Technology news

Snapchat recently announced it would be updating Snap Map to bring you notifications of what your friends (and Snapchat itself) are up to. This is one of Snapchat’s steps towards becoming more of a social network, as opposed to a person-to-person photo-sharing app. As reported by The Verge, you will now see a feed of updates on your Snap Map, showing what friends have been up to as well as major stories breaking across the map. You can keep up with your friends and community in a way

Governments aren’t  known for being innovative, lean, quick-to-act organizations. Aside from deep state and cyber intelligence operations, most people think the government is synonymous with bureaucracy and outdated technology. While many are critical of government ’s hesitance to adopt new technologies, it’s important to remember that governments manage systems and operations that often serve hundreds of millions of people. In many cases, however, a government’s te

Define “useful.” I mean, sure, it’s not hard to talk to Google or Alexa and ask for music. They mishear you half the time, but that’s probably your fault. So why would you bother to print and craft dozens of custom RFID tags to control your music? Don’t you have must-see television to be watching?
Well, someone named “hoveeman” on GitHub and YouTube can’t hear the haters because he’s too busy listening to the Trolls soundtrack and Pet Sounds

After a couple years of anticipation, China’s first human space station — Tiangong-1 — will drop out of its orbit in about a week and plunge into Earth’s atmosphere. The European Space Agency has pinpointed the vehicle’s reentry date to sometime between March 30th and April 2nd, with the event most likely happening on April Fools’ Day. Once the station descends, it will finally put an end to all of the anxiety over the location of this vehicle’s landing

For all of Android’s dominance on smartphones, Google’s never been able to nail the tablet experience. Now it seems companies are getting ready to give up on it altogether for a more sensible alternative: Chrome OS. Asus today announced the  Chromebook Tab 10.  It has a 9.7-inch, 2048 x 1536 display, 32 GB of storage (expandable) and 4GB of RAM. It’s powered by an OP1 processor, an ARM chip designed to Google’s specs specifically for Chrome OS. It also comes wi

Elon Musk has sold millions of dollars of branded hats and flamethrowers, and now, he says his Boring Company will sell “interlocking bricks” made from the rock that its tunnel-creating machines excavate from the ground. In other words, think Lego, he says, except giant, heavy, and made of earth.Musk says that the Boring Company will sell “kits” of bricks, starting with one that makes it easy to build things from “ancient Egypt,” like replicas of the pyramids

Dropbox’ssurge on the stock market has continued, with the company going up another 7 percent on its second day on the stock market.
The company saw its shares close at $30.45, giving the company above a $13 billion market cap, fully diluted.
When it priced its IPO, there was a question as to whether Dropbox would surpass the $10 billion valuation it achieved in its last private round. It eliminated those concerns overnight.
The first few days have been a strong indicator of investor

After a four year investigation, Europol announced it has arrested the suspected leader of a crime syndicate that stole $1.2 billion from over 100 banks in more than 40 countries using malware. According to Europol, the suspect was arrested by the Spanish National Police in Alicante, Spain, with support from the FBI, Romanian, Belarusian, and Taiwanese authorities, along with cybersecurity companies.Beginning in 2013, the crime syndicate used multiple malware campaigns — the first called

Mobile trivia game show HQ has landed its first high-profile pair of sponsorships slated to debut this week: a Ready Player One tie-in courtesy of Warner Bros. and a surprise giveaway in conjunction with Nike’s celebratory Air Max Day. The marketing deals mean HQ, which hosts twice-daily live trivia games that give away real cash, will be more than able to cover the cost of larger-than-normal prize pools on top of experimenting with its ongoing and unprecedented live video format.Accordin

At 2018’s South By Southwest Conference, HBO and the marketing agency Giant Spoon created an epic promotion for Westworld, HBO’s series about a far-future Old West theme park where the rich elite play out their fantasies of heroism and villainy. Giant Spoon significantly rebuilt Texas’ existing J. Lorraine Ghost Town as a two-acre, real-life version of Sweetwater, a small Westworld town packed with plot hooks for visitors. They populated it with more than 60 costumed actors pl

At 2018’s South By Southwest Conference, HBO and the marketing agency Giant Spoon created an epic promotion for Westworld, HBO’s series about a far-future Old West theme park where the rich elite play out their fantasies of heroism and villainy. Giant Spoon significantly rebuilt Texas’ existing J. Lorraine Ghost Town as a two-acre, real-life version of Sweetwater, a small Westworld town packed with plot hooks for visitors. They populated it with more than 60 costumed actors pl

