Technology news

President Donald Trump issued an order Monday evening blocking any merger of the chipmaking giants Broadcom and Qualcomm, saying it was necessary to protect national security. There is “credible evidence,” the order says, that if the Singapore-based Broadcom took control of the US-based Qualcomm that the company “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
Broadcom has been trying to purchase Qualcomm for the last several month

Apple has updated the specs for its MFi accessories program (which also got a snazzy new logo over the weekend), letting companies now put USB-C ports on licensed devices, as well as create 3.5mm to Lightning cables for the first time, as reported by 9to5Mac.They’re useful additions for Apple product users, especially as the company switches more towards using USB-C — at least on its laptops. Now third-party companies building things like controllers, battery packs, and speakers can

Fornite cross-play between consoles and PC, Mac, and mobile is coming soon, but PlayStation 4 owners won’t be able to play against Xbox One gamers. Epic Games revealed this weekend that Xbox One players will be able to play Fortnite with PC, Mac, and mobile players, but not PS4 players; similarly, PS4 owners will be able to play against all platforms except Xbox. In a new statement to Kotaku, Microsoft is directing the blame squarely towards Sony.
“We’ve worked closely with Ni

The only things that actually move on a modern smartphone these days are the silencing switch, the lock button, a volume rocker, and (if you’re lucky) a dedicated button for Bixby.
So it’s natural that we’re a little curious to see how the Samsung Galaxy S9’s new dual aperture works. Lucky for us, iFixit’s requisite teardown of the phone includes a couple of close-up shots of the aperture in action.
As iFixit points out, a regular camera’s aperture is control

Social Animals, the feature-length debut from documentary director Jonathan Ignatius Green, stars three kids: self-taught New York street photographer Humza Deas, dancer and aspiring fashion brand mogul Kaylyn Slevin, and Ohio high school student Emma Crockett, who stands in for the everyman teen. They talk about their lives, which means they talk about Instagram — how it’s helped them, how it’s harmed them, what the rules are, what people can use it for, why they might care.T

A calendar app in the Mac App Store has been mining cryptocurrency in the background in exchange for giving users additional features — and an option to opt out of mining has been broken. So far, Apple has not taken the scheduling app Calendar 2 down, even after Ars Technica informed the company that Calendar 2 has been mining virtual currency.
The app is supposed to be a buffed-up version of Apple’s Calendar app in macOS, but recently, its developer, Qbix, added extra code to mine

At SXSW 2018, I was invited to take part in a four-day immersive story experience called a SimuLife. Mounted by the Austin-based creative lab Interactive Deep Dive, SimuLife is meant to blur the line between fantasy and reality by letting me interact with the story as part of daily life. It’s like David Fincher’s movie The Game, executed in the real world. Other than those broad edicts, I wasn’t given any advance information about the experience. I’m documenting my journ

Tesla drivers may enjoy a vast network of Supercharger stations across the US, but it’s coming at a cost: the price of charging. The automaker has quietly raised prices per kilowatt hour for using the fast-charging stations.The average increase for pay-per-use customers ranges from roughly 20 to 40 percent, according to Electrek. In California, for example, the price went from 20 cents per kWh to 26 cents. In Oregon, the price doubled from 12 cents to 24 cents, and New York’s went u

China’s police have been testing sunglasses with built-in facial recognition since at least last month to catch suspects and those traveling under false identities. Now China is expanding the facial recognition sunglasses program as police are beginning to use them in the outskirts of Beijing, according to Reuters. The program was used as extra security while Parliament voted to extend Xi Jinping’s presidency to a lifetime rule, and paralleled the increased censorship and surveillan

Apple Maps has been getting a few more features to keep up with the likes of Google Maps. Now those features include more comprehensive bike-sharing information for various global cities.
Through a partnership with Ito World, Apple Maps now supports bike-sharing data in more than 175 cities in 36 countries, including San Francisco, New York, and London, according to TechCrunch. Ito says its global bike-share data, “curates and integrates the disparate data of Bike Share schemes around the

