Technology news

Soylent may have been a polarizing powdered drink when it first went on sale four years ago, but it’s clearly developed a following outside of the startup world as a drink that’s said to be a substitute for a meal. And it may have truly hit the mainstream market now that it’s available at Walmart.Its maker, Rosa Foods, announced Wednesday it has signed a deal to get Soylent in 450 of the big box stores across the US. Soylent CEO Bryan Crowley says the move is, “a signifi

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before members of Congress, splitting his visit into two days of questioning. There were expected queries regarding the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, about whether Facebook has grown too large and could be considered a monopoly, and how to better regulate the platform.
Less expected were the weird and somewhat rambling moments throughout the combined 12 hours of testimony, as members of Congress grappled with the legitimately complica

T-Mobile has announced that through an update today, it is now supporting Apple’s Business Chat. Included in iOS 11.3, Business Chat is a way for customers to chat with company reps over iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. That means instead of calling, emailing, or hitting up Twitter DMs and Facebook Messenger when you have a question, you can talk to an actual human being at a company directly through the iMessage app.
Though T-Mobile already offers the ability to chat with representati

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has found himself once again embroiled in a controversy surrounding his website’s policy on moderation. In a Reddit thread announcing the platform’s 2017 transparency report findings, in which Reddit identified and listed close to 1,000 suspected Russia-linked propaganda accounts that have been banned, Huffman replied to a straightforward question about the company’s rules around hate speech, which is a verbal attack based on race, religion, or another

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his second of two appearances before Congress on Wednesday, enduring a five-hour session of questions from members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In contrast to their amiably confused counterparts in the Senate, members of the House committee demonstrated a generally better command of how Facebook works and how its efforts to develop richly detailed advertising profiles for billions of people have created privacy concerns around the world.
As with

Bellus3D, the company behind the uncannily accurate, slightly creepy 3D selfie camera, is making the jump to the iPhone with a new app that will let you take its oddly realistic scans without any extra hardware.The company had previously announced at CES 2018 that it was finally releasing its face-scanning camera this year for $499. But with the release of the iPhone X, the company is taking things in a bit of a different direction by bundling its software into an iPhone app, removing the requi

Called before Congress this week, Mark Zuckerberg tried to present Facebook’s approach to user data as open and transparent. In question after question, he focused on the privacy choices available to users, and their ownership over all the data they share — and it wasn’t all wrong. Facebook has data because users share it (mostly). Users control that data and can review it or delete it whenever they want (with a few exceptions). And if you delete your account, (almost) all of

Do you really miss your Walkman headphones? Or maybe you just want to pull off the perfect Guardians of the Galaxy cosplay? Either way, JLab’s Rewind headphones might be the solution for you, styled after the old-school, bright orange on-ear headphones that the original Walkman made famous. They look more or less like the original Sony headphones, but with an added dose of modern day Bluetooth technology that lets them cut the cord and a microphone for answering calls.The problem is that

Instagram is building its own data portability tool which will allow users to download a copy of everything they’ve ever shared on the platform, similar to how Facebook’s download your information tool works. The platform confirmed the news to TechCrunch.
The tool could help Instagram users monitor how much of their data is on the platform. It will also help Facebook, which owns Instagram, comply with the forthcoming European data privacy rule, General Data Protection Regulation (GD

Battle royale shooter Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is quite popular in China, with the country making up nearly half of the game’s tens of millions of users. But with that popularity comes a significant amount of in-game cheating, with around 99 percent of all unauthorized modifications originating from Chinese players. Cheating is so prevalent, in fact, that Dell even went so far as to advertise a new laptop for the Chinese market as being superior for running PUBG-specific plugin

Well that was intense. On Monday, April 9th, Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy held a Reddit AMA where they announced that they were planning to post a video spoiling the entirety of the upcoming second season of Westworld. Nolan put it like this:
We thought about this long and hard, and came to a difficult (and potentially highly controversial) decision. If you guys agree, we’re going to post a video that lays out the plot (and twists and turns) of season 2. Everything. The

Netflix has decided to exit France’s Cannes Film Festival entirely over festival leadership’s decision to ban films from competing unless they secure a local theatrical release, according to a report from Variety. The report includes an interview with Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, who says the decision was made only after escalating tensions between the streaming service and Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux. Netflix, though it was banned from co

