Technology news

As of this writing, there’s a single, solitary review for Button Tooter. It’s three stars and three sentences, and it’s a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. “They clearly ran out of ideas!” the reviewer writes. “It’s kind of fun! How about a game where you can make music. [sic]” Is Amazon’s creation of a fart app a true indication of creativity bankruptcy?Or is it the sign of a company that’s finally discovered the killer app for i

You’ll soon be able to draw on the world around you and shoot back-and-forth InstagramBoomerang GIFs with the FacebookCamera. Bringing additional creative tools to the Facebook Camera could make it a more popular place to shoot content and help the company compete with Snapchat.
“We wanted to give people an easy way to create with augmented reality and draw in the world around them” says John Barnett, a Facebook Camera Product Manager about the feature it calls “3D d

Hulu is now offering a discount on its HBO add-on, timed with Westworld’s season 2 premiere this month. Now, instead of paying an extra $14.99 a month, Hulu subscribers can add HBO to their plan for only $4.99 a month. The discount lasts for six months. After that, users will have to pay the full fare again.
Hulu started offering HBO as an add-on last summer, coordinated with the return of Game of Thrones’ seventh season. Other add-ons Hulu offers include Cinemax and Showtime. With

Matthias Müller is out as Volkswagen CEO, amid a diesel emissions scandal that shook the world’s largest car maker. The company confirmed the move today, naming Brand Chief Herbert Diess to the top job in his stead.
Müller had only been in the top role for three years, and while the chief executive was never charged in the scandal, many in the industry believe that he didn’t impose changes quickly enough after information came to light.This time last year, the company was h

Superman’s origin story is so well-known that Grant Morrison opened his All-Star Superman series by summing it up in just eight words: “Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple.” Krypton showrunner Cameron Welsh, who cites All-Star Superman as one of his favorite Superman stories, has the unenviable task of trying to make audiences really care about the “doomed planet / desperate scientists” half of that story. Prequels always struggle to justi

Subscription biller Zuora was well-received by stock market investors on Thursday, following its public debut. After pricing its IPO at $14 and raising $154 million, the company closed at $20, valuing the company around $2 billion.
It was also much higher than expected. The company said in its filings that it planned to price its shares between $9 and $11, before it raised that range to $11 to $13.
Founder and CEO Tien Tzuo told TechCrunch that he believes “a bet on us is really

Teslasays it willingly withdrew from the party agreement with the National Transportation Safety Board, adding that the NTSB is more concerned with “press headlines than actually promoting safety,” a Tesla spokesperson told TechCrunch via email.
“Last week, in a conversation with the NTSB, we were told that if we made additional statements before their 12-24 month investigative process is complete, we would no longer be a party to the investigation agreement,” a Tesla spo

Netflix announced today that it has renewed Jessica Jones for a third season, about a month after the show’s season 2 premiere.
Although critics generally praised the debut season of the Marvel series, many deemed its second season a sophomore slump. “The first five episodes are marked by oppressive dourness, with precious little relief,” Samantha Nelson wrote in her review for The Verge. Others said the show improved as the season went on, however, with Jones (Krysten Ritter)

The Ocean’s Eleven series has historically focused on the achievements of its male characters — groups of men coming together to throw caution to the wind — but the sort-of sequel Ocean’s 8 reenvisions the series as an all-female job. As detailed in the film’s latest trailer, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), the “estranged sister” to George Clooney’s Danny Ocean from the trilogy, begins drafting her all-star lineup to pull off a jewelry heist at the

Uber drivers are independent contractors, not full-time employees of the ride-hailing company, a federal judge ruled in what is said to be the first classification of Uber drivers under federal law.Reuters reported that US District Judge Michael Baylson said on Wednesday that Uber does not exert enough control over drivers for its limo service, Uber Black, to be considered their employer under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The drivers work when they want to and are free to do what they

Being an online video star might seem cool or even glamorous these days, but Burnie Burns, co-founder and chief creative officer at Rooster Teeth, can remember when that wasn’t the case.
Rooster Teeth,which is behind the popular web series Red vs. Blue, is turning 15 years old this month. (The studio was acquired by Fullscreen a few years ago.) And Burns has been looking back at its history as part of the upcoming documentary Why We’re Here: 15 Years of Rooster Teeth.
He acknowledge

For all the good of Android’s open-source approach, one of the clear and consistent downsides is that the onus to issue software updates falls on the manufacturer. That can mean frustration for those waiting for the latest and greatest feature updates — and in some cases, it can put your phone at risk with delayed or missed security updates.
A pair of researchers at Security Research Labs recently shared a study with Wired highlighting some of these risks. The team’s findings a

Now that a popular parody and meme app in China called “Neihan Duanzi” has been shut down and its social media account on WeChat got deleted, fans of the app are gathering in solidarity offline in subtle protest.Drivers are honking at each other in code to indicate that they’re fans, The New York Times reports. A coded message might be a car honk, followed by a pause, and two more honks.This week, while in the US Congress was slowly grilling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in Ch

Austria-based startup Rebeat Innovation has just received $4.8 million in funding for a new way of manufacturing records called “high definition vinyl,” according to Pitchfork. The process, the patent for which was originally filed in 2016, claims to allow for records with longer playing times, louder volume, and greater audio fidelity.
To create HD vinyl, the audio is first digitally converted to a 3D topographic map. Then, lasers engrave the map onto a stamper, which makes an impr

