Technology news

Electric scooter (and bike) sharing services have inundated West Coast cities like Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and San Francisco over the last few months. Despite some complaints, and some vandalism, it’s only a matter of time before they make it out East, en masse, too. One of the first companies to give that a shot launched today in Washington, DC. It’s called Skip, and it was started by Sanjay Dastoor and Matt Tran, the same pair who created the Boosted board.The battery on Skip&r

Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian is quick, charming, and — according to Solo co-writer Jonathan Kasdan — pansexual. In an interview with HuffPost, Kasdan said there’s a “fluidity” to both Glover and Billy Dee Williams’ portrayals of the beloved character. “I mean, I would have loved to have gotten a more explicitly LGBT character into this movie,” Kasdan says. “I think it’s time, certainly, for that, and I love the fluidity ̵

Drive.ai, a self-driving startup based in California, is operating fully driverless vehicles without safety drivers on public roads in Frisco, a suburb outside Dallas-Forth Worth, the company announced this week. The tests are in the run-up to the company’s planned autonomous ride-hailing service, which is scheduled to launch later this summer. It’s a major milestone for the scrappy startup, which can now claim the distinction of being only the second company to experiment with driv

A “dating app for teachers” is an odd but useful way to describe the startup Selected, which has just closed on $1.2 million in seed funding for its recruiting platform for educators. And, in all fairness, Selectedsaid it first. The startup’s own website describes itself (a bit tongue-in-cheek) as a “dating app for job-seeking teachers and hiring schools.”
Before you roll your eyes at the shorthand being used here, let’s skip ahead to the main point. And

The CX Sport are Sennheiser’s latest wireless headphones, joining the CX 6.00BT and HD1 Free (which I just compared earlier this week), but designed for more athletic activities.You can tell this because, despite looking almost identical to the CX 6.00BT (which is, in turn, extremely similar to the HD1 Free), the CX Sport has the word “Sport” in the name, and also comes in a bright yellow color scheme with some extra rubber fins. The CX 6.00BT, for reference, has a blue color

Catfish host and executive producer Nev Schulman is currently being investigated for sexual misconduct. The Daily Beast reports that MTV has temporarily halted production on the show. “We’re working with Critical Content, our third party production company, to conduct a thorough investigation,” a spokesperson told the publication.The show, named for the documentary of the same name, is dedicated to exposing the real people behind fake dating profiles. Schulman, along with co-h

Lego announced a new connected toy line today, called Powered Up, as well as its first set in the series: an app-controlled Batmobile. The company previously ventured into connected toys, most recently with its Boost set that lets kids build a variety of items and then code and control them through an app. Remember the cat that plays the harmonica? Loved it.This new Powered Up line will consist of multiple products that vary in complexity, instead of one set that can be used to build multiple t

Before today you could ask Google Home (and in turn, Google Assistant) to play shows on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, but not with Google’s own Play Movies service.All that changes today, now you can ask Google Home to assist your TV show or movie binge-watching without ever needing to link accounts — after all, you’re using Google Assistant to access another Google service, so everything is attached to your account. This applies to both rented and purchased movies

Amazon has picked up The Hunt, a new series from Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. The 10-episode series will follow a group of Nazi hunters in 1977’s New York City.
Deadline reports that The Hunt will be written by David Weil, who will also serve as an executive producer on the show. In the show, a team of Nazi hunters discovers and works to stop a plot by a group of high-ranking Nazi officers who plan to create a Fourth Reich in the US.
This will be the

After announcing the game back in March, today, Activision has finally provided a glimpse at the next Call of Duty. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (unfortunately styled “IIII”) will ditch the series’s traditional single-player campaign, and instead focus on multiplayer. (There will still be narrative elements, but they will be weaved into the multiplayer modes.)
That multiplayer focus will include the now-standard “zombies” mode, as well as a brand-new addition: “

Google is changing the visual cues for HTTPS in Chrome’s user interface, starting in September. Sites using HTTPS will no longer trigger the green “Secure” text that usually appears in the address bar on Chrome version 69.Then in October, sites visited with Chrome 70 that don’t have HTTPS certificates will trigger a red “Not secure” label when entering text. Image: Google
Here’s a quick HTTPS refresher course: it’s a more secure version of HTTP, a

