Technology news

Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Windows 10 gamers may have trouble booting up certain releases at the moment. Xbox Live isn’t working for everybody, and Microsoft has engineers working on the problems, according to the Xbox Live status site. The issues are affecting a huge portion of Xbox Live users, based on the volume of complaints on social media.
Microsoft notes that this outage is causing problems with matchmaking, cloud storage, finding friends, and other online functions. But players on soc

AT&T changed the cost of its single-line, unlimited data plans today by simultaneously raising and lowering prices, according to Ars Technina. The telecom’s Unlimited Choice plan is going up to $65 from $60, and its Unlimited Plus Enhanced plan is dropping to $80 from $90. Family plan prices went up $5. Both plans have existed for nearly a year now, and the pricing adjustment comes with some changes to service.Ars reports that the cheaper Unlimited Choice Enhanced plan used to limit i

Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone is almost here, and preorders for the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus start tonight, March 2nd, at 12:01AM ET (or March 1st at 9:01PM PT for those on the West Coast).The phones will be out in two weeks on March 16th, so if you want to make sure you’re the first in the world to get one, you’ll probably want to get your preorder in tonight.
Samsung
Preorder here starting at 12:01AM ET.
The cheapest way to get an S9 is through Samsung itself. Add

Amazon has been quietly rolling out a new program over the past few months where delivery people will use photos to confirm your package has been delivered. The photo of exactly where the package has been placed will be included in the notice of delivery so Amazon users know when it arrived and where it is, as first spotted by USA Today.
Sometimes an Amazon package can be misplaced or stolen, and Amazon’s refund policy means customers can request a duplicate of the original order. With th

Though lawsuits and government investigations into Apple’s iPhone battery debacle multiplied and went international in January, Canada’s government escalated its investigation today, bringing representatives of Canada’s Competition Bureau, Apple, and Primate Labs — the Toronto, Canada-based company that unearthed the issue — to testify before the House of Commons’ standing committee on industry, science, and technology.
Faced with charts fr

Ubisoft announced that Tom Clancy’s The Division has reached more than 20 million players on the second anniversary of the online shooter’s release. At about $60 per game, the retail sales of The Division probably add up to about $1.2 billion, not counting revenues from expansions or other live events. That’s an amazing outcome for a game that went through a huge hype cycle, encountered bugs and other disappointments at launch, and then went through overhauls that got it and au

Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are going to be able to see the next big installment a little sooner than expected. Today, Marvel Studios announced that the worldwide release date of Avengers: Infinity War has been moved to April 27th, a full week in advance of the previous May 4th date.
The announcement came in the form of an exchange on Twitter, with Marvel tweeting a teaser about the film, and star Robert Downey, Jr. responding. The two accounts went back and forth — I’m not going

President Donald Trump is planning to meet with executives from the gaming industry as part of his public response to gun violence. Alongside his plan to arm teachers, Trump has repeatedly said that violent video games may act as a root cause of school shootings.
“The video games, the movies, the internet stuff is so violent,” Trump told an assembly of congresspeople and gun experts on Wednesday. “It’s so incredible. I see it. I get to see things that you would be —

Chrome Music Lab has launched a new music creation tool called Song Maker. A browser-based experience, Song Maker is a sequencer that allows you to program loops for two different instruments of your choosing, then save it or send to someone else for collaboration.
Google Creative Lab launched Chrome Music Lab in 2016. A series of web-based experiments, each Chrome Music Lab installment let you play around with music and sound in a different way. This includes Oscillators, which has you squish

The good news: flights to Europe on American Airlines might soon get a little cheaper! The bad news: that’s because American Airlines is following in the footsteps of other airlines by adding a tier known as “basic economy,” which lowers the price of airfare at the cost of some standard amenities many flyers are used to.Starting in April, American Airlines will offer basic economy fares on trans-Atlantic flights, including those operated by British Airways, Iberia, and Finnair

Kiera O’Brien, a 19-year-old government student at Harvard and president of the Harvard Republican Club, grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska, where she spent lots of time outdoors, hiking and fishing. “I have always had a deep respect for nature and have really cared about climate and wilderness and the preservation of both,” she says.So the fact that her own party — the GOP — has had a track record of ignoring climate change, or even denying that it’s caused by hum

Google Assistant-enabled devices now support August DoorSense, the smart lock company’s smart integrated sensor. Now if a user has DoorSense installed, they can check with Google Assistant whether their door is closed and locked.
Users can now use voice commands with the August Smart Lock and Smart Lock Pro through the Google Assistant on select Android devices, the Google Assistant app on iOS, Google Home, and other wearables. To enable it, their August Lock must be connected to Wi-Fi th

Google Assistant-enabled devices now support August DoorSense, the smart lock company’s smart integrated sensor. Now if a user has DoorSense installed, they can check with Google Assistant whether their door is closed and locked.
Users can now use voice commands with the August Smart Lock and Smart Lock Pro through the Google Assistant on select Android devices, the Google Assistant app on iOS, Google Home, and other wearables. To enable it, their August Lock must be connected to Wi-Fi th

