Technology news

Wakanda forever. 
The highly-anticipated sequel to Marvel's record-shattering box office success Black Panther has been in the works for some time. But it wasn't until this afternoon that we officially learned director and writer Ryan Coogler would return to helm the follow-up project. 
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Coogler "quietly closed a deal to write and direct the sequel" a few months ago, an unsurprising move considering the first film's success. 
The report adds: "S

President Trump has entertained plenty of deeply dangerous and upsetting conspiracy theories. This week's had to be one of his dumbest.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton spoke out on Twitter about Donald's latest theory: that she colluded with the Russians in the 2016 campaign.
SEE ALSO: The Clintons are hitting the road for a new speaking tour
"There was collusion between Hillary, the Democrats and Russia," Trump said at a rally on Wednesday. "There was a lot of collusion with them and Russia and lo

A fault in a Soyuz rocket booster has resulted in an aborted crew mission to the International Space Station, but fortunately no loss of life. The astronauts in the capsule, Nick Hague (U.S.) and Alexey Ovchinin (Russia) successfully detached upon recognizing the fault and made a safe, if bumpy, landing nearly 250 miles east of the launch site in Kazakhstan. This high-profile failure could bolster demand for U.S.-built crewed spacecraft.
The launch proceeded normally for the first minute and a h

Hurricane Michael was one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the continental U.S. in almost 50 years, according to the Associated Press. 
The hurricane made landfall in Mexico Beach, Florida, as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday and then weakened as it moved through Georgia. Now designated a tropical storm, Michael is headed toward North and South Carolina, which were both recently devastated by Hurricane Florence.
SEE ALSO: Photos show widespread destruction in the aftermath of Hurricane

Two years ago, Boston Dynamics’humanoid robot Atlas needed a big ol’ safety tether to shuffle its way down a flat hiking trail. Five years ago it needed a big, bolted-down support structure to keep itself upright.
Now it’s casually leaping up and over obstacles that would leave many humans huffing and puffing.
The company demonstrated Atlas’ newly found hops in a video published this morning:It starts with a lil’ leap over a log before Atlas bounds its way righ

Mercedes-Benz plans to debut its own semi-autonomous system on the refreshed S-Class sedan, due in the 2020 lineup, according to an Automotive News interview with the company’s head of research. The system will offer what the Society of Automotive Engineers refers to as “Level 3” autonomy, which means the car can drive itself in certain situations without any driver input, with the caveat that said driver needs to be ready to take over in case of an emergency.This kind of driv

Starting this week, the Google Translate app will be capable of visually translating 13 new languages by using the camera on your smartphone, according to a report from VentureBeat.In 2015, Google added the visual translation feature to the Translate app with the support of 27 different languages. It allows users to translate dinner menus and signs in real time, making communicating abroad much easier. This week’s announcement adds Punjabi, Bengali, Vietnamese, Thai, Gujarati, Kannada, Ne

Instagram is testing a new way to advance through photos, by tapping through posts like you would on Stories, it was reported by TechCrunch. Tapping through posts is meant to eliminate the supposedly cumbersome experience of scrolling, while also displaying the entirety of every post in one tap. The test is currently only being conducted in the Explore tab, with no plans to be implemented in the main feed yet. It’s also not known how widely the test will be rolling out.Instagram user Supr

Bird,the scooter-sharing startup founded by former UberVP of International Growth Travis VanderZanden, has brought a couple of former Uber employees to the flock.
Joining Bird as VP and Head of Finance is Dennis Cinelli, who worked as Uber’s head of finance for global rides up until this month, according to his LinkedIn. Uber, of course, is not without a financial leader. In August, Uber’s lengthy search for a chief financial officer ended when the company hired Nelson Chai, the

Eva Yoo Contributor Eva Yoo is a Shanghai-based tech writer for TechNode.The advantage of entering an emerging market is that the market still has a lot of empty space to fill, and as a startup you can be the first player. Kazakhstan might not be the first country that comes to mind when you think of overseas expansion. However, it is the world’s largest landlocked country, and shares borders with Russia and China, which are important consumer markets as well as technology hubs.In fact, c

