Technology news

Walking a cat on a leash will get you some looks. Walking a leopard will probably prompt a phone call to the police. 
Neighbors are reportedly upset after a man, referred to only as Aleksandr, was spotted walking his pet leopard outside his apartment building in Nizhny Novgorod — a city located in Russia, of course. Directly outside the building is a playground, which the man apparently takes no effort in avoiding.
The leopard was spotted on security footage walking with the man outs

One of Nintendo’s greatest games is celebrating its 15th anniversary. Metroid Prime came out for the GameCube on this day in 2002.
Metroid Prime is one of the most critically acclaimed games ever and spawned two sequels. A new entry, Metroid Prime 4, is coming out for the Switch in 2018, according to Nintendo. That is part of a push to revive that franchise after Nintendo took some time to focus on other properties. Earlier this year, the publisher released Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3

Tesla's had a big week so far with the launch of its ultra fast supercar and its new electric semi truck. But what's the biggest announcement for us here at Circuit Breaker? I'm glad you asked. The company, along with all its other news, also launched a portable Tesla-themed battery that can charge iPhones, iPads, or any other device that takes a microUSB.The 3,350mAh battery pack is modeled after Tesla’s Supercharger monument at the Tesla Design Studio, which you'd probably recognize if y

Update at 3:05 p.m. Pacific time: It looks like PSN is back up and running for most people. 
PlayStation Network is not working for a lot of people. PlayStation 4 owners are having trouble getting connected to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s online PSN service. The company has now confirmed the problems on its status site, and a significant number of fans are complaining about the outage on social media.
“You may have some difficulty launching games, applications, or onlin

Something that often bothers me about sci-fi is the loner inventor trope. A guy in a garage builds a robot, or AI, or frequently both that are somehow decades beyond the technology of his day, and all the wild implications of his vast technological leap are the fuel for the next two and a half hours of popcorn entertainment.
But the latest video from Boston Dynamics is the closest equivalent I've ever witnessed IRL. Sure, it’s the achievement of an entire company, and they’re doing i

GUEST: Artificial intelligence is an important vehicle for companies looking to automate processes, reduce the cost of operation, or fuel innovation. Despite the positive influence AI-supported activities have on business, a successful implementation won’t happen overnight. First you need a complete understanding of your business goals, technology needs, and the impact AI will have on customers and employees. The majority of employees face challenges or concerns relating to AI adoption, an

We’d previously written an opinion piece titled “The case for an artificially intelligent god.” This is our counterpoint to that. It’s a strange time to be a technology journalist. Somehow artificial intelligence has grown from buzzword to a religion, literally. For tech enthusiasts, it can often be more comfortable to wrap our heads around ideas like algorithms and neural networks than religion and faith. Yet here we are, in a never-ending discussion on the ever-terrify

Update November 17th, 4:15PM ET :On Thursday, SpaceX stated that it had decided to stand down from the launch as it reviewed data of a fairing test the company did for another customer. SpaceX said it still had the opportunity to launch on Friday, but that the launch might not happen depending on how long it takes the company to review the test data. Now it looks like SpaceX won’t be launching in the next couple days, and the company will come up with a new launch date soon.
Sometime in th

EXCLUSIVE: During the development of Star Wars: Battlefront II (read our review), developer DICE began work on a mode that played like Overwatch and featured a similar business model to Blizzard’s team-based hero shooter, according to sources familiar with the production (who asked that I not print their names or titles to protect their employment). The mode would have focused on cooperative play and team composition, and — more importantly — it would have favored cosmetic

It’s hard to imagine a worse time for a Punisher TV show. A little over a month after one of the worst mass murders in American history, in a country where mass shootings come at the rate of roughly one per day, the arrival of Marvel Comics’ favorite gun-wielding, spree-killing angry white man on Netflix is awkward, to say the least.
The Punisher has always been an antihero, a not-quite-good guy with a gun whose motivation for murder is initially sympathetic: bad guys killed his fami

