Technology news

EA had already announced its biggest titles, like Battlefield V, before its E3 keynote. But it showed up with a number of smaller announcements, including a new indie game that’s launching today, as well as some gameplay footage for the highly anticipated BioWare game Anthem. And the show was shot through with promises that EA isn’t going to repeat last year’s Battlefront II loot crate debacle. It was a low-key way to start a week of big reveals, but not a disappointing one.
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Uberis reportedly looking into buying Motivate, the company that makes Ford GoBike’s in the San Francisco Bay Area and Citi Bike over on the East Coast. This comes following reports of Lyft getting close to purchasing Motivate in a $250 million deal.
Uber bought bike-share startup JUMP, a dockless, electric bike-share service, earlier this year, for about $250 million. In April, Motivate deployed electric bikes in San Francisco. Once JUMP’s 18-month pilot program with the c

Good afternoon, downtown L.A.! The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the giant banners with gun toting cyborgs have been unveiled.
That can only mean one thing: it’s time for E3!Electronic Arts kicked the show off this morning with the first official press conference, and the big news was, as anticipated, Battlefield V.
Battlefield VThe World War II title will likely get a little more love at the Xbox press conference tomorrow morning, but we did get a look at some compelling gamep

BioWare’s answer to Destiny was shown in action today at E3 2018, and it looks impressive. Here’s a look at what sort of experiences you’ll be able to play within Anthem come February 2019.
If you’ve been following Anthem, then you know that it’s set in a future where humanity lives in cities protected by freelancers who wear mechs. During today’s gameplay reveal, we watch players donning “javelins” go out into the wild, beyond the city, where lar

At E3 today, DICE revealed several big updates to Star Wars: Battlefront II. Players will be able to play during the Clone Wars era, and the game will introduce several new playable characters, including Anakin Skywalker, Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. There’s no release date yet for the DLC.
While Battlefront II has allowed you to play as a clone trooper, it’s largely focused on the latest series of films: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and Rogue One. This is

Sure, E3 doesn’t actually officially start until Tuesday, but the big news kicks off this weekend. Here’s a quick overview of some of the biggest new titles we expect to be shown off at press conferences from Sony,Microsoft and Nintendo,but there’s a lot more to the show than just the big three.
EA started several days of big announcements with a press conference in downtown L.A. this morning, focused on Battlefield V, Fifa 2019 and a bunch more. Microsoft,meanwhile, will be th

BioWare’s big upcoming shooter made an appearance at E3 today, and it looks as ambitious as ever. Announced last year, Anthem lets players strap into exosuits to protect humanity, which is living under a protected city. Here’s the latest cinematic trailer.Anthem is an open-world shooter where players can roam and find objectives, enemy mobs and patrols, ruins, as well as special events — and many of these tasks drop loot. One of the biggest draws for Anthem is that it combines

The beautiful and haunting indie game Sea of Solitude that explores dark emotions like sadness and loneliness now has a new trailer and more details, announced at today’s EA keynote. It’s an EA Originals game that was picked up in 2015 and has since been in development.
Sea of Solitude is about a young woman named Kay, who is suffering from such loneliness, that her hopelessness transforms her into a monster. After her transformation, she she drifts on a small boat through a deserte

The computers of a US Navy contractor were breached by Chinese hackers, who stole hundreds of gigabytes of information about secret projects, reports The Washington Post.According to officials who spoke with the Post, the breaches occurred in January and February of this year. The target was an unnamed contractor that worked with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which the Navy uses to conduct “research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center for submarine

EA has announced a sequel to adorable 2016 game Unravel, and it’s coming out today. Unravel 2, revealed at EA’s E3 keynote, is a new puzzle platformer that you can play co-op with a buddy. You’ll both star as adorable yarn critters, also known as Yarny.In this adventure, you’ll be exploring natural landscapes such as forests and urban locales, like towns. Better yet, you’ll be able to purchase and play Unravel 2 right away. Gotta love the announce-release combo tha

Airbnb — the travel startup that lets individuals rent out private homes or rooms in private homes to people as an alternative to hotels — has racked up more than 17,000 nights in its Open Homes program, a voluntary effort where Airbnb hosts can offer their houses and rooms free of charge to people in cities going through an emergency such as a hurricane or flood or other critical incident, either because those people have been displaced from their homes or because they have come to

Titanfall developer Respawn’s Vince Zampella gave us a small teaser during today’s EA conference at E3, and while there aren’t many details yet, what we know so far sounds juicy. Yes, there’s a new Star Wars game dropping holiday 2019 called Jedi: Fallen Order, and it’s being made by the people behind Titanfall 2.All we know so far is that this game will be dark and gritty, and will take place during a time when Jedi are hunted following the rise of the Empire in R

Battlefield V is getting a multiplayer battle royale mode that’s been “re-imagined for Battlefield.” Developers are promising to “bring you an experience that you haven’t had before.” For now, there are few details on what the new mode will look like, but DICE developers say more information will come soon, perhaps during the Xbox E3 briefing tomorrow.
In addition to battle royale, there are several other tweaks to improve gameplay. Players will now be able t