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's family has just witnessed a herpetological miracle!
Five months ago, the Stone family's pet tortoise, Roshi, went missing. Though high and low they searched, the distinctive reptile remained gone in the wind.
SEE ALSO: 8 essential keyboard tips every iPhone owner should know
But, lo! On Tuesday at school, Stone's son Jake glanced amongst the clover. And who did he see? NONE OTHER than his long-lost tortoise, ROSHI! In the words of the Lion King's Rafiki, "He's aliv

UPDATE: Oct. 11, 2018, 6:55 p.m. EDT Updated to include statement from WWE.The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi and reports of the Saudi government's involvement with his possible murder has resulted in outrage, but it's also had an impact on a group you may not have suspected: fans of WWE.
As more is uncovered about Khashoggi's disappearance, fans of the wrestling promotion are expressing growing discomfort with an upcoming event the company is h

This time instead of exposing users’ data, a Facebookbug erased it. A previously undisclosed Facebook glitch caused it to delete some users’ Live videos if they tried to post them to their Story and the News Feed after finishing their broadcast. Facebook wouldn’t say how many users or livestreams were impacted, but told the bug was intermittent and affected a minority of all Live videos. It’s since patched the bug and restored some of the videos, but is notifying some use

In an effort to level the playing field, Twitter is changing how emoji are viewed on its platform.
In a post over on the company’s developer forum, Twitter announced that, moving forward, every emoji will be counted as the same number of characters toward your tweet’s 280-character count. All emoji regardless of gender, race, eggplant, or flag will count as a total of two characters.
SEE ALSO: Twitter's Jack Dorsey doesn't use a computer or a tablet, apparently
It may seem like a sma

Facebook has disabled accounts operated by a Russian business that the social network says scraped user data from its platform.The Russian company, SocialDataHub, advertises insights through publicly available information. According to Facebook, that includes information gleaned from its users.Facebook said it expects to disable more
“As part of our efforts to protect people’s security, we have recently removed Social Data Hub (SDH), a Russian-linked social media firm, because they

How can a movie capture an experience that everyone in the world has heard about, but only an extremely privileged few will ever get to have firsthand? 
Well, for starters, it's got to have the right music.
That's the task composer Justin Hurwitz faced when he signed up for First Man, director Damien Chazelle's telling of Neil Armstrong's journey to the moon. But while reading Josh Singer's script, Hurwitz was most struck by how alienating the trip must have been for Armstrong.
"I really re

China’s two largest digital payments services, Alipay and WeChat Pay, have warned that thieves are using compromised Apple IDs to make purchases with people’s accounts. Alipay posted a warning offering “security tips about Apple phones,” which said that it had contacted Apple many times with hope of solving the issue, according to Reuters. Tencent, which owns WeChat Pay, later confirmed similar issues in a statement to Bloomberg.
“Since Apple hasn’t resolved

The Music Modernization Act (MMA) is officially law. And, as evidenced by the musician-packed Oval Office from earlier this afternoon, that means a lot of things for a lot of different people. 
The former bill turned law ensures artists receive the compensation they are owed, encourages fair industry competition, and protects the intellectual property rights of studios nationwide—among other benefits. 
While the journey to get MMA in place was a long, hard-fought battle between t

Facebook just took a rare step in its fight against fake news.
The company removed hundreds of pages and accounts that intentionally spammed users with fake news and misleading information in a "coordinated" effort, Facebook reported.
SEE ALSO: Facebook is finally making progress against fake news
In a statement Thursday, Facebook said the removed accounts had "consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior."
The purge of 559 pages and 251accounts is the largest

One of the latest additions to the on-demand economy is Papa, a mobile app that connects college students with adults over 60 in need of support and companionship.
The recent graduate of Y Combinator’s accelerator program has raised a $2.4 million round of funding to expand its service throughout Florida and to five additional states next year, beginning with Pennsylvania. Initialized Capital led the round, with participation from Sound Ventures.
Headquartered in Miami, the startup was fou

Greetings all: Is your baby or a baby you know in need of a Halloween costume?
If the answer is yes, look no further, because someone just thought up the World's Best Baby Costume: Kevin Malone from The Office ... on Chili Day.
On Wednesday, Instagram user Adam The Creator posted a stunning Photoshop of a fake Amazon baby costume listing titled, "Paper company accountant spilling a pot of chili."
And though the baby costume isn't a real item sold on Amazon, the idea is still absolute perfection.

