Technology news

The Choose Your Own Adventure books are a staple for young readers. Unlike normal books, CYOA novels give the reader a series of choices at the bottom of each page, each of which directs you to a different page, allowing you to arrive at a new ending each time you read. At CinemaCon today, 20th Century Fox announced that it wants to do something similar with movies. It’s adapting the series for film, and in doing so, will partner with interactive film company Kino Industries to develop an

Nobody expected great things out of today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing about social media platforms censoring conservatives. The hearing came on the heels of Congress’ multi-day session with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where lawmakers exhaustively asked about the issue. Claims about large-scale censorship are basically unfalsifiable, and none of the tech companies invited even showed up. The whole thing looked potentially like a soapbox for vloggers Lynnette “Diamond&

Pinterest has rolled out new changes that let users filter hair and beauty search results by skin tone ranges, as a way to make it easier to find what you may be looking for. The changes come after the social media platform conducted a survey and found that 70 percent of people used the service to find and save everyday looks and styles.
A Medium post from Pinterest’s engineering account says the process of programming the search filters to detect skin tone in images was difficult, given

Amazon reported first quarter earnings results today with eye-popping sales of $51 billion, up by nearly 43 percent year over year, and a net profit of $1.6 billion. That means it’s another strong quarter for CEO Jeff Bezos, whose e-commerce juggernaut continues to defy expectations and earn money hand over fist as it expands into markets like food delivery, grocery chains, and smart home gadgets. But one area the company continues to lag in is international online retail sales, where it

Apple is finally bringing its iTunes app to Microsoft’s Windows 10 app store today. Microsoft first revealed nearly a year ago that iTunes would be coming to the Microsoft Store by the end of 2017, but that date came and went. Apple’s iTunes app is the same desktop version available online, but it will be updated and available through the Microsoft Store.
iTunes is one of the most searched for apps that wasn’t available in the Microsoft Store, and the addition will be a boost

Microsoft posted the third quarter of its 2018 financial results today, reporting revenue of $26.8 billion and net income of $7.4 billion. Revenue has jumped 16 percent year-over-year, and net income is up a massive 35 percent. As ever, Microsoft’s Office and cloud bets are paying off once again, but surprise increases in LinkedIn and Surface revenue are also playing their part in ensuring Microsoft has a diverse amount of successful products and services.
Microsoft now has more than 135

Square announced today that it’s buying website builder Weebly for $365 million, in a deal that includes a mix of cash and stock. According to Square, the intent behind the purchase is to merge Square’s hardware and software for payments with Weebly’s website hosting, design, and online stores to offer a single solution for starting and running businesses across physical and digital storefronts.“Square began its journey with in-person solutions while Weebly began its jou

Stock market investors greeted payroll software company Ceridianwith enthusiasm on its debut Thursday. After pricing above its expected range at $22 per share, the stock shot up 42 percent, closing above $31 by day’s end.
Ceridian helps clients ranging from BlackRock to Trader Joe’s keep tabs on personnel, including payroll, benefits and onboarding. Its clients pay it a fee per employee per month.
“The platform is designed to ease administrative work for both employees and mana

A veteran of the US Armed Forces has a new penis and scrotum after the most extensive penis transplant yet, Johns Hopkins Hospital announced this week. Not included in the transplant? Testicles — because the testicles would continue to make the donor’s sperm in the transplant recipient’s body.The patient, who asked Johns Hopkins not to reveal his name, suffered a devastating injury to his penis, testicles, part of his lower abdomen, and his legs in Afghanistan when an improvis

Smartphone shipments in China saw their biggest decline ever this first quarter, as shipments dropped to 91 million units, according to a report from market analyst group Canalys. Every year since 2013, Chinese smartphone shipments have been able to reach or exceed 100 million units quarterly. This is the first quarter since Q4 of 2013 that numbers have dipped below that benchmark.
Canalys experts suggest that the Chinese market is simply feeling worn out by the endless marketing campaigns of e

