Technology news

Machine learning is everywhere these days, but it’s usually more or less invisible: it sits in the background, optimizing audio or picking out faces in images. But this new system is not only visible, but physical: it performs AI-type analysis not by crunching numbers, but by bending light. It’s weird and unique, but counter-intuitively, it’s an excellent demonstration of how deceptively simple these “artificial intelligence” systems are.
Machine learning systems, w

China’s just began testing its first ever “sky-train” earlier this week. The suspension railway is currently zipping around on a monorail track in a province in Southern China, reaching speeds of up to 60 km / hr (about 37 mph). When it launches, the train will be battery-powered, entirely autonomous, and capable of carrying 200 people.
It also looks like a giant panda — if the panda was a little square.
China's first unmanned, panda-shaped "Sky Train" has been tested in

Google has updated its Play Store developer policies to ban several more categories of apps, including cryptocurrency mining ones and apps with disruptive ads, as reported by Android Police.
When it comes to cryptocurrency apps, Google says mining apps are now prohibited, but apps that “remotely manage the mining of cryptocurrency” are still permitted. Apple recently banned apps that mine cryptocurrency, stating that, “the only cryptocurrency mining apps allowed are those that

Electric scooter startups Bird and Skip have landed permits to operate in Portland under a new pilot program that aims to gauge how the controversial form of micro-transportation will fit in the city. And already there’s a bit of drama, or call it skeptical-scooter feelings, scuttling about.
The permits issued by Portland Bureau of Transportation will run until November 20, when the pilot program is set to end. Scooters could be available for rent as soon as this week, PBOT officials said.

Amazon reported earnings for the second quarter of 2018 today, posting an even higher profit than Wall Street analysts estimated thanks in large part to boosts in North American operating income, its highly profitable cloud computing business, and booming sales in its growing ad division. Amazon reported earnings per share of $5.07, more than double of analysts’ estimation of $2.50.That equates to a quarterly profit of $2.5 billion, Amazon’s highest ever and a staggering 1,200 perce

Samsung might be taking its marketing of the Galaxy Note 9 in a different direction than previous Notes: the company is said to be planning a huge, exclusive Fortnite push through a partnership with Epic Games. Both 9to5Google and XDA Developers are reporting that Fortnite’s Android port will launch alongside the Note 9 — perhaps even as a pre-bundled application. Samsung might have a 30-day exclusive on the hugely popular battle royale game, according to 9to5Google.Epic Games did n

Amazon’sweb services AWS continue to be the highlight of the company’s balance sheet, once again showing the kind of growth Amazon is looking for in a new business for the second quarter — especially one that has dramatically better margins than its core retail business.
Despite now running a grocery chain, the company’s AWS division — which has an operating margin over 25 percent compared to its tiny margins on retail — grew 49 percent year-over-year in the q

Slack made a surprise announcement today that it’s acquired Hipchat, once a primary competitor to its workplace chat service, from enterprise software giant Atlassian. As part of the partnership between Slack and Atlassian, Hipchat will be shutting down and the two companies will work together to migrate all of its users over to Slack. The same goes for Stride, the chat and collaboration successor to Hipchat that Atlassian launched last year.Atlassian clarified that Slack is only buying t

HipChat, the workplace chat app that held the throne before Slack was Slack, is being discontinued. Also being discontinued is Atlassian’sown would-be HipChat replacement, Stride.
News of the discontinuation comes first not from Atlassian, but instead from a somewhat surprising source: Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. In a series of tweets, Butterfield says that Slack is purchasing the IP for both products to “better support those users who choose to migrate” to its platform.
But

The Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant goes on sale July 27th, but the 10-inch model (with the nicer bamboo rear finish) is already $50 off for Costco members, bringing the price down to $199. This not only puts it at the same cost as the eight-inch model, but it’s also $30 cheaper than its main rival: the Amazon Echo Show.
You should definitely read our review to get a sense of whether a Smart Display would be a good purchase. This is just the first of them, but it’s alread

Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, is splitting itself up into three companies in order to make itself “fit for the future,” the automaker announced today. Mercedes-Benz, Daimler’s truck division, and Daimler’s mobility division will all become independent entities as a result of the effort (which Daimler AG is calling, in all caps, “PROJECT FUTURE”).Under the reorganization, Mercedes-Benz vans and cars will be rolled into Mercedes-Benz AG. Daim

