Technology news

Over the weekend, post-tropical cyclone Ophelia hit an unusual place, Ireland — so unusual that a graphic depicting the storm’s high-speed winds was abruptly cut off. That's because so few tropical cyclones travel so far northeast that the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) doesn't include the area in its wind forecast graphics.Ophelia started out in the North Atlantic as a tropical cyclone that gathered strength as it traveled northeast, briefly becoming a Category 3 hurricane. The

Deadline is reporting that Amazon Studios executive Roy Price has resigned, in response to sexual harassment claims leveled online by The Man in the High Castle executive producer Isa Hackett. Contacted by The Verge, an Amazon representative confirmed his resignation. Price was also a producer on Man in the High Castle and other Amazon shows, including Transparent.
Price was suspended from Amazon on October 13th. It’s the latest step in what’s become a groundswell of revelations abou

Today, Facebook added the ability to directly share your screen on Facebook Live, as spotted by The Next Web. Previously, third-party software was needed to do the same thing.
As shown in the below tweet, the option now appears on the right-hand side under “FaceTime Camera” with a button marked “Share Screen.”NEW! Facebook screen sharing option on FB Live via https://t.co/Luozcvmz9G (desktop / laptop) pic.twitter.com/1CN2nsaUrT— Matt Navarra ⭐️ (@MattN

Women's reproductive organs are home to plenty of microorganisms, and identifying them may help us improve women's health.
Scientists have long known that the vagina is home to trillions of bacteria, but much less is known about the community of organisms inhabiting the rest of women’s reproductive tracts — from the uterus to the ovaries. In a study published today in Nature Communications, researchers in China identified the microorganisms found in six parts of the reproductive trac

WhatsApp announced today that you’ll be able to share your location in real time with friends on your contact list, a popular feature borrowed from its parent company Facebook. The feature, called Live Location, should be available starting today and is coming to both the iOS and Android versions of WhatsApp. Facebook officially rolled out temporary location sharing in Messenger back in May, having experimented with the idea in different formats within Messenger and the main Facebook app f

Apple has expanded universal search options for film and TV on standard Apple TV and Apple TV 4K. The additional options are country-specific, as the network offerings vary by country. In the US, Apple TV will now show listings from Classix, Oxygen, and BBC America, as long as you have the apps installed.While the US is still the country with the most Apple TV listings, other countries are seeing expansion as well. Canada is getting Classix, FXNOW Canada, Treehouse, CBC TV, and ICI Tou.tv, among

Three former employees of Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, claimed they’ve suffered constant, often daily racial discrimination and harassment, and that the electric car company did little to nothing to stop the behavior. The allegations were made in a new lawsuit that was filed yesterday in California’s Alameda County Superior Court; it names Tesla and three staffing agencies as defendants. The suit was first reported by Mercury News.
In the lawsuit, the three men &mdas

Google is testing out the ability to add third-party email services to the Gmail app on iOS. If enabled, it would put the app directly in competition with Apple’s own default Mail app, along with other third-party email apps like Spark and Edison Mail.Google has offered the option to add third-party accounts on Android phones for a while, which made sense, given that Gmail is the default (and sometimes, only) email app preinstalled on many Android devices. But offering the ability to suppo

 There have always been outliers, people in tech who are willing to volunteer to help certain candidates. An even smaller percentage of techies quit their jobs to join campaigns. Still, it’s probably safe to say that most tech employees, who are also U.S. citizens, have long viewed the extent of their obligation as Americans to vote for their preferred candidate — then get back… Read More

EA has announced that it’s shutting down Visceral Games, the studio best known for developing the Dead Space series of games and Battlefield Hardline. Visceral was in the middle of work on an upcoming Star Wars title, which EA says will live on in some form, with EA Worldwide Studios and EA Vancouver taking over development.According to EA executive vice president Patrick Söderlund, Visceral’s take on the Star Wars title would have been a “story-based, linear adventure gam

 Hard to believe that TechCrunch’s first Startup Battlefield Australia is just one month away.  The Sydney event on Nov. 16 at ATP’s Locomotive Workshop will present a tremendous day of programming and an epic competition to find early stage best startup across Australia and New Zealand. TechCrunch and our partner, Elevacao, are very pleased to announce the agenda for the big… Read More

What does fall mean to you?Perhaps that it’s time to talk about death without it being weird? Perhaps it’s thinking of a topical-and-clever-but-cool-and-comfortable-and-cheap-and-flattering Halloween costume? Or washing your sweaters over and over, even though nothing makes them stop smelling like basement? Time to pull your Bon Iver-heavy playlists out of storage and think your saddest thoughts? Maybe “fall” to you means artificial pumpkin spice and apple flavors, and if

It may feel like it was just yesterday when Razer updated its Blade Stealth laptop (it was actually in June), but the company is back with another refresh to the high-end configuration of the 13.3-inch laptop, adding one of Intel’s latest eighth-gen quad-core i7 processors.The new processor is the Intel i7-8550U, clocked at 1.8 GHz, which can be boosted to 4.0 GHz. Otherwise, the new Stealth is pretty much the same as the updated model from June. It’s got the same 3200 x 1800, 13.3-i