At 2018’s South By Southwest Conference, HBO and the marketing agency Giant Spoon created an epic promotion for Westworld, HBO’s series about a far-future Old West theme park where the rich elite play out their fantasies of heroism and villainy. Giant Spoon significantly rebuilt Texas’ existing J. Lorraine Ghost Town as a two-acre, real-life version of Sweetwater, a small Westworld town packed with plot hooks for visitors. They populated it with more than 60 costumed actors pl

Smartsheetis the latest company to file to go public, now that the IPO window is open. 
The Bellevue, Washington-based company offers enterprise software for communication and collaboration.
It describes itself as the “leading cloud-based platform for work execution, enabling teams and organizations to plan, capture, manage, automate, and report on work at scale, resulting in more efficient processes and better business outcomes. ”
Smartsheet says it has 3.6 million users a

The Beijing International Film Festival has dropped the Oscar-winning gay romance Call Me By Your Name, a move that highlights the lack of progress for LGBTQ rights in China. The censorship of the film occurred just days after China shifted control of all its film and media to the Department of Propaganda and, on the digital front, banned video spoofs and parodies.The film festival, set for this April, had planned to show Call Me By Your Name (directed by Luca Guadagnino), a film about a romanc

The city of Sochi in Russia is known for hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, but for the past few days, the resort city has been notable for another reason: its mountains are dusty red and look like the surface of Mars.Winds have carried sand from the Sahara desert in North Africa to Eastern Europe, UK meteorologist Steven Keates told The Independent. The dust, mixing with storm and rain, has turned the snow various shades of red and orange. According to CNN, the sandstorm went from North Africa

Machines have become deft at exploiting rules and seeking the greatest possible rewards in surprising and creative ways. Facebook’s AI once created its own language to make arguing with itself easier and another AI found a way to cheat at Q-bert which had eluded humans for decades. Yet, most of these tales of the wild and weird ways AI finds to approach a problem have gone unpublished until now. They’re usually shared from one researcher to another as amusing anecdotes, just somethi

In July last year, Chinese phone company Doogee released the Mix — an intriguing, if not flawed, stab at a bezelless smartphone. Not long after, it released its successor, the Mix 2. This handset feels vastly more premium than its predecessor, and it does this while improving on many of the flaws of the original. I got the opportunity to spend a few weeks playing around with it, and quickly became a fan. Design Over the past year, every phone manufacturer (and their aunt) has jumped onto

The Fab Five are coming back, baby.
Queer Eye and five other series have been renewed by Netflix including One Day at a Time for a third season, and Dope, Drug Lords, Nailed It!, and The Toys That Made Us for their second seasons, The Hollywood Reporter reported Monday. 
SEE ALSO: Forget the cooking — how come Antoni smells weird sh*t in each episode of Queer Eye?
All of the shows outside of One Day at a Time are all relatively new unscripted series, showing Netflix's commitment to gi

The Walking Dead is back after its traditional midseason break, careening toward the conclusion of the “All Out War” saga and the end of the feud between Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his archnemesis Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Thus far, the show’s big bet on Negan has been a bit of a misfire, with ratings hitting staggering lows last year and Negan himself largely absent from the first half of the show’s eighth season.
But a midseason relaunch is an opportunity to s

Lee Pace and Djimon Hounsou are both returning to their old Marvel Cinematic Universe roles in Captain Marvel.
The two actors previously appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy, as Ronan the Accuser and his crony Korath the Pursuer, respectively. So now we know that Captain Marvel will be wading into Guardians territory.
SEE ALSO: 'Black Panther' is loaded with Easter eggs you probably missed. Here they are.
It's not a huge surprise. We already know that the Skrull alien race is Captain Marvel's pri

Leading mobile company Cheetah Mobile and China-based AI firm OrionStar have jointly introduced a robotics and smart device platform dubbed Orion OS. In addition, the partnership included the unveiling of five new products. All of this happened at the 321 Conference: A Night of Robots, held at the Beijing National Aquatics Center (AKA Water Cube). Back in 2016, Cheetah earmarked $50 million for AI development, so in many ways, the conference was a coming out party of sorts for the mob

This is not how I wanted the women's pocket revolution to go.
On this sordid planet, there exists a brand called Alexo Athletica, which specializes in "active carry-wear." Don't get your hopes up, because that means exactly what you think it means: a $99 yoga pant made for carrying guns.
SEE ALSO: Student asks boyfriend to buy her some new leggings, things escalate quickly
It's a huge shame, really, because women could use more (and larger) pockets, especially on our athletic apparel. We just do