IBM’s Watson supercomputer gave unsafe recommendations for treating cancer patients, according to documents reviewed by Stat. The report is the latest sign that Watson, once hyped as the future of cancer research, has fallen far short of expectations.In 2012, doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center partnered with IBM to train Watson to diagnose and treat patients. But according to IBM documents dated from last summer, the supercomputer has frequently given bad advice, like when

After a surprisingly weak growth forecast in this week’s earnings report, Facebook’s stock price dropped 19 percent today. The decline, which erased about $120 billion in market value, is the largest one-day drop in the history of the American stock market.
Facebook shares fell as much as 23 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday, when Facebook reported its second quarter earnings. While revenue increased 42 percent in the quarter, it still missed analysts’ projections.More

The UK is currently mulling a lot of new regulations around drones, aimed at clamping down on consumer use ahead of a seemingly inevitable explosion. Among a deluge of proposal is age restriction, banning use of drones weighing more than 0.55 pounds by anyone under the age of 18.
That proposed age limit would be three years younger than the age restriction on applying for a full plane or helicopter license. In the case of the proposed drone restriction, however, kids could potentially still fly

Joshua New Contributor Joshua New is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, a think tank studying the intersection of data, technology and public policy.While artificial intelligence was once heralded as the key to unlocking a new era of economic prosperity, policymakers today face a wave of calls to ensure AI is fair, ethical and safe. New York City Mayor de Blasio recently announced the formation of the nation’s first task force to monitor an

If you’re a car enthusiast then the words “Pirelli” and “Bluetooth speaker” will definitely perk up your ears. The Italian tire manufacturer is licensing and debuting the Pirelli P Zero Sound, a Bluetooth speaker modeled after a Formula 1 racing wheel and tire, at one half the scale.Unfortunately, the one feature that would make this specialty speaker complete is if it were an actual rubber racing tire. But alas, the P Zero Sound is a replica mold (that comes in ni

Last May, Googlelaunched a new events feature designed to help web searchers more easily find things to do nearby, while also challenging Facebook’s dominance in the local events space. Today, Google is updating event search with personalized event suggestions, and well as a new design that puts more event information directly in the search results.
When the feature first launched last year, Google said it was built in response to the millions of search queries the company saw daily for fi

Apple shipped 3.5 million smartwatches in the second quarter this year, an uptick of 30 percent year over year, according to a Canalys report today. Last year the second quarter was Apple’s worst of the year, so the numbers this year suggest the Apple Watch Series 3 is considerably more popular than its predecessor.
Still, rivals like Fitbit and Garmin also made a strong showing in Q2 and they actually widened their share of the market. Features like advanced heart rate metrics and smart

Virgin Galacticis celebrating the third successful supersonic test flight of VSS Unity, the passenger spacecraft it intends to make available for space tourism in the near future. This flight took the craft higher and faster than ever, stressing the system and providing useful data for the rocket plane’s engineers.
Virgin’s two-part flight system uses a traditional jet-powered plane, the WhiteKnightTwo-class VMS Eve, to carry the spacecraft up to about 45,000 feet, after which the la

Earlier this year, BoJack Horseman’s distributor Debmar-Mercury and its production company Tornante Company indicated that they were shopping the show to cable networks. The animated comedy has now found a home on Comedy Central, which will begin airing the show on September 26th.Set in a world that includes anthropomorphic animals living alongside humans, BoJack Horseman is one of Netflix’s most critically acclaimed shows. Comedy Central has acquired the rights to air the entire sh

Google has updated the way you discover events in Search, adding new features that both personalize results and provide more key information about events right in search results.
Now when you search for an event and tap on it, an overview will be presented that shows details like ticket cost, venue reviews, time, and location. You can save events to revisit later, or click through to buy tickets via various vendors like StubHub and Ticketmaster.
The new update covers all types of events, like c

