Technology news

A new VR attraction invites users to strap into a haptic vest, grab a rifle, and embark on a real-world indoor adventure as an undercover stormtrooper from the Star Wars movies. Complete with props, smells, sound effects, and weather, the experience is called “hyper reality” and it looks awesome. Developers at The VOID created the immersive experience using the popular Unreal Engine 4, which also powers games like Fortnite: Battle Royale and movies like Finding Dory and Star Wars: R

As Uber goes, so does Lyft, apparently. The ride-hailing company says it’s investigating whether some of its employees abused access clearances and looked into customers’ information, with one saying it went on for “too long.”Lyft confirmed to The Information Thursday it was looking into the allegation after receiving an anonymous tip from a current or former employee at the San Francisco-based company.“Maintaining the trust of passengers and drivers is fundamental

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich opened his fourth-quarter earnings call with comments on the newly discovered Spectre and Meltdown security flaws in nearly all of Intel’s processors.
He said that the company was working “around the clock with our customers and partners” to address the flaws, and he was “acutely aware that we have more to do” beyond issuing software fixes to deal with the problems.
In the long term, Intel is implementing changes in its p

GUEST: The ability of artificial intelligence to make ethically sound decisions is a hot topic in debates around the world. The issue is particularly prevalent in discussions on the future of autonomous cars, but it spans to include ethical conundrums similar to those depicted in sci-fi flicks like Blade Runner.
These high-level debates are mainly about a future that’s still years away, but it is true that AI is already becoming part of our lives. Think Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and the

There’s a new update for the Photos app that Microsoft added in the Windows 10 Creators Update that brings more features to those auto-generated videos, similar to Google Photo’s movie feature. Now, there’s a new “Choose a star” option that lets you drop in a bunch of videos and pictures and create a new video file highlighting a specific person.
As the title implies, the “Choose a star” function works pretty similarly to the existing auto-generated vid

If you aren’t familiar with Kentucky Route Zero, it is, in my estimation, one of the greatest games ever made. Your mileage may vary, depending on your feelings about dream logic, non-Euclidean architecture, and magical realist explorations of economic collapse. At least initially, it follows a graying delivery man named Conway as he attempts to deliver his final package before retirement, which requires him to traverse a secret, unmappable highway in the caves beneath Kentucky.
The surre

Back in December, Elon Musk tweeted that if his new Boring Company – the one digging giant holes – sold 50,000 hats, it would also start selling a flamethrower. I mean, why not? It turns out he wasn’t kidding. As reported by The Verge, a few redditors noticed that going to boringcompany.com/flamethrower would prompt you to enter the password. If you typed in ‘flame’ you’d be taken to a pre-order page, where you could buy the flamethrower for $600. The page no

While Apple has redesigned a number of its high-profile apps and stores in recent years, one aspect of the company’s business has noticeably remained untouched: iBooks. According to a report in Bloomberg, that’s set to change as Apple is reportedly redesigning the app with a simpler interface and a new storefront, and has hired a new director to oversee the work.
Bloomberg says that the app will be renamed “Books” and will reportedly be released in the “coming mont

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
There’s a world in which Stranger Things doesn’t exist and the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s It didn’t just become a huge horror movie success. In that alternate timeline, the emergence of a film set in 1984 about a group of four high school kids trying to solve a local murder mystery &md

Already beset by production problems, the production ramp-up of the Tesla Model 3 could be further held up from reaching goals because the Gigafactory battery plant is still not up to speed. Furthermore, there could be a looming quality problem in the batteries that have already shipped.While Tesla CEO Elon Musk already blamed production hurdles at the Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada for delays in getting significant quantities of the Model 3 sedan shipped on schedule, issues at the factory persi

Intel reported fourth-quarter financials that beat estimates for earnings and revenue growth in the holiday quarter, but it remains to be seen if that will calm down investors.
Investors are watching closely for any impact from the newly discovered Spectre and Meltdown security flaws in nearly all of Intel’s processors. Talks about that disclosure on January 3 threatens to overshadow anything Intel says about the health of the PC and server chip markets. Intel has said it doesn’t exp