Jeff Brantingham is as close as it gets to putting a face on the controversial practice of “predictive policing.” Over the past decade, the University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted his Pentagon-funded research in forecasting battlefield casualties in Iraq to predicting crime for American police departments, patenting his research and founding a for-profit company named PredPol, LLC.PredPol quickly became one of the market leaders in the nascent field of cr

Sprint is reportedly announcing a new unlimited plan for people 55 years and older on May 18th, according to Android Police, in order to better compete with T-Mobile, which started offering a similar plan for seniors last year.
The Sprint plan — also said to be called Unlimited 55+, just like T-Mobile’s — offers one line of unlimited service for $50 a month, or two lines for $70, assuming you’re 55 or older. Image: Sprint (via AndroidPolice)
It’s not quite as good

Axon, formerly known as Taser, has launched a new “AI ethics board” to guide its use of artificial intelligence. The board will meet twice a year to discuss the ethical implications of upcoming Axon products, particularly how their use might affect community policing. Privacy groups responded to the news by urging the board to pay close attention to Axon’s development of facial recognition technology.
The use of real-time facial recognition in policing has become a contentious

A new biotech company co-founded by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna is developing a device that uses CRISPR to detect all kids of diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and Zika. The tech is still just in prototype phase, but research in the field is showing promising results. These CRISPR-based diagnostic tools have the potential to revolutionize how we test for diseases in the hospital, or even at home.
Called Mammoth Biosciences, the company is working on a credit card-sized paper test and smar

It’s a banner week for Snapchat. The company has announced a new version of its Spectacles which appear to be an improvement on the original. It’s also shown off Snappables, AR games you can play with friends. In between that news, however, it’s come to light the company is also going to start testing unskippable video ads. The details: According to DigiDay, Snapchat is flirting with the idea of running unskippable six-second ads on some of its biggest shows —

Disney announced that it has begun production on a new animated Star Wars show, which will debut later this fall in the US on Disney. Star Wars Resistance will be set just before the events of The Force Awakens, and will follow a pilot named Kazuda Xiono, who is recruited into the Resistance movement.The show is created by Dave Filoni, who was also behind Lucasfilm’s other two animated shows, The Clone Wars and Rebels. He notes that Resistance was inspired by “my interest in World W

Alexa will soon be smarter and more natural about the way it interacts with you. This includes Alexa being able to recall information you’ve told it to remember, asking multiple questions without each query beginning with “Alexa,” and launching skills through natural requests. Ruhi Sarikaya, head of the Alexa Brain group, announced the news this morning in a keynote presentation at the World Wide Web Conference in Lyon, France,In the US, users will soon be able to ask Alexa to

Apple rumors can be way, way out there sometimes. But often, when there’s enough noise, there’s something going on — even if the rumors aren’t firm enough to figure out exactly what it’ll be. And over the past few months, more and more rumors (admittedly, sketchy ones) have pointed toward Apple updating the iPhone SE.
The iPhone SE was introduced in March 2016 and updated with more storage in March 2017. It’s now just over a year later, and we’re yet to

The Handmaid’s Tale is a difficult show to appreciate right now. After following the plot of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book in its first season, its second season piles on a series of additional horrors, all set in the future nation of Gilead —a religious theocracy that kills and tortures women who refuse to submit to male ownership. As my colleague Laura Hudson writes, “its portents are so terrifyingly familiar that they have become excruciating to watch.”
The Handma

Today is Alien Day — a day 20th Century Fox uses to promote all things Alien. (The date falls on April 26th because of the name of the moon in the first film: LV-426.) One of the things Fox has rolled out this year is a neat Alexa skill called “Offworld Colony Simulator,” a game in which you have to escape from a colony without getting eaten by a xenomorph.The skill is available today: go to your Echo or Alexa-enabled device and say “Alexa, open Alien Simulator,” a