There’s no topping wired audio, but high-end headphone makers are doing their best to get the most out of Bluetooth. As the latest example of this, Grado is now shipping its $249 GW100 headphones. These are Grado’s first wireless headphones. As with the rest of the company’s lineup, these are open-back headphones — so you’re not going to want to use them for commuting on the subway or in noisy surroundings.Grado says these are the first open-back Bluetooth headphon

Ad Content by CanonWhat do you get when you combine pancake frisbees, pups, and plenty of photo opportunities? The biggest pup party of the year, brought to you by Canon and Mashable. We threw a photo party bash for any and every dog in Brooklyn, inviting them—and their owners, of course—to our Williamsburg space for a day full of playing, portraits, and pancakes. While their pups caught pancake frisbees, played with free toys, and had their glamour shots taken, our human guests chec

Legacy open-backed headphone maker Grado is taking their classic design into the future with the small Brooklyn company’s first pair of wireless headphones.
The GW100s have a familiar look, but integrate Bluetooth tech and volume controls. They go for $249.
Grado headphones are a favorite of mine; they have a very unique open sound that really resonates and are perfect for home listening. Previous iterations haven’t really thrived as much on the road or in noisy offices because

Apple has just released the first numbers for iOS 12’s adoption rate on its App Store developer portal, and things are looking up from last year’s iOS 11, with Apple’s latest mobile OS hitting 50 percent adoption across eligible devices in 23 days (via VentureBeat).
For comparison, iOS 11, released on September 19th, 2017, didn’t hit 52 percent adoption until November 6th of that year, taking 48 days, or over twice as long as it took iOS 12 to hit its own 50 percent mark

Johnny Depp hasn't spoken about being cast as Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise since news broke in 2016, but the actor gave Entertainment Weekly a rare phone interview as Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald approaches.
Depp's casting remains a subject of caution and contention among swaths of Harry Potter fans because he was accused of assaulting ex-wife Amber Heard several months before Beasts premiered (some fans plan to boycott the film and franchise entirely). 
"Ult

Sure, that Episode 3 vomit marathon was rough—but Episode 5 is something else. 
During early press for American Horror Story: Apocalypse, creator Ryan Murphy promised "a huge thing happens in Episode 5." While fans are debating what that huge thing was (or if it even happened), plenty of gruesome stuff went down on Season 8's fifth installment. And to say things got gorey would be a massive understatement.
No, there wasn't a super high body count and no one critical peaced out. But th

Holograms aren't just for Tupac or Princess Leia anymore.
That's what Vimeo shares in a new blog post about how it is bringing live streamed "volumetric content" to the masses. Or, at least the creative filmmakers and somewhat technologically savvy masses.
SEE ALSO: Stunning Michael Jackson Hologram Performs at Billboard Music Awards
On Monday, Vimeo laid out a how-to manual for how an average person can use its new tools to live stream a 3D video of themselves. 
"We’re really excited

Today, Facebook is adding a new feature to Groups: giant, intergroup Messenger chats with the option to add up to 250 people, via TechCrunch.The chats can also support audio or video calls with up to 50 people in them. The idea is that users in big groups — like a book club or surfing club — will be able to have smaller conversations about things like local meetups that may not be relevant to the entire group.
In-Group chats can be viewed by all members of the group, and anyone alre

Pennsylvania is opening its roads to self-driving cars.
The state authorized its first self-driving car company to test on state roads this week — and no, it wasn't Uber who received the honors.
Instead Aurora, the company working with China's Byton vehicles, clinched the first authorization with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). Earlier this year the autonomous vehicle software maker raised $90 million.
SEE ALSO: Who is responsible when a self-driving car kills some

G2 Crowd,a platform that lets businesses search for, compare reviews and pricing for, and then buy software and other IT services — it likes to refer to itself as the “Amazon of business software” — has raised $55 million in growth funding to continue expanding its business.
This round was led by IVP, with participation from enterprise VC Emergence Capital and Accel (Accel led its previous round, which also included LinkedIn as an investor), and brings the company “

Musicians are celebrating as the Music Modernization Act, an attempt to drag copyright and royalty rules into the 21st century, is signed into law after unanimous passage through Congress. The act aims to centralize and simplify the process by which artists are tracked and paid on digital services like Spotify and Pandora, and also extends the royalty treatment to songs recorded before 1972.
The problems in this space have affected pretty much every party. Copyright law and music industry practi