If humans disappeared from the face of the Earth, letting evolution run its course, what would animals look like in 50 million years? That was the premise of the book After Man: A Zoology of the Future, published in 1981 by paleontologist Dougal Dixon. Last month, Breakdown Press published a new edition of the book.
The mythological-looking creatures illustrated in the book seem to come out of a Tim Burton movie. There’s the rabbuck, a rabbit-like animal that has grown the size of a deer

Electric scooters have become the hot new area for startups and “innovation.” For those who haven’t been keeping track, there are three main players in the Silicon Valley scooter wars: Bird,Limeand Spin. Bird first launched in Venice, Calif. before expanding into San Francisco in March. It’s worth pointing out that Bird, for now, is strictly an electric scooter company. That’s not the case for Lime and Spin,which both have their own bike-share services deployed

A year ago, we got our first look at Google founder Larry Page’s secretive “flying car” project, Kitty Hawk: an all-electric hover-bike designed to be flown specifically over water. This week, the company unveiled an updated version of its recreational aircraft, the Flyer. And it’s quite the improvement over the original concept.The Flyer weighs 250 pounds and sports 10 battery-powered propellors and two joysticks. It looks sort of like bobsled mounted on a couple of pon

Next week professional services firm Accenture will be launching a new tool to help its customers identify and fix unfair bias in AI algorithms. The idea is to catch discrimination before it gets baked into models and can cause human damage at scale.
The “AI fairness tool”, as it’s being described, is one piece of a wider package the consultancy firm has recently started offering its customers around transparency and ethics for machine learning deployments — whi

Apple is reportedly planning to make a change to the Apple Watch, according to Fast Company: a future version might replace its physical button for a solid-state one that provides haptic feedback, much like the updated home button introduced in the iPhone 7 a couple of years ago.Fast Company cites a “source with direct knowledge of Apple’s plans,” saying that the company will keep the same configuration of buttons, but that it won’t physically move, relying instead on Ap

Apple is reportedly planning to make a change to the Apple Watch, according to Fast Company: a future version might replace its physical button for a solid-state one that provides haptic feedback, much like the updated home button introduced in the iPhone 7 a couple of years ago.Fast Company cites a “source with direct knowledge of Apple’s plans,” saying that the company will keep the same configuration of buttons, but that it won’t physically move, relying instead on Ap

Overall leisure time has increased by over an hour per day in the past ten years. How are we spending these extra 365 hours per year? Not playing with our kids, working on passion projects, exercising, or any other wholesome activity you may have guessed — we’re spending it in front of screens. In 2007, just 33 percent of leisure time was spent on screens; today, that number has increased to 47 percent — over three and a half hours per day. According to research from McKi

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributorScaling startups are setting up secondary hubs in these cities Here is where CEOs of heavily funded startups went to school
With Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub this week, we can now decisively declare a trend: 2018 is shaping up as a darn good year for U.S. venture-backed M&A.
So far this year, acquirers have spent just over $20 billion in disclosed-price purchases of U.S. VC-funded companies, according to Crunch

I’m not a big horror fan, but there’s a certain kind of horror movie that uses the genre’s tropes to tell a story — and isn’t necessarily all that scary — that I sometimes really love. The Witch is one. And the other week I got around to seeing A Quiet Place, which is another that definitely works for me.
One thing that makes the film work so well is how lean it is: it introduces its characters, then immediately lights a fuse and watches the events unfold. Th

Father’s Day is next Sunday, June 17th, which means you have a little over a week to find a gift for the dad in your life. The Verge’s Graduation Gift Guide is a good place to look for ideas for Father’s Day gifts, but you can also check out some of the sales that retailers like Best Buy and Walmart are running.
Whether your dad is into the latest gadgets or is more of a tech novice, a new TV is always a hit. Walmart, Vizio, Best Buy, and B&H all have some great TVs on sal

The first trailer for La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s upcoming biopic First Man has touched down. The film will follow the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong as he prepares to become the first human to step on the moon.The film is based on Armstrong’s authorized biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, written by James R. Hansen. While that book was a comprehensive look at the late astronaut’s life, the film will cover a smaller snippet: the years between 1961

Electronic Arts will kick off E3 2018 with EA Play on Saturday, June 9th. The event begins in LA at 11AM PT, where the developer is expected to stream announcements, gameplay, and more.EA announced its latest game in the Battlefield series, Battlefield V, last month, but there’s still a lot to learn before its release this October. It will be on hand and playable for the first time during the event, where EA is also expected to show off more gameplay. Anthem, the next game from the creato

When I think about the future evolution of my job — in that sliver of time between now and the inevitable AI automation of all writing and reporting — I’m most curious about what will end up replacing my laptop. The Google Pixel 2 XL has, for most intents and purposes, taken over as my professional camera, but a smartphone isn’t quite versatile or comfortable enough to pen notes or longer articles on. This is where Intel’s Tiger Rapids concept device, shown off for

It’s Emmy nomination season, and Nathan For You star Nathan Fielder has released an important informational video: someone, but definitely not one of his fans, could hack the Emmys.The winking video includes a real cybersecurity researcher, who walks Fielder through a phishing attack that could be used to grab credentials from online voters. While the theoretical scheme would require a determined criminal to compile a list of Emmys voters and get them to follow fraudulent email links, the

