Technology news

Ahead of its big E3 2018 showcase this Sunday, Microsoft has confirmed a report from Kotaku that Crackdown 3 has been delayed to February of next year. The game, the third in the open-world crime-fighting franchise, has been stuck in a troubled development cycle for years, with rumors swirling of late that it may have been on track to be canceled or that it might linger in development hell for years to come. Back in August of last year, Microsoft put its release date as the second or third quar

The Essential Phone is getting its first new attachment module since it launched almost a year ago. And it’s a magnetic 3.5mm headphone jack dongle. Essential revealed it was working on this accessory back in September.
The new attachment dongle — called the Audio Adapter HD — is part of a focus on music that Essential announced today, and in addition to providing the missing 3.5mm headphone jack, it also contains a high-resolution ESS Sabre DAC with an “audiophile-grade

Microsoft is making its Xbox preview program more similar to its Windows Insider testing for Windows 10. A new “ship ahead” ring will be opened up for Xbox Insiders on the current alpha ring, and this will allow testers to access new Xbox features that are typically months away from being generally released. “By piloting builds well in advance of their release, Xbox Insiders will play an even bigger role in shaping the future of Xbox,” explains Savannah, an Xbox program

Wargroove is a turn-based strategy game where you control an army, and that crew is led by a special officer. Most commanders look like humans, or at least walk on two legs. While the Advance Wars-inspired game isn’t out yet, we already know that one of the characters is objectively the best one.Meet Caesar. He is a dog, which is to say he is very good. I would die for this boy. Actually, I kind of have to — this is war. But still.Caesar can be the player’s avatar. As a comman

Stitch Fix,one of last year’s high-profile IPOs, has had a bumpy ride for the past few quarters — but it blew out expectations this afternoon for its most recent quarter, and the stock went absolutely nuts.
There’s also a ton of news coming out from the company today, including the hire of a new chief marketing officer as well as the launch of Stitch Fix Kids. All this is pretty good timing because the company appears to be cramming everything into one announcement that is serv

J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot is launching a new gaming division — and it’s being backed by arguably the biggest company in games. Simply called Bad Robot Games, the new division is being announced alongside a “strategic relationship” with Chinese internet giant Tencent. Warner Bros is also a minority investor in the new venture.
According to Bad Robot, the studio will focus exclusively on original games. “Bad Robot Games will team up with traditi

Instagram has announced a slight change to Stories. Now, when someone mentions you in their story, you’ll have the option to instantly repost it, adding the photo or video to your own story.
The feature, called @mention Sharing, is initiated when you tag a user in your Story. A pop-up will appear saying, “Mentioned users may repost this story for 24 hours.” The person mentioned will get a notification via direct message that they were mentioned with a link to “Add This t

Never tweet. At least not from a burner account.Last week, The Ringer published an extensive report on the suspicious connections between Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations and general manager Bryan Colangelo and five burner accounts on Twitter that sent out numerous tweets criticizing other NBA executives, the behavior of current and former Sixers players, and leaking privileged medical information about said players. The tweets sent shockwaves through the NBA.
Today Colange

Facebook said today that it was informing 14 million users that they may have accidentally shared posts publicly because of a bug.
The company disclosed today that the bug, which was live last month, switched the “suggested” sharing setting on some users’ posts to the “public” setting. Facebook generally sets its suggestions for sharing based on previous activity, but in this case, a software error caused the default setting to be set to public regardless of whethe

Google has released a set of principles to guide its work in artificial intelligence, making good on a promise to do so last month following a months-long controversy over its involvement in a Department of Defense drone project. The document, titled “AI at Google: our principles” and published today Google’s primary public blog, sets out objectives the company is pursuing with AI, as well as those applications it refuses to participate in. It’s authored by Google CEO Su

On October 19th of last year, a just-barely bipartisan group of senators held a press conference to announce a new piece of legislation. The Honest Ads Act, as the bill is called, would require Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms to retain copies of the political ads they host and make them available for public inspection. Platforms would have to release information about who bought the ads, how much they cost, and to whom the ads were targeted. Anyone who spent more than $500 on politic

Apple made a big splash at WWDC this year when it announced that it would be letting developers port their iOS applications over to the Mac sometime next year — and that Apple had already started the process by bringing over the iOS versions of the Home, Stocks, News, and Voice Memo apps to macOS 10.14 Mojave.
The project — rumored to be codenamed Marzipan — is still in the early stages, and Apple isn’t even planning on offering it to developers until 2019. And there&rsq

