameras and Apple’s Face ID tech.
That’s it for details right now. And since it’s still early to be predictin

One of the larger changes in iOS 11 is the Notification Center, which has been overhauled yet again on Apple's new mobile operating system into a somewhat confusing design.
Apple is taking a different — we'll charitably call it "unique" — approach to notifications in iOS 11. Under Apple's logic, notifications live on your lock screen, where they pop up for you to address as they come in. So why not make your Notification Center more like the lock screen? In fact, why not just make th

Waymo, the self-driving car unit spun out of Google last year, is launching a public education campaign today called “Let’s Talk Self-Driving” aimed at addressing the skepticism many people have about autonomous technology. The company is teaming up with a host of safety and disability advocacy groups to promote its self-driving car pilot in Arizona, as well as raise awareness around a technology that remains inaccessible to most people.a prelude to inviting ordinary people to

Seeing what’s happening on the other side of a corner isn’t as impossible as it sounds. Scientists have been working on the problem for years, using lasers to bounce light off unseen objects and detect what’s going beyond their line of sight. Now, researchers from MIT’s CSAIL have gone one step further: they’re using footage from an ordinary smartphone to “see” around corners by spotting subtle changes in light and shadow.
The premise of the work is simp

To be human is to fear the unknown. And since only a tiny fraction of people have ever had the experience of riding in a self-driving car, most fear them: the loss of control, the distrust of the technology, the fear of malicious hacking, etc. The companies that hope to eventually make lots of money on autonomous vehicles realize their promised riches will never materialize if they can’t convince ordinary people to go for a ride. Which brings us to LeBron James, who I’m told is a ver

Virtual reality might get its popularity from applications in film, gaming, and adult entertainment, but it is quickly becoming one of the most powerful new developments in a completely different industry: the medical universe. In light of the upcoming VR Days 2017 on October 25-27 in Amsterdam, I took a look at three important areas in healthcare that virtual and augmented reality (XR) are making a difference in: Surgery, medical training, and patient treatment. 1. Surgery  One of ma

Halloween might still be a month away, but scaring the crap out of your friends is timeless – and all you’re going to need to pull off a killer prank is a Raspberry Pi computer, an LCD panel, and about eight hours of your time. The best part is that you won’t even have to wear a costume. One inventive prankster has built an amusing digital portrait designed with the sole purpose to freak people out. The high-tech portrait was programmed to unexpectedly turn from a regular huma

Hulu is stepping into the world of e-sports for the first time. The streaming service just ordered four new series from the gaming tournaments producer ESL, Variety reports.
The four weekly shows are: an e-sports talk show called Player vs. Player; a documentary series about a pro e-sports team called Bootcamp; Defining Moments, about rivalries in e-sports; and ESL Replay, a recap show.“The partnership with Hulu marks ESL’s first original series on an on-demand streaming service, and

It’s been little more than a week since the SNES Classic was released, but there’s already a tool available for those who want to add more games to the console (just like the NES Classic before it). The hack comes from Russian user Cluster who has updated his hakchi2 tool, which can sideload extra games onto the NES Classic, so that it now supports the same thing on the SNES version.
There are release notes and a Reddit FAQ if you want to see how it all works or potentially do this w

Phone Case of the Month is a monthly series in which we live with, and subsequently review, our time with a phone case. Phone cases are one of our only ways to express individuality with our smartphones, so what do our phone case choices say about us?
My great aunt, who's 98 years old, told me my phone case looks like a bag of candy. Other people asked me if I made it. I'm not crafty, I told them, although after a month with this case, I do think I should have just glued it together myself, so I

Just how does machine learning work? You’ve probably read a primer or two on the subject, but often the best way to understand a thing is to try it out for yourself. With that in mind, check out this little in-browser experiment from Google named Teachable Machine. It’s a perfect two-minute summary of what a lot of modern AI can — and more importantly can’t — do.Teachable Machine lets you use your webcam to train an extremely basic AI program. Just hit the “tr

I remember it like it was yesterday. My Guardian, hobbled by his low power level and horrendously subpar weapons, felt at first so weak and incapable. He was struggling to reclaim the light that would restore him to glory, and by extension let me once again feel the rush of superpowers and the thrill of endless firefights.Now, one month into Destiny 2, my Hunter is an all-powerful, emperor-slaying, magic-wielding warrior who fears nothing. In fact, I’m in control of two of those resolute s

The first trailer for the 11th season of The X-Files is here, having debuted at New York Comic Con over the weekend.It looks like the stakes are pretty high, as we get chilling voiceover threatening the extinction of the entire human race throughout the trailer, and Gillian Anderson as Agent Scully croaking vague commands to David Duchovny’s Agent Mulder from a hospital bed. There are guns, cigarettes, jump scares, and threats of “hell on Earth.” But don’t worry: “T

RED has announced a new flagship sensor, the Monstro 8K VV, which will be sold in combination with the company’s existing Weapon camera to create the new Weapon 8K VV, via Engadget. The new camera will cost $79,500, which puts this so far above the consumer price bracket that it’s almost laughable. Practicality aside, it’s still an impressive piece of technology for pros.
According to RED, the new Monstro sensor can record video at up to 8K resolution and 60 fps, take 35.4-mega

One time. This was all it took me to fall in love with Slack. But my infatuation with the team collaboration tool has been gradually wearing off over the past few months – largely due to a glaring bug in the chat client the company seems to be frivolously neglecting. Slack has a handy drag-and-drop feature that makes it easy to quickly upload and share images with colleagues. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work as intended. The functionality appears to be affected by a glitch that

It’s a brisk, sunny morning in late summer, the perfect time to be outside in New York City. I’m cruising up the Brooklyn Bridge, sipping an ice coffee and charging my phone. My ride is the URB-E Pro-GT, a $1,999 electric scooter that bills itself as the ultimate in lightweight urban vehicles. It gets me to and from work, a roughly four-mile commute, in the same amount of time as my bicycle. But it doesn’t leave me sweaty, and it tucks neatly under my desk. “No motors!&rd

Google has found evidence that a Russian government campaign used the company’splatforms to spread propaganda, according to a new report from The Washington Post. The report follows investigations from Facebook and Twitter that uncovered similar ads, apparently designed to influence Americans around the time of the 2016 election.Google’s investigation is still in its early stages
Google’s investigation is still in its early stages, according to the Post, which reported that the