Technology news

Netflix used its third quarter earnings report to criticize the European Union over a new content quota for streaming services.The EU, writes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in the report, is “currently rewriting its audio visual rules” that will demand streaming services like Netflix “devote a minimum of 30 percent of their catalog to European works.” Netflix’s report acknowledged that catering to a specific audience encouraged more regional original programming for int

Alongside the slate of new phones Huawei announced today was an interesting addition: a new type of expandable storage the company is calling Nano Memory (NM), which replaces the traditional microSD card in the newly announced Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro.
Huawei says that NM cards, which are identical in size and shape to a Nano SIM card, are 45 percent smaller than a microSD card, and come in at least a 256GB storage and 90MB/s transfer speed version that the company showed off onstage. Photo by V

Buzzwords like “deep learning” and “neural networks” are everywhere, but so much of the popular understanding is misguided, says Terrence Sejnowski, a computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.Sejnowski, a pioneer in the study of learning algorithms, is the author of The Deep Learning Revolution (out next week from MIT Press). He argues that the hype about killer AI or robots making us obsolete ignores exciting possibilities happening in t

Puffs — the popular Off-Broadway play that reimagines the events of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book and film series from the perspective of the often-unsung Hufflepuff house — is about to make history. Representatives for the comedy play have announced that Puffs will debut online on the theatrical streaming service BroadwayHD on October 18th. Per Playbill, an iTunes and Amazon release will follow on November 22nd.
The first major Broadway or Off-Broadway show to offer a wide

It’s a universal truth that what’s old will eventually become new again, and what’s beloved on Instagram or YouTube can never truly die. And so, adopting teacup pigs, a fad inspired partly by Paris Hilton in 2007 (the same year Hilton’s reality series, The Simple Life, ended) is back.Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande adopted a pet pig before they broke up. (Grande reportedly returned the engagement ring, but kept the pig, adorably named Piggy S

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s ex-chief security officer, thinks his former home at the heart of Silicon Valley is ill equipped to address the world’s most pressing digital problems, namely security, user privacy, and the protection of democratic institutions. To address this, and perhaps help ease the tensions between Washington and the tech industry while pulling in more academic and research experts, Stamos is launching a new institute he’s calling the Stanford Internet Observator

Lexar announced its new JumpDrive Fingerprint F35 USB 3.0 flash drive today, which uses fingerprint authentication to protect your data. It works with speeds up to 150 MB/s, and it can recognize fingerprints in less than a second. You can set it up to recognize up to 10 different people, and it’s protected with 256-bit AES encryption to keep your files safe.
9to5Mac reports that the 32GB variant is available to preorder on Amazon now for $32.99, but it’s not clear when the flash dri

Bill Gates has published his personal reflections on the life of Paul Allen, who died on October 15th of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 65. Gates describes Allen as “one of my oldest friends and the first business partner I ever had.” The two co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and forever changed the world of technology. Allen was also widely praised as a giant of business, sports, and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest in the decades after departing Microsoft in 1983.&ldqu

As creators move to the cultural forefront, the question of how much power they wield — if any — is one Hank Green ponders with care. “I think that [creators have a social] responsibility, but I think that the responsibility can be taken differently by each person,” he says. “And I often cannot stand people who not only don’t take the responsibility of their audience seriously, but actively, almost intentionally, have a negative impact.”Green has more t

When Hurricane Michael crashed into the Florida Panhandle on October 10th, the storm cut power to parts of Florida and Georgia in its path, new NASA images show. The pictures are a stark reminder of our energy infrastructure’s vulnerability to natural disasters.The pictures went up today on NASA’s Earth Observatory blog, but lights have started to turn back on since the “after” image was snapped on October 12th. At this point, the number of customers without power has dr

Home security system company SimpliSafe launched a new smart standalone doorbell today with heat sensors and motion detectors. It’s the company’s first product that’s technically not inside the home.
The SimpliSafe Video Doorbell Pro has a wide angle 1080p camera that supports HDR with a 162-degree field of view, that’s just short of seeing everything front of it. It has two-way audio equipped with noise and echo cancellation that’s supposed to minimize background

Finding a place to quickly top off your electric car’s battery might get a little bit easier: Google announced today that it’s adding support to Google Maps for EV chargers. Both Tesla and Chargepoint’s global network of EV chargers will be added to the iOS and Android versions of the app starting today, with support for the desktop version of Maps coming in a few weeks.Google Maps will also support different charging networks specific to certain countries. It will display cha

For the first few minutes, the ride to space had been routine. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and his fellow crew mate, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, were pressed into their seats inside a Russian Soyuz capsule as the vehicle rapidly climbed through the atmosphere. Then then there was a jolt.
“The first thing I really noticed was being shaken fairly violently from side to side,” Hague said during a round of broadcast interviews today.
The vehicle carrying Hague and Ovchinin had just