 Stitch Fix went up just 1 percent on its first day of trading. After pricing at $15, the company closed at $15.15. It’s also below the opening trade of $16.90. The company didn’t raise as much money as it had been hoping for. It raised $120 million, after pricing at $15, below the expected range of $18 to $20. The company also reduced the size of its IPO from 10 million shares to… Read More

In most role-playing games, side quests appear out of nowhere on town boards that act like fantasy versions of Craigslist. The Quest Giver puts you behind the scenes as you head up your own guild and hire adventurers. The guild simulator is the second game from German indie studio Restless Games, and it’s raising funds on Kickstarter with an estimated release date in 2018 for PC, Mac, Linux, and iOS and Android devices.
“The inspiration for the game came to us by simply playing

Republic Wireless, a popular MVNO that runs off of Sprint and T-Mobile, offers, among other things, some pretty comprehensive Wi-Fi calling features that caught the eye of Walt Mossberg last year.
So now the company is doing something a little differently for its first hardware product, a smart speakerphone called Anywhere HQ. According to Republic’s website, Anywhere HQ syncs with your regular phone number and allows you to make and receive calls. There isn’t a ton of information on

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter run through a few things in the tech world that happened this week, like reviews for Google’s Pixel Buds and Microsoft’s Surface Book 2, and the announcement of the OnePlus 5T.Also, Lauren Goode stops by the show to talk about season 2 of her video series Next Level, which takes a closer look at technology's impact on the human experience. This week’s episode featured DJI's Aeroscope technology that can track rogue drones.Ther

Internet addicts in Latin America can get a “detox” treatment at Instituto Delete in Brazil, a center focused on treating cellular and internet addictions. For many of us, our cell phone is an extension of our hand. Whether that’s healthy or not remains in how that affects our lives — but for many people, it’s the cause of arguments, conflicts and could even result in losing a job. The addiction is often referred to as nomophobia, joining the words “no,&

China-based gadget maker Xiaomi is bringing more of its products to the US this week. Two headphone models, a 10,000mAh Mi Power Bank Pro, a 360-degree camera, and a robot coding kit are all coming to Amazon. This continues the company's slow march toward wider device releases in the US.Xiaomi currently sells its Android TV set-top box, Mi TV, at Walmart locations around the US, and previously launched items in its Mi online store for the US, including a fitness tracker, battery packs, and headp

Doubts that Elon Musk would be unable to put on a raucous reveal party were put to rest late Thursday night. Amid Tesla’s “production hell” this fall, the automaker delivered two beacons of hope for the California-based company’s future.
The Tesla Semi drew excitement from the crowd at the Hawthorne, California facility, as people eagerly waited for Musk to emerge from the big truck. But the surprise showing of the second-generation Tesla Roadster caused explosive cheers

I’ve been using the iPhone X for about a week, and, like Nilay Patel said in his review: “The good news is that Face ID generally works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t.”
I’ve been trying to figure out what to do in those cases when it doesn’t. And, thanks to a complaint on Twitter (which, as I always say, is what Twitter is for), I have an answer.
But first, my overall take is that when Face ID works, it is magically better than Touch ID. Your

Global healthcare is on the rise. “The world’s major regions are expected to see healthcare spending increases ranging from 2.4% to 7.5% between 2015 and 2020,” according Deloitte’s 2017 Global Healthcare Sector Outlook. To overcome this, cities across the world are working hard to incorporate cutting edge technologies in innovative ways that reduce their healthcare expenses. Let’s explore a city that’s spent the majority of the past decade stepping up its ga

Amid a swarm of 160 events as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announced a new microlending program to spur investment in underserved entrepreneurs.
In partnership with four microfinance lenders, the foundation issued a series of grants totaling $1.2 million that will change the way the nonprofit microlenders capitalize their loan pool funds for lending.
The foundation awarded grants of $300,000 each to AltCap, Women’s Business Cente

Starting today, the first thing you’ll see when you walk into the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto — even before the giant Klingon Bird of Prey dangling above the escalators — is a state-of-the-art virtual reality arcade. You’ll probably even hear a few of the telltale shrieks that come from someone’s first VR experience. Today, IMAX is opening the latest of its IMAX VR centers with its first location in Canada. The launch follows VR installations in theaters