With Tuesday’s release of the 2018 Best States Ranking that places Iowa as the top state in the nation based on factors like broadband access, education, opportunity, and quality of life, the discussion has turned to how to utilize the state’s resources to build density and develop startup centers.
Day one of Silicon Prairie News’ Heartland Innovation Road Trip took a crew of Nebraska founders and startup leaders to Gravitate, where they met with Iowa s

In January, the popular fitness app Strava ran into controversy over a global activities heat map so detailed it revealed clandestine military bases. To make matters worse, the path to opt out of the feature was not simple and required several clicks within the app.The company has, however, since made a design change to make the opt-out feature more prominent. Rather than requiring multiple clicks, a toggle for the heat map is now visible on the first page of privacy settings. (The change appea

Scavengers Studio announced today that its battle royale shooter Darwin Project is coming out for Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview on March 9 for $15.
Battle royale games have become huge following PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds explosive debut last year, and other games (notably Fortnite: Battle Royale) have followed the trend, even on mobile. PUBG and Fortnite earned more than $200 million on PC and consoles in digital revenue in January, according to industry tracking firm&n

This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set its sights on California. In an operation dubbed Keep Safe, ICE detained more than 150 undocumented immigrants across the state, with an estimated 864 residents targeted but still at large. The raids sparked an outright feud with local governments, which scrambled to protect the targets in any way they could: on Saturday, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf issued an alert warning citizens that ICE was planning arrests in the coming days, promptin

The largest family tree to date — which includes 13 million people going back 11 generations and 500 years — provides new insights about marriage and death, and it all comes from public data.
The tree was created by a team led by Yaniv Erlich, a Columbia University computer scientist who is also chief science officer at the genealogy company MyHeritage. Erlich’s team downloaded 86 million public profiles from the ancestry site Geni.com (which is owned by MyHeritage). Many smal

Netflix has tapped The Daily Show’s Hasan Minhaj to host a new weekly talk show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show will be an “opportunity for the comedian to explore the modern cultural and political landscapes with depth and sincerity.” The not-yet-named show is expected to start later this year, and Minhaj will move away from The Daily Show this summer.
Minhaj is a seasoned comedian whose accomplishments include performing at the 2017 White House Correspondent&r

Microsoft is planning to distribute Intel’s firmware updates to protect Windows 10 systems against the Spectre CPU vulnerability. While Microsoft typically distributes its own firmware updates for Surface devices, the software maker usually leaves it up to PC makers to issue their own firmware updates. Microsoft is now planning to list the Intel firmware updates in its Microsoft Update Catalog, which will help IT admins distribute these to systems.
Updates for Skylake systems will be avai

Facebook is ending an experiment in six countries that placed publisher content in a separate feed, the company said today. In six countries, Facebook has been placing posts from official pages in a separate feed called Explore, while limiting the main News Feed to posts from friends and family. But the experiment, which has been ongoing since October, did not achieve the desired result, the company said.
“People don’t want two separate feeds,” said Adam Mosseri, who runs the

VB LIVE: The hype surrounding AI has reached a fever pitch, but practical uses that are delivering concrete business results are here, and it’s time to get real. Join this VB Live event hosted by Forrester Senior Analyst Brandon Purcell and Kayak Chief Scientist Matthias Keller to learn more about how to identify the AI use cases that can transform your business, and how to get started, stat. 
Register here for free.“Farmstead is one of those companies where AI defines our

EXCLUSIVE: Just like World War I got a sequel, Battlefield 1 is getting a followup later this year. The game is Battlefield V. It was previously known as Battlefield 2 internally at EA. Battlefield V will return the series to World War II in a main entry for the first time since 2009’s Battlefield 1943, GamesBeat has learned from sources familiar with EA’s plans. These sources wish to remain anonymous.
Above: A leaked logo for Battlefield V.Image Credit: Reddit
I reached out to EA to

The Indie Megabooth is returning to the 2018 Game Developers Conference to showcase more games than ever. It shows off 24 games from independent developers from March 19 to March 23 on the interactive spaces show floor at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Two games are also debuting at the event: Myst developer Cyan‘s steampunk adventure Firmament and Silver Dollar Games’s kung fu fighter One Finger Death Punch 2.
Indie Megabooth is featuring twice the number of games as compared

Red Bull has unveiled Red Bull Conquest, a new U.S. fighting game tournament circuit that will travel across the country in the coming months. Red Bull’s goal is to find the best players in 15 cities for Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Tekken 7, and Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2.
The qualifier tournaments will crown one winner in the three fighting games to represent their region at the national finals in Washington, D.C. These players will face off in their respective games to determi

Closing out the heavily 5G-focused 2018 Mobile World Congress, ZTE today announced partnerships with major carriers MTN and Ooredoo to bring 5G wireless technology to Africa and the Middle East. The goal of both deals is to accelerate 5G deployment across large geographic areas with diverse mobile infrastructures.
In this case, the companies and represented regions are equally noteworthy. Although China’s ZTE has recently received negative attention in the United States due to na