The effortless way you fast forward through Stories could be coming to more of Instagram . A screenshot from user Suprateek Bose shows Instagram “Introducing a new way to move through posts — Tap through posts, just like you tap through stories.”Now Instagram confirms to TechCrunch that it’s testing tap to advance within Explore, and a spokesperson provided this statement: “We’re always testing ways to improve the experience on Instagram and bring you closer t

Riverdale has never been the most chill teen drama out there, but over the course of its first two seasons its plot has been slowly riding a funicular to the top of Mount Bonkers. 
SEE ALSO: 8 returning TV shows that make staying in almost too easy this fall
What started out as a show about a very dumb boy who couldn’t play guitar and football at the same time transformed into a wild romp through a world populated with gangsters with names like Poppa Poutine, 15-year-olds leading gang

As the summer of grift has rolled on into a fraudster’s fall filled with new schemes and financial chicanery that are seemingly revealed daily, one storyline has remained relatively consistent: the ongoing legal troubles of convicted Fyre Festival founder and confidence man Billy McFarland. Vice News reports that McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison with three years of supervised release today, and he was “ordered to forfeit $26,182,386, though it’s unclear how much

This morning’s Russian Soyuz rocket launch turned dire just two and a half minutes after liftoff when an unknown failure forced the flight to abort and sent the two astronauts on the vehicle on an unexpected landing. The emergency maneuver was a success, but the aftermath puts NASA in a precarious situation: now, the space agency must find a way to continue operations on the International Space Station without its usual equipment.
The Soyuz is currently the only vehicle that can take huma

Everyone’s favorite future robot overlords are back with a new trick: parkour. SoftBank-owned Boston Dynamics released a short video today that shows its bipedal humanoid Atlas robot breezing over a log before showing some serious ups as it hops to the top of a set of staggered boxes.It’s another feather in the cap of the small Massachusetts outfit, which has regularly teased new robots with new capabilities for years now despite having been abandoned by Google. While it’s sti

Amazon is introducing some new software tools allowing developers to connect smart cameras and doorbells to Echo devices. Specifically, Amazon has released the Doorbell Event Source, Motion Sensor, and Alexa.RTCSessionController APIs (application programming interfaces) in the US, with additional regions coming soon.
What each API offers to Alexa and Echo devices is different, of course. For example, smart doorbells can now ping all Echo devices to make an announcement, alerting you to a visito

Kanye West may need a new iPhone password. The outspoken musician accidentally revealed his password when unlocking his iPhone X on video during a meeting with President Trump, shown to be the incredibly weak combination of ‘000000’.Kanye revealed the password as part of a stream of consciousness speech to the President, which saw him break off on a tangent to show off a GIF what West referred “the iPlane 1,” a hydrogen-powered concept aircraft that he felt “our Pr

Microsoft is releasing a significant dashboard update for the Xbox One today. The new October 2018 update for Xbox brings Microsoft’s new diverse avatars, Dolby Vision support for Netflix, and an Alexa skill to control your console with an Echo device. After more than a year of testing, the new Xbox Live Avatars will begin appearing across the Xbox dashboard today.
The new avatars will appear on profiles, activity feed posts, friend blocks on the home screen, and elsewhere. They’re

Facebook is taking down hundreds of United States-based accounts and pages, many of which spread sensational political misinformation, for breaking the company’s terms against “inauthentic” content and spam.The company said in a blog post that 559 pages and 251 accounts would be removed. While the accounts used “sensational political content,” Facebook did not say that was the reason for the purge. Instead, the accounts and pages will be taken down after they had &

As battle royale games like Fortnite pit more players against each other, studios are starting to realize the potential of bringing a massive online audience together at one time. This ambition has always existed, but Improbable, a well-funded startup aiming to enable these vast online worlds, is looking to bring these experiences to more game developers.
Improbablehas announced that it is bringing a game development kit for its SpatialOS multiplayer platform to Unity, a popular game development

Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Dan Seifert went to Google’s Pixel 3 event this week in New York City. After the event, the trio, along with Paul Miller, got together for an early taping of The Vergecast to discuss Google’s product announcements and their first impressions.That’s the gist of the show! Of course, there are the weekly segments “This week in Elon Musk” with Liz Lopatto and Paul’s “Meal pods 2: Jeff Bezos edition” that he does every epi