Ford showed the next generation of its compact Focus Tuesday. While that may not normally sound momentous, it’s a reminder that the automaker is still focused on cars and not trucks, SUVs, and connecting cities. But it’s also another indicator of how Ford will connect its cars in the coming years.While official information on US versions isn’t expected until later this year, it’s likely the new Focus, arriving sometime next year, will get the Co-Pilot360 system that was

In 2017, District 9 and Chappie writer-director Neill Blomkamp launched Oats Studios, a production house designed to experiment with new ways of developing projects ranging from short CGI films to longer story concepts that could eventually become feature-length projects. Now he’s announced his plans to turn one of those shorter films, Firebase, into a much larger project — and he wants fans to fund it.Blomkamp told The Verge that just as he designed the studio to experiment with st

For the first time, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved an artificial intelligence diagnostic device that doesn’t need a specialized doctor to interpret the results. The software program, called IDx-DR, can detect a form of eye disease by looking at photos of the retina.It works like this: A nurse or doctor uploads photos of the patient’s retina taken with a special retinal camera. The IDx-DR software algorithm first indicates whether the image uploaded is high-quality

GIF platform Tenor has announced that it will be powering GIF searches within LinkedIn Messaging, as reported by TechCrunch. The news comes just a couple weeks after Google announced it had acquired Tenor to help the company bring up GIFs inside Google images and other services like Gboard more easily.
As part of the new integration, members will be able to search for GIFs within LinkedIn Messaging as well as access trending GIFs, and in the near future have a custom stream thats shows what&rsq

Apple Music has broken the 40 million subscriber mark, according to Variety, and picked up a new boss in Oliver Schusser, who’ll be running the streaming service as part of his new role as vice president of Apple Music & International Content.Apple confirmed to The Verge that Schusser will report to Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue, and will be in charge of managing Apple Music, as well as running Apple services like the App Store and iTunes outside of the US. Schusser has previou

Mark Zuckerberg is facing a lot of questions about Facebook’s policies, most of which involve handling user data. But there’s a running theme on the Republican side of the aisle: Facebook is censoring conservative content, particularly two pro-Trump vloggers who go by the names Diamond and Silk. Multiple legislators have asked about Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson, who complained that Facebook was limiting the reach of their videos,

When J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973, he left behind mountains of notes, poetry, and stories set within his larger Middle-earth fantasy world that he never got around to finishing. Since then, Tolkien’s son Christopher has worked to edit and collect his father’s writings, which became posthumous books, like The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, that built and expanded the world that we see in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. More recently, we’ve been seeing more standalone n

In today’s hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) decided to take the opportunity to press Mark Zuckerberg on the subject of racial diversity in Silicon Valley.After rebuking him for the Cambridge Analytica data leak, he changed the topic. “I want to go in a different direction today,” he said, with a sudden shift in tone. “You and your team know how I feel about racial diversity in corporate America, and Sheryl Sandberg a

Sex workers are running out of safe online spaces. Craigslist is no longer displaying personal ads. The controversial classifieds site Backpage, which many escorts used to screen clients, has been seized by the FBI. Adult content is disappearing off Google Drive, and many sex workers say they’re being forced off social media. With the news that President Trump has signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), their options will continue to dwindle &mdash

For families looking for cheap budget phones for their kids, there are now phones around the $100 range that can almost pass for flagship phones from a distance. The Blu Vivo XL3 now costs $109.99 for 24 hours on Amazon. Blu is also launching an additional Blu Vivo XL3 Plus phone.
Both are budget phones, and with today’s discount, there aren’t other phones in their price range that have similar flagship-like-but-not-quite features. They’re both nearly bezel-less and have perks

In today’s hearing before the House Committee on Commerce and Energy, Mark Zuckerberg stated that the changes Facebook is making in response to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be available worldwide. Zuckerberg made a commitment to not only provide the same privacy controls but making the same kinds of disclosures and treating users’ data the same. The GDPR imposes requirements on how user data is collected, and how user data must be deleted

