Technology news

Qualcomm has been hit with a nearly $774 million fine by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission, which said today that the chip maker abused its monopoly over smartphone modems to squeeze higher licensing fees and better terms out of its customers. Taiwan is only the latest country to go after Qualcomm over its expensive and onerous licensing terms: China and South Korea have both fined the company in the past two years, and Apple is now engaged in a series of global lawsuits against Qualcomm over

For as long as I can remember, Android flagships have largely been defined by their specs. Whereas Apple users know the newest iPhone is always the best iPhone, Android’s diversity means researching processors, RAM, etc, is a regular part of choosing a new phone. But with the Pixel 2, Google is bent on changing that. Talk to the average iPhone user – you know, people who don’t read tech blogs – and chances are they know next to nothing about what’s actually in thei

Following the trend of desperate cities vying for Amazon to choose them as its second headquarters, Kansas City’s mayor bought 1,000 Amazon products today and reviewed them on the company’s website. But don’t worry, all the products are going to charity.
Amazon is asking cities to woo the company by October 19th with incentives like tax credits, relocation grants, fee reductions, and more in order to get chosen as the company’s second headquarters. Amazon’s main hea

The creators of Unity, the most popular game engine in the world, recently launched a set of machine-learning tools that lay the groundwork for actual AI (not scripted computer opponents) in video games. Typically these kits include rendering aids and simple tools for training neural networks, but the beta release sent to developers promises to revolutionize video games, and provides machine-learning researchers with a perfect environment for training robot brains. The applications for the

When Razer bought Nextbit, the question of whether or not the gaming hardware company would be releasing a phone quickly changed from “if” to “when.” And now, the company seems to be gearing up for an announcement on November 1st, if the teaser posted to Twitter by the Razer account, which shows a man holding what appears to be a smartphone-shaped device in his hands, is anything to go by (first spotted by 9to5Google).
WATCH for our biggest unveiling...️https://t.c

UK ministers said today Facebook and Twitter could be asked to pay a levy for the “undeniable suffering” they have caused amongst young people. Culture secretary Karen Bradley suggested an “industry-wide levy,” where social media companies and service providers fund campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of the internet, amongst other proposals. She also indicated she wants social media platforms to reveal the scale of online hate found on their websites in order to

Huawei announced its next-generation budget phone today: the Honor 7X. The biggest change over last year's device, the Honor 6X, has a new aspect ratio and screen dimensions. This is the company's first device with an 18:9 display. You'll notice it still has bezels, although they're minimized, and the screen size is slightly longer, at 5.93 inches. The 6X had a 5.5-inch screen.
Here are the rest of the specs:
Kirin 659 chipset
4GB of RAM
Up to 128GB of expandable storage
3340mAh battery
Android

Ford has taken a stake in Silicon Valley’s Autonomic to be the basis for the automaker’s future mobility efforts.In its investors report last week, Ford said it had made an investment in Palo Alto-based Autonomic Inc. to build a basis for future iterations of mobility services that will use Ford vehicles, such as its Chariot service that employs Transit vans, as part of the company’s plan to move people through cities in every way, according to CEO Jim Hackett.“The platfo

Update October 11th, 3:40PM ET: This afternoon, Facebook updated its statement, adding, “Earlier today, a networking issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Facebook services. We quickly investigated and started restoring access within about an hour, and we have nearly fixed the issue for everyone. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”The original article is below.
Facebook and Instagram users are experiencing outages on the platforms this morning, according to web tra

There are plenty of unconventional methods to make music, like Shawn Wasabi’s MIDI controller, which is fashioned with 64 arcade buttons, or the cute, squawking Otamatone, which YouTubers have mastered to cover a wide range of beloved tunes. Now, novelty Chinese calculators might be the latest instrument of choice for burgeoning bedroom musicians, particularly the delightful Japanese YouTuber who goes by It’s a Small World. Watch as the mysterious musician absolutely nails the Super

Popular AI-driven homework app Socratic is introducing new social features to make it easier for students to talk about their classes — including chat and groups. The new features bear a very close resemblance to other social media apps, such as Snapchat and Facebook Groups. Users can create groups associated with their schools, which other users can join. Group members can send messages and share pictures to keep abreast of each other’s studies. According to a Socratic spokesperson