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Vertigo Comics, the DC Entertainment imprint that brought us Sandman, Preacher, The Invisibles, and Y: The Last Man. Today, DC announced that it will be relaunching the line this fall with seven new comics from a diverse array of creators that focuses on “modern, socially relevant, high-concept, inventive” stories.
Many of the creators come from outside of the comics mainstream, including game developer Zoe Quinn, sex-education podcaster Tina

A navigation mistake by Autopilot contributed to the grisly death of a Tesla Model X owner in Mountain View, California, according to a preliminary report released today by the National Transportation Safety Board.Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang was traveling south on US Highway 101 on March 23rd when his Model X P100D smashed into the safety barrier section of a divider that separates the carpool lane from the off-ramp to the left. The front end of his SUV was ripped apart, the v

The 2016 reboot of Hitman is officially getting a sequel — creatively called Hitman 2 — developer IO Interactive announced today. It’s the latest major game announcement to try to get ahead of the E3 rush.
Hitman 2 — not to be confused with 2002’s Hitman 2: Silent Assassin for the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube — continues the story of the bald and barcoded Agent 47, who will set out to “hunt the elusive Shadow Client and unravel his militia once and for all.&

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected background levels of methane in the atmosphere of Mars, and these concentrations seem to go up in the summer and down in the winter, according to new research. Where the methane is coming from is still a mystery, but scientists have some ideas, including that microbes may be the source of the gas.Researchers at NASA and other US universities analyzed five years’ worth of methane measurements Curiosity took at Gale Crater, where the rover landed in

Just as the Department of Justice begins examining whether the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint would raise wireless prices for US consumers, Sprint is announcing a limited-time unlimited data plan for $15 per month. If you can put up with 480p video when using cellular data and don’t mind potentially being slowed down during times of network congestion, $15 is pretty cheap. Sprint’s regular unlimited data plan is $60 per month.
This promotional plan includes unlimited ta

Two photos of what looks like an early prototype of Google’s upcoming Pixel 3 XL have been leaked. The images first surfaced over at the XDA forums and were then posted by Android Police. The phone’s external design — notch, chin, stereo speakers, and single real camera — line up with recent rumors and a report from Bloomberg that revealed some of what Google has in store for consumers this fall. Instead of Google’s signature G, the device has a different emblem on

Craig Brittain, a former revenge porn site operator and current Republican Senate candidate, has sued Twitter for banning him from the site, building on a recent legal ruling involving President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Brittain filed his case on June 5th in Arizona’s district court, throwing a long and varied list of complaints at the company, including inflicting emotional distress as well as violating the First Amendment, federal election law, contract law, and antitrust l

AT&T is once again raising the prices of its grandfathered unlimited data plan, up from $40 to $45 for anyone who’s managed to still hold onto one since AT&T discontinued the original $30 unlimited plan in 2010, via MacRumors.This marks the third time that AT&T has raised the price for grandfathered unlimited customers in the last decade (first to $35 back in 2015, and then to $40 last year). While the slowly increasing price tag is certainly onerous to customers, you’re

Three people who admitted to stealing over $1 million in merchandise from Amazon through an elaborate returns scheme have received prison sentences, and some approach up to six years.
Erin and Leah Finan, a couple from Indiana, pulled off the plot by taking advantage of Amazon’s generous returns policy, which does not always require a returned item be sent back before a replacement is issued. The couple ordered electronics like tablets and GoPro cameras on Amazon, and then initiated retur

The titular superhero characters of CW’s The Flash and Freeform’s new Marvel series Cloak & Dagger came from the comics world and got their powers from exploding science experiments, but that’s where the similarities stop. It would have been easy for Cloak & Dagger to follow The Flash’s highly successful formula and have the initial power-granting incident produce a bounty of supervillains, which the protagonists would have to use their new powers to stop. But in

For some, the phrase “artificial intelligence” conjures nightmare visions — something out of the ’04 Will Smith flick I, Robot, perhaps, or the ending of Ex Machina — like a boot smashing through the glass of a computer screen to stamp on a human face, forever. Even people who study AI have a healthy respect for the field’s ultimate goal, artificial general intelligence, or an artificial system that mimics human thought patterns. Computer scientist Stuart Rus

Google is bracing itself for what will likely be a record-breaking EU fine in the coming weeks. The Financial Times reports that the EU antitrust investigation into Android is concluding, and a fine is expected to be announced in July. The European Commission has been investigating Android after rivals complained that Google has been abusing its market dominance in software than runs on smartphones.
Google has been accused of limiting access to the Google Play Store unless phone makers also bun