Technology news

One current and one former employee are suing Riot Games in a class-action lawsuit citing gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay. The lawsuit was first reported by Kotaku. Accusations against Riot Games, which is best-known for making League of Legends, first arose in a Kotaku investigative feature from three months ago that included complaints from dozens of employees.
The lawsuit further details some of the sexist conditions first described by the Kotaku piece, includ

Ariana Grande and Pete Davidon’s failed relationship was strung together by a series of inexplicable, enjoyable, and very online moments. From the second Ariana Grande released a song called “pete davidson” to sparking conversation about “Big Dick Energy” and inspiring one of the most popular couple’s Halloween costumes, their relationship has cultivated an aspect of online culture in 2018.That trend has continued, and come to an end, with Grande’s rele

Vince Lynch Contributor Vince Lynch is CEO of IV.AI, an artificial intelligence company that teaches machines how to understand human language so companies can better engage, understand and serve their customers.At this moment in history it’s impossible not to see the problems that arise from human bias. Now magnify that by compute and you start to get a sense for just how dangerous human bias via machine learning can be. The damage can be twofold:Influence. If the AI&

AT&T plans to alert over a dozen customers in the next week or two that their service will be terminated due to copyright infringement, anonymous sources told Axios. AT&T created its own policies on piracy last year, and this is its first time ending a customer’s service in accordance with the new rules.
These dozen-plus customers have received at least nine warnings that they might be infringing on copyrights before AT&T could cancel their service, as AT&T’s new pol

Qualcomm was dealt a major loss in one of its many ongoing legal battles this afternoon, with a federal court ruling that the company must license its modem patents to competing chipmakers, potentially weakening its stranglehold on the market.
The ruling came out of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against Qualcomm, which was filed near the start of 2017. The crux of the lawsuit — whether Qualcomm used anti-competitive practices to maintain a monopoly over smartphone modems — isn&

Watchmaker Jaquet Drozmakes luxury watches that cost more than some San Francisco apartments. Now, however, they’ve decided to go “downmarket” with their Sports Watch chronograph, a handmade watch that is designed for both work and play.
The watch is a standard chronograph with big date, a complication that displays the date as two digits instead of on a rotating dial. The resulting piece looks like ahaute couture Speedmaster and should cost around $15,000, an acceptable sum fo

The holiday season is here again, touting all sorts of kids’ toys that pledge to pack ‘STEM smarts’ in the box, not just the usual battery-based fun.
Educational playthings are nothing new, of course. But, in recent years, long time toymakers and a flurry of new market entrants have piggybacked on the popularity of smartphones and apps, building connected toys for even very young kids that seek to tap into a wider ‘learn to code’ movement which itself feeds off worr

IndieBio, the biotech startup accelerator that’s produced heaps of notable companies (including several that have graced the Startup Battlefield), is holding its twice-annual demo day today at 3PM Pacific Time. An even dozen young companies will be pitching their work, from AI-informed research to artificial meat, and you can watch them present live right here.
The IndieBio program is a four-month one that takes companies at the seed stage, often researchers straight out of graduate progra

It seemed like the ingredients were there for “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” to win us over.
After all, at least one of the hosts of the Original Content podcast is a fan of “Riverdale,” and this comes from the same creative team, with a similar approach — instead of a noir version of Archie, it’s a show that takes the “witch” side of Sabrina the Teenage Witch a little more seriously, with genuine spookiness and scares.
We didn’t hate t

In June, alongside annual creator conference VidCon, YouTuber Tana Mongeau held her own event called TanaCon. Despite promises of free concerts, talks, and meet-and-greets with stars like Shane Dawson and Bella Thorne, the event spiraled into a disaster that was canceled after its first day. Dawson later released a three-part series featuring interviews with Mongeau and TanaCon organizer Michael Weist. Now, Weist has released his own version of events.
The tedious hour-and-a-half video, “

The on-site health clinic at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory prioritized underreporting workplace injuries over proper treatment and safety, according to a new report from Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting. The allegations build on similar claims published by Reveal earlier this year from current and former Tesla employees, and they imply that the company’s so-called Model 3 “production hell” has had serious physical consequences on the workers who pu