Hot on the heels of Tesla’s big event last night, Walmart says it has preordered 15 of the electric automaker’s new semi trucks, according to CNBC. The deal was likely in the works before Tesla unveiled its new truck to the public, but interest from the world’s biggest retailer in battery-powered transport is still a huge boost of confidence for Elon Musk and his mission to electrify the industry.Update: Wal-Mart says it’s preordered 15 of Tesla’s new electric tract

 Following consumer outrage over YouTube’s handling of disturbing videos aimed at children on its network, the company has now banned one of the more controversial kid channels it hosted, Toy Freaks. The channel, the 68th largest on YouTube with over 8.5 million subscribers, was often criticized for its vile and seemingly exploitive videos featuring a dad and his daughters, which many… Read More

Amazon yesterday announced its ONNX-MXNet package to import Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) deep learning models into Apache MXNet, signifying the company is on-board with Facebook and Microsoft in efforts to open-source AI. With the ONNX-MXNet Python package, developers running models based on open-source ONNX will be able to run them on Apache MXNet. Basically, this allows AI developers to keep models but switch networks, as opposed to starting from scratch. If you can imagine a thousand

Virgin Orbit — one of the Virgin Group’s three primary space companies — has scored a deal with the Department of Defense, agreeing to launch experimental satellites for the agency on the company’s future LauncherOne rocket. The mission, slated for 2019, marks the first national security agreement for the private spaceflight company.
While its sister company Virgin Galactic is focused on space tourism, Virgin Orbit’s goal is to launch small satellites with its Launc

With two weeks left until he turned thirty, Marc Köhlbrugge made a daunting realization — no, not that his twenties were almost over. He had failed to achieve his goal of seeing his name in Forbes’ 30 under 30 list. Not content to merely try for Fortune’s consolation prize 40 under 40 awards, he instead decided to launch his own list of who’s who, called (what else?) 100 under 100. 100 under 100 is perhaps the most attainable “who’s who” list aroun

Apple today announced that the HomePod smart speaker will no longer be made available this year, but rather in early 2018. Missing the holidays could be a major setback for the smart speaker, which will compete with Amazon’s Echo series, Google’s Home series, and other several other smart speakers on the market. Though the smart speaker market is relatively new, the holiday season is traditionally the biggest time of year for sales.
“We can’t wait for people to experience

The Legend of Zelda has some of the best music in gaming. It’s melodic, epic, and memorable. It also works pretty well when translated to heavy metal.
Octorock: The Zelda Metal EP rearranges four classic Zelda songs with a metal flavor. It is available on iTunes and Spotify.
It includes:
“The Lost Woods” (Ocarina of Time)
“Dragon Roost Island” (The Wind Waker)
“Stone Tower” (Majora’s Mask)
“Ballad of the Sky Goddess” (Skyward Sword)
The

PRESS RELEASE:Results rank Okta highest in Current Offering and Strategy, and mark history of steady industry recognitionSAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–November 17, 2017– Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ:OKTA), the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise, today announced that the company has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Identity-As-A-Service, Q4 2017,* a report published by Forrester Research, Inc. The report evaluates seven Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) vend

Candy Crush Saga is the most popular mobile game in the U.S. after a dramatic comeback in the third quarter. As the mobile game crossed its fifth anniversary this week, its tally has crossed 2.73 billion sugary downloads.
In the third quarter that ended September 30, the match-3 game generated more than $250 million in revenue, up 97 percent from the same period a year ago, according to measurement firm Sensor Tower. More than 1 trillion game rounds have been played in the game since its launch,

The first teaser trailer has dropped for the highly anticipated Deadpool 2. The trailer opens with Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) dressed in a collared shirt and curly wig, spoofing Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting, except it’s called “Gettin’ Wet on Wet with Deadpool 2.” He’s seen puttering around, muttering about the colors he’s using in his painting (which include “mennen black,” “box office gold,” “doc brown,” “pretty