Amazon’sPrime Wardrobe appears to be getting ready to launch. The retailer’s “try before you buy” shopping service, first announced in June 2017, aims to challenge incumbents in the market like Stitch Fix, Trunk Club, Wantable, and others. The service has quietly remained in an invite-only beta since last year, and Amazon claims that’s still the case. However, a recent flurry of tweets, including – ahem, those from an Amazon account and people who worked

The record-setting score that settled the Donkey Kong arcade rivalry, made famous by the documentary The King of Kong, has been invalidated by Twin Galaxies, the de facto arbiter of arcade world records. What’s more, Billy Mitchell, the occasionally controversial player who set the scores, has been permanently banned from consideration for future records.
It’s a huge upset that calls into question decades of history. Will other similarly disputed scores get the ax? Are any old-school

The amount someone can earn driving for Uber and Lyft has been the subject of intense debate in recent years. Now, Lyft is bringing some clarity to the conversation around how much drivers earn on an hourly basis. In short: it’s complicated.First, Lyft says that driver work generally breaks down into three sections: turning the app on and waiting for requests, driving to pick up passengers, and driving passengers to their destinations. The ride-hailing company says that since drivers can

Luxury car brands are increasingly trying out subscription-based services to get customers who want to have access to a fleet of fancy cars, rather than just picking one. Mercedes-Benz is the next to join the fray.The company’s US arm announced Thursday it would begin a pilot program called Mercedes-Benz Collection in June. Nashville and Philadelphia are the first cities where the automaker will offer an unspecified fleet of their new cars. Those who subscribe will have access to the cars

Tesla has been removed from the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into a fatal Autopilot accident that happened in March, the agency announced today. The NTSB says it took the action because Tesla had released “investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by” the agency. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.
“Such releases of incomplete information often lead to speculation and incorrect assumptions about the probable cause of a cra

In light of Teslagoing a bit rogue and disclosing details of the fatal crash that involved Autopilot, the National Transportation Safety Board is removing Tesla as a party in the investigation.
“The NTSB took this action because Tesla violated the party agreement by releasing investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by the NTSB,” the NTSB wrote in a press release today. “Such releases of incomplete information often lead to speculation and incorrect assumpti

Credit card signatures are about to become a thing of the past, with American Express, Mastercard, Visa, and Discover — the four major US credit card companies — set to do away with the requirement for signatures on in-store purchases in the coming days. American Express, Mastercard, and Discover have all confirmed that they’ll be flipping the switch on April 13th, while Visa should be following later in the month.
We’ve known it was coming for a while, with all four com

How much drivers can make working for Lyftand Uber has long been a topic of conversation and third-party studies. Now, Lyft is providing some more clarity around how much people can make driving for its platform.
“Understandably, we’ve seen a few external groups take their own guesses at what Lyft drivers make, usually as an hourly average across the country,” Lyft Head of Driver Communications and Community Laura Copeland wrote on Medium. “This is an important topic, so

Amazon’s acquisition of Ringofficially closed today. Now the companies (or company, rather) are marking the occasion by discounting the Ring Video Doorbell $30, down to $100 — because what better way to celebrate scalability and maximum distribution than a price drop?
Amazonis quick to note in its press material that the Ring name is sticking around — for the time being, at least. The company’s products will be joining a bunch of other smart home devices under the Amazon

Uberis expanding the proposed settlement it made with the Federal Trade Commission last August pertaining to data mishandling, privacy and security complaints that date back to 2014 and 2015. In August, Uber agreed to 20 years of privacy audits.
That proposed settlement happened prior to Uber’s disclosure of the massive 2016 data breach that affected some 57 million riders and drivers. Now, Uber will be subject to “additional requirements,” according to the FTC.
“After mi

Do You Trust This Computer? is not a particularly subtle watch. The documentary, from filmmaker Chris Paine, is dedicated to the dangers of artificial intelligence, and while it didn’t make a splash in theaters, it was promoted enthusiastically by Elon Musk, who tweeted about the film and paid for it be streamed for free in early April. (Musk also appears in the documentary as a talking head.) It starts by bombarding viewers with quotations and whizzy graphics of phones and brains. &ldquo

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman made waves earlier this week by telling users on the platform that racism was not explicitly against site rules. The chief executive has since clarified his position in an updated statement, saying today that “while racism itself isn’t against the rules, it’s not welcome here.” Huffman had originally responded to a question about racism and racial slurs in a thread about Reddit’s 2017 transparency report, saying Tuesday that Reddit’s

Impossible Foods is taking another bite out of the meat supply chain, with the announcement that its meatless burger substitute is coming to America’s first fast-food burger chain — White Castle.
That’s right, now stoned vegan hippies can join stoned slackers in their quest for cheap, delicious burger-y goodness.
The “Impossible Slider,” which is made from Impossible Foods’vegetable-based ground beef substitute, will now be available for $1.99, or as part of a

Tocano, a spinout from Delft Technology University in the Netherlands which is working on an inkless printing technology, has closed a €1 million angel round to fund the next stage of its tech development and move a step closer to building its first commercial product.
The startup began as the graduate student project of co-founder Venkatesh Chandrasekar who, along with fellow student Van der Veen, founded the business in 2015, gaining early backing from the university.
The team&n