An influx of rumors suggest that we should expect cheaper iPads and MacBooks this year. First, we know that the MacBook Air may be getting a less-expensive refresh, as hinted by multiple reports. The latest comes from DigiTimes, which today reported that Apple will launch a new 13.3-inch “entry-level” MacBook late in Q2 this year.While the report refers to the new device as a “MacBook,” its screen size suggests it may be an updated version of the Air, since the MacBook o

The PGA Tour is now bringing the golf course to your home through Apple’s augmented reality platform. Using Apple’s ARKit in iOS 11, the PGA Tour has made a new app called PGA Tour AR that lets you compare professional golfers against each other and check out featured golf holes. You’ll be able to better visualize players’ strokes and the angles from which they sank the balls.To use the app, first let your camera sense a surface, and then tap the screen to select a hole.

There are legitimate reasons to hate Ernest Cline’s bestselling 2011 novel Ready Player One, and many of them are summed up in the paragraph where the teenage protagonist, Wade Watts, describes the virtual car he constructed for himself in the vast online world where he spends most of his waking hours:
The DeLorean came outfitted with a (nonfunctioning) flux capacitor, but I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d installed an artificially intellig

Robot avatars have been a sci-fi staple for decades, letting fictional humans remotely carry out delicate and dextrous tasks, from hospital care to mining on the Moon. But, as usual, our imagination outstrips reality. The best commercially available “avatars” are telepresence bots, which are little more than iPads on wheels, while cutting-edge humanoid robots look flashy but struggle to keep their balance. The X Prize Foundation wants to change this, and today, it announced its late

Uber’s food delivery service Uber Eats is expanding to over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, TechCrunch reports. Specifically, the service will launch for the first time in Ireland, Egypt, Kenya, Ukraine, Romania, and the Czech Republic, along with previously announced markets around the globe, a spokesperson confirmed.The service will launch in around 40 new cities in the UK and 35 new cities in France. Presently, Uber Eats operates in 200 cities around the globe, inclu

Apple is buying a digital magazine subscription service known as the “Netflix of magazines,” which lets readers access over 200 magazines for a monthly fee. The acquisition of the service Texture, owned by Next Issue Media, comes at a time when news publishing as an industry is being shaken up by fake news accusations and Facebook’s changing algorithms in ways that prioritize friend activity over brands.
The bridge between tech companies and journalism continues to narrow with

Via, the app-based ride-sharing service, is replacing bus services for an entire town in Texas, according to CBS This Morning. It’s the latest evidence of US cities forgoing investments in public transportation in favor of partnerships with privately held technology startups.Under the deal, residents of Arlington, Texas, who own a smartphone can use Via’s app to summon one of 10 commuter vans that will be operating primarily in the city’s downtown area. Fares will only be $3 a

Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer have responded to accusations of verbal abuse from a former crew member. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the Duffer brothers said they were “deeply upset to learn someone felt uncomfortable on our set.”Last week, Stranger Things crew member Peyton Brown announced on Instagram that she would not return for the show’s third season due to on-set verbal abuse. “I personally witnessed two men in high positions of power o

Huawei announced at CES this year that it would be bringing its Honor 7X and Honor View 10 phones to the US. Now we know when to expect the View 10: March 23rd, with preorders opening today for $499.
The Honor View 10 (aka the V10) has similar specs to Huawei’s flagship Mate 10 Pro. It’s got the same Kirin 970 processor, although there’s a slightly worse 16-megapixel camera (along with a second, monochrome 20-megapixel shooter), a slightly smaller 3,750mAh battery, and an LCD

Season 1 of Netflix’s street-level superhero show Jessica Jones had one primary villain: Kilgrave, a mind-controlling monster whose ugly history with the heroine drove most of the action. But season 1 had another, more complicated villain: Jeri Hogarth is a high-powered attorney played by Carrie-Anne Moss, best known as Trinity from the Matrix movies and the duplicitous Natalie from Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In the original Marvel comics, her character was a fairly bland and reli

Amazon now lets you use Alexa to place phone and video calls and send messages on tablets, so you no longer need an Echo to talk to other Alexa users. Compatible tablets include Android tablets, iPads, and Amazon’s Fire tablets, as spotted by Engadget.
To set it up on the Fire HD 10 tablet in Hands-Free mode, just ask Alexa to place a call. On other Fire tablets that don’t yet have the Hands-Free mode, first tap the home button and then ask Alexa to make a call. On all other devices