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), ranking member of the Senate committee that oversees NASA, had some harsh words about the Trump administration’s alleged proposal to stop funding the ISS by 2025, vowing to fight such an endeavor.
“If the administration plans to abruptly pull us out of the International Space Station in 2025, they’re going to have a fight on their hands,” Nelson said in a statement. “Such a move would likely decimate Florida’s blossoming commercial sp

Organic meal delivery service Sun Basket has announced a new $57.8 million funding round as the San Francisco startup looks to become a $1 billion business through expansion across the U.S.
The latest funding tranche constitutes two components: a $42.8 million series D round led by August Capital, and a $15 million debt segment from Trinity Capital Investment. Altogether, the startup’s total funding exceeds $100 million since its inception, including its $15 million raise last Fe

The Doomsday Clock is now two minutes to midnight, as close as it’s ever been to the hour standing in for the apocalypse because of threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, and fake news. So, should we take the Doomsday Clock seriously?
The clock is a symbolic threat assessment made by a panel of experts at the nonprofit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. They evaluate the likelihood of Armageddon and move the minute hand accordingly. This year, North Korea’s progressing nu

SpaceX, Tesla, and Boring Company CEO Elon Musk is known for making bold promises on deadlines he often can’t keep. That’s why this one from last December sounded more like an Onion headline than anything: “After [we sell] 50k [Boring Company] hats, we will start selling The Boring Company flamethrower.” On Christmas Eve, after selling said 50,000 hats, he tweeted that the flamethrowers were coming “soon!”
Mark this down as one of the promises Elon delivers o

GUEST: Though not fully autonomous, Tesla’s electric truck that debuted in November, equipped with the company’s next-generation autopilot system, represents a significant step toward fully driverless trucks. Embark, a Silicon Valley startup, is also partnering with Ryder and Electrolux to make the trucking industry driverless. It’s an exciting technological achievement, but those of us who are members of entrepreneurial ecosystems across the Heartland need to realize that tran

Microsoft launched the closed beta for its online pirate game Sea of Thieves yesterday on Xbox One and Windows 10, but you may have struggled to commit any piracy due to a number of server errors that prevented people from getting online. Now, in response to those issues, developer Rare is extending its pre-release trial period. If you have access to the closed beta, you can now play it for two additional days. The test now runs through January 31 at midnight Pacific time.
“We know that a

Ford Motor Company announced today that it was acquiring two transportation software companies, Autonomic and TransLoc. It also announced it would be reorganizing its mobility subsidiary in a bid to accelerate the delivery of new products, like microtransit services and self-driving cars. The news comes as the automaker’s stocks remained stagnant despite a raft of high-profile announcements during CES and the Detroit Auto Show about its investment in mobility services and electric cars.Fo

GUEST: Artificial intelligence achieved prominence in 2017 as companies looked to automate how they derive value from data. Following years focused on collecting data, where Hadoop and big data management dominated the conversation, organizations are now turning their attention to machine learning and other forms of AI to better extract meaning for that data and to open up new business models, products, and services.
For perspective, 451 Research expects the total data market to reach nearl

Blizzard announced that it is changing the way players climb ranks in its digital card game, Hearthstone.
Since launching in 2014, Hearthstone players queue up against random opponents and earn stars for wins and lose them for losses. You need a certain number of stars — three at lower ranks, five at higher ones — to progress to a new tier. Rank 25 is the lowest, and the goal is to get to Rank 1 and then the Legend rating beyond. At the end of every month, the ladder resets, and you&

Buzzfeed revealed earlier this week Facebook’s latest solution to the problem of trustworthy news was a user survey comprised of two questions: “Do you recognize the following websites” and “How much do you trust each of these domains?” At first, this sounds too simplistic — but think about it for longer than it takes to take the survey, and it looks more useful than it sounds at first. Mark Zuckerberg last week announced that Facebook would prioritize news s