You don’t need a TV to tune in to live coverage of the U.S. elections results today – and you don’t have to have Hulu or another live TV streaming service, either. Today, YouTube announced a list of news organizations that will be broadcasting live elections coverage on its site today – helpful for those who don’t have another way to watch at home, or need to tune in while on the go. There’s also live coverage available on other sites, including Facebook,

TransferWise, the European fintech unicorn that enables low-cost international money transfer, has always had ambitions of being a platform in the truest sense. In addition to its direct-to-consumer app, the company offers an API for integration with other fintechs and banks, although it is fair to say that third-party integrations of this kind have been quite slow to come by. With that said, the number of third-party integrations appears to be picking up pace.
The latest bank to offer TransferW

Microsoft’s tiny laptop-tablet hybrid Surface Go originally came in two variants: a 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD budget model for $399 and an 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD model for $549. Then in July, Costco began selling a $549 bundle that included a Surface Go with 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, and the Surface Type Cover (which separately, would cost $99). Now the exclusive period on the Costco model is over, and the 4GB / 128GB variant has made its way to the Microsoft Store for $499. Unfortunately, it’s cu

We didn’t receive an official release date for Google’s Chrome OS Pixel Slate when it was announced in October, but regardless, preorders are now live on the Google Store and through Best Buy. The device starts at $599 on the Google Store and can be specced out at $1,599 for 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. Best Buy starts its pricing at $799 for 64GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. It also sells the fully specced version for $1,599. Best Buy lists the release date as November 22nd, and

Often, Netflix doesn’t announce its new projects until shortly before their release. It has the luxury of making surprise releases for an audience that is always hungry for new content. Today, though, the streaming company announced a four-year plan for upcoming animated series, which brings it more in line with traditional animation studios like Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks. Because the lead time on animated projects is so lengthy, most of the big studios publicize their release plans y

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is calling on the telecom industry to help put an end to scam robocalls. On Monday, FCC chairman Ajit Pai sent letters to the heads of voice providers, including AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, Google, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon* and others, urging them to adopt a call authentication system that would combat illegal caller ID spoofing and get that system up and running no later than next year.
The FCC stressed the system was critical to protec

Microsoft’s Javier Soltero, the company’s vice president of Cortana, will be departing by the end of the year, according to a report from ZDNet. Soltero first joined Microsoft when it scooped up his email app Acompli back in late 2014.Soltero and the Acompli team helped Microsoft vastly improve its Outlook iOS app. He later became the overall head of Outlook before taking on the Cortana chief role in March of this year, as part of the company’s massive reorganization that brou

Microsoft’s Javier Soltero, the company’s vice president of Cortana, will be departing by the end of the year, according to a report from ZDNet. Following the report’s publication, Soltero confirmed his departure in a tweet posted to his personal account.
Soltero first joined Microsoft when it scooped up his email app Acompli back in late 2014. He and the Acompli team helped Microsoft vastly improve its Outlook iOS app. He later became the overall head of Outlook before taking

Verizon is updating the pricing for its prepaid plans, and its unlimited plan is now cheaper than ever at $70 per month — or $65 with a $5 discount for setting up autopay.
That’s a nice discount, considering the old prepaid unlimited plan cost $75 per month. There is also a new 8GB plan for $45 and a 3GB plan for $35, which are only slight improvements over the old 7GB for $50 and 3GB for $40 options (via Android Authority), once you factor in the $5 autopay discount Verizon is appl

The head of Harvard’s department of astronomy thinks that there’s a possibility that a strange object that visited our Solar System from interstellar space may be an alien probe sent from a distant civilization. He and a colleague outlined their idea in a paper published this week analyzing what the mysterious space object might be, setting off a media frenzy.
But let’s take a breath before we jubilantly cry “aliens.” A single idea about what this object could be d

The Verge’s Holiday Gift Guide for 2018 has launched, and within it you’ll find a huge variety of gifts at every price point. There’s a good mix of practical and essential gift ideas that we’ve put together, and we hope that it’s helpful as you begin shopping for those in your life, or putting together a personal wishlist.To make shopping a bit easier on the wallet, a few companies featured in our guide are excited to offer some exclusive discounts for readers of T