“Reading is hard and we just don’t want to do it,” scream the European Union countries like frightened children at the sight of their first reading test. The reading test of course being the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) whose sole purpose is to protect the vital right to privacy of European Union residents. A right that we can only dream of here in the United States of Big Brother. Should we face the facts here or should we just pat them on the back, give them a b

Don't get us wrong: We love traveling as much as the next jet-setter, but we'd be lying if we said it doesn't come with its share of challenges. From navigating your way through uncharted territory, to picking up a new language, to forgoing cell reception, the traveling struggle is real. The last thing you should have to worry about is charging your devices at a moment's notice.
SEE ALSO: The best cases for the iPhone 8 Plus, according to customer reviews
That's where the Twist Pl

When the average person thinks of hacking, they might picture a trenchcoat-wearing citizen in The Matrix, furiously pounding away at a keyboard in a darkened room, in attempt to “infiltrate the mainframe,” only pausing to spout snarky one-liners into a headset mic and triumphantly exclaim, “I’m in!” when the job is done. 
SEE ALSO: 6 VPNs that can help you break through China's 'Great Firewall'
Obviously, that’s a bunch of nonsense, and most real life &ld

Oppo R15 Pro
$$549View Product
The Good
Solid performance and battery life • Great selfies • Nice big screen
The Bad
Some software bugs • Should be cheaper • Fumbles on the details
The Bottom Line
The Oppo R15 Pro is a good phone, but the very similar OnePlus 6 is a better deal.Mashable Score3.5Cool Factor3.5Learning Curve3.0Performance4.0Bang for the Buck2.5The Oppo R15 Pro is an interesting smartphone, but not for the reasons you might think. It's an all-around solid phabl

It looks like our next door stellar neighbors might not be so bad for life after all. 
NASA’s Chandra space telescope has revealed that any planets circling Alpha Centauri, which is located about 4 light-years from Earth, could be a more friendly place for life than we initially thought.
Scientists have always held Alpha Centauri is one of our best chances for finding life beyond the solar system, but the three-star system was believed to be so inundated with harmful X-ray radiation t

Is there a right way to announce a breakup? 
On YouTube, there is. 
Like how celebrity couples release joint statements to the tabloid press when they break up, it's become somewhat of a requirement for popular YouTubers to announce the demise of their relationships in joint videos posted to their channels. 
The latest participants in the breakup video trend were the YouTube couple: Liza Koshy and David Dobrik.
Liza, 22, and David, 21, built a content empire together over the last

At some point in social media history, Twitter's grammar police officially crossed into grammar Nazi territory. 
I'm not sure when it became socially acceptable to tell strangers that they used the incorrect version of "your." I don't know when we started caring so much about proper capitalization and dangling participles. I find it profoundly disturbing that people now look to Merriam-Webster as a moral authority.
SEE ALSO: Public service announcement: Stop! F*cking! Snitch tagging!
Back i

It hasn’t even been a month since Brussels was hyped about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being (supposedly) grilled by the European Parliament. COO Sheryl Sandberg is next on the agenda, rumored to be questioned by MEPs in June. Simultaneously, for five months now the European Commission has been hard at work within their High Level Expert Group on Fake News (HLEG), tasked with “advising on all issues arising in the context of fake information spread across traditional and social med

Taipei is game-crazy. From pinball machines to toy dispensers, the gray city blocks are sprinkled with the neon glow of mini arcades, with enticing names such as “Happy Moments” and “Sweet Box” (😬). But no game is more common than the claw machine. Claw machine games are, of course, not exclusive to Taipei. There are plenty in the United States, as well as the rest of the world, but they’re largely restricted to arcades, dark corners of malls, or big restau

WWDC. Apple's software show. "Dub-dub."
Whatever you call Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, it's the event where we find out what cool new features are coming to the company's multiple platforms: iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It's also where we get to know what's on Apple's mind.
The new software shows Apple's hand in ways its hardware doesn't: From new features to combat iPhone addiction to updates meant to prevent data companies from tracking you, Apple is playing both defense and off

Luck finally ran out for a tiny dog in Australia known for terrorizing saltwater crocodiles. Pippa, a 10-year-old terrier was perhaps known for a series of viral videos showing the pint-sized dog chasing much larger crocodiles off the banks of the Adelaide River. In her remote Australian town, she had become somewhat of a folk hero in recent years. But as Pippa learned recently, luck never lasts. Kai Hansen, Pippa’s owner, told Australia’s ABC Radio that the dog was just doing what

On Friday, Simone Giertz, YouTuber and creator of "Shitty Robots," announced some positive news: Lab results revealed that the tumor removed from her brain in late May is noncancerous. 
In a photo accompanying the tweet, Giertz showed off her Gold Creator Award from YouTube for passing one million subscribers. 
SEE ALSO: Simone Giertz, creator of 'Shitty Robots,' undergoes surgery to remove brain tumor
"So big fricking cheers to us and to many years ahead," she tweeted. Three year