The battle of the smart speakers has become a constant back and forth between Amazon and Google. Back in April, Google Home gained the ability to recognize individual voices, which allows the device to personalize its response for everyone in your house or apartment. This way, you’ll get your calendar briefing or curated music playlists when asking Assistant for them, and Google won’t mix up contacts when you call someone with the Home speaker. Today, Amazon announced that Alexa can

Neverware, a New York City-based startup with a software platform that converts legacy computers into Chromebooks, announced today that it has raised a new round of investment led by Google. It won’t say the exact amount, but it will likely be more than the $6.5 million it raised in its last round.The synergy between the two parties is obvious. CloudReady is built on the same open-source technology as Google’s Chrome OS. IT teams from corporations or schools that decide to use Neverw

Respawn Entertainment, creator of Titanfall shooter game, said that it will create a VR game for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset in 2019. The odds are good that it will be a Titanfall game, but the company didn’t specifically say that.
Vince Zampella, CEO of Respawn, announced in a video played at the Oculus Connect event today that VR is an immersive platform that really makes you feel like you’re inside the world of a game, and it’s time to take the shooter franchise

What can we learn from losing?That’s the question at the heart of the documentary AlphaGo, about an AI program designed to play the ancient Chinese board game Go. The film follows AlphaGo and its creators, the Google-owned firm DeepMind, as the program defeats first the European champion, Fan Hui, then the legendary player Lee Se-dol. Fan and Lee are forced to answer this question as they’re overwhelmed by AlphaGo’s uncanny play style. And as artificial intelligence imitates mo

Facebook today announced a handful of new features for its virtual reality hangout app Spaces. The news, presented onstage at the Oculus Connect developer conference in San Jose, California, means you now can bring in your own photos and videos into Spaces, as well as live stream 360-degree video. The company also introduced what it calls 3D Posts, which are cartoony, interactive 3D objects that can be crafted using new creative tools in Spaces and then be taken out of VR and posted directly to

Facebook Spaces, a social virtual reality space, is getting a few upgrades that make it a lot more social. Spaces will now let you share live 360-degree video from anywhere in the world.
The videos show up inside the social space, so you can watch them with friends who are sharing the space with you in real time. The feature is coming later this year.
Above: Facebook’s QuillImage Credit: Oculus
Facebook’s Rachel Franklin, head of social VR, made the announcement at its Oculus Connect

Oculus announced at its Oculus Connect keynote event today that its Explore API will be available for all Gear VR developers. The API will enable devs to promote their content in the new Oculus Explore section that’s meant to help with app discoverability. It will be available for the Rift in 2018.
Using the Explore API, a developer can create Stories around their app or game. These can be used to showcase updates or announcements as well as deeplink to videos or specific content within an

Do you think the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 controller is too big? Then Hori’s new adorable-looking Wired Mini Gamepad might just be the controller for you.The miniature controller works like a regular DualShock, with all the buttons and triggers that you’d expect. Even the touch pad is there, sort of: there’s a dedicated button to simulate a click on top of the controller, and a “TP” button on the bottom that lets you use control sticks to simulate the gestu

Oculus is announcing a revamped Rift interface it refers to as Rift Core 2.0, which supports 2D desktop windows and a customizable VR home space. The former system is called Dash, which is based around Facebook’s React VR development framework. Dash is a central hub that incorporates all the old Oculus interface elements into somethingyou can access from anywhere in VR, designed for motion controllers. It also supports pulling 2D windows into virtual reality, where you can pin them into th

Facebook said today that its Oculus avatar characters for virtual reality will be upgraded to be more realistic, and they will be available across platforms in SteamVR and Google Daydream VR apps.
Christina Womack, product manager at Oculus, said onstage at Oculus Connect that the cross-platform use of avatars was the most-requested feature for the avatars, which can be used in VR games or Facebook Spaces, a social VR platform.
Above: Oculus avatarsImage Credit: Facebook
Now you can change your