The University of Arizona is tracking freshman students’ ID card swipes to anticipate which students are more likely to drop out. University researchers hope to use the data to lower dropout rates. (Dropping out refers to those who have left higher-education entirely and those who transfer to other colleges.)
The card data tells researchers how frequently a student has entered a residence hall, library, and the student recreation center, which includes a salon, convenience store, mail roo

 Uber Eats is pushing its international growth with a sizeable expansion across EMEA markets today. The Uber-owned on-demand food delivery app intends to serve 100 new cities spanning Europe, the Middle Eatst and Africa this year, including launches in Ireland, Egypt, Kenya, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and Romania. Already, Uber Eats reaches customers in over 200 cites globally, and in fact… Read More

The AliveCor KardiaBand, a sensor compatible with the Apple Watch, can detect dangerous levels of potassium in blood with 94 percent accuracy. Though the US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved KardiaBand for this purpose, it’s an interesting step forward considering that, right now, the condition is usually caught using invasive blood tests that use needles.The KardiaBand by AliveCor is a sensor that snaps into a slot on the watchband. The user touches the sensor, which then

At SXSW 2018, I was invited to take part in a four-day immersive story experience called a SimuLife. Mounted by the Austin-based creative lab Interactive Deep Dive, SimuLife is meant to blur the line between fantasy and reality by letting me interact with the story as part of daily life. It’s like David Fincher’s movie The Game, executed in the real world. Other than those broad edicts, I wasn’t given any advance information about the experience. I’m documenting my journ

Philips has announced that it’s bringing the Brilliance 492P8 curved 49-inch monitor to the United States in Q4 2018 — with an upgraded QHD display. It’s not the first 49-inch curved computer monitor (that honor goes to the Samsung CHG90, released last year), but with a 5120 x 1440 display, it’s the highest resolution we’ve seen in a 32:9 form factor yet.
The Brilliance 492P8 was originally announced at IFA last summer with a more pedestrian 3840 x 1080 display, si

 Microsoft Teams, the company’s team collaboration software and challenger to Slack, announced this morning- on its first anniversary – a suite of new features that will roll out to the software throughout 2018. This includes features that will allow users to record, transcribe and save meetings to the cloud, integrations with voice assistant Cortana, inline message translation… Read More

Samsung is apparently no longer looking at using an in-display fingerprint sensor for the Galaxy Note 9, according to a research note from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, via AppleInsider.
Kuo had originally speculated last August that Samsung was looking at the technology for the upcoming Note 9. The company skipped including the feature in the recently released Galaxy S9 models, which featured a more traditional fingerprint sensor on the back of the device. But according to Kuo, Samsung is apparent

Augmented reality is almost exclusively associated with vision, but it doesn’t have to be. Audio company Bose announced a project it’s calling “Bose AR” at this year’s SXSW festival, and it showed off a pair of prototype glasses that demonstrate what sound-based AR might look and feel like. The company plans to ship 10,000 of these glasses to developers and manufacturers this summer, with the intent of developing its own line of commercial glasses and partnering wi

LG has begun rolling out Android Oreo to users with V30 devices on Verizon’s network, as spotted by AndroidPolice. A user posted screenshots of the software update on their V30, which seems to include a few changes to the notifications window and a new settings app. The software update is 1.7 GB. Users on a forum where the screenshots were posted said they expected some AI camera features as some Korean customers have reported, though there doesn’t seem to be anything in the US vers

Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, is turning a year old this week and to celebrate the company is unveiling some new features today. Perhaps the most interesting are Cortana integration and inline message translation. Cortana integration is coming to Microsoft Teams soon, with support for voice interactions through Team-enabled devices like IP phones and conference room devices.Message translation will allow Microsoft Teams participants to automatically translate messages in

Nascent technologies are sometimes described as solutions in search of a problem, and that’s certainly something that could be said for AR glasses right now. AR glasses have been positioned as everything from phone replacements to sports goggles to entertainment devices to work tools, but are still far from mainstream in any one area.That last value proposition is what Toshiba is going for with its new dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses, a new head-mounted display tethered to a PC pocket pack. The