Technology news

Drake has transitioned from casual Fortnite player into video game overlord today, assuming the mantle of co-owner of professional e-sports organization 100 Thieves.Drake and producer Scooter Braun (best known for working with fellow Canadian superstar Justin Bieber) are now co-owners of Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag’s 100 Thieves, coming in as the company completes its Series A funding round.
The choice to invest is an adventurous one for Drake and Braun, but not completely surpris

“Society as a whole is unable to think on anything like geologic time scales,” says Marcia Bjornerud. “Or even decadal time scales.” It’s clear that we need to think long-term about climate and the environment, but instead political leaders are constrained by the two-year Congressional cycle and those working in business are beholden to quarterly earnings.Bjornerud is a geologist at Lawrence University in Wisconsin and the author of Timefulness: How Thinking Like a

We already know quite a bit about the OnePlus 6T. It’s launching on October 29th with an event in New York City that was moved up a day to avoid conflicting with Apple’s iPad Pro event. And the phone will come with an in-display fingerprint sensor and a tiny notch at the top of its bezel-less display. There’s even a leaked image of the front and back of the phone that circulated earlier this month.But we may have just gotten a better picture of the device’s specs, thanks

Peeking behind the curtain to see the process of game development is already a rare joy, but it’s even more unusual to see some of the flawed, erroneous moments that had to be polished out of a finished piece of work. Thankfully, Sony Santa Monica, the makers of PS4 hit God of War, have lifted that curtain for us in a newly posted video.“Making a video game is difficult,” reads the YouTube description for the video, which showcases some particularly choice prerelease gameplay

Jelly is a new electric scooter company preparing to launch at Purdue University in Indiana. Outwardly, it appears very similar to other scooter startups that have quickly spread across the country in the last 12 months. Except for one key difference: Jelly is apparently a subsidiary of Ford, one of the largest automakers in the world.Ford wanted to stay anonymous at first
Of course, you wouldn’t know that by going to Jelly’s website, because there’s nothing there except the w

Mozilla has released Firefox 63, which introduces Enhanced Tracking Protection, a feature that blocks third-party trackers to increase your privacy online. Mozilla has been focused on data and privacy in recent months, announcing upcoming features like having Firefox block ad-tracking software by default and partnering with ProtonVPN to sell subscriptions to a small group of Firefox users.
For now, Firefox 63 has Enhanced Tracking Protection off by default, but it gives users the option to bloc

Apple’s streaming television service, which is said to resemble Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, will launch in the first half of next year, according to a report today from The Information. The service, which may exist as a standalone app or within the existing TV app, will launch in the US first and become available in more than 100 countries after a few months of availability, the report says. It will feature a mix of original programming, access to third-party services, and the ability

HP is updating its popular Spectre x360 convertible laptops today. Both the 13- and 15-inch versions are getting a new “gem cut” design with a more angular look and feel. The new design also includes a USB-C port that’s angled on the edge of the Spectre x360 to improve cable management. As you’d expect, HP is including Intel’s latest 8th Gen quad-core processors inside the 13-inch Spectre x360, and six-core options for the larger 15-inch model.
The big promise of t

Apple’s second fall event is rapidly approaching, but noted TF International Securities supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has some predictions of what won’t be at the event: an updated fifth-generation iPad Mini, which Kuo says won’t be coming until sometime in 2019, via 9to5Mac.When it does arrive, though, Kuo says that the new iPad Mini will get “an upgraded processor and a lower-cost panel,” which would seem to position it as a smaller option for those consideri

Super Mario Bros. 3 was launched in Japan on October 23rd 1988 (and every game since has been sub par). It’s incomprehensible that this isn’t a globally recognized holiday, but nonetheless, we’re here to help you celebrate this momentous occasion in gaming history. It doesn’t matter how old you are, Super Mario Bros. 3 is the greatest game ever made. That’s a fact. If you’re my age, it was the absolute peak of 1980s video game technology, and you were the per

China’s highest-paid actress Fan Bingbing (X-Men: Days of Future Past) disappeared this summer following accusations of tax evasion. This month, an apology for breaking the law appeared on her social media account, and Fan has been ordered to pay 884 million yuan ($127 million) to avoid criminal prosecution. Last week, she resurfaced in paparazzi shots, but the Chinese release of her upcoming film Air Strike (also commonly translated as Unbreakable Spirit or The Big Bomb), also starring B

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ digital media company, the WikiTribune, is shifting its focus away from traditional news-gathering and moving to a “community oriented” strategy that prioritizes working with contributors.In the process, the company has laid off its 12 original editorial staffers, reports The Drum, following the April departure of CNN and Reuters journalist Peter Bale, who initially assembled the team. The WikiTribune began in August of last year, and Wales and h