The debate of nature versus nurture is never simple, and one reason is because nature influences nurture. A father’s genetically predisposed anxiety will affect the environment he creates for his daughter, even if he doesn’t pass down the trait itself to his happy-go-lucky child. Scientists are now quantifying these effects in humans, and showing how the genes your parents don’t pass on can still influence you.The key to today’s research, published in the journal Science

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop is one of the best laptops on the market, but until now, customers have only been able to pick it up with the more limited Windows 10 S operating system. Now, though, Microsoft is selling the Surface Laptop through its commercial store, and for the first time the company is giving users the option to buy a device with Windows 10 Pro already installed, via Neowin.Despite being sold through the commercial portal, much like the LTE-equipped Surface Pro, anyone can

On a good day, my phone battery never drops below 35 percent. A dead phone is a useless one, and the spike of anxiety that accompanies that fear is enough to send me scurrying for the nearest outlet. But when my charger is home in bed, and I’m out at a bar, there’s nothing I can do but embrace the inevitable: my battery is on its way to its own funeral. At the very least, I’ve found a conversation app that turns that feeling of desperation into anticipation. Welcome to Die Wit

Shortly after Apple finally announced a release date for its $349 HomePod speaker, Sonos is firing back with a new deal. You can buy two Sonos Ones for the same price. The speaker normally costs $200, so that’s a nice $50 discount. We liked the new Sonos One in our review, both in terms of sound and functionality, but of course we can’t say how it holds up against the HomePod without having tested Apple’s speaker ourselves. Still, the Sonos One does sound good, and no matter h

Pirates are well known for their aversion to meeting new people. Stranger danger killed more Caribbean sailors than sharks, and players in Microsoft’s new piracy simulator Sea of Thieves are dealing with that threat by putting their crewmates in the brig for no good reason.
In Sea of Thieves, you can matchmake to join a crew of up to three other people to form a random band of jolly ol’ scurvy curs. This is great if your friends aren’t online, but it also means you have to deal

Amazon just released an ad for the Echo Spot on YouTube. The ad called, “Be Together More,” is only a minute long, and it’s full of feels. The commercial tells a heartfelt story about a grandma who is left home alone with her cat after a visit from her family. She’s gifted an Amazon Echo Spot that comes with an instruction, “Just ask: ‘Alexa, Call Home.’” She studies the gadget curiously, which looks like a futuristic alarm clock, before realizing

We know plastic trash in the oceans kills birds, turtles, and whales, but now, scientists have found it’s making corals sick, too. In reefs in Asia and Australia, corals tangled in plastic are about 90 percent more likely to get a disease, according to new research. And that can cause corals, which are already stressed by warming ocean waters, to die.
Between 2011 and 2014, researchers looked at more than 124,000 corals in 159 reefs across the Asia-Pacific region, which hosts over 55 perc

GUEST: Entrepreneurship plays a critical role in establishing or revitalizing any economy. Look no further than Michigan to know that this is true. Thanks to a strong pipeline of talented workers from private and public universities that are supported by entrepreneurship organizations, Michigan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is gaining the momentum it needs to be recognized on a national scale. By 2016, there were 141 active venture-backed startups based or with offices in Michigan, a 48 perc

Apple gifted us with new Animoji, more insight into battery health, and an update for ARKit yesterday with its release of iOS 11.3. Buried in its update notes, the company also says it now supports Advanced Mobile Location, which automatically sends a user's location to emergency services when someone calls.AML isn't currently supported in the US, but iOS users in the UK, Belgium, New Zealand, Sweden, Lithuania, and some parts of Lower Austria can take advantage. The feature activates GPS and W

Snapchat has always prided itself on real-time sharing. That’s why the app opens to the camera: it’s designed to get you sharing whatever is happening in the moment. That’s why, until today, snaps posted from your camera roll got a white border around them. It was a subtle cue from the app that older photos and videos are considered second-class citizens inside Snapchat. But as of today, that’s going away.
An update to Snapchat rolling out today removes the white border.