GUEST: Though it will still be months before the public learns which city will be home to Amazon HQ2, one thing has already become clear: This RFP process, arguably the most highly speculated business decision ever, has forced cities to take a hard look at their infrastructure. Local government officials are able to see what’s required to attract a behemoth like Amazon, with its 50,000 workers and up to $5 billion in construction dollars — and where they’re lacking.
No matter w

Oculus announced during its Oculus Connect 4 event today that Rift Core 2.0, the new built-in software user-interface programs for the company’s virtual reality hardware, will go into beta in December as a free update.
Rift Core 2.0 includes a revamped Home and Dash. Home is now a customizable 3D space that you can decorate (which is giving me flashbacks to the ill-fated PlayStation Home). It makes your Home experience more, well, homey. You can even launch apps by inserting cartridge

The best way to improve as a developer is to read other people’s code, and to work on projects with other developers. Github, as the epicentre of social coding, is arguably the best place to do that, and today the company announced two new discoverability features that will allow developers to unearth interesting new projects. The Github dashboard now shows a “Discover Repositories” feed, which highlights projects based on your interests. So, if you star Python projects and fo

GitHub announced a series of updates to its service today that are supposed to help users improve the way they manage the development of software.
A new Dependency Graph will help customers better understand what code they rely on. It’s not unusual for one project to use an external piece of code to handle some piece of infrastructure that the developer didn’t want to replicate, and those dependencies sometimes stretch several layers deep.
What that means is that developers could be

Github today announced the introduction of more robust security features for its users, which will help developers identify vulnerable dependencies in their code. The announcement came at the company’s flagship Github Universe conference, taking place at Pier 70 in San Francisco. The new feature, called Dependency Graph, enumerates the software libraries that constitute a project. This information is then visualized in a way that’s easy for developers to digest, giving them an accur

Oculus unveiled a new virtual reality interface for the Oculus Rift called Dash at the Oculus Connect keynote event today in San Jose. It’s built with React VR and will be available alongside Oculus Home. It’s also a part of the Rift Core 2.0 software update that’s coming this December.
Dash will enable people to run their PC applications on the Rift. A task bar along the bottom brings up settings, their friends list, and notifications, and it’s optimized for touch so peo

An Australian court has accepted an unsent mobile text message as an official will, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The will, written by a 55-year-old man who took his own life in 2016, was found in the drafts folder of his phone. It contained information on how to access his bank account as well as directions for what to do with his ashes.
In Queensland, if a person dies without a will, the management of their estate is automatically assigned to next of kin. In this case,

Oculus VR today revealed a new prototype headset design for its upcoming standalone product, codenamed Santa Cruz, at its Connect developer conference in San Jose, California. The headset was first shown off last year at Connect, but it was much farther from the polished design Oculus showed today. The goal with Santa Cruz is to create a headset that does not need to be tethered in any way to a PC, nor tracked by external cameras.In addition to a new headset design that looks similar to the cons

Oculus is permanently dropping its Rift headset price to $399. The change was announced at this year’s Oculus Connect conference, and it effectively brings back the sale price we got this summer, a $100 cut from the current $499 price. As before, this bundle includes both the Oculus Rift headset and Oculus Touch motion controllers.
With this discount, the Rift is around half the price it launched at last year, when the headset cost $599 and the Touch controllers were $199. Oculus hasn&rsqu

Today at this year’s Oculus Connect conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his company’s ambitious goal for VR growth: one billion users.“We’re setting a goal: we want to get a billion people in virtual reality.” - Zuckerberg, #OC4— Adi Robertson (@thedextriarchy) October 11, 2017To say that one billion people is a big ask is a serious understatement. Analysts estimate that only a few million VR headsets have been sold across the entire industry, t

Hugo Barra, the new head of the Oculus division at Facebook, said today at the Connect event that the company is targeting businesses with its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.
Facebook launched the Rift for consumers in 2016, and now it is creating bundles for businesses that include a full VR commercial license, enterprise-grade warranty, dedicated customer support, and bulk ordering.
The company made the announcement at its Oculus Connect event in San Jose. There are now 300 Oculus Touch t

