Technology news

The version of Autopilot that Elon Musk has long promised would make Tesla cars capable of driving themselves is reportedly being handed over to a small group of employees for testing, according to an internal email obtained by Bloomberg.In the email, Musk promised there were about 100 spots available in the testing program, and that he would take volunteers on a “first come, first served basis.”Willing employees have to agree to sharing “300 to 400 hours of driving feedback w

Facebook revealed, earlier today, that it had detected a data breach affecting at least 50 million accounts (and as many as 90 million). Within minutes, as you might imagine, multiple sites including TNW were rushing stories out to inform everyone. Just as quickly, concerned readers began posting the news, including to the site in question. Now Facebook is actively stopping people from posting those stories. Facebook is preventing users from posting The Guardian's report on the Facebook data br

A US District Court judge in California has ruled in favor of Facebook, denying a joint federal and state task force that tried to force the social networking company to wiretap Messenger voice calls by holding the company in contempt of court, according to a report from Reuters.The case first came up last month, when the Department of Justice was reportedly looking to hold Facebook in contempt of court for refusing to comply with a wiretapping request for an ongoing investigation into the MS-1

Some users are reporting that they are unable to post today’s big story about a security breach affecting 50 million Facebook users. The issue appears to only affect particular stories from certain outlets, at this time one story from The Guardian and one from the Associated Press, both reputable press outlets.
Facebookis preventing users from posting The Guardian's report on the Facebook data breach. Ouch. https://t.co/IGU685PjdK pic.twitter.com/GGGrKqBZEc
— Jed Bracy (@JedBrac

Last month, Line announced it was partnering with DJI to create a Brown Bear-themed drone, and now it’s teamed up with Bang & Olufsen for a Brown-Bear themed speaker, as reported by TechCrunch.
Line is a chat app that’s hugely popular in several Asian regions, with tens of thousands of sticker sets, many of which feature original characters. These characters have become so popular that there’s a Line Friends merchandise line sold in 108 countries, and a flagship store for

There are more problems for camera maker Red’s first smartphone, the Hydrogen One. Company founder Jim Jannard posted today that the titanium version of the phone is delayed. The aluminum version still appears to be on track for an October release date. Jannard blames supply chain issues for the delay and the fact that the company’s outside manufacturers weren’t able to create enough devices to cover all the preorders.In the meantime, he writes that all titanium customers will

In an extremely random case of product leaking, Kobo’s Spanish Twitter account briefly tweeted, then deleted, an image of its upcoming Forma e-reader. The screenshot above shows a rendered image of the device, along with its release date of October 16th.
Though it looks a lot like the one-handed design of the Kindle Oasis, there’s no word yet on its water resistance. Although the Kobo Aura One came out with a waterproof e-reader way before Amazon in 2016, the more recent Kobo Clara

Bandai Namco’s officially-licensed “Mario Kart Arcade GP VR” game for virtual reality will finally grace US shores in October. But don’t get too excited, it’s only coming to the VR ZONE Portal arcade in Washington DC for now. 3 days until one of the most anticipated titles in #VR launches in the United States, at Union Station in Washington,… Posted by VR ZONE Portal US on Friday, September 28, 2018 VR early-adopters haven’t seen much in the way o

A few weeks ago, we got our first look at the upcoming Razer Phone 2. It showed a device that appeared nearly identical to the original, at least from from the front perspective provided. Today we’re getting our second good look at the device, courtesy of ever-reliable leaker Evan Blass. Aside from corroborating the earlier report, the new leak does at least show the phone has a rearranged camera setup. There still appear to be dual cameras on board, and there’s no telling whether R

Yesterday Amazon opened up another retail location in New York City. But this one, the company’s third in Manhattan, is different than the standard Amazon Books store. It’s called Amazon 4-star, and the name gives away the store’s premise: Amazon 4-star stocks items that have an average customer review rating of four stars and above. There are also sections for new / trending and top sellers, where featured products don’t necessarily have to meet the four-star bar.
The s

Fortnite’s Season 6 update added a small animation update — one which gave some characters a little extra bounce. Gamers certainly didn’t seem to mind, but Epic Games might have overreacted just a bit. One of the first people to notice was streamer Agony, who posted an illustrative gif of the new… um, feature. The most important thing in the Season 6 update pic.twitter.com/FrnzFsF1Fl — FaZe Agony (@Agony) September 27, 2018 I was, naturally, eager to see the

Oculus VR had one big hardware surprise to reveal at its annual Connect developer conference on Wednesday: the all-new standalone Quest virtual reality headset. The Quest is a culmination of Oculus’ last five years of VR work, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it a major step toward getting a billion people into VR.
But the following day, Oculus chief technology officer John Carmack — a video game industry legend who is responsible for creating seminal shooter titles like Wolf