Cable provider Charter will increase a half-dozen of its surcharges and fees for all Spectrum customers beginning in November. The hiked cost of bill items like “broadcast TV surcharge” and more expensive cable box rentals, among other changes, could result in some customers paying “an additional $7.61 a month” according to the Asheville Citizen Times. Ars Technica also reported on the pending increase.The new rates “will affect all markets,” the company has

Starting today, SoundCloud will let you share songs from its app directly to Instagram Stories, the company announced in a blog post.
To post a SoundCloud track to Instagram Stories, navigate to the song you want to share in the SoundCloud app, then tap the share icon at the bottom of the screen. Depending on the phone you’re using, you’ll either select the Instagram icon or tap “Share to Instagram Stories.” It will then open in Instagram Stories, with the album art as t

We already knew that the electronic scooter space in Europe was heating up, with Berlin’s Tier announcing today it has raised €25 million in a round led by Northzone, and rumours circulating that Delivery Hero founder Lukasz Gadowski has ventured into the space — all within the context of U.S. companies Bird and Lime recently expanding to Europe. However, now it seems that Balderton Capital could be about to make its move by investing in Sweden’s VOI Technology, another e-

Over 125 Android apps and websites have been drawn into a massive fraud scheme that’s seen hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue stolen, according to an in-depth investigative report published by Buzzfeed News.As Buzzfeed’s report details, the scam saw the fraudsters purchase legitimate, established applications from developers through a front company called “We Purchase Apps.” Those apps would see their ownerships transferred over to shell companies that would c

The White House wants the nation’s big tech companies to make it easier for employees to do a civic “tour of duty” with the government. Another way of putting it: the President needs to bring in temps now that his plan to cheat Federal workers out of their promised 2019 pay raise fell apart. This latest assault on Federal employees by the White House comes in the form of a meeting held Monday between lawmakers and representatives from several technology companies. Accordi

Draw on This Website delivers exactly what it promises: a website that allows anyone with access to the internet and a little imagination the chance to contribute their own art. It’s communal: people can draw whatever they like on an open document, or add to other people’s drawings in real time. It’s a site where everyone who buys their own little chalk stick is set free on a digital sidewalk and told to play nicely with the other neighborhood kids.
Draw on This Website, which

Facebook is releasing a redesigned version of Messenger today that attempts to put the focus back on your chats. After years of revenue-focused expansion into bots, games, payments, and other distractions, the company is bringing Messenger back to basics. While all those extra widgets are still present in the app, they’ve mostly been hidden away in spots where you can safely ignore them. The new Messenger still promotes its business objectives throughout the app, but on the whole it&rsquo

Bethesda Game Studios today released a note to its fans warning its upcoming game, Fallout 76, was likely to have some pretty big bugs and glitches, and it would need gamers’ help finding them. In other news, the sky is still blue and bears still shit in the woods. As the Fallout 76 beta is due to open tomorrow, one can only assume the note was a bizarre attempt to soften the blow for the people who are going to find the bugs the hard way. It begins with a description of ho

The new Google Camera app for Pixel 3 phones touts a lot of widely publicized features like the wide-angle selfie camera and updated AR stickers, but another lesser-known feature is that it can add a remote viewfinder to any smartwatch running Wear OS. The Google Camera Wear OS app also adds a timer and flip camera button. The new feature was first spotted by Redditor AimarChirico, via Android Police.The feature is a big improvement over the last Wear OS Camera app, which only allowed for remot

Google announced in a blog post today that Google Play customers in the US and Canada will see several upgrades to their movie-watching experience.
Any movies you’ve previously purchased in SD or HD that are available in 4K will now be automatically upgraded to stream in 4K. If you open the Play Movies & TV app it should tell you which titles have had the upgrade applied. Additionally, Google Play has lowered the cost of most 4K titles — they used to sit around $30 a pop and now

The office might not seem like an area in desperate need of disruption, but Envoy — a Silicon Valley company used to sign in over 100,000 visitors at offices across the world each day; and a TechCrunch SF office neighbor! — has raised $43 million to do just that.
The company started life five years digitizing the sign-in book with a simple iPad-based approach, and it has moved on to office deliveries with an automated system that simply involves scanning a barcode. In both cases, ale

If you’re motivated by pretty lights and the prospect of turning them on, you might be into YouTuber and robot maker Simone Giertz’s new (and first) Kickstarter campaign: The Every Day Calendar. It’s a large printed circuit board that relies on capacitive touch and LEDs to light up individual days on the calendar — the idea being that you’ll tap on a day to make it glow when you’ve accomplished a specific goal. Let’s say you want to go to the gym every

In 2018, films and television shows about superheroes or the adventures of heroes fighting evil across space are commonplace: only a single non-genre film (Crazy Rich Asians) has cracked the top 10 list for highest box office gross this year. Historically, that’s a new development; science fiction was once a reviled genre, dismissed as juvenile trash or escapist nonsense. Two projects are largely responsible for this shift: Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking 1968 film 2001: A Space Od

