Technology news

Sony announced a new pair of compact cameras last week with some incredible zoom capabilities, going from as wide as 24mm to as zoomed in as 720mm. This isn’t the first of Sony’s compact cameras to have that exact zoom range, but this year’s models add 4K shooting and, in one instance, a touchscreen. That should turn them into far more capable cameras that get closer to rivaling Sony’s much loved RX100 series.
The new models, HX99 and HX95, are about the size of an iPod

Latin American small businesses just got a big boost with a new commitment for a $200 million lending joint venture between the Bogota-based startup Portal Finance and Latin America’s largest financial services institution, BTG Pactual.
For Portal Finance, the deal with BTG caps a meteoric rise, which has seen the company raise $1.5 million at a $60 million valuation and move from a small $5 million lending pilot to a $200 million deal in the span of two years.
“A year ago we were fo

2018 has been an incredibly strong year for IPOs, particularly in the technology sector. Among the brand names this year that have made their public debuts are Dropbox, Xiaomi, Spotify (through a direct listing), DocuSign, Carbon Black, Zuora, among many, many others.
Given the strength of these numbers through the first eight months of this year, the key question for the public markets is whether the year will close out just as strongly or die in a whimper.
It’s a decidedly mixed picture

When you’re primarily a storage company with enterprise aspirations, as Dropboxis, you need a layer to to help people use the content in your system beyond simple file sharing. That’s why Dropbox created Paper, to act as that missing collaboration layer. They announced some enhancements to Paper to keep people working in their collaboration tool without having to switch programs.
“Paper is Dropbox’s collaborative workspace for teams. It includes features where users can w

The US, UK, and three other governments have called on tech companies to build backdoors into their encrypted products, so that law enforcement will always be able to obtain access. If companies don’t, the governments say they “may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative, or other measures” in order to get into locked devices and services.
Their statement came out of a meeting last week between nations in the Five Eyes pact, an intelligence sharing agreement between the

Just about a month after the merger of the short-form video apps Musical.ly and TikTok, the app is introducing a new social feature, allowing users to post their reactions to the videos that they watch.
Instead of text comments, these reactions will take the form of videos that are essentially superimposed on top of existing clips. The idea of a reaction video should be familiar to anyone who’s spent some time on YouTube, but TikTokis incorporating the concept in way that looks like a

Looks like Sujeet Kumar, Amod Malviya and Vaibhav Gupta’s decision to jump ship from Flipkart to focus on their own venture is paying off.
The trio announced this morning that their B2B e-commerce startup Udaan had raised $225 million in Series C funding co-led by DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with capital coming out of the latter’s growth fund. The cash infusion, according to Indian media reports, makes Udaan the fastest-ever Indian startup to be valued at over $1 bill

Audibegan production of its first all-electric SUV on Monday, three years after the German automaker unveiled a concept version of the vehicle at the International Motor Show in Frankfurt.
The company won’t reveal the production-version of the Audi e-tron SUV until Sept. 17, in a what promises to be a splashy event in San Francisco.
Audi, which is owned by Volkswagen Group, has been working towards mass production of the e-tron quattro for years now, offering periodic updates and teas

The VoCore2 is a Wi-Fi capable computer with a 580 MHz CPU and 128 RAM that supports video, USB, and Ethernet. And it plays Doom. That’s right: this is a computer you can easily swallow and allow your biome flora to play a hard core FPS while you slowly digest the package.
The product started life on Indiegogo where it raised $100,000. Now it’s available for $17 for the barebones unit or $24 for the unit with USB and MicroSD card. You can also buy a four inch display for it that lets

It’s been the subject of creepshots on public transit. It’s reportedly been stolen and sold for thousands on the black market a full two months before its official announcement. And in the latest leak of Google’s upcoming Pixel 3 XL, well, someone accidentally left the thing in their Lyft. It happens to the best of us, right? It’s understandable that people with test units might be letting their guard down a bit since this phone has already been so thoroughly leaked.The

Swiss startup Avrios reckons business mobility is going to get a whole lot more interesting as companies adopt more tailored mobility solutions, rather than sticking with the traditional one car per person model.
And at the same time as businesses are seeking to accelerate their progressive cred by moving away from combustion cars to greener alternatives, new urban mobility choices are starting to spring up to offer consumers a multi-modal spectrum of personal transport choice. So the

Stamping out the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a priority for big internet companies. But it’s also a difficult and harrowing job for those on the frontline — human moderators who have to identify and remove abusive content. That’s why Google is today releasing free AI software designed to help these individuals.Most tech solutions in this domain work by checking images and videos against a catalog of previously identified abusive material. (See, for example:

The future of Ethereum has come under scrutiny with claims that the collapse of its cryptocurrency is inevitable. And co-founder Vitalik Buterin agrees, for now. In a piece published on TechCrunch, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Jeremy Rubin stipulates the price of ETH – the network’s underlying digital asset – is bound to plummet. “In Ethereum as it presently exists, this is absolutely true,” Buterin said in a post on Reddit. “[A]nd in fact if Ethereum were not

