Technology news

Coinbase is moving away from its predominantly US-centric approach with a new cryptocurrency listing process. As a result, some new digital assets won’t be available to customers based in the US due to stricter regulations. The popular cryptocurrency exchange announced today that it will be assessing coins based on their compliance with local laws. Oh, and if you thought you can use a VPN or some other computer trickery to get around these restrictions, you’ll be unsuccessful. Coinb

Microsoft is enabling keyboard and mouse support on the Xbox One. Select Xbox testers will be able to trial this new support in the coming weeks, and Microsoft is teaming up with Razer so Xbox One users can purchase hardware that taps into the company’s Chroma lighting effects. Most wired and wireless USB keyboards and mice will work on the Xbox One, and it will be up to developers to support this in games.
“Mouse and keyboard input is not enabled by default for games,” explai

Twitter today announced it’d be altering its hateful conduct policies to prohibit “dehumanizing speech.” By doing so, it intends to patch a hole in its rules against hate speech to account for tweets that don’t specifically target anyone, but which are nonetheless demeaning. It’s also asking for users to give feedback on whether the new rules are clear. Del Harvey, Twitter‘s VP of Trust and Safety, and Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust & Saf

Sony’s next PS4 Pro bundle lassos in Red Dead Redemption 2 for no additional cost, offering the game alongside the 1TB, 4K-ready console and a DualShock 4 controller for $399 when it releases on October 26th. This gives you some big savings, and eliminates the need to preorder the game ahead of release. There’s nothing special or custom about the console hardware itself, however.
This bundle is available for preorder now through Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, and GameStop, though at thi

The first episode of Shane Dawson’s new documentary series, “The Mind of Jake Paul,” has arrived, and it asks a very important question: Is Jake Paul a sociopath? The series has miles to go on proving or disproving that point, but it’s hardly shying away from it.Dawson is a longtime YouTuber whose work as of late has focused on fellow creators. Most recently, he profiled beauty vlogger Jeffree Star. Before that, he released a deep dive into where TanaCon went wrong. Lead

Qualcomm says that Apple has been stealing its wireless technology for several years in order to eventually rid itself of the need to rely on Qualcomm components. Apple is alleged to have given Qualcomm’s code to Intel, in order to boost Intel’s modem speeds, which are known to be slower.
The claims come in the latest update to Qualcomm and Apple’s blockbuster legal battle, which started close to two years ago with Apple claiming that Qualcomm was abusing its position as the d

Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abruptly announced their departure last night after a New York Times report cited tensions between the duo and Instagram’s parent company Facebook as the reason for their exit. Bloomberg has since corroborated those rising disagreements between Systrom, Krieger, and Mark Zuckerberg as the key factor that drove them away. And today Recode published its own report that includes specific decisions that created animosity between the

It’s been a wild few weeks in the photography world.  Fresh after Nikon and Canon announced their first serious mirrorless camera systems, now Panasonic, Leica, and Sigma, are teaming up on a mirrorless lens system of their own. Unlike Canon and Nikon, we’re not talking about an entirely new lens mount. Panasonic and Sigma will adopt Leica’s L-mount system, which first showed up in 2014 with the Leica T and has since been used in the company’s other APS-C and full-f

They all started with the best of intentions. Formation 8 talked about bringing “smart enterprise” to the corporate world. Social Capitaltalked about how to “fix capitalism” and Binary Capitalwanted to “affect global behaviour change.” Rothenberg Ventures set out to “work on the biggest problems that change the world.”
Young founding partners debuting change-the-world funds were irresistible for chroniclers of the venture world, who too often had b

Developer Telltale Games, maker of the popular episodic narrative games The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, is still dealing with the aftermath of an effective studio closure last Friday that saw around 250 employees, or 90 percent of its workforce, laid off without severance. Now, the studio says it’s shopping around the final season of The Walking Dead to third-party partners in hopes of appeasing fans eager for a conclusion to the saga that began in 2012 as an original spinoff of t

Telltale Games announced on Twitter last week, with little warning, that it’d be shuttering its doors. The news drew a not-unexpected amount of backlash and scrutiny based on first-hand accounts from the people involved. Now the same Twitter-based community is keeping the company on notice for its messy handling of the situation. To coin a phrase, Gaming Twitter is the loose collection of gaming-affiliated individuals and companies. If it sounds a little odd, think of it this way: Twitter

After giving the app a fresh coat of paint and a new dark mode in recent weeks, Google is now adding some helpful features to Android Messages. In a blog post today, the company showed off a more powerful search experience that users will start seeing this week, which will let them find specific content types (images, videos, etc.) spanning all conversations or on an individual-chat basis.So you’ll be able to tap on someone’s name and scroll down a sleek list of messages, media, and