After all the talk about Bitcoin using up energy, the first scientific paper calculating how much electricity the cryptocurrency needs is here, and it supports the pessimists. Energy use could double by the end of this year, and if it continues at this rate, by the end of 2019, Bitcoin could be using more electricity than all solar panels produce. Mining crypto is expensive, and with numbers like that, who can resist doing some mining on someone else’s dime?These calculations published th

We already know that pools are gross, but hotel pools and tubs are especially gross, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today. In fact, the water can be so contaminated that it’s been making thousands of Americans sick.
The CDC sorted through nearly 500 outbreaks linked to pools, spas, and waterparks that made more than 27,200 people sick and killed eight people between 2000 and 2014. Roughly one-third of those outbreaks were traced back to hotels, motels, inns, and l

Months after the controversy made headlines and angered consumers, Samsung is only now getting around to trolling Apple for throttling iPhones. A new commercial tells the familiar tale of many Samsung ads: an iPhone user gradually becomes so fed up with Apple’s phone that they ultimately make the switch to the latest Galaxy device, which in this case is the Galaxy S9.The minute-long spot aggressively hammers on Apple’s decision to throttle performance of iPhones containing older bat

It’s not as good as a new season, but it’ll have to do: Netflix has dropped the trailer for the “series finale” of Sense8, the movie-length cap to the Wachowskis’ two-season Netflix show about eight psychically connected empaths who can literally walk in each other’s shoes.Last June, Netflix announced it would not be renewing the series, saying simply that it had “come to an end.” “It is everything we and the fans dreamed it would be: bold,

HTC has officially started teasing its next flagship, the U12 Plus, promising a full reveal of the device next week on May 23rd. Unfortunately for HTC, another leak (courtesy of Evan Blass) has revealed even more details of the upcoming phone, including our best look yet at the design and what appears to be a translucent variant that subtly shows off the internal hardware of the phone.HTC U12+ pic.twitter.com/HL48YuoRzr— Evan Blass (@evleaks) May 17, 2018Blass also got his hands on the fu

Smart luggage startup Raden announced today that it has shut down and can no longer handle “returns, exchanges or repairs.” It’s the second dedicated smart luggage company to go under this month (following Bluesmart, which ceased operations May 1st) after major US airlines imposed strict rules on suitcases with batteries earlier this year.
The policies that airlines like Delta and American put in place earlier this year most aggressively targeted luggage with non-removable bat

The line between Instagram posts and stories is getting even thinner today. There’s a new feature that will let users share posts — both from their own account and from public accounts they follow — directly to their story as a sticker.
Instagram imagines the feature will be used to help promote friends and brands you like on your own story, making it easier to share, say, a band’s tour announcement with your followers. (It’s easier than saving or screenshotting th

Pluralsightis having a pretty good day in its debut as a public company, with its shares popping more than 30% after its first trade following its IPO.
There’ll be a little bit of debate as to whether Pluralsight might have left some money on the table in its IPO after raising its price last night above its original target range. After looking at a range between $12 and $14 per share, the company settled on $15 in an IPO that would raise as much as $357 including additional shares offered

The Google Store now lets customers return gifts, so if you’ve been holding on to a Google product like a Home speaker or an extra phone case because you’re not sure what to do with it, you can now return it for Google Store credit. To return the item, just go to the gift return page. You can sign in to your Google Account to autofill some information, or just provide your name, order number, and ZIP code. Once your order has been found, pick the items you wish to return, and submit

After announcing that t was coming at CES and showing us a beta version in late January, Ford is finally rolling out Waze integration with its SYNC 3 infotainment system. iOS users with a SYNC 3-equipped car will now be able to “project” or “mirror” Waze onto the infotainment system, giving them full access to Waze’s maps as well as all of the crowdsourced information about traffic, hazards, and police alerts that the app is known for.
To make it work, users need t

RED’s Hydrogen One phone is coming to Verizon and AT&T sometime this summer, although there’s no word yet as to a final release date or what it will cost to buy the upcoming phone through carriers.
The Hydrogen One first opened preorders last July with an early $1,200 price tag, and was recently delayed until this August. Company founder Jim Jannard explained the delay as giving RED more time to work out carrier certification. With the Hydrogen One getting support on two of the

