Technology news

Netflix announced on December 28 that more than 45 million accounts watched its Netflix original horror movie, Bird Box, in seven days, making it a record breaking debut for the streaming service — but considering Netflix rarely specifies what its data means, it was difficult to gauge what that number meant.There are a lot of variables in Netflix’s statement. 45 million accounts doesn’t exactly translate to specific viewer counts, as an account could serve one person or an ent

For the first time ever, a police drone will keep a watchful eye on the New Year’s Eve ball drop in New York’s Times Square, as first reported by the Associated Press. The New York City Police Department deployed the gadget to keep the festivities safe, in addition to the 7,000 police officers it has on deck, bomb-sniffing dogs, and 200 blocker trucks filled with sand.The quadcopter drone will be controlled remotely by trained police and will help give a bird’s-eye view of the

Jake Chapman ContributorShare on Twitter Jake Chapman is a managing partner at Alpha Bridge Partners. More posts by this contributorDriving the new American century Specialization, Polymaths And The Pareto Principle In A Convergence Economy
Colin Kroll,was the co-founder of Vine and HQ Trivia, both consumer sensations that brought joy to millions; Anthony Bourdain, had been a chef, journalist and philosopher, who brought understanding and connectedness to millions of lives; while Robin Williams

Sadly, Game of Thrones isn't returning until April 2019, but if you're in the mood for some show- related news to hold you over, we've got you covered.
Brett Ratcliffe, a University of Nebraska entomologist and professor, decided to name three of his eight newly discovered beetle species after Game of Thrones characters. How fun!
According to The Omaha World-Herald, Ratcliffe named the three species of beetles — each from the Gymnetis genus — after Daenerys Targaryen’s three dr

What standard, exactly, am I supposed to be judging virtual and augmented reality against in 2018? Should I measure it against the sci-fi aspirations that VR and AR companies set years ago and have unsurprisingly failed to meet? Should I estimate how far it remains from mainstream adoption? Or should I stick to comparing 2018 with 2017, when I gave VR a middling C grade and didn’t even talk about AR? Since I just went through the trouble of listing those options, my predictable answer is

Lady Gaga has officially made her Las Vegas debut with brilliant blue hair and an emotional AF performance of "Shallow."
The singer closed out the opening night of her Enigma residency by performing the hit song from A Star Is Born live, for the first time, and boy was it something.
"For a really long time I felt so misunderstood about the way I dressed, the way I talked, my attitude," Gaga explained before sitting down at the piano to play. "They thought it was shallow. But this shit is deep as

As any true horror fan should know, in the movies, senses like sight, speech, and hearing sometimes work against characters.
In the 2016 film Hush, the protagonist, Maddie, can't hear. The 2018 film A Quiet Place follows a family who must remain silent, as sound attracts deadly monsters. And in Netflix's recently released hit Bird Box, the characters must wear blindfolds to avoid seeing threatening creatures with the potential to invade their minds.
All three are terrifying, slightly similar sce

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson slayed the gift-giving game this year.
For Christmas, he went big and bought his mom a brand new home. Then he captured her reaction on video and shared the touching footage with his 126 million Instagram followers. View this post on Instagram
A post shared by therock (@therock) on Dec 29, 2018 at 1:59pm PST"This one felt good... Bought my mom a new home for Christmas," The Rock captioned the video of his mom unwrapping the card, which he disguised as a "Willy Wonka Gol

Amazon reportedly has plans to expand Whole Foods stores across the US into suburbs and other regions. It also wants to bring its two-hour delivery program Prime Now to all current Whole Foods stores, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal. The move would grow Whole Foods at a rapid pace that it hasn’t seen before.
Whole Foods employees have already reportedly ventured to parts of Idaho, Wyoming, and southern Utah for potential retail spaces they could set up shop in. One anonymou

Big Mouth Billy Bass with Alexa isn’t necessary the product of the year, but it’s one that symbolizes all the novelty trends that we saw in gadgets in 2018. In one item, the talking, singing fish represents nostalgia, DIY hackery, and corporations taking independent developer ideas and turning it to profit. These themes highlight the trends that led the world of gadgets this year, as nostalgia continues to influence products while simultaneously being a reflection of our bleak times

Think you know tech? Square off against TechCrunch editors with 2018’s year in tech quiz.
TechCrunch’s 2018 Year In Tech Quiz
Square off against TechCrunch’s reporters and editors in this year’s annual quiz, covering the major stories of the past twelve months. Have you got what it takes?Which big tech company didn’t get called to Congress this year?
How many rockets did SpaceX launch this year?
Which company has never operated a bike-share program?
What was the sha