Amazon is eliminating the frustration of having to constantly re-enter your cable credentials whenever you install certain apps on its Fire TV streaming gadgets. Like Apple before it, Amazon has now introduced a Single Sign-On feature that remembers your account information across TV Everywhere apps from the likes of A&E, AMC, HGTV, and more.Single Sign-On already supports most major cable and satellite providers with the glaring exception of Comcast Xfinity. But Spectrum, Charter, DirecTV,

We’re here to tell you it’s not just you: both Facebook and Instagram are having experiencing connection problems. While the problem doesn’t seem to affect everyone, several TNW team members are either unable to access the services or are having trouble loading their feeds. As usually happens when other social networks are down, Twitter is full of people trying to figure out what’s going on. got the same. could react on the post, but could not post a reply. also, got inf

PRESS RELEASE: BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 25, 2018– After approximately three months in the market, Silversmith Capital Partners (“Silversmith”) announced today the first and final closing of its second fund, Silversmith Capital Partners II, L.P. (“Fund II”) at its target and hard cap of $670 million of commitments. The fund was significantly oversubscribed. Consistent with the strategy of its predecessor fund, Fund II will focus on growth companies

EXCLUSIVE: Y Combinator (YC) recently launched a program to help its startups improve their series A fundraising, VentureBeat has learned. YC partner Aaron Harris, who is overseeing the program, confusingly named Series A, confirmed that it debuted in November.
The program has two main goals, says Harris: First, increase the rate at which YC companies successfully raise series As, and second, improve the quality of those rounds. “We think that will meaningfully improve the long term succes

Obsidian Entertainment announced today that its role-playing game sequel Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is launching on April 3 for PC.
Deadfire raised over $4.4 million on the crowdfunding site Fig.The first Pillars of Eternity sold over 700,000 copies after it came out in 2005. It recieved strong reviews and ports to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2017.
Deadfire will be available digitally and in boxed versions. The normal version will cost $50, while a Deluxe Edition will go f

Damien Chazelle, the filmmaker known for award-winning films La La Land and Whiplash, will be making a new TV series for none other than Apple. Variety reports that Chazelle will write and direct every episode of the new drama, with the plot and other details being kept secret for the time being. The currently untitled series will also be executive produced by Jordan Horowitz and Fred Berger — two more La La Land production alums.Chazelle is the latest big name to join Apple’s rapid

The “eating Tide Pods” meme continues to be one of the more baffling parts of 2018 — which is impressive since we’re just four weeks into the year — but the ramifications of the meme continue to rise. Earlier this week, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) released another alert warning consumers not to eat the pods. The number of reported cases of teenagers intentionally eating the laundry detergent-filled gel capsules this year has more than

The stylish roguelike dungeon-crawler Dead Cells launched on PC in Early Access, and developer Motion Twin announced today that the full game will debut on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch as well. The release date has yet to be announced, though Motion Twin is hoping to roll it out before the fall.
In Dead Cells, players take control of a nameless pile of green cells that possess a skeletal warrior. They hack, slice, and pierce their way through procedurally generated dungeons crawl

PRESS RELEASE: SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 25, 2018– UGC Network, a decentralized social publishing network and a content value prediction platform, was launched on January 22, 2018 in San Francisco. To solve the problem of too much low-quality information, UGC Network helps users to price the content by creating a prediction market. In UGC Network, after the price is set by free markets, contributors of the high-quality content could earn money for their work, includ

Does your boyfriend text you back? Does your boyfriend like your selfies on Instagram? Does your boyfriend know you exist?More importantly:Does your boyfriend know that you are a Twitter bot?
Most importantly:Did your boyfriend buy you a moon-shaped lamp from moonlamp.co despite his inability to respond to your texts or recognize your corporeal form?Today, on Twitter, among hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of conversations that will bring you nothing but extreme boredom or frothing ra