President Donald Trump has signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a bill that aims to fight sex trafficking by reducing legal protections for online platforms. FOSTA passed the Senate in March by an overwhelming majority, and it’s been endorsed by the Internet Association, which represents major companies like Facebook and Google. But privacy and civil liberties advocates say it’s a fatally flawed bill that would hurt small online communitie

Google is planning to launch a new design for its Gmail web interface soon. In an email to G Suite administrators, obtained by The Verge, the company says the new design will include “several new features” that will also be made available to regular Gmail accounts. Google promises a “fresh, clean look for Gmail on the web,” with features like Smart Reply, the ability to snooze emails, and offline support.
Google isn’t revealing exactly what the new design for Gmail

For weeks, Facebook has been struggling with the fallout from a third-party app that leaked 87 million Facebook profiles to the campaign firm Cambridge Analytica — but speaking to a House committee today, Zuckerberg revealed a new personal connection to the breach. Apparently, Zuckerberg himself was one of the many Facebook profiles collected through the app.
The revelation came as part of a string of yes-or-no questions from Rep. Anna Eschoo (D-CA), who encouraged Facebook to adopt a mor

Sony announced its Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact at Mobile World Congress this year and has now followed up with pricing and availability news. In the US, both models will be available to pre-order online through Best Buy from April 13th through April 19th. They’ll then be available online through Best Buy on April 20th and will come to the company’s physical stores on May 6th. Then, on May 20th, they’ll come to Amazon and “other participating retailers.” The Xperia X

If reports that a combination of sarin and chlorine gases killed more than 40 people in Douma, Syria are true, many of the survivors should expect to recover physically. The chemical weapons themselves won’t linger in the town, but for some people, the fear and anxiety left behind by a chemical attack will.
There’s still a lot we don’t know for certain about the suspected chemical weapons attack said to have struck the town of Douma this weekend. Photos of limp children breath

Isaac Asimov’s acclaimed science fiction Foundation trilogy might finally reach television. Deadline reports that Apple is putting an adaptation into development, adding to the company’s growing list of original content offerings as it seeks to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and Disney.The show comes from David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Man of Steel) and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles and the upcoming Snowpiercer TV show), who began work on the pro

Remember back in the day when you’d open the Uber app and just see cars? Well, that’s all about to change. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is in Washington, DC today to make a wide-ranging announcement on Uber’s plans to integrate a variety of new transportation options to its app, including bikes, car-sharing vehicles, and public transportation like buses and trains. Uber will also share more of its data on traffic patterns and curbside usage with cities in an effort to become &ld

Spotify is planning to make changes to its free subscription tier that should make it more closely mimic its paid subscription service, according to Bloomberg.
The updates, according to Bloomberg’s sources, will make the service easier to use, especially for those accessing it on mobile devices. Mobile users with free plans will be able to access playlists more quickly and have greater control over how they listen to music on playlists. Currently, the free plan prevents you from selecting

Spam calls are universally terrible, and Google is taking steps to help you ignore them by automatically sending spam calls to voicemail instead of letting them ring, as spotted via 9to5Google.The Google Phone app already flags spam numbers and lights up the screen bright red when one comes in (as seen in the image above), but the new spam filtering goes a step further, sending robocalls straight to voicemail without even bothering you with a missed call notification.Of course, this requires Go

Spotify and Hulu are today expanding their partnership and offering a bundle of both services to all consumers for $12.99 per month. That price gets you Spotify Premium and traditional, video-on-demand Hulu (with ads). Initially, this deal is only available to current Spotify Premium customers. The companies say everyone will be able to sign up for it sometime this summer.Existing Spotify Premium customers can do a three-month trial of Hulu for an extra $0.99 / month before deciding if they wan

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce today, fresh off the heels of a grueling five-hour joint session before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees yesterday. In total, Zuckerberg will face questions from nearly 100 legislators, and many of those legislators have received thousands of dollars from the company Zuckerberg runs.
Over the last 12 years, Facebook has spent $7 million in campaign contributions. Historically, Fac

The iconic moment from Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing yesterday came before he faced toothless questions from profoundly uninformed senators. It happened when the Facebook boss walked to his seat and was confronted by a wall of wide-angle camera lenses and photographers jostling for position, each of them trying to capture the most distilled picture of a CEO under fire. Zuckerberg’s personal space was eroded by the heaving throng, and he was treated less as a human and more as an