On Tuesday, Lyft offered a glimpse of its brand-new self-driving car. It’s a Ford Focus hybrid sedan with technology designed and built by the ride-hailing company’s in-house team of autonomous vehicle engineers. Lyft also announced the acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, a London-based augmented reality startup that uses computer vision to process street-level imagery.Lyft has 300 engineers working on self-driving cars
The acquisition, first reported by TechCrunch, is a first for Lyft

Patreon, a crowdfunding membership platform for creators, announced today that it’s partnering with Reddit to help users promote their work and build communities.Most of these changes are being made through tiny integrations that will change the aesthetic of creators’ subreddits and make their Patreon accounts more visible. The most noticeable change is a specific “Patron” flair that appears beside Reddit users’ names who support a specific creator on Patreon. This

Starz is joining Hulu’s live TV subscription as an optional $8.99 monthly add-on. It’s the latest premium cable company to offer its content and channels on the over-the-top streaming service.The new Starz subscription will give subscribers access to the company’s live Starz and Starz Encore channel lineup as well as the back catalog of existing Starz content. Hulu already offers HBO ($14.99 per month), Cinemax ($9.99 per month), and Showtime ($10.99 per month) as similar add-

Berlin-based startup GoEuro just raised a new $150 million funding round from Kinnevik and Temasek, with Hillhouse Capital also participating. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised nearly $300 million to date.
Chances are you’ve used some sort of flight aggregator before to compare prices and find the best deal. But if you live in Europe, this isn’t enough. Sometimes, you want to compare flights with trains and buses.
GoEuroallows you to do just that. After entering two cit

Some Alexa-enabled headphones already exist, but Qualcomm wants to make it easier for hardware makers to build Amazon’s assistant into their devices and use Qualcomm chips while doing so. The company released a reference design today that’ll give makers the instructions on how to make an Alexa-enabled device with a button to activate the assistant. Of course, the design incorporates Qualcomm’s Bluetooth audio chips.
Qualcomm’s goal is to make it simpler for creators to b

In 2016, YouTube released its first original movie: a near-future tale called The Thinning about a world where children are killed for failing a standardized test. Starring Logan Paul, The Thinning was almost immediately forgotten; nevertheless, YouTube still started the production of a sequel the following year. This past January, however, Paul filmed the body of a suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest in one of his vlogs, igniting international controversy, and the project was she

This season, The Walking Dead has been taking the opportunity to reinvent itself. New showrunner Angela Kang has streamlined the pacing, cut down on the filler, and focused the plot on grounded issues like governance, punishment, and the necessary work required to rebuild a functioning society. Minor characters have been given well-written moments to take on more of the spotlight, while the main cast truly feels like they’ve earned their stations as high-ranking leaders and decision-maker

Lime plans to open physical stores in the US and abroad in the coming year as it seeks to elevate its electric bike and scooter business from just a cheap way to get around to more of a lifestyle brand.The news about Lime’s plans first came to light in the job posting for a “store manager” in Santa Monica, California, which is ground zero for dockless scooter services. This future location will “place heavy importance on brand experience and customer engagement,” t

Crypto-anarchists may not like it, but money doesn’t buy everything. Sometimes, you just need the help of a traditional venture capitalist.
Binanceis the fastest growing company in crypto — having risen to become the world’s largest crypto exchange based on trading volumes in under one year — but even it needs help from the old guard. Earlier today the exchange firm, which is officially headquartered in Malta, announced that it has landed an undisclosed investment fr

On Friday, October 25th, Christie’s will conduct a very unusual sale. As part of a three-day Prints & Multiples event, it’s auctioning off the Portrait of Edmond Belamy, a canvas in a gold frame that shows the smudged figure of what looks like an 18th century gentleman. It’s expected to fetch a modest price, somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000, but the artwork’s distinguishing feature is that it was “created by an artificial intelligence,” says Christie&r

MoviePass parent company Helios and Matheson has announced a preliminary plan to spin off the struggling subscription move service into its own company.
“Since we acquired control of MoviePass in December 2017, HMNY largely has become synonymous with MoviePass in the public’s eye, leading us to believe that our shareholders and the market perception of HMNY might benefit from separating our movie-related assets from the rest of our company,” Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnswo

Phone companies usually want to stop you from repairing your own devices, or even going to a third-party repair shop. But Motorola is taking a different approach: it’s partnering with iFixit, the repair guide site famous for its device teardowns, to offer battery and screen replacement kits for a number of its phones.
The kits range from $40 to $200 and include the key replacement parts — either a battery or a display and digitizer — along with many of the speciality tools you

When ICE launched an immigration crime hotline last year, the Trump administration pitched it as a way to provide resources to victims, but activists saw something else: an attack on the immigrant community.
The hotline was part of the Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, an outfit established in February 2017. When the office first launched a line for its services the following April, protestors flooded the hotline to call in pranks and slow down response times. The plan pick