The recent fluctuations in the value of Bitcoin are just the latest in a series of spectacular peaks and troughs since it was created in 2009. (Though its price has been falling recently, it remains five times higher than last April, before the latest major peak began.) Commentators are often dismissive of Bitcoin buyers, writing them off as naive victims of a fraudulent bubble. But if we look more carefully, we can trace the history of Bitcoin through five key narratives. Each has drawn in a d

Three years ago, almost to the day, I was anguished to find Kodak, the once-great photography brand, slapped atop some random selfie sticks. Now, walking through the same IFA halls in Berlin, I find Polaroid’s name emblazoned on some dreadful laptops. These two companies — or, rather, whatever vulture capitalists have taken ownership of their names after their businesses went bust — are engaged in a miserable race to see who can put their name to the worst possible product.
To

Well, Google seems about as good as keeping its latest phones away from the public as a colander is at holding water. Yes, as reported by the Android Police, the Pixel 3 XL has been leaked again. The site was sent images from a figure they call “Anonymous Alligator,” a Lyft driver who took some snaps of the phone after an individual forgot it in his vehicle. Have a look: On one hand, there isn’t too much we can learn from these photos that we haven’t learnt in a pre

Sony’s Japan division has ceased repairs on the PlayStation 2 console, as reported by Kotaku. Back in late June, the company put out a notice to local PS2 owners with a deadline for requesting one final repair. Customers had until August 31st to fill out an application for after-sales service, and they’ve now got until September 7th to get their devices (and any malfunctioning peripherals) to the PlayStation Clinic repair depot.Sony’s notice on the termination of PlayStation 2

The PlayStation 2 was the console Sony couldn’t kill. It was too popular. Too enduring. Top-tier developers kept making games for it, long after it passed its prime. In fact, Sony only stopped production five years ago, thirteen years after it first hit shelves. But now Sony is killing the PlayStation 2. For realsies. It’s serious. As reported by Kotaku, Sony Japan is discontinuing its aftercare service from Friday. Busted consoles that arrive at the PlayStation Clinic in Iwate Pref

The threat of attack is very real for upstart cryptocurrency projects. Bitcoin Gold, a popular hard fork of Bitcoin, is set to be delisted from cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex. The reason for the removal is that the currency has suffered a series of debilitating heists that netted thieves over $20 million in stolen funds. Back in May, Bitcoin Gold was hijacked with rented computing power. After hackers took control of more than 51 percent of the overall hash power, more than 388,000 BTG (approx

It was going to be the deal that would Microsoft’s rightful place as a mobile superpower. This time five years ago, Microsoft bought Nokia’s mobile business (and a meaty patent portfolio to boot) for a cool $7.6 billion. A steal, when you consider the Finnish icon once controlled 41 percent of the global handset market. Five years ago today, Nokia sold its smartphone businesses to Microsoft. pic.twitter.com/qqfycrgmOd — Tero Alhonen (@teroalhonen) September 3, 2018 We all know

I used to have an app that tracked how long I spent on my phone and reminded me of how often I picked it up during the day. After discovering that I spend around five hours a week just endlessly scrolling through my Instagram feed, filled with glamorized holiday pictures and perfectly structured lunches, I took the assertive decision to do something about it — and deleted the social detoxing app. I enjoy pointlessly scrolling through Instagram, is that so bad? But I must admit, I can&rsqu

It’s hard not to be wowed by today’s 4K TVs, living room projectors, and multi-room sound systems. And between Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu, HBO Now, Shudder, FilmStruck, and the myriad of internet TV services, it’s easy to bombard ourselves with entertainment options beyond the traditional walls of cable. But we’re still living in a fragmented world that requires hopping between apps, remembering what show is where, and keeping tabs on content that might suddenly disappe

UK founded startup Funding Circle,a p2p lending platform which focuses on the underserved small business market, has announced a “potential intention” to float on the London Stock Exchange.
In a press release today, announcing the publication of a Registration Document for a possible future IPO, Funding Circle says that should it proceed with floating on the stock market it would be looking to raise around £300 million (~$387M). According to the document the business is be

Sony has been blocking cross-play and progression between Fortnite on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch / Xbox One. While there were some signs the company was listening to the feedback to its controversial decision, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has made the company’s stance clear. In an interview with the Press Association (via The Independent) at IFA last week, Yoshida claims the PlayStation 4 is the best experience to play Fortnite:
“On cross-platform, our way of thinking is always

Countingup, the U.K. fintech that provides a business bank account that combines bookkeeping, has raised £2.3 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Forward Partners, with participation from previous backer Frontline Ventures, and JamJar Investments.
Founded last year by Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, Countingupwants to simplify the life of sole traders and other small businesses by reinventing the business current account. Fouracre&rsquo

You wait for years for a full-frame mirrorless camera to show up from the most dominant brands in photography, and then two show up at once. Right after Nikon announced its first serious step into high-end mirrorless with the Z7 and Z6, it looks like Canon’s own effort is imminent. Leaks from Japanese website Nokishita have revealed images of the camera, its spec sheet, and details on the initial lens lineup.The camera is apparently called the EOS R, and looks a lot like a slimmed-down fu