Technology news

Google’s upcoming Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones may be among the most leaked devices in modern consumer electronics history. With just two weeks to go until the official October 9th press event, where both devices will be unveiled presumably alongside some other Google-made hardware products, we’re getting yet another visual leak of the handsets, courtesy of WinFuture.This comes after a torrent of leaks revealing what the devices look like and what the specs are, in addition to

Content warning: the following story contains sensitive material regarding mental health, self-harm, and suicide.
Two months after Yousef “FouseyTube” Erakat threw a disastrous concert in LA that ended in a bomb threat, the YouTube star says he’s giving up his channel with 10 million subscribers. “It’s not worth it,” Erakat said in a video uploaded last week. While the confession seems heartfelt and genuine, Erakat’s history of sensational dishonesty in

At least one supposed member of a group calling itself “Project Edge” claims they will be undertaking a mission to travel to the edge of the Earth later this week. Here’s hoping they can finally figure out if our planet resides on a series of turtles’ backs, or the shoulders of Atlas. In the following video, uploaded to Facebook last month, Desmond Walsh – some guy who thinks the Earth is flat – sends out a call for volunteers. There’s a better-than-nau

Slack has purchased Astro, the maker of an email app with a built-in smart assistant that helped sort through your messages and elevate important items to your attention.
It may seem curious for Slack, the giant chat app with the goal of killing email, to buy an email app — but the pairing makes a good deal of sense. Astro’s focus was on business users, and it built out some smart integrations inside of Slack. With the two teams combined, Slack can use Astro’s experience to bu

A year ago, dockless electric scooters first appeared on the streets San Francisco and Santa Monica. The initial reaction was bewilderment, eventually giving over to annoyance and dismissal. The companies that were scattering these scooters everywhere, like Bird and Lime, seemed to epitomize tech-bro arrogance. Surely the fad would fade and the scooters would be shipped back overseas from whence they came, destined for some landfill in China.Twelve months later, the scooters are in over 100 cit

Waze, like its parent company’s mapping product, now supports navigation through Apple CarPlay with a new update out today, via 9to5Mac. Last week, Google released an update to its iOS app to fully support CarPlay navigation, which arrived as part of iOS 12’s third-party support feature. Waze said it was coming soon, and it looks like the company needed just a few extra days to get it into shape.Just like with Google Maps, you’ll now be able to sync Waze directions from your i

Content warning: the following story contains sensitive material regarding physical and verbal abuse.
Ian Rylett, the 55-year-old British co-founder of the mega-popular YouTube empire SevenAwesomeKids, was arrested in Florida in August, BuzzFeed News reported today. All of the company’s channels, however, are still up: SevenAwesomeKids, SevenSuperGirls, SevenPerfectAngels, SevenFabulousTeens, SevenCoolTweens, SevenFuntasticGirls, and SevenTwinklingTweens. It appears that none of the chann

Toyota may finally relent and allow Android Auto to work in its cars, according to Bloomberg. An official announcement reportedly could come as soon as next month.The giant Japanese carmaker was one of the last major automakers to announce CarPlay compatibility. After holding out for years, Toyota announced this past January that Apple’s own in-car infotainment service would show up in its cars starting with the 2019 Avalon.However, the company has continued to eschew Android Auto, with s

Slack, the workplace communications platform used by over eight million people, today announced it had acquired Astro — a beloved email client that uses AI to help users manage their overflowing inboxes. Big news — Astro is joining @SlackHQ! Slack is the fastest-growing business application in history, and we'll join Slack's mission to make work simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. In prep, we’ll shut down our Astro apps on Oct 10. Learn more at https://t.co/itOD5Z5zl5

The man behind a large “kid-friendly” YouTube channel was recently arrested for attempted molestation of a minor — and you can still view his entire library of videos on the site. Buzzfeed News today broke the story of what happened to the popular channel SevenAwesomeKids and its network of offshoots: The creator, Ian Rylett, was arrested last month on the aforementioned charge — specifically, he’s accused of attempting lascivious acts with a girl who was to a