Owning a car will be more expensive than relying exclusively on ride-share apps for transportation by 2027. At least, according to a study released earlier this month. The impact: The study, conducted by Quote Wizards, focused on Seattle and Denver, two cities which already embrace ride-sharing. It also assumes that driverless car technology will quickly mature and become status quo. By the numbers: It might be hard to wrap your head around it, but the math adds up. Based on current trends, Quo

So, I’ve got a joke for you. A man walks into a bank and asks the manager “Can I have a mortgage?” The bank manager says “sure!”, but then changes his mind upon discovering the man owes hundreds of thousands of pounds to a variety of creditors — loans, credit cards, phone contracts, you name it. Someone had stolen his identity, and used it to go on a massive spending spree. The man then loses his house, his job, and has to move in with his parents. He spends

Tile has expanded on its partnership with Comcast today, which it first announced back at CES this year. Tile and Xfinity users will now be able to use their Xfinity X1 Voice Remote to locate their tagged items, with the results showing up on their TV.Users can say, “Xfinity Home where are my keys,” for example, or, “Xfinity Home find my purse.” The TV will display the last known location and address of the tagged item. Tiles will have to be added to Comcast’s plat

Sometimes it’s hard to keep your work life and private life separate. At TNW, we’re all for merging the two together and finding a balance. As our CEO Boris said last year, bringing your kids to work can be a great learning opportunity. It’s also a great lesson for us adults. Promoting inclusivity reminds us that being a parent doesn’t make you any less of a badass in the office. Of course, it’s not always possible to bring your kids along — like when you&rsq

You can expect some serious volatility in the cryptocurrency market over the next few days, if history is any indication. Notorious cryptocurrency exchange desk Mt. Gox – which went down in 2014, along with 850,000 of its users Bitcoin – has moved another huge batch of its remaining funds to consolidated wallets. The now-defunct exchange desk seems to have transferred 16,000 BTC and 16,000 BCH to two separate addresses, according to a Mt. Gox cold wallet monitor. The 16,000 BTC have

This morning, the House Judiciary Committee will hear arguments about whether Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other big tech companies are discriminating against conservatives. In some ways, it’s a smaller version of the marathon Facebook hearings earlier this month — but instead of focusing on broad questions about web platforms’ social responsibilities, it’s pulling a specific politically charged thread from those hearings. It’s also yet another way to bring up Di

The case for dental dams is simple: Although many people consider oral sex to be a low risk activity, it can still transmit STIs. But dental dams have never been popular with the general public — and their low sales have hampered the very product innovation that might make them a sexier, more affordable, and generally more appealing safer sex product.
Inventing a new safer sex device is pricey
It’s not just a matter of whether dental dams are profitable. Inventing a new safer sex de

This interview is part of our series of Growth Stories. We interviewed the founders and CEOs of 20 of the fastest growing startups in Europe. We asked them about their companies, their companies’ culture, and their lives, trying to understand how these three factors played a role in the achievement of such impressive growth. Acast is a Swedish audio technology company founded in 2013 by Karl Rosander, Mans Ulvestam, and Johan Billgren. Over the past three years, the company has grown

Disney Research, MIT Media Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University have unveiled a new conceptual haptic “force jacket” that simulates physical experiences to people wearing the device. The force jacket is lined with airbags controlled by a computer that inflates and deflates the bags. Disney envisions the jacket will be used with VR headsets for more immersive experiences, given it’s able to simulates hugs, being hit or punched, and peculiarly, the sensation of a snake slithering

The European Emergency Number Association (EENA) just announced the launch of PEMEA architecture at its conference in Slovenia. PEMEA stands for Pan-European Mobile Emergency App and the architecture was created by EENA, Beta80, and Deveryware to enable emergency apps to contact emergency services across borders in Europe. This hasn’t been possible up until now with most emergency apps only working within limited areas. TNW is in Ljubljana, and we spoke with Christina Lumbreras, technical