Like a kid shooting spitballs, designer Beer Holthuis has figured out that sopping wet paper is the best material for making mischief. His 3D printer, a primitive RepRap clone that literally squirts out huge lines of paper pulp, is designed to allow artists and designers to create more sustainable 3D objects.
According to 3DPrint.com, Holthuis was searching for material that wouldn’t create waste or increase plastic pollution. He settled on ground-up paper. By extruding the wet paper he is

Vimeo has long regarded itself as the video-sharing site for those that want to get experimental. Well, the company has found a new medium to get creators pumped about, and I think it’s fair to say they’re near the forefront of this one: holograms.
Vimeo has partnered with Brooklyn-based Looking Glass Factory to combine volumetric video with a medium that can display the content without a headset. Looking Glass Factory’s lenticular display is intensely cool, with a partic

Photomath just raised a $6 million funding round from Goodwater Capital, with Learn Capital also participating. Photomath has created a hugely successful mobile app for iOS and Android with 100 million downloads so far.
Photomath first launched at TechCrunch Disrupt London back in 2014. The company was working on text recognition technology. Photomath was just a demo app to promote that technology.
But the startup accidentally created a consumer success. The app instantly attracted millions of d

The first virtual reality experience created by From Software, the studio behind notoriously punishing action role-playing games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Déraciné isn’t what you’d expect. It’s not violent or particularly challenging. In fact, it has more in common with narrative-focused indie games like Gone Home and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture than the rest of From’s catalog. So it’s important to go into Déraciné with t

Luminar, the buzzy LiDAR startup founded by Austin Russell,has added another high-profile executive to its ranks. This time, Luminar has hired Uber executive Brent Schwarz as its head of business development.
Schwarz, who has been at Luminar for about two months now, comes from Uberby way of self-driving truck startup Otto, which acquired his own LiDAR startup.
Schwarz is a veteran in the LiDAR sensor industry. He was vice president of sales and marketing at Velodyne from 2009 to 2012 and h

GoogleCloud is getting a managed cron service for running batch jobs. Cloud Scheduler, as the new service is called, provides all the functionality of the kind of standard command-line cron service you probably love to hate, but with the reliability and ease of use of running a managed service in the cloud.
The targets for Cloud Scheduler jobs can be any HTTP/S endpoints and Google’s own Cloud Pub/Sub topics and App Engine applications. Developers can manage these jobs through a UI in the

GPS is too inaccurate to tell if a scooter is being driven or parked in off-limits areas. But as scooter startups compete for permits from city governments, they need a way to prove their riders play by the rules. That’s where Fantasmo’s new scooter positioning camera comes in.
The augmented reality mapping startup had been building the Camera Positioning Standard to give self-driving cars, robots and AR games a dynamically updated understanding of the real world around them. But now

Dropbox has a new feature it hopes will make getting work done from within its cloud storage product even easier. Called Extensions, these third-party software plug-ins will let you perform basic tasks you’d normally need to launch a separate app or in-browser window for all within Dropbox on the web.Dropbox’s first suite of Extensions — with partners like Adobe, DocuSign, and Vimeo — will let you get the required digital signatures on a PDF and perform some light photo

In 2011, Steven Yang’s laptop battery gave out. Searching online, he couldn’t find a new battery from a third-party supplier with good enough ratings. Instead, he was faced with paying an arm and a leg to buy a battery from the manufacturer. With this problem in mind, Yang created Anker and began developing and selling batteries and chargers through Amazon. Just one year later, the company was profitable and highly regarded by customers. Now, Anker has set its sights on solving bigg

Microsoft is overhauling its 500-acre campus in Redmond, Washington for 2022. The new campus will include 18 additional buildings (Microsoft already has more than 100), alongside cricket and soccer fields and retail shops. While work is set to start on the buildings this fall, Microsoft has commissioned Blockworks to create a Minecraft version of its new headquarters for employees to explore.
CNBC reports that Blockworks, a company that specializes in building Minecraft versions of real-world p

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Foxconn is looking to transfer some of its Chinese workforce to Wisconsin in time for its new factory opening in Racine. These workers, the Journal reports, would likely be engineers and would fill a gap in prospective talent due to a tight labor market. Given that the entire deal with Foxconn hinged on the promise of new jobs for Americans, that would be an unwelcome surprise for many in Wisconsin.
In a comment to Gizmodo, Foxconn denied that