Apple’s Everyone Can Code initiative, which introduces young students to coding through the Swift Playgrounds iPad app, is coming to several schools across the US that support students with vision, hearing, and other assistive needs, the company announced today. Eight schools will be participating in the initial accessibility push, including schools for the deaf and blind in California, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York."Apple collaborated with engineers, educators, an

eBay is launching a new feature on its iOS and Android app today that personalizes and curates items for you based on your hobbies, interests, and what you like wearing. The new “Shop your Interests” feature figures out what you like with a brief survey that lets users select things they enjoy shopping for. Options include something as vague and all-encompassing as “cooking” and “gadgets” to “wine,” “tea,” or “Apple.”
eBay

Sony is finally rolling out deeper support for Google Assistant on some of its headphones, making good on a promise it made at CES 2018 when it first announced the feature, as spotted by Android Police.For now, the update seems to be arriving for Sony’s WH-1000XM2 and WI-1000X headphones, adding a few new features to how Google’s Assistant works. Now, instead of summoning Assistant by holding down the call button, users can change the noise cancellation / ambient noise toggle to tri

There’s a ton of tools for digital art on the market — tablets, styluses, drawing apps — but it can be hard to make sense of it all if you’re just starting to explore all the options available. When I first started drawing comics for my college newspaper, I had no idea what I was doing. I drew with a ballpoint pen and scanned it, and it looked truly awful. Then I got a Wacom tablet, and my art was still awful, but there was room for growth! With my newfound ability to wo

Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future.The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X (formerly Google X), and shared internally within Google. It imagines a future of total data collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment

If you like your speakers to look bespoke and only mildly pretentious, the new PR / 01 speaker from Native Union and La Boite Concept might tickle your fancy. While the speaker’s wooden frame, aluminum controls, and textile grille harken back to a golden age of Hi-Fi, it features modern functions including Bluetooth Apt-X wireless connectivity to stream music and concealed USB and audio ports inside a hidden drawer where there’s space for an optional Qi charger. The company claims t

It’s been a busy week for startup funding in Southeast Asia. Following big deals for Carro and Carousell, financial comparison startup Jirnexu is the latest to announce new capital after it closed an $11 million Series B round.
The new investment comes courtesy of Japan’s SBI Group — a returning investor which led the round having co-led Carro’s $60 million raise — alongside new backer SIG Asia Investments. The deal takes Jirnexuto $17 million from in

Google is breaking up its premium YouTube Red service into two new offerings: a YouTube Music streaming service, available either for free with ads or for $9.99 per month, and a YouTube Premium for original video content, costing $11.99 per month.
YouTube Music is Google’s most direct competitor to Spotify yet, coming with “a reimagined mobile app” and a new desktop player, both of them designed specifically for music. The YouTube advantage, argues Google, is that it will comb

For at least a few hours overnight, owners of Nest products were unable to access their devices via the Nest app or web browsers, according to Nest Support on Twitter. Other devices like Nest Secure and Nest x Yale Locks behaved erratically. The as of yet unexplained issues affected the entire lineup of Nest devices, including thermostats, locks, cameras, doorbells, smoke detectors, and alarms. Importantly, the devices remained (mostly) operational, they just weren’t accessible by any mea

OnePlus said it’d be making an Avengers-branded limited edition of the OnePlus 6 a while back, and here it is. The Avengers: Infinity War edition features a Kevlar-style patterned back along with a gold Avengers emblem and color-matched mute switch. There's also a new official case molded in the shape of Iron Man’s helmet. Overall it’s a more ambitious effort than the Star Wars OnePlus 5T, which was basically just a white 5T that said “Star Wars” on the back.
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Microsoft has announced the Xbox Adaptive Controller, an Xbox controller designed for people with disabilities. The device was leaked earlier this week. It has two large programmable buttons and 19 jacks that can be connected to a range of joysticks, buttons, and switches to make it easier for a wider range of people to play games on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs.“I can customize how I interface with the Xbox Adaptive Controller to whatever I want,” says Solomon Romney, a Microsoft St