Technology news

Just a week after Marvel announced at New York Comic Con that Star Wars author Chuck Wendig would be penning a Darth Vader miniseries, Wendig says that he’s been removed from the series as well as from an unannounced Star Wars book after he was temporarily suspended from Twitter earlier this week.In a series of tweets, Wendig noted that he was fired from the remainder of the series “because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring... It was too much politics, too much vu

You might think that AnaplanCEO, Frank Calderoni would have had a few sleepless nights this week. His company picked a bad week to go public as market instability rocked tech stocks. Still he wasn’t worried, and today the company had by any measure a successful debut with the stock soaring up over 42 percent. As of 4 pm ET, it hit $24.18, up from the IPO price of $17. Not a bad way to launch your company.
Stock Chart: Yahoo Finance
“I feel good because it really shows the quality of

Earlier this year, Facebook disclosed that the company had secretly deleted some old messages sent on Messenger by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This was highly irregular as normal Facebook users can’t do this — if you delete messages from your own inbox, those messages still remain in the recipient’s inbox. Then in April, Facebook said it planned to implement an “unsend” feature for everyone, but gave no further details or delivery date. Now, a first look at th

The Google Pixel 3 and 3 XL are now available for preorder starting at $799, but they won’t appeal to everyone — even if they are on the cheaper end of the flagship phone pricing spectrum. Thankfully, buying the Google Pixel 2 XL is becoming a whole lot more affordable.The last-gen phone still costs $849.99 outright at Best Buy, which is far too expensive and far more costly than the Google Store’s own $699 price point. But if you commit to the 24-month payment plan through Ve

Selling vape juice with Viagra in it is not okay, the Food and Drug Administration says. On Thursday, the agency sent a warning letter to HelloCig Electronic Technology Co. Ltd for brazenly selling e-cigarette liquids that have erectile dysfunction drugs in them.
These ED drugs are not for vaping, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. And the vape juices certainly have not been FDA approved, despite the company’s claims, as Ars Technica first reported with a series of perfe

Ever since Venmo rolled out its instant transfer feature, which moves money from your Venmo balance to a personal debit card within minutes, the cost of this speedy transfer has been 25 cents. But soon that will be going up. Venmo today emailed users about changes to its user agreement. One of those updates will see the fee for instant transfers switch from 25 cents to 1 percent of the transfer amount (with the minimum still being 25 cents). The change is also acknowledged on this instant trans

Looking to ditch cable? Or maybe you’re already a cord cutter and are getting increasingly bored with what’s on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. By now, you’ve likely heard about the handful of streaming internet TV services that offer many of the same channels you’d get from a cable package but with the freedom to watch them anywhere and across your devices.Many of these apps might save you a fair amount of money compared to what you’re forking over to a cable provid

Facebook detailed today exactly what type of information was accessed during a wide-scale hack last month. It included users’ names and contact info, and in many cases, personal details like religion, locations, and more.
This data was viewed on 29 million people, and now Facebook is offering a way to see whether your account was broken into and what information was seen. If you visit Facebook’s Help Center, a notice at the bottom will explain whether your account was affected. If i

When the original Nintendo DS was at the height of its popularity, some of its most interesting games were, well, incredibly strange. There was a musical toy that turned jellyfish into touchscreen pianos (Electroplankton), a story about a secret government agency that solved problems by singing (Elite Beat Agents), and an epic battle where giant tanks were piloted by cute blue blobs (Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime). One of the best examples of this exciting period of games is The World Ends

Android Pie updates continue to roll out, and next up is Sony, which is starting to bring the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system to its older devices, the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact, via Xperia Blog.
Technically, the Xperia XZ3 that Sony announced at IFA is the company’s first Android Pie device, but the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact (which, incidentally, are very similar devices to the XZ3) are the first phones that Sony is actually updating to Pie, instead of merely s

Huawei will develop self-driving technology with Audi for cars that will be sold in China, the two companies announced today. The partnership will focus on creating so-called Level 4 technology, which the Society of Automotive Engineers defines as a car that completely drives itself from start to finish within a specifically designated area.
The deal is the latest in a now very long line of similar partnerships between car companies and tech companies as the two industries move apace toward the

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from Fantastic Fest.
Back in 1973, Robin Hardy completed his shocking cult classic The Wicker Man just in time to see a shakeup at studio British Lion erode all support for his movie. “I think this is one of the 10 worst films I’ve ever seen,” the new studio head told star Christopher Lee, before recutting and then burying the film. But

After the 2016 US presidential election, social media came under scrutiny like never before, and what’s since come to light hasn’t been pretty: widespread consensus that foreign government-backed groups used platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to spread discord and division among the American public. In their new book, P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking make the argument that what we witnessed was a new form of global conflict, in which there are no bystanders.LikeWar: T

In September, a group of hackers used a flaw in Facebook’s “view as” feature to gain unauthorized access to millions of accounts — and today, the company released its most comprehensive statement yet on exactly what data was taken as part of the breach.According to today’s statement, the hackers stole access tokens for 30 million accounts (revised down from an initial estimate of 50 million), allowing them to gain complete access to the profiles. Of those 30 millio

If you’re in the market for a new graphics card, Newegg’s latest coupon code will take 10 percent off of select models. At checkout, enter the code EMCEPER22 to apply the discount to one of the GPUs offered in the sale.
Missing from this list of discounted graphics cards are any of Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 20-series GPUs or AMD Radeon Vega cards. This promotion is, instead, for those who want to save a bit of money on the GTX 10-series cards as well as AMD’s Radeon RX 50

Samsung just announced an LTE version of the Chromebook Plus V2, one of the more capable Chromebooks in recent memory. It’s a semi-pro-tier Chromebook that will launch on November 2nd for $599.99 — which is $100 more than the base Wi-Fi version — at Samsung.com, Best Buy, and Verizon.
The Chromebook Plus V2 LTE retains all the specs and features of its Wi-Fi-only cousin, including a 12.2-inch full HD display with 300nit max brightness, a decent Intel Celeron 3965Y processor, 4

Tesla says all orders placed before October 15th will be delivered before the end of the year and qualify for the full $7,500 federal tax credit. But given the electric automaker’s well-publicized delivery problems, prospective car buyers may want to take that promise with a grain of salt.Customers ordering after the end of the year won’t qualify for the full tax credit because Tesla crossed the 200,000 electric vehicle sales mark in July. Customers who take delivery of their cars b

To mark the launch of new Alexa skills for Xbox One, Amazon will offer its updated Echo Dot for free with the purchase of an Xbox One S or Xbox One X console while supplies last. Normally a $49 purchase by itself, getting Amazon’s tiny speaker tossed in for free is a nice perk — regardless of whether you see yourself shouting Xbox voice commands regularly or not.
Our review for the third-generation Echo Dot praises its vastly improved sound quality and aesthetic, which come at the s

Like many, when Ryan North watched Back to the Future as a kid, it blew his mind. “I kept thinking about what I would do if I got stuck in the past and what it would be like,” says North, the creator of Dinosaur Comics. He’s also now the author of How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler (out now from Penguin), which tries to answer that exact question.
How to Invent Everything is formatted as a helpful tool for you, the reader, who has just de