Google will resume accepting cryptocurrency-related online advertising after previously banning such ads earlier this year, according to a report from CNBC today. Lifting the ban will allow regulated crypto exchanges to purchase ads through Google’s platform in the US and Japan starting next month.The original ban was announced in March, amid a wave of high-profile initial coin offerings (ICOs) and other crypto activity that made it difficult to distinguish between over-hyped or outright

Google will resume accepting cryptocurrency-related online advertising after previously banning such ads earlier this year, according to a report from CNBC today. Lifting the ban will allow regulated crypto exchanges to purchase ads through Google’s platform in the US and Japan starting next month.The original ban was announced in March, amid a wave of high-profile initial coin offerings (ICOs) and other crypto activity that made it difficult to distinguish between over-hyped or outright

The US House Oversight and Reform IT Subcommittee today released the results of a months-long investigation into Federal investment and oversight in artificial intelligence. There’s a lot to unpack here, and most of it is bad. TL;DR: If the Trump administration doesn’t make drastic changes China will pass us in AI R&D spending this year, and will likely lead the globe in AI technologies long before the 2030 deadline its government issued last year. On a day when the leaders of t

Dolby Atmos support has arrived on the Apple TV 4K, joining the ranks of other streaming boxes like the Roku Ultra, Amazon Fire TV, and even a few game consoles, like the Xbox One S and Xbox One X. Combined with the existing Dolby Vision HDR support, this makes the Apple TV 4K the only set-top box to “light up all of the lights” and have a deep catalog of content to go with it. But you won’t be able to use the multi-directional audio standard or improved picture quality featur

A three-judge panel ruled in favor of Uber in a long-standing lawsuit that could have a profound impact on the future of ride-sharing and the gig economy.The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Tuesday reversing the class certification order in the case of O’Connor v. Uber, in which Uber drivers argued they should be categorized as employees rather than independent contractors. The judges nullified the decision on the ground that Uber’s arbitration clause prohibits c

Cody Wilson has resigned as CEO of Defense Distributed in the wake of recent sexual assault charges, the company announced in a press conference today in Austin. Paloma Heindorff will serve as the new CEO of the firearm company going forward, having previously served as director of development.
“It was his own decision and we support him in it,” Heindorff said. “Going forward, he has no role in the company.” She declined to comment on the charges against Wilson, but desc

Monero developers have disclosed a major bug that could really have been nasty. Until now, attackers could have drained Monero from exchanges (or any organizational wallet), all for the cost of a few transaction fees. “A bug in the wallet software allowed a determined attacker to cause significant damage to organizations present in the Monero ecosystem with minimal cost,” declares the official statement. “The bug basically entails the wallet not providing a warning when i

As the mirrorless camera battle reaches a turning point, three entrants are teaming up to help their cameras stand out. Leica, Panasonic, and Sigma announced today that they’ll all use the same lens mount format for full-frame and APS-C cameras, allowing lenses purchased for one company’s cameras to work on each other’s cameras.
That’s a huge benefit for two reasons: it makes their cameras more appealing to photographers who won’t find themselves locked into a sing

A trademark application filed in the US suggests that Led Zeppelin is about to launch its own streaming service called The Led Zeppelin Experience, reports LedZepNews. According to the application, the service will have a large emphasis on live music, but it will also feature “non-downloadable pre-recorded music.”The news follows a cryptic tease from the band’s guitarist Jimmy Page last year that 2018 (the band’s 50th anniversary) would see the release of a “Led Ze

Fujifilm has just taken the wraps off of the new GFX-50R medium format camera, but that’s not the only thing it has coming for fans of big digital sensors. The company has also announced that next year it will release another GFX model with a whopping 100-megapixel sensor. In addition, this yet-to-be-named camera will have in-body image stabilization (IBIS), a notable achievement for a medium format camera.
Fujifilm hasn’t provided many details on the camera, though it is expected t

This robotic Rubik’s Cube is the product of a Japanese creator who’s documented many of his creative projects on his YouTube channel, Human Controller. Yes, it has a custom 3D-printed core attached to servo motors that are programmed to solve the cube, which is all laid out in this process post here. But when he puts the Rubik’s Cube onto the table to run free and solve itself, it really looks like a super nerdy poltergeist is doing his best to impress his seventh grade crush.

This afternoon, Europe will launch its 100th Ariane 5 rocket, a historic achievement for the nearly 20-year-old vehicle design. Launching from Europe’s South American spaceport in French Guiana, the Ariane 5 will put a pair of communications satellites into a high orbit above Earth. And if all goes well, it will mark the 300th overall flight for the three-vehicle family of Arianespace, the launch provider overseen by the European Space Agency.
First introduced in 1996, the Ariane 5 has be

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project has been controversial since it first rolled out in 2015 — AMP is an open-source standard for a specialized type of web page that offers a huge speed boost to sites that use it, and those pages load instantly from search engines like Google and (now) Bing. But AMP has many critics, who have spent years contending Google is using AMP to take over the web. In particular, Google shows AMP pages in a news carousel at the top of its mobile search