Land Rover has announced the 2019 Range Rover P400e plug-in hybrid, among the first of a wave of electrified vehicles from Jaguar Land Rover.
A 296hp 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engine is paired with a 114hp, 85kW electric motor for a total output of 398 horsepower and 472 lb.-ft. of torque. Land Rover estimates the Range Rover PHEV can go up to 31 miles on a fully charged battery, too, which would put it well above other plug-in hybrid SUVs such as the BMW X5 and Volvo XC90 T8

Yes, Circuit Breaker Live is a live show, and it’s shot live, and you can watch it live. But we get it, you can’t always be there, at circuitbreaker.twitter.com at 4PM ET on a Tuesday, where you can find Circuit Breaker Live for the next couple months. So we’ve got you covered and have recorded the latest episode for you to watch at your leisure.
On this week’s show, we fly some drones with Ben Popper, dive deep into #podlife with Ashley Carman, and test out some of the b

Oculus is announcing a new standalone VR headset that will sit in the middle of its lineup between the mobile Gear VR and high-end Oculus Rift, called Oculus Go. Oculus Go will ship early next year for $199, not too much more than the $129 Gear VR and significantly less than the $499 Rift. It’s supposed to enable everyday uses of VR without the trouble of plugging in a phone or computer, at an affordable price point. Mark Zuckerberg announced the news at this year’s Oculus Connect co

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new standalone virtual reality headset called the Oculus Go today at the Oculus Connect event in San Jose. It will launch in early 2018 for $200, with developer kits shipping in November.
Head of Oculus VR Hugo Barra noted that it designed the Oculus Go to be lightweight and comfortable, with a new mesh fabric on the facial interface. It will feature upgraded lenses from the Oculus Rift headset, with the same field of view but less glare and a fast-switch

At its fourth annual VR developers conference, Oculus announced its newest, and most affordable, VR headset to date. The Oculus ‘Go’ resides in the sweet spot between Daydream and Rift, and features a lightweight headset with a wild field of view and significantly reduced glare. Better still, the new headset starts at just $199. After the Go announcement, Zuckerberg teased another new hardware product from Oculus, its motion tracking controllers with six degrees of directional freed

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced an ambitious goal to make virtual reality accessible to everyone.
“We are setting a goal,” he said. “We want to get a billion people in virtual reality.”
Zuckerberg made the announcement at his company’s Oculus Connect event at the San Jose Convention Center.
One of the key ways Facebook will get there is through the Oculus Go, a wireless VR headset that will sell for just $200. Zuckerberg said it will be available next ye

Meural, a company that brings digital high-brow art into people's homes, is launching the second generation of its electronic canvas at the end of this month. The new frames, called the Leonora and the Winslow, include slight spec bumps. Both have doubled their RAM to 2GB, support both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Wi-Fi, and automatically determine their vertical or horizontal orientation. The Lenora costs $595 while the Winslow costs $695. The pricing reflects the frame's materials.
The company's also now l

Even though it appears that the world of extroverts is slowly shifting their actions toward giving introverts some credit, a lot of corporations are still far off from reaching an equality between the two types of people. Introverts may be respected for the work they are doing and they usually get the proverbial pat on the shoulder. However, extroverts are still the ones who are in the spotlight and get most of the recognition. Because of their very nature, the employees who are more subdued ar

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been talking up augmented reality for the past year, but don’t take that to mean that Apple will launch a dedicated AR product anytime soon. In an interview with The Independent, Cook said that currently “the technology itself doesn’t exist” to make augmented reality glasses “in a quality way.” And Apple, he said, won’t ship an AR product unless it can deliver “a great experience.”
Cook identified two problems with curr

A recently released report shows that Amazon, over the last five years, has been involved in an AI-developer ménage à trois with Google and Microsoft. It turns out all three companies have a penchant for poaching talent in the machine-learning field from each other on a regular basis. Last month Amazon was looking everywhere to fill its open AI positions, and today there are 140 job openings on its AI hiring site alone. According to career site Paysa, this is par for the cour

Astronomers have found a ring of particles surrounding a small, distant space rock at the edge of our Solar System. The ring encircles a strange world called Haumea, a dwarf planet that’s shaped a bit like a squashed egg. Haumea is one of just five officially recognized dwarf planets in the Solar System, but it’s the only one we know of to have its very own ring.
Although Haumea is unique among its peers, this isn’t the first time a ring has been found around a small body like