If you’re interested in the Canadian tech scene, Toronto is on your radar. Certainly the hype surrounding this tech scene is not undeserved. Among other good news to come out of Canada’s financial capital, the city has cemented its reputation as a global center for AI, thanks to a $5 million investment by Google into the Vector Institute last year and an aligned buy-in from the city’s academic, government and corporate sectors. Toronto now boasts the highest concentration

This week we saw the two founders abruptly leave Instagram, so Casey Newton comes on the show to talk about all that drama and what it might mean for Facebook’s prized possession.Then Dan Seifert joins us to talk about all of the insane cameras that were announced at Photokina this year, plus all the models that were announced before the show even started.
Finally, Liz Lopatto comes on for an impromptu This Week In Elon to discuss the fact that the SEC has filed a lawsuit against Mr. Musk

Microsoft first started work on its touch-friendly Office apps for Windows 8.1 more than five years ago. Designed for tablets or laptops with touchscreens, the apps are lightweight and speedy versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft has updated them regularly for Windows 10, but now that the company has halted work on Windows 10 Mobile, it’s also halting work on these Office apps.
The apps aren’t fully dead yet, but Microsoft is no longer developing new features for them.

Reddit hosts an immense number of communities on its servers, dedicated to about as many human pursuits as there are. Some of those groups are delightful, like r/showerthoughts or r/dogswithjobs, and some are reprehensible, like the long-since banned r/jailbait (pictures of underage women) and r/picsofdeadkids (exactly what it says on the tin). But there are subreddits that don’t fall neatly into either category, and it’s why the site implemented a quarantine policy in 2015 —

We’re just a few weeks away from the third season of Netflix’s Daredevil returning on October 19th, and the latest teaser is putting the spotlight back on the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest foe (and the greatest part of the show): Vincent D’Onofrio’s William Fisk, aka Kingpin.Fisk was the antagonist in the first season of the show, and he’s a high water mark that the rest of the Marvel Netflix series have tried to meet in the years since, to varying

This morning, Facebook disclosed a widespread security flaw that could have allowed hackers or other malicious third parties to access an affected user’s account by gleaning their security token. The flaw affected as many as 50 million people, and Facebook says it’s forcibly making around 90 million users log back into their accounts in full today to be safe. The company says around 40 million additional people simply used the exploitable feature since the exploit was active.It also

The Nokia 7 Plus is joining the small lineup of non-Google phones to get an update to Android 9 Pie. HMD Global chief product officer Juho Sarvikas made the announcement in a tweet today. Outside of Nokia, the update has only rolled out to Essential Phones, eight Motorola phones, and the OnePlus 6, which runs a modified version of Android 9 Pie, as well as Google’s Pixel phones.
Android 9 Pie brings a range of useful new features, like adaptive battery, tweaked navigation, and improved no

It’s not exactly a secret that Sprint’s LTE network, well, just isn’t very good compared to other carriers like AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile.But it’s surprising for a company like Sprint to just up and admit that its LTE network is dramatically worse than all of its competitors, like Sprint just did in a recent filing, via analyst Walt Piecyk.Sprint filing yesterday. $S pic.twitter.com/iWMWw5OEB9— Walt Piecyk (@WaltBTIG) September 27, 2018Sprint has been trailing

Facebook today announced a data breach occurred on September 25 affecting at least 50 million Facebook accounts. The social network disclosed the breach Friday morning, issuing a statement that said an “attack” on its system led to “the exposure of information” affecting the 50 million users, according to the New York Times. CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a statement indicating the company had patched the vulnerabilities exploited by the attacker(s) and was investi

Burger King’s newest ad campaign mocks machine learning with a series of commercials that take a lighthearted jab at AI-generated media. Each video begins “This ad was created by artificial intelligence,” before devolving into delicious imagery and hilarious gibberish. The best part: None of them were created by AI. They were actually conceived and made by an ad agency called David Miami – the same company behind Burger King’s net neutrality-themed campaign earlier

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.
What to watch
Meru, a 2015 documentary co-directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and her husband J

After a summer of teasing, Dontnod’s sequel to its award-winning episodic adventure series Life is Strange is here, and it has a loud and clear message to deliver.
The first Life is Strange tackled issues like cyberbullying, suicide, and assault through the eyes of its teenage protagonist Max and her friendships. Life is Strange 2 is far more ambitious. While set up to be a story about a family through the eyes of two Hispanic brothers, the game quickly wades into more political, timely t