When the FCC asked for public comment on its plan to end net neutrality last year, the docket was swarmed with millions of comments from bots. The fake comments used real identities and made it difficult for anyone perusing the system to find legitimate commenters trying to express their views.A new study from a Stanford researcher sheds some light on the issue. By analyzing more than 800,000 comments that were “semantic outliers” — comments that were unique and not obviously

JLab’s newest pair of sport headphones come with a unique twist: they’re not earbuds. The Flex Sport are over-ear Bluetooth headphones, and they are designed to be worn during all types of workouts and rigorous physical activity.The headphones come with 20 hours of play time and removable ear pads that can be tossed in the washing machine. The model enters a small but growing category of higher-quality audio gear designed for workouts, including over-ear models from JBL / Under Armo

Sony hasn’t always had the best track record when it comes to digital rights management, or DRM. (Look no further than its massive 2005 CD copy protection scandal.) But now, the company has announced that it’s working on a new DRM system for protecting digital content based on blockchain technology, via Engadget.While details are still slim on how or when Sony will be implementing the blockchain-based DRM system, the project sounds ambitious. Sony says that the current system is &ld

Google is changing the way it licenses its suite of Android apps in Europe, leading the company to charge a licensing fee for the Play Store and other Google apps for the first time.
The changes come in response to a July ruling by the European Commission, which fined the company $5 billion for antitrust violations and ordered it to stop “illegally tying” Chrome and search apps to Android.
Google hasn’t historically charged for Android and its app because of the revenue it get

The Nokia X7 smartphone just announced in China is part of an expanding line of Nokia-branded phones that have revived the brand name under the wing of HMD Global. The new X7 has near-flagship specs with competitive pricing — as is often the case in the Chinese smartphone market — and is expected to launch outside of China as the Nokia 7.1 Plus. The Nokia 7.1 was launched earlier this month and is coming to the US for $349. Image credit: HMD Global
Specs include a 6.2-inch 1080p LCD

US District Judge Alison Nathan has approved the proposed settlement between Tesla CEO and chairman Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The clock has now officially started on the various terms of the settlement, meaning Musk will soon no longer lead the company’s board of directors for the first time since he took the post in 2004.
Musk has 45 days to resign as chairman of Tesla. After he does, he won’t be able to step back into that role for three years. Tesla ha

For a Welsh-born director, Gareth Evans has an odd claim to fame: through a series of movies made in Indonesia, he brought the martial art pencak silat to Westerners’ attention, made a star out of martial artist Iko Uwais, and built a name for himself through brutal, precise action sequences and a memorable approach to violence. Evans’ movies Merantau, The Raid: Redemption, and The Raid 2 weren’t major action blockbusters, but among martial arts fans and cult-cinema enthusiast

Earlier this month, Facebook announced Portal, a camera-equipped smart device that’s meant to compete with Amazon’s Echo Show. But the company’s hardware ambitions apparently go far beyond that: Cheddar is reporting that Facebook is working on a TV camera that would offer Portal-like video chatting on a bigger screen and allow users to stream content from Facebook Watch.
If the device — said to be codenamed “Ripley” — makes it to market, Facebook would

Self-proclaimed rap god Eminem and visionary director Terrence Malick officially have more in common than people may have thought: both partnered with Google for over-the-top Pixel 3 commercials. But whereas Malick’s commercial captured the Pixel 3 camera’s best qualities, Eminem’s gaudy performance failed the entire concept.
Eminem’s anticipated Empire State Building performance, which caught New Yorkers off guard last week when it was being filmed, was shot mostly on a

Analogue is known for providing high-end consoles designed to play classic Nintendo games, and now, the company is turning its attention to Sega. Today, Analogue is announcing the Mega Sg, a retro console that can play Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, and Master System cartridges, and it works seamlessly with modern TVs. “I’ve wanted to do the end all, be all Sega system for a long time,” says Analogue’s Christopher Taber. “There is zero proper way to explore Sega’s

Pokémon Go players will be able to considerably expand their pokédexes this week, as Niantic has confirmed the arrival of the fourth generation of pokémon. This generation first appeared in the Nintendo DS games Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, and hail from the Hokkaido-influenced Sinnoh region.As with the third generation, Niantic will be rolling out the new pokémon in waves rather than all at once. The company says it’ll also be announcing new fe

As per tradition with every new flagship smartphone, iFixit carried out its teardown of the Google Pixel 3 XL. The teardown revealed several new additions to the Pixel 3 that are in line with the phone’s spec sheet. The iFixit team came across the new Google Titan M Security chip, the same Pixel Visual Core as the Pixel 2 XL’s, and the most interesting find: a Samsung AMOLED display. Image: iFixit
Google’s transition from LG to Samsung’s more vibrant and saturated displa

Boston Dynamics continues to get the most out if its AdSense dollars with a new YouTube video of its four-legged robot SpotMini. This time, it’s dancing to a cover of “Uptown Funk,” complete with the best robotic rendition of the Running Man dance we’ve ever seen.SpotMini performs fantastically, and it’s right to prepare for the spotlight. Next year, the bot will go on sale as Boston Dynamics’ first commercial product. It won’t be sold for a particular