Dropbox announced a partnership with Google today that is designed to help G Suite users make better use of the cloud collaboration company’s toolset by letting users open and edit G Suite files directly from Dropbox folders on the hard drive and on the web. The news comes just as Dropbox announced plans for an initial public offering after 10 years as one of the leading cloud storage and file management companies in Silicon Valley.As part of the new Google partnership, which mirrors one

Microsoft has a new app out today called Soundscape that uses 3D audio technology to help map out landmarks and points of interest through audio cues.The company has been working on using 3D soundscapes of audio for navigation as early as 2014 when the company first began experimenting with a bone conduction headset and smartphone system. The Soundscape app is built off of that research, packaging it into a form that works with an ordinary smartphone and any pair of stereo headphones.Users can

Microsoft’s AI assistant Cortana has a new boss, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat today. Javier Soltero, who previously controlled the Microsoft Office product group, will now be in charge of product for Cortana, an assistant available on 400 million devices.
Now corporate vice president of Cortana product, Soltero will the team together with corporate vice president of Cortana engineering Andrew Shuman, a spokesperson said.
Consumers who have to choose between assistants like Corta

Microsoft today announced several improvements to its pre-built AI tools for companies, with a focus on improving facial recognition, custom image classification, and understanding important entities. The updates are included in the company’s suite of Cognitive Services — APIs that help developers deliver intelligent capabilities even if they don’t have a great deal of AI expertise.
The three updated services — Microsoft’s Custom Vision Service, Face API, and B

Users of Google’s G Suite productivity service will be able to keep their Docs, Sheets, and Slides files inside Dropbox’s cloud storage environment, thanks to a partnership the two tech firms announced today.
It’s a massive win for the cloud storage company, which plans to make the feature available to all of its users, whether they pay for the service or not. In addition, Dropbox Business administrators will be able to manage those files like they would any other content that

The Securities and Exchange Commission sent subpoenas in recent weeks to dozens of tech companies and individuals who are involved in cryptocurrency, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday evening, citing anonymous sources.
The targets of the subpoenas include companies that have launched initial coin offerings (ICOs), the cryptocurrency equivalent of IPOs, as well as their lawyers and advisers. The subpoenas reportedly include requests for information on how ICO sales and pre-sales are str

Microsoft’s Outlook for iOS and Android boss is now transitioning to a new role inside the company, overseeing the Cortana digital assistant. Javier Soltero first joined Microsoft back in December 2014 when the software maker acquired the Acompli email app that soon became Outlook for iPhone and Android.
Axios reports that Soltero has moved to overseeing Cortana around three weeks ago, and will report to Harry Shum, Microsoft’s head of AI and research. Microsoft’s Outlook mobi

Our latest speaker for GamesBeat Summit 2018 event is John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, the creator of augmented reality games such as Pokémon Go and Ingress. The event will take place at the beautiful Claremont Resort in Berkeley, California, on April 9 and April 10. Our conference is all about making games better and improving the business, and our latest speakers should give us a window into the future of game technologies.
You can get your tickets here at 30 percent off our rate u

Twitter, like other major tech companies, has faced a year of punishing criticism, as it’s been roiled by misinformation, bots, and the prominence of far-right users. Now, the company is admitting it can’t solve its problems on its own and is asking for help.
Twitter is looking for outside experts to measure the “health” of the company, it said in a statement, and is seeking proposals to determine exactly how the company is fostering “healthy debate, conversations,

Sir Terry Pratchett’s long-running fantasy series Discworld is finally getting a TV adaptation from BBC Studios, according to a new report from Deadline.Discworld is a massive series written by Pratchett — who died in 2015 — which spans 41 books, dozens of characters, and a variety of smaller, thematic sub-series within the larger work. This show will reportedly be a six-episode series, with a current working title The Watch. That implies that it’ll be based off one of t

Secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap is alleging that its current director of global security tried to extort the company for “millions of dollars” by threatening to file frivolous lawsuits against it. In a complaint published yesterday, the company asked a Texas court to preemptively declare that Magic Leap did not discriminate or retaliate against Todd Keil, a former Department of Homeland Security employee who joined Magic Leap in 2015. It claims that Keil was preparing

Shakespeare’s Landlord is a murder-mystery, but more than that, it’s about Lily Bard’s journey of dealing with past trauma and sexual assault. It’s the first of at least two games, which indie studio One More Story Games is adapting from a series of novels written by Charlaine Harris. She’s the author of The Southern Vampire Mysteries, which many know as the source material for HBO’s hit show True Blood.
Shakespeare’s Landlord doesn’t fea

eBay is announcing a new section called “Under $10” today, which lists millions of products that cost $10 or less, following the footsteps of Amazon. Amazon added its own $10 and Under section to its app and website last month, including products like T-shirts, earrings, hats, and phone cases.
eBay’s section will include similar offerings, including video games, watches, audio players and mini speakers, headphones and earbuds, and fitness accessories. The purchase will truly b