Sidewalk Labs, the smart city subsidiary of Alphabet with the stated goal of “reimagining cities from the Internet up,” now has a very big sandbox in which to conduct its high-tech experiments. The Google spinoff announced a deal with the city of Toronto to develop 800 acres of waterfront property into its own digital utopia.Waterfront Toronto, a city agency tasked with overseeing the development along the shore of Lake Ontario, is teaming up with Sidewalk Labs to create a new ventur

When the AI boom came a-knocking, Intel wasn’t around to answer the call. Now, the company is attempting to reassert its authority in the silicon business by unveiling a new family of chips designed especially for artificial intelligence: the Intel Nervana Neural Network Processor family, or NNP for short.The NNP family is meant as a response to the needs of machine learning, and is destined for the data center, not your PC. Intel’s CPUs may still be a stalwart of server stacks (by s

 Security researcher Mathy Vanhoef publicly disclosed a serious vulnerability in the WPA2 encryption protocol yesterday that affects all devices that use WiFi. While we’ve listed many ways to protect yourself against KRACK, the best way to completely eradicate it from your network is to update all your WiFi devices. And some companies have been faster than others. First, you should… Read More

It’s officially launch week for the Pixel 2. Some customers are set to receive their preorders as early as tomorrow, and Verizon — the exclusive carrier of Google’s new smartphones — will have them for sale in stores on Thursday.A Verizon spokesperson confirmed that both the Pixel 2 and 2 XL will be available, though stock will vary by location. The spokesperson was unable to provide specifics on inventory.Hopefully both Google and Verizon are better prepared to meet dema

Sonos is offering a $25 discount on an Amazon Echo Dot to its customers starting this week, to better help them take advantage of the newly added Alexa integration that’s now in public beta.The deal is pretty simple: if you’re a Sonos customer, you should be getting a unique code sometime this week with the discount, which marks down the Echo Dot from the usual $49.99 price tag to $24.99.One per customer
The only real restrictions are that the deal is good for only a single Echo Dot,

Google continues to add more media and smart speaker integrations across its growingnumber of hardware and software products, and today YouTube TV support has arrived. Now, if you have a Google Home speaker — that includes the new Home Mini and Home Max that were announced earlier this month — you can use your voice to control YouTube TV broadcasts. You will, of course, need the YouTube TV app to be running on a Chromecast hooked up to your TV.
For those who may be unaware, YouTube T

Google doesn't have any dedicated hardware stores like Apple or Microsoft, but it has previously experimented with pop-up demo experiences where users can test products before buying them online through the Google Store. That's changing today... sort of.The company confirmed to The Verge that it will begin selling hardware at these temporary locations this year. The Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and Google Home Mini will go on sale in New York City and in Los Angeles on Thursday. The rest of the new devi

Bigelow Aerospace, a company devoted to manufacturing inflatable space habitats, says it’s planning to put one of its modules into orbit around the Moon within the next five years. The module going to lunar space will be the B330, Bigelow’s design concept for a standalone habitat that can function autonomously as a commercial space station. The plan is for the B330 to serve as something of a lunar depot, where private companies can test out new technologies, or where astronauts can s

Dropbox launched a new plan today called Dropbox Professional for individuals that lets you store, access, and track files from one place. The plan opens up Dropbox’s business feature Smart Sync to individuals for the first time. Smart Sync lets you save space by storing files only in the cloud, without any hard drive backup, and it’s compatible with Mac and Windows.
The company also announced a new feature called Dropbox Showcase, which lets you create a PowerPoint-like introduction

Microsoft's Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is here and ready to download. The software giant first started testing its Fall Creators Update back in April, and now all Windows 10 users will be able to experience the improvements today. Just like previous updates, Microsoft is rolling it out in stages, and you can check whether it’s available for your own PC from Windows Update. If your device is eligible then it will start downloading in the background, and a prompt will appear to schedule

Hello! It's your good friend and confidant, Paul Miller. It's my pleasure to inform you that Circuit Breaker Live, the live show we do every Tuesday on Twitter, will be live. Today. On Twitter. Head on over to circuitbreaker.twitter.com at 4PM ET to watch it happen.
Dieter Bohn will be on this week (in person!) to talk about Google's new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones, Ashley Carman will introduce us to some enormous and aggressive Bluetooth speakers, and Dan Seifert will explain our pick for the

Using half a million images taken by spacecrafts including the Cassini probe, Google Maps added over a dozen distant planets and moons to its repertoire yesterday.
By zooming out of Earth and into other moons like Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon which is thought to have water underneath its crust, you can re-create the journeys of Cassini and other spacecrafts. Pluto, Venus, and several moons were also added to Google Maps. Astronomical artist Björn Jónsson put together