Microsoft’s app store for Windows has become a fairly impressive library of software for users, and we want our readers to go into the new year with apps that will make their PCs just that much better. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite apps from the Microsoft Store. Some came out this year, while a few are slightly older, but they’re all pretty great. We’re going to assume, if you’re here, you already have the basics — Microsoft Word,

With 2018 in the rear-view mirror, 2019 lies ahead, bringing with it a ton of new science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels that will bring us to new worlds and introduce us to our next favorite characters.2019 is shaping up to be a really exciting year for readers. There are books coming from authors that we’re huge fans of, and debuts from up-and-coming novelists that we can’t wait to delve into.With that in mind, we’ve rounded up some of the upcoming books that we’r

It was the best of years, it was the worst of years, it was the wokest of years, it was the most problematic of years, it was the year of AI, it was the year of scooters, it was the year of Big Tech triumph, it was the year of Big Tech scandals, it was the year of Musk’s disgrace, it was the year of Tesla’s redemption, it was the year of shitcoin justice, it was definitely not the year of AR or VR, it was the dumbest timeline, it was the spring of stanning, it was the winter of wtf.

While you ring in the new year on Monday night, you can also watch along as NASA sends a spacecraft zooming by a tiny rock 4.1 billion miles from Earth. The space agency’s New Horizons probe, which flew by Pluto in 2015, is now going to fly past another object — a type of space rock we’ve never been to before. And it’s all happening just as we enter the year 2019.
Just like with the Pluto flyby, the New Horizons mission team is gathered at John Hopkins University’s

As for much of the tech industry, 2018 has been a year of reckoning for artificial intelligence. As AI systems have been integrated into more products and services, the technology’s shortcomings have become clearer. Researchers, companies, and the general public have all begun to grapple more with the limitations of AI and its adverse effects, asking important questions like: how is this technology being used, and for whose benefit?This reckoning has been most visible as a parade of negat

Motion helps make UIs expressive and easy to use. Despite having so much potential, motion is perhaps the least understood of all the design disciplines. This may be due to it being one of the newer members of the UI design family. Visual and interaction design dates back to early GUIs, but motion had to wait for modern hardware to render animation smoothly. The overlap between UI motion and traditional animation also muddies the waters. A lifetime can be spent mastering Disney’s 12

When you say “cryptocurrency,” you’d be forgiven if one of the first things that comes to mind is: “exit scam.” Exit scams refer to those cunning plots, whereby blockchain startups collect investors money, often through initial coin offerings (ICOs), only to disappear suddenly, along with any funds raised. This happens so frequently that by August, more than $100 million in funds contributed to ICOs had been stolen as part of an exit scam in 2018. They’re ind

Here at TNW we’re always looking for a killer app that does something better, entertains us, or introduces innovation. Our favorite Android apps in 2018 are a mixture of brand new apps, returning champions, and things we’re finding for the first time. These aren’t the usual suspects, like “Netflix” and “Spotify” that you’ll find on most lists. Instead they’re the ones we wrote about or fell in love with this year that haven’t necessari

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain platform which lets anyone create and deploy decentralized applications (DApps). The project was first proposed in a white paper in 2013 by a 19 years old Vitalik Buterin. Buterin’s purpose was clear. Instead of targeting and building every single use-case over blockchain, he wanted to create something that could be used to create anything over blockchain — whether it is custom cryptocurrencies, financial instruments, smart property, decent

While hardcore cryptocurrency enthusiasts often tout blockchain for its heightened security, the technology is not perfect – and there are often tons of vulnerabilities in the code. Indeed, blockchain companies have received at least 3,000 vulnerability reports in 2018 alone. According to stats from breach disclosure platform HackerOne, blockchain companies awarded $878,504 in bug bounties to hackers this year. The data was compiled in mid-December. By contrast, the total sum of

Every couple of weeks we see a new article come up that tries to answer the good old question: should designers learn to code? Our industry is finally reaching a point where we are able to step back and reframe that question altogether. There are two fundamental arguments used by those who defend the fact that designers who learn to code become more valuable than others: First, by creating prototypes that are as close as possible to the ultimate intent of the desired experience, it becomes

Chinese internet giant Tencent has been excluded from the first batch of video game license approvals issued by the state-run government since March.
China regulators approved Saturday the released of 80 online video games after a months-long freeze, Reuters first reported. None of the approved titles listed on the approval list were from Tencent Holdings, the world’s largest gaming company.
Licenses are usually granted on a first come, first serve basis in order of when studios file

We’re entering an unprecedented era of advanced technology and behemoth tech companies driving its development. Earlier this year, Apple became the first company to reach a one-trillion-dollar valuation, and Amazon followed suit, reaching a one-trillion-dollar market cap in September. Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Facebook, and Netflix are similarly dominant over the S&P 500, together providing an enormous proportion of the technology we use on a daily basis and influencin