Reddit users have uncovered an elaborate campaign to seed Reddit’s most popular pro-Trump community with content linked to Russian influence operations, as detailed in a post on Friday night.
Archives show a sustained effort to plant and upvotes links to a site called Geotus.Army, playing off a slang term for the president that is popular at /r/the_donald. Each of the links, visible on this archived page, redirected to articles on a recently launched site called USA Really, a site with we

Google is announcing changes to its search product today, tied in part to the 20th anniversary of the company. The biggest announcement is that Google is rebranding its news feed as “Discover.” It will be on the Google homepage on all mobile browsers, which is a huge shift for the company as it works to better organize information and help users understand context.Discover will do more to show relevant content — stuff that might not necessarily be just recent news. It will hav

A pair of scientists recently came up with a new take on the Turing Test. It goes like this: “Imagine you and a smart robot are both before a judge who cannot see you. The judge will guess which of you is the human. Whoever the judge thinks is the human will live, and the robot will die. Both you and the robot want to live.” It isn’t every day you come across a white paper that reads like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. But hats off to University of Pennsylvania&r

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities has provided insight on Apple’s lineup of new products in a research note obtained by MacRumors. The note discusses the reception of the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and Apple Watch Series 4.
Kuo’s report says that demand for the iPhone XS Max is higher than expected, and is about three to four times higher than demand for the iPhone XS. Gold and space grey are far more popular than silver when it comes to color options, and the

Bose’s acclaimed noise-canceling headphones, the QuietComfort 35 II, are $274 at Rakuten in black or silver with offer code ALT55 used at checkout while signed in. This discount is just shy of $80 cheaper than its original $349 asking price, which is what other retailers currently charge for the headphones.
These Bose over-ear headphones differ from the first-generation model thanks to their support for voice assistants, including Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Additionally, y

Microsoft is demonstrating its Surface Hub 2 hardware for the first time today. The software maker used a Surface Hub 2 during a keynote at the Microsoft Ignite conference today. It’s the first time we’ve seen the Surface Hub 2 in public, and more importantly the first time we’ve seen Microsoft reveal some of the software that will power it. Microsoft’s demonstration involved rotating the 50-inch display to show off the smooth animations that let content move on the disp

Snap and Amazon are making it easier to buy whatever Snapchat users come across in real life. The companies announced a partnership today that’ll let users point their Snapchat camera at a physical product or barcode to then be redirected to an Amazon pop-up card for that product or something similar. From there, they can load it in the Amazon app or through Amazon.com and then buy the item. Users just have to press and hold the camera screen to activate the function. It’s unclear w

MacOS version 10.14 — codenamed Mojave — is now available to download. The free update to Apple’s desktop operating system was first announced back in June with a number of new features including a dark mode, Stacks file organization, a redesigned Mac App Store, and enhanced screenshots. Although the software has been available in public beta for a few months now, this general release means most of the kinks and bugs should have been fixed.In the grand scheme of things, Mojave

If you own an iPhone, there’s good reason to look forward to the new version of iOS every year. It usually comes with meaningful improvements to the interface, useful new apps and features — like this year’s Screen Time option that monitors how much you use your apps — and even the occasional performance improvements.
But if you’ve owned a Mac in recent years, there’s been little reason to get excited for new releases of macOS. Some hidden corner of the operat

A whole lot of hubbub has been generated by infamous billionaire Peter Theil and his repeated, dull attacks on higher education across the United States. Despite the fact that I keep seeing more and more about Theil in the media, usually when it comes to his ceaseless critiques of American universities, I think too few people are acknowledging one simple fact – Peter Theil and his long-disproven assault on higher ed isn’t just hopelessly wrong, it’s also incredibly boring. Her

Microsoft is releasing Office 2019 for Windows and Mac today. The update is designed for businesses and consumers that haven’t opted into Microsoft’s Office 365 service with monthly feature updates. Office 2019 is essentially a subset of features that have been added to Office 365 over the past three years, and it includes updates to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher.
Office 2019 will include a roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations acros