If you took a look at Twitter anytime in the past week, you might have noticed a debate around one of the least popular emoji in the standard Unicode character set; the “aerial tramway.”For the unfamiliar, these tramways are a bit like a car that’s suspended in midair, and travels via cable. This particular emoji (red if you’re on Twitter, or yellow if you’re using Apple messenger) is the smaller, more unassuming cousin to other emoji like the mountain cableway and

There’s a Blood Moon on the rise, and people around the world will be able to catch a glimpse of it on Friday July 27th, 2018, when the Moon ducks into the Earth’s shadow. North America, however, is going to miss it — so we’ll have to catch the event on a live stream.This will be the second Blood Moon (also known as a lunar eclipse) of the year. And it’ll last a whopping one hour and 43 minutes, making it the longest one this century. But the eclipse’s impres

When I flew out to San Diego Comic-Con last week, I noticed one big change to the scene from last year. It wasn’t that Marvel and HBO weren’t there, and there were still thousands of fans dressed up in their favorite T-shirts or costumes. But as I rode in from the airport, I noticed that there were hundreds of electric scooters and bikes strewn around the sidewalks from companies such as Lime, Bird, Ofo, and MoBike. It was a drastic change from 2017’s convention, where I didn&

Charter Communications, better known as Spectrum, has failed to deploy enough high-speed broadband in New York as promised and may lose its permission to operate in the state.
Back in 2016, Charter had agreed that it would expand its network in New York in exchange for being allowed to merge with Time Warner Cable. It agreed to bring high-speed broadband network access to 145,000 underserved homes and businesses. But New York state officials have found “Charter has continually failed to m

Makula Dunbar Contributor Makula Dunbar is a writer with Wirecutter.More posts by this contributorThe best Amazon Prime Day deals you can still grab Summer road trip tech essentials and extras
Editor’s note: This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and TechCrunch may earn affiliate commissions.
One of the many ways to take full advantage of the summer is by attending long-awaited happe

No matter how splintered the cinematic landscape gets, the “twin films” phenomenon keeps resurfacing. Whether it comes from studios trying to ride each other’s publicity coattails, or just parallel evolution as different producers chase the same ideas through the zeitgeist, it’s still fairly common to see, say, the dystopian evil-twin fantasies Double and The Enemy coming out in the same year, or White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen — both White House invasion a

Car2go, the free-floating car-sharing service owned by Daimler, launched in Chicago this week — the company’s 25th market globally. The car-sharing company, which lets customers rent out vehicles on a short-term basis, has been steadily expanding in the past several years, adding to and changing up its fleet beyond the diminutive Smart cars that were once the lone option for customers.
This launch stands out because it’s the first time in four years that car2gohas added a U.S.

ProtonMail is arguably the easiest way to send end-to-end encrypted emails. But encryption only works by default with other ProtonMail users. The company is adding full PGP support so that you can send and receive encrypted emails with people who use other apps and services.
ProtonMail is pretty much like iMessage or WhatsApp, but for email. All communications between two users are seamlessly encrypted. It’s transparent for the end user as you don’t need to manage encryption keys you

Tickets to the TechCrunch Summer Party at August Capital are on the verge of selling out. If you want to attend our 13th annual summer fete on July 27, there’s no time to waste. Reserve your ticket right now.
This event draws an incredible mix of Silicon Valley’s startup community — a who’s who of founders, investors, tech makers, movers and shakers. It’s an excellent way to connect over cocktails and celebrate our shared entrepreneurial spirit in a relaxe

The LG G7 ThinQ is now available at its lowest price yet for Verge readers. We’ve worked with B&H to make this recommended Android phone even more affordable — now $599 for a limited time, which is $50 cheaper than you’ll find elsewhere for the unlocked model.
If you’ve been trying to decide on a new phone, there’s a lot to like about LG’s latest. It is by no means a perfect phone, but Dan Seifert awarded it an Editor’s Choice award because it offer

Amazon hasn’t released a new Echo Dot speaker since September 2016, but newly leaked photos appear to depict a third-generation model that could be released within the next couple months. The images, reported on by AFTVnews and first published by French publications Numerama and FrAndroid, reveal that Amazon is making some significant design changes to its most affordable Alexa device.With the third-gen Echo Dot, it looks like Amazon will ditch the glossy black plastic and flat top of the