Technology news

One of the big, noteworthy announcements ahead of this year’s E3 show was that the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, first revealed back in March, would contain a battle royale mode in the style of Fortnite and Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. The game mode is going to be called Blackout, and at the time, developer Treyarch and publisher Activision revealed only a few small details about it. We knew Blackout would feature the largest Call of Duty map ever made — approximately 1,500

The Justice Department announced today that it will not seek a legal stay of the AT&T–Time Warner merger ruling, clearing the way for the completion of the giant deal.Judge said a stay that scuttled the deal would be “unjust”
In a sharp rebuke to antitrust enforcers, a judge ruled this week that he would allow the deal to go through despite the Justice Department’s lawsuit. In his decision, the judge suggested that an appeal would be futile and that granting a tempor

When PT — a playable teaser for Hideo Kojima’s reboot of Silent Hill — left the PlayStation Store in 2015, it took on an urban legend status. No longer downloadable and with the larger game canceled to boot, only those who already had PT on their system could continue to play it. But after Sony’s E3 press conference earlier this week, some fans think that the legend isn’t entirely dead.
PT originally came out in 2014 and instantly became viral on social media. In a

Instagram confirmed to BuzzFeed News today that it’s no longer testing a feature that would have let people see when someone took a screenshot of their story. This is incredibly good news for all creepers, myself included. The company said in February that it was testing this feature and that some users would receive a warning when they tried to screenshot something for the first time: “Next time you take a screenshot or screen recording, the person who posted the story will be able

Samsung said today that it’s going to make its factories and offices in the US, Europe, and China run on 100 percent renewable energy. The announcement comes after a more than year-long Greenpeace campaign advocating for greener practices and protesting the company’s role in worsening climate change.Activists have pointed out that Samsung lags behind rivals when it comes to going green. Apple and Google have both purchased enough renewable energy, such as wind or solar energy, to of

When the battle royale gaming sensation Fortnite arrived on the Nintendo Switch during E3 2018, Sony immediately blocked cross-play between players on the Switch and its own PlayStation 4. The company went a step further by forbidding Epic accounts that were previously linked with a PS4 from working on the Switch version of the game, preventing people with both consoles from syncing their progress and items earned or purchased between the two platforms.Sony has refused to allow cross-play betwe

The SEC has declared that Ethereum and its digital coin ether, are not securities today, during the Yahoo Finance summit. The announcement led the price of ether to rise by over 8 percent, hitting a high of $520 per token.
William Hinman, director of the division of corporation finance at the SEC, explained at the summit: “Based on my understanding of the present state of ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of ether are not securities tran

The Boring Company scored a surprise victory in Chicago today with the announcement that Mayor Rahm Emanuel had selected Elon Musk‘s tunneling venture to design, build, and operate a rapid transit link between O’Hare International Airport and the city’s central business district. Even more surprising: Emanuel is adamant that the project will require no taxpayer money. The Boring Company has promised to pay for it.The project will cost less than $1 billion, sources told the Chi

Few games pack the emotional wallop of The Last of Us. The tale of a grizzled and grieving survivor of a zombie apocalypse reluctantly agreeing to ferry a child to the resistance, only to find that she has given him a new reason to live, introduced a new maturity to developer Naughty Dog, previously best known for its more lighthearted Crash Bandicoot and Uncharted series. It also gave the company a hit: The Last of Us sold more than 17 million copies, all but ensuring the company would invest

In an air-conditioned chrome trailer sitting across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center, Masanori Takeuchi watches patiently as I boot up a game he produced nearly 15 years ago. Now the senior managing director at FromSoftware, a legendary Japanese game studio most known for the Dark Souls series, Takeuchi has been with the company since long before it made the video games that vaulted it to worldwide fame.That includes a time in the studio’s past, in the ‘90s and earl

Are you ready for some football? No, it’s not time for the Super Bowl. It’s the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the biggest football (okay, fine, soccer) tournament in the world. This year’s tournament kicks off today in Russia. Matches will run over the course of the next month, leading up to the finals on July 15th.Since the matches are taking place in Russia, the games will likely air in the morning or midday if you live in the US. So that means you’ll probably want a way to kee

One of last year’s most talked about Chromebooks is getting an update this month. Samsung announced the second generation of its Chromebook Plus today, which will include a few upgrades like a second camera and new processor.
The Samsung Chromebook Plus (V2) doesn’t stray too far from the size and style of the original model that came out in early 2017. The device can still switch between laptop and tablet modes, and comes with a built-in pen that doesn’t require any charging