Uber is overhauling its disaster response procedures so it doesn’t get caught flat-footed during major events like a hurricane or terrorist attack. In the past, Uber’s response to disasters was largely piecemeal, relying on local teams to make all the decisions about capping surge pricing or suspending service. Now, the ride-hail company’s new Global Security Center, based outside of Washington, DC, will hand down all decisions to those regional teams, with the hopes of creati

Twitter has released a new moderation policy explicitly banning dehumanizing speech. In a post on Tuesday morning, Twitter executives Del Harvey and Vijaya Gadde described the proposed rule as part of an ongoing effort to promote healthy conversations on Twitter and limit real-world harms stemming from discourse on the platform.“Language that makes someone less than human can have repercussions off the service, including normalizing serious violence,” the post reads.Once the new cha

In March of last year, Stephen Colbert stepped out onto the Late Show stage and kicked off a monologue over the twinkle of a keyboard. “Hey, I’ve got a quick question for you guys, if you don’t mind me asking,” he said to the audience. “Anybody here use the internet?”
The audience cheered. “Might want to knock that off,” he deadpanned.Congress had just voted to allow internet service providers to sell the browser histories of consumers, a move that

Ahead of the US midterm elections, Snapchat is using its app to encourage users to register to vote. The functionality will be available to everyone over the age of 18 in the US, who’ll receive a voter registration link from the app. Clicking it will launch a Snapchat-branded TurboVote mobile site where users can register.As well as generating an in-app alert, Snapchat will also send a Team Snapchat message (a feature commonly used to celebrate national holidays) to the 80 percent of its

Diamonds, we’re told, are a girl’s best friend. They’re rare, they’re valuable, they’re unique. So what happens now that we can make artificial ones that are just as good as the real thing?
The Verge science team goes inside the artificial diamonds industry: how they’re made, how the artificial diamonds compare to the real thing, and what it means for the jewelry industry now that man-made diamonds are flooding the market. We talk to experts Wuyi Wang and Tom

Mozilla today announced the launch of Firefox Monitor. This free service, which Mozilla has been testing since this summer, informs individuals when their details have been part of a data breach. Firefox Monitor is the product of a partnership with Troy Hunt, creator of ‘Have I Been Pwned,’ and relies heavily on the site’s API endpoints to work. The way it works should be familiar to anyone who has used Hunt’s site. Users provide their email addresses which Firefox Monit

Despite investors dropping a whopping $12 billion into Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) in the past year, 70 percent of cryptocurrencies outside of the top 100 are now valued less than the amount initially raised. In fact, blockchain research unit Diar calculated that the bulk of the ICOs conducted in the past year are now just worth $2.2 billion. This represents an “eye watering” $6 billion loss across just a small part of the token ecosystem. For many projects, most of the

Fujifilm is introducing its second hybrid instant camera, and it comes with a feature that might sound very out of place on its Instax line: video recording. The new model, the Instax Square SQ20, is able to capture video clips of up to 15 seconds. While you’re able to store those on an SD card, that isn’t really the point. Instead, the SQ20 uses those video clips to create new photo effects, which you can then edit and print out directly from the camera.
The SQ20’s “mot

Firefox Monitor is a new service from Mozilla that you can use to check whether your personal information has been compromised by any of the numerous data breaches that occur every year. For added security you also have the option of registering with the service to allow it to proactively alert you if you’re ever affected by an incident in the future.The functionality comes via a partnership with Have I Been Pwned, a site that has been offering the service since it launched in 2013. The s

“Deepfake” is the name being given to videos created through artificially intelligent deep learning techniques. Also referred to as “face-swapping”, the process involves inputting a source video of a person into a computer, and then inputting multiple images and videos of another person. The neural network then learns the movements and expressions of the person in the source video in order to map the other’s image onto it to look as if they are carrying out the spe

The Mt. Gox saga keeps dragging on. The now defunct cryptocurrency exchange’s largest trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, has sold off another $230 million (26 billion yen) worth of Bitcoin. Kobayahsi – who is known as the “Tokyo Whale” in cryptocurrency circles – has been selling off the cryptocurrency since early March following the 10th creditors meeting, Bloomberg reports. It would appear that the Tokyo Whale received an average of $8,100 per Bitcoin. Even if the money

Visual novels have long ventured to places that more mainstream games avoid. A genre-cum-medium of interactive stories that often feature static anime-influenced art, they also tend to be more diverse than more mainstream titles — including how they depict queer relationships. Even before programs like Twine democratized game design, visual novels offered a lightweight process for development that allowed lone creators to put together a playable story. All they needed was the free RenPy e

A year after being purchased by the world’s largest lock company, August is starting to share the smart tech that made its original lock stand out. Naturally, it’s coming first to the biggest brand in its parent company’s portfolio: Yale.
Yale is now starting to sell a module that can be inserted into some of its locks to add August’s tech to them. The company will also begin selling a lock that’s bundled with the August module, offering Yale’s first fully in