Imagine the greatest themed dinner party you can, and then forget about it entirely. One Simpsons-obsessed genius decided to top whatever your wild imagination could invent.
SEE ALSO: 'The Simpsons' paid tribute to the late Stephen Hawking
Tristin Hopper had a Simpsons themed dinner party over the weekend, and it was perfection. It was beyond perfection. It included more Simpsons references than you can shake a fondue stick at. 
Pictures of this dinner party will do two things. 1. It will m

Microsoft started previewing its Edge browser for iPad earlier this month, and it’s now releasing it for everyone using an iPad or Android tablets today. Microsoft has mainly just scaled up the interface for the larger screen on iPads or Android tablets, and features like “continue on PC” remain, alongside options to change from a light to a dark theme.
The iPad app is rather basic, especially if you’re using an iPad Pro. Microsoft hasn’t included iOS 11 split scre

It's probably not a surprise, but you shouldn't trust the NRA.
Killer Mike, one half of popular rap group Run the Jewels, had to issue an apology Sunday for an interview he taped with the National Rifle Association last week.
The interview appeared on NRATV's NOIR on March 22. It included Killer Mike giving a full-throated support of black gun ownership. It also went into an exploration of "woke" culture.
SEE ALSO: Emma Gonzalez's March For Our Lives speech will go down in history
The interview

Every company is trying to figure out what makes a good digital avatar, especially for messaging. Snapchat owns Bitmoji, which you completely build yourself. “Selfie stickers” are available on Google Allo. Animoji that map your facial reactions can be made on the iPhone X and sent in iMessage, and Samsung’s new AR Emoji on the S9 are part of the camera and can be recorded as long videos that are sent over any messaging service. Some — like Animoji and Samsung’s AR

FACT: The Office will never die.
Sure, the NBC comedy ended in 2013, but the show's beloved characters will live on in our hearts, minds, and apparently sketchpads forever.
The latest tribute to the Dunder Mifflin crew comes from Marisa Livingston, a Los Angeles artist who transformed Michael Scott and the gang into some of the most perfect cartoon characters we've ever seen. #the office #character design #art pic.twitter.com/JvyQFUXMqV
— Marisa Livingston (@Marisa_Draws) February 28,

Chances are, you work for Facebook. 
You probably don't have an office or an ID card. And you almost certainly don't get paid. But if you're one of the 239 million Americans who use the platform each month, your work is as valuable as a coder's. Maybe more. Your clicks, likes, and posts keep content circulating, users scrolling, and data streaming into algorithms used to serve you ads. Leave, and the platform crumbles. 
The Cambridge Analytica scandal has driven away some users —

Twitter will begin blocking cryptocurrency-related ads tomorrow, the company confirmed in a statement to The Verge. The move follows other social media platforms like Reddit back in 2016, and more recently, Facebook and Google, which have already banned cryptocurrency ads.“We are committed to ensuring the safety of the Twitter community. As such, we have added a new policy for Twitter Ads relating to cryptocurrency,” the company says. “Under this new policy, the advertisement

Rare’s co-op pirate game, Sea of Thieves, has been released on Xbox and Windows. After nearly three years of hype, how does the final release play? Let’s just say you’d better have a really close crew ready to brave some very dull hours with you if you want to get anywhere. First debuted back at E3 2015, the game has changed little in appearance since its reveal trailer. It’s nice to have Rare back after seeing them make little more than the Kinect Sports serie

Stranger Things is heading back into production this month, and details on Season 3 are already giving us nostalgia for Season 2.
SEE ALSO: You'll be seeing a lot more of a fan-favorite 'Stranger Things' character in Season 3
At PaleyFest in Los Angeles on March 25, executive producer Shawn Levy told The Hollywood Reporter that the most important storyline would thankfully make a return:"Dad Steve magic" is one way of putting it. But perhaps the real magic is the daddiness of the whole season &m

The opening credits of Silicon Valley are among the most delightful on television. Each season's title sequence offers a fresh crop of newsy Easter eggs for fans and Sunday's start of the new season was no different.
This time, there's a very sharp Facebook barb in there. Dunking on Facebook is very in right now, so this is great! Observe:During the Silicon Valley opening credits, the Facebook logo flipped from English to Russian. First-rate burn by one of the best series on TVpic.twitter.com/zv

There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who use Microsoft Excel and those who use Google Sheets. Excel loyalists will fight to the death to prove that their preferred spreadsheet platform is infinitely better than the new kid on the block, while Sheets supporters firmly believe that Google's version is worthy to be called the new king of the hill. 
SEE ALSO: Learn how to create your own online courses for sites like Udemy
Of course, it ultimately boils down to the type of job