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has been meeting with cryptocurrency investors and hedge funds recently after getting fired from the job ten months ago. The former Breitbart News executive chairman is in talks with them about launching an initial coin offering through his investment firm Bannon & Company.
Bannon confirmed to The New York Times in an interview published today that he has a “good stake” in bitcoin. “Control of the currency is control of ev

It’s been three years since we’ve seen anything from Square Enix regarding its episodic remake of Final Fantasy VII. The game was a no-show again at E3 this year, but it remains in development, according to Tetsuya Nomura, who has a hand in the title along with directing Kingdom Hearts III. “We are developing [Final Fantasy VII] in parallel, and it’s not just in the early concept stages,” he tells The Verge. “We are actually in development.”The longtime

Microsoft is planning to bring its SwiftKey keyboard to Windows 10 later this year. The software giant has started testing SwiftKey in its public beta program for Windows 10 testers. The keyboard includes autocorrections and predictions just like on iOS and Android, and it will power the touch keyboard when Windows 10 devices are used in tablet mode.
The latest Windows 10 preview, codenamed Redstone 5, includes access to SwiftKey in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, and Russ

OnePlus has sold over 1 million units of its latest smartphone, the OnePlus 6, in just under a month, according to company founder and CEO Pete Lau speaking with Business Insider.
Lau said the sales benchmark actually happened in 22 days — the two previous phones OnePlus released each took three months to reach the same milestone. While 1 million sounds like a large number, it’s quite small in relation to sales for phones like the Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPhone, which can move tens

Nintendo’s Labo kits captured the imagination of gamers everywhere with their creative cardboard constructions, so it was only natural that we’d eventually see other companies start to build their own cardboard creations.
At E3, Nyko announced the Labo’s first competitor: the $20 PixelQuest Arcade Kit, which turns a Nintendo Switch into a miniature two-player arcade cabinet. And like the Nintendo Labo that the PixelQuest Arcade is, shall we say, ”heavily inspired”

It’s standard practice to receive your paycheck every couple of weeks. But now Caviar, the food delivery service from Square, is launching an option for delivery drivers that’ll make the process of getting paid instant.
From today forward, all of Caviar’s couriers will have the option to receive payment immediately after completing a delivery, so long as they receive the money inside Square’s Cash App. From there, they can choose to transfer the money to a bank account,

Over the past few years, smart home tech has become more and more accessible. It connects to our phones and routers, it speaks our language, and it’s increasingly easy to find that you’ve bought a product that includes smart home features, without even thinking about it.
So what does a modern smart home look like, and how can you start building one? In our latest episode of Workflow, we decided to set a roughly $200 limit to see how much stuff we could get to start making your house

Influential announced today that it has raised $12 million in Series B funding.
The funding came from existing investors Capital Zed, ECA Ventures, Paradigm Talent Agency, ROAR and Tech Coast Angels, as well as from Hollywood agency WME .
Just a couple weeks ago, Influential said it was working with (and had raised money from) WME. The agency is the first to try out a new Influential product called Talent Pro, which gives agents access to social data around a broader pool of talent.
Influential

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out more than a year ago, which means enough time has passed that we’re starting to see its influence on other games. One upcoming game that draws heavily from Link’s adventure is Sable, a new title from Shedworks, a two-person indie team from London. Development on the game started around the same time that the Switch launched last year, and when the team played Zelda for the first time, they realized it was built on many of the same cor

Spider-Man has a long legacy that covers almost every form of media, including comic books, movies, TV shows, and video games. He’s one of the most popular superheroes on the planet, and it’s hard to find someone who isn’t familiar with the webslinger’s powers and history.
Insomniac has nailed it
That means that Insomniac’s Spider-Man game for the PlayStation 4 has a lot of expectations to live up to, especially when it comes to the most important piece of the puzz

Last year, a $2 million global competition called the Go Fly Prize was introduced with the goal of producing “an easy-to-use, personal flying device.” These devices needed to be safe, quiet, ultra compact, and capable of carrying a single person 20 miles or more without refueling or recharging. Think of it like the first X-Prize competition, which effectively spurred the private space industry, or the DARPA Grand Challenge, which gave birth to the current self-driving car craze.
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