Apple has just confirmed its acquisition of the music identification app, Shazam. On top of this, the company has announced that the app will become ad-free for all users, even for those on Android. This purchase has been on the cards for some time. In fact, we reported on it in December of last year, but it’s now completely official. Shazam was one of the early apps to gain success on the app store and has now been downloaded over a billion times. The app ‘listens’ to so

One of the iPhone’s most useful 3D Touch features is the ability to turn your keyboard into a trackpad while typing, and with iOS 12, this functionality is coming to handsets without Apple’s pressure-sensitive technology. Mashable notes that you can enable the functionality by long-pressing the keyboard’s space bar at any time, at which point you can use it to easily move your cursor without having to obscure the text with your finger.
Apple introduced 3D Touch with the iPhone

Apple has successfully completed its acquisition of Shazam, the popular song identification app. The company confirmed it was buying Shazam and its development team for a reported $400 million last December. The acquisition was temporarily held up because of an investigation by the European Union, which scrutinized the deal over potential antitrust concerns. But regulators gave it the thumbs up earlier this month.In what’s sure to be welcome news for Shazam users, Apple has announced that

Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration announced that e-cigarette startups like Juul have 60 days to prove they can keep their devices out of the hands of kids, or their products might be taken off the market. But a new report shows that despite this high-profile crackdown, the FDA isn’t doing enough when it comes to another part of the vaping market: copycats.Two years ago, the FDA new rules in place that essentially banned new e-cig companies from entering the market un

Six years ago, on a cold November day, I was forced to make the most difficult decision a video game had ever presented me with. I was playing the fifth and final episode of The Walking Dead’s debut season, and though I had long predicted how things would play out, it didn’t make it any easier when the moment arrived. A beloved character was beginning to turn into an undead monster, and he wanted me to kill him. All I had to do was press a button — but I labored over the decis

After a search in Taiwan, the controversial 3D-printed gun maker Cody Wilson has been returned to the United States and is out on bond as he faces charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a minor.Last week, authorities in Texas announced that Wilson was charged after allegedly paying a 16-year-old for sex. At the time of the announcement, Wilson was in Taiwan, but he was quickly apprehended and returned to the United States.According to local media, Wilson posted a $150,000 bond in Texas and

Samsung has trademarked the name “Samsung Buds” in Europe, reports SamMobile, indicating that we could see a pair of new earphones released from the manufacturer soon. The application doesn’t give many more details than that, leading some to speculate that we might see a pair of true wireless earbuds, Bixby-focused earphones, or a combination of the two.Samsung has had some skin in the true wireless game for a while with its fitness-tracking Gear IconX earbuds, which received

Some users who upgraded to an iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max over the weekend have reported poor cell and Wi-Fi reception and noticeably slower speeds when comparing their new phones to their older models. According to users on Apple’s support forum, MacRumors forums, and Reddit, the issue appears to be widespread across the country and not limited to any specific carrier.
It’s a frustrating issue, especially considering that the iPhone XS is supposed to have significantly faster data

Salesforce and Apple have announced a partnership “that brings together the number one customer relationship management platform and iOS.” The biggest direct result of the collaboration will be a redesigned, native Salesforce app for iOS coming in early 2019. Salesforce is working with Apple to implement features like Face ID, Business Chat, and the new-in-iOS-12 Siri Shortcuts.Siri definitely seems to be a large focus of this — at least on Apple’s side. “If you lo

Microsoft is bringing its OneDrive Files On-Demand feature to macOS. OneDrive beta testers will be able to get access to the feature today, which lets OneDrive users use placeholders for files instead of syncing entire folders onto a MacBook. Mac users will be able to download files as they use them, instead of wasting space by syncing an entire OneDrive library.
The Files On-Demand feature requires macOS 10.14 Mojave (set to be released today) and an Apple File System (APFS) formatted volume.

A signature feature of OnePlus phones is their distinctive red charging cable, which together with an accompanying fast charger makes up the company’s proprietary Dash Charge technology. Well, that’s what it used to be called until this spring, when the EU rejected OnePlus’ application for a trademark on the Dash brand, following complaints from Amazon and Bragi, as spotted by Android Police. Amazon has its Dash easy-ordering buttons, whereas Bragi’s flagship wireless ea