Technology news

If you were hoping to get in on the Bitcoin craze using your credit card, you might be out of luck. Three major banks have said that they won’t allow cryptocurrency purchases on their credit cards, according to a report from Bloomberg.Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup each confirmed to Bloomberg that they were halting transactions involving digital currency with their credit cards, although Bank of America spokeswoman Betty Riess says that customers can still use their debit

Mark Zuckerburg founded Facebook on February 4th in his dorm room at Harvard, and the company celebrates the anniversary with its self-proclaimed “Friends Day.” As it has in the past, the company is allowing users to commemorate the day by singling out friends and this year, users can give one another a “Friend Award,” with a variety of superlatives such as “Always Has My Back,” “Big-Hearted”, “Bestie,” and more.The feature allows you

Earlier this year, Spotify announced that it had 70 million paying subscribers, reaffirming its place as the number one streaming service in the world, with Apple Music a distant second with 30 million as of September last year. In a new report in The Wall Street Journal, it appears that Apple is gaining subscribers at a higher rate in the United States, and will surpass Spotify for the number one spot this summer.Globally, Spotify remains ahead, but Apple is growing at a higher rate in the US

Reuters is reporting that Tesla is collaborating with several companies that have placed large orders of its Semi truck to build on-site charging stations to charge the vehicles when they’re rolled out next year.Details of the partnerships haven’t been disclosed, but they reportedly include design and engineering from the electric vehicle company. The companies include Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, Loblaw Companies Ltd, and United Parcel Service, each of which have placed large orders fo

Researchers have identified more than 60,000 previously unknown structures in northern Guatemala after extensive aerial LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) surveys. Their findings show that the region’s pre-Columbian civilization was “far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed,” according to National Geographic.Scientists mapped more than 800 square miles of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, and uncovered an extensive network of previou

Virtual Reality (VR) is coming to the masses. But how quickly?   An industry segment that truly started no more than a year ago with the launch of headsets such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive is already a multi-billion dollar enterprise, with every major tech player — Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, etc. — hoping for a piece of the pie. Curiously, the battle of the industry titans has seemingly led to slower adoption. Mainstream consumers continue to hold out for the &l

When actress Natalie Portman first hosted Saturday Night Live in 2006, one of her more memorable sketches was a rap video in which she poked fun at her image as a positive role model with a rap about fighting, drinking, and cheating at Harvard. Portman returned to host the show last night, and revived the sketch with some updated references, as well as a pointed defense of the Star Wars prequels.In the original sketch, Portman was interviewed by Chris Parnell, which ended with him getting bashe

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play, we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
Every four months there is an event called Ludum Dare, where participants try to make a complete game from scratch in 48 hours, based on a particular theme. It’s a difficult task for a group, let alone a single person, to get a game to a finished state in that amount of time

Should you watch a movie? Well, there are a lot of factors to consider, such as the director, the actors, and the movie’s budget. Most of us base our decision off of a review, a short trailer, or just by checking the movie’s rating. There are a few good reasons you would want to avoid reading reviews, or watching a trailer, although they bring much more information than a rating. First, you may want to completely avoid spoilers, no matter how small. I understand that! Second, it cou

Megan Herbert knows how hard it is to talk to children about climate change; she has a five-year-old son. “Some of those images and some of those ideas can really be too much for a kid to take onboard,” says Herbert, a writer and illustrator. “You have to make the conversation something that’s not overwhelming.”So, instead of highlighting the bleak stuff — the melting ice, the rising sea levels, the more extreme weather — she focuses on the solutions: t

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are iconic fantasy adventures, and readers return to them time and again because of the rich detail that defines the world. Tolkien’s prose is aided by his beautiful maps of Middle-earth, which comes with simplified, beautiful forests, mountains, and typography that has set the standard for fictional cartography ever since. That influence extends beyond just fantasy novels: an English artist is using Tolkien’s style to reim

Whether you’ve been writing professionally for a long time or are an aspiring blogger or journalist, you probably know titles and headlines are some of the most important parts of a piece. Sure, they’re short — but they give readers an idea of what to expect from the content and help them decide whether it’s worth their time to read more. Below, check out some of my tried-and-true title formulas and learn more about the most appropriate times to depend on them. 1. How to

When Tal Golesworthy was told he was at risk of his aorta bursting, he wasn’t impressed with the surgery on offer – so he came up with his own idea. Lunchtime at a small medical engineering company in Tewkesbury. The entertainment thoughtfully laid on to garnish our sandwiches is a colourful video: a neat bit of cardiovascular surgery featuring someone’s heart and blood vessels. Someone? Well, not quite anyone. The exposed and beating heart at which we’re gazing belongs

In the past few months I’ve seen some really impressive stuff in VR. From standing atop the mountains of Skyrim, gazing down at a seemingly endless landscape, to the subtle nuances of the little girl in Wolves in the Walls, VR is really starting to hit its stride lately, especially with character interactions. Now with light field company Lytro’s acquisition of VR animation studio Limitless, we’re inching closer to a world where the virtual is nearly in

Perhaps I’m biased due to my passion and business, but to me, 2017 was the year drones became mainstream. Initially a military innovation used for covert missile strikes and aerial reconnaissance — drones have evolved to become a novelty toy, readily available in any main street store. And as with so many other technologies, entry into the consumer market has led to abuse: pranksters spying on neighbors, criminals smuggling drugs and terrorists converting drones into homemade missil

GUEST: At first glance, the artificial intelligence industry seems to be on fire, with tons of consumer demand and ample investor interest. In fact, VC investment in AI startups rose from $3.2 billion in 2014 to more than $9.5 billion in just the first five months of 2017. There are countless exciting prospects for AI development, including applications for health care, agriculture, and other realms of technology, but the AI industry isn’t a runaway train just yet.
The biggest hurdles

An image leaked on Reddit shows a convincing look at what might end up being the retail packaging for Oculus Go, the standalone VR headset coming soon from Facebook.
The image shows the box for the $200 device with available apps listed including Netflix, Hulu, Ultrawings, Facebook, The New York Times and others. Oculus Go includes everything you need to have a seated or standing VR experience, and all the apps released for the Gear VR over the years should be technically capable of ru

Yesterday, I reported that competitive gamer Billy Mitchell may have misled record keepers with some of his best Donkey Kong scores. But while we were getting details of that scandal, the current Donkey Kong world-record holder Robbie Lakeman was setting a new high score. Lakeman beat his previous best of 1,230,100 points with 1,247,700. The record-keeping officials at Donkey Kong Forum and Twin Galaxies have verified the score.
The 3 hour and 49 minute playthrough had Lakeman maximizing his sco