At the end of an event where two devices were already announced — the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro — Huawei had another surprise up its sleeve. The Huawei Mate 20 X is the largest in the lineup with its 7.2-inch OLED display, which already consists of three phablet devices. The device is equipped with a massive 5,000mAh battery, and it’s compatible with styluses.Huawei emphasized the device’s gaming performance and its vapor chamber cooling design that, combined with &

Fortnite’s latest weekly update introduces a souped-up vehicle that seems to wreak havoc wherever it goes. The quadcrasher, as it’s called, does more than navigate terrain quickly. It can destroy any player-built surface and boost through the air.
Oh, and it can launch other players into the air, too. You just need to smash into them, and they’ll go flying.
The quadcrasher can hold two players: one drives and the other shoots. Boost is acquired by driving, and players can push

On January 12th, 2018, an Indian PSLV rocket took off en route to space carrying a cluster of 31 satellites into orbit. It was a successful mission: every probe deployed where it needed to be. The only problem? Four of those satellites didn’t have permission to fly from the US government.These “rogue satellites” were four tiny probes from a Silicon Valley startup called Swarm Technologies. The company didn’t have a license to launch the spacecraft that went up on the fli

Discord’s digital game store, which first launched to just 50,000 users in Canada back in August, is now available globally in a public beta capacity, the chat company announced today. The marketplace, simply called Discord Store, is launching with 22 titles, including Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight and other indie gems like Dead Cells and Into The Breach. Five of those 21 titles are labeled “First on Discord” titles, meaning Discord is the primary distribution for those ti

Elon Musk has announced that Tesla’s new custom AI chip is about six months away from being installed in new production cars. The CEO said that the chip, which was confirmed as being in development last December, will offer “somewhere between [a] 500% & 2000%” increase in its vehicle’s autonomous driving performance. Existing Tesla owners who have already paid for full self-driving will be offered this “hardware 3” update for Autopilot free of charge.The

Last week, I traveled to Dumbo, Brooklyn, to see some interactive, aluminum, mirrored bricks. A company called Breakfast designed a massive “display” called Brixel Mirror that reacts to movement to change what it shows. (You might have seen one of the company’s prior projects: Flip-Discs.) The demo unit I was shown, and the only complete machine right now, features 540 bricks (or “brixels,” as the company refers to them) and measures 19 by 6 feet. At the bottom of

Once upon a time, wireless charging was a rarity in phones. As of today, though, not only do we have fast wireless charging in the iPhone and many Android flagships, there’s even reverse wireless charging, courtesy of the freshly announced Huawei Mate 20 Pro. I tried this out in London ahead of the new super flagship phone’s launch today, and it works beautifully. You just enable the option on the Mate 20 Pro, and any time the device is pressed against another that supports Qi wirel

At a grand event in London today, Huawei is unveiling the latest members of its Mate smartphone series: the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. The Mate 20 is the larger device, featuring a 6.5-inch, 2244 x 1080 LCD display with a peculiar 18.7:9 aspect ratio. It also has one of the smallest screen notches we’ve seen, accommodating only the selfie camera, with the earpiece positioned at the very edge of the phone. With 820 nits of brightness, Huawei claims this is an extremely power-efficient displa

The cryptocurrency sector has grown anxious over a market reliance on controversial “stablecoin” Tether (USDT), after its value dropped well below its supposedly pegged price of $1. In fact, the market is so concerned with the risks associated with USDT that a “Tether premium” has formed on the cryptocurrency exchanges still using it. Stablecoins like USDT are supposed to be equally valued and completely interchangable with the US dollar. But as the value of USDT has bec

It seems there’s news of a new cryptocurrency scam every week. Usually, as victims come forward the scam is revealed and the perpetrators get caught. However, one scam investigation in India has hit a dead end. Subhashchand Jewria encouraged people to invest in their virtual currency, ATC Coin. Claiming after an 18 month “lock-in” period the cryptocurrency could be used for online shopping, but nothing ever materialized. A year after Jewria’s arrest, the investigation is

It’s easy to think of Microsoft and immediately think of Bill Gates. While Gates led Microsoft to where it stands today, co-founder Paul Allen played an early instrumental role in creating the software giant. Originally named “Micro-soft,” Gates and Allen founded their software company in 1976 after meeting as students at Lakeside School in Seattle. It was this unique friendship at the right time and the right place that ultimately changed the world of computing.
Gates and All

Following the 2015 Paris Agreement to hold the global increase in climate to below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was asked to produce a report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5℃. The report focuses on what must be done if we want to avoid warming above 1.5℃, and the difference between 1.5℃ and 2℃ warming. The general message is that the ecological and social impacts of 1.5℃ are significan

This Day In Days is a new section where we share the best deals of the day alongside a historical fact, and try to connect the two. The aim? To enrich ourselves financially, and you spiritually. In this day in 1384, Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland – although she was a woman. You can view this a middle finger to the patriarchy. Or you can see it as a form of patriarchy. Why? Well, the middle finger is that Jadwiga was called “king” to reflect she was a queen regnant, a