Technology news

Honda marked its 50th anniversary in Australia today, and to celebrate, the company wrapped some of its most iconic products in gold vinyl, including cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, a lawn mower, and a power generator. More specifically, it gilded a Civic Type R hot hatchback, the Acura NSX hybrid supercar, a HRU19 Buffalo lawn mower, EU22i generator, CBR1000RR Fireblade motorcycle, CRF450L dual-sport dirt bike, and a CRF50F kids motorbike, for the little ones who enjoy luxury. Unfortunately, th

Autoplaying video is the scourge of the internet, and Mozilla is going to do its part to help stomp it out in the upcoming Firefox 66, which will automatically mute any autoplaying video unless the user actively clicks the play button, via TechCrunch.Users will be able to whitelist sites they’d like autoplay on
As detailed in the blog post announcing the new block, Mozilla is defining autoplaying video as “any playback that happens before the user has interacted with a page via a mo

The Apple HomePod is $70 off of its usual price at both Best Buy and B&H Photo. Normally $349.99, it’s $279.99 until supplies last. We’ve seen this device for as low as $249 during Black Friday, so this may be the best discount we see for some time on the smart speaker, which Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel said sounded “immediately, obviously better than other speakers” in his full review.
Also, just for today, Anker has cut prices on a few of its accessories at A

Google parent company Alphabet continues to invest heavily in its quest to figure out the future. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, the company said it incurred a more than $1.3 billion operating loss in its “Other Bets” category, the collection of divisions that includes its experimental X lab, its internet group Access, its LTE balloon initiative Loon, its drone delivery project Wing, and its self-driving car unit Waymo, among other groups focused on health sciences an

All-electric racing series Formula E announced plans to sprout another EV series called Extreme E last week. The new green racing series will focus on electric cars that more closely resemble the ones we drive every day, though they’ll compete in intense conditions in locations around the globe that are being threatened by climate change. It’s easily Formula E founder Alejandro Agag’s wildest idea yet.The new series’ first season will kick off in 2021. It will feature 12

There are no 5G iPhones, and there probably won’t be 5G iPhones for a while. But that isn’t stopping Apple and AT&T: they are reportedly rolling out AT&T’s fake “5G E” branding with its upcoming iOS 12.2 update, according to a report from MacRumors. Much like when the two companies pulled this scam with 4G and LTE back in 2012, if you can’t beat them, you roll out a software update to make it look like you did even though the phones and network are st

Titanfall creator Respawn Entertainment became the latest developer to take on Fortnite, with today’s announcement and surprise launch of Apex Legends. It’s a new free-to-play shooter set in the Titanfall universe, and it’s a bold attempt at venturing into the increasingly crowded battle royale space. Perhaps even more interesting than the game itself, though, is Respawn’s release strategy, which amounts to a radical rethinking of how big-budget game studios put out new

Slack was late to the world of workplace messaging apps. When it arrived in in 2013, it didn’t appear to offer much that was new — chat rooms and direct messaging were already available in a host of apps. But its co-founder Stewart Butterfield cannily presented it as a powerful alternative to email and, over time, as a command hub for the workplace that would integrate all the other software a company uses into a single interface. Slack spread like wildfire, and today is worth at le

Puma has announced its latest take on self-lacing shoes just a few weeks after Nike unveiled one of its own self-lacing models. The sneakers, called “Fi” for “Fit Intelligence,” are training shoes that can adapt to a wearer’s foot with the swipe of a module on top of the shoe’s tongue. A micromotor pulls a pair of blue cables that run through the sneaker, and tightness can be adjusted through a smartphone app or an Apple Watch.
The shoes are the successor to

The Belkin Ethernet + Power Adapter with Lightning Connector dongle — a long, but descriptive name — gives Lightning iPads an Ethernet connection and a Lightning power port. The Ethernet port supports connections up to 480 Mbps, and can deliver 12W of power. This dongle might be handy if you’re using an older iPad, but given that the new iPad Pro has a USB-C port, the support comes at a strange time in Apple’s port strategy. But then, it’s been a strange time in Ap

In celebration of the Lunar New Year, Steam has kicked off its themed sale that will last until 4PM ET / 1PM PT on February 11th. This sale seems promising so far, with some steep discounts on some recently released titles for your library, and others that might finally be cheap enough to gift for a friend if you already own them. And if the sales aren’t what you were hoping for, Steam is offering a $5 discount on your first purchase during the sale period that’s over $30 in total.

Warning: significant spoilers ahead for Netflix’s Velvet Buzzsaw.
“They’re visionary,” art critic Morf Vandewalt enthuses when he first sees a series of paintings by the late outsider artist Ventril Dease in Dan Gilroy’s Netflix movie Velvet Buzzsaw. “Mesmeric… I’m ensorcelled,” he continues. It’s the reaction every artist dreams of: instant, ecstatic, unqualified praise. Forget leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Forget awakeni

Twitter today added a new feature to its Periscope live-streaming app that it says users have been asking about for years: the ability to invite guests onto a live recording. The new feature is designed to let streamers bring in audience members, while the Periscope app will then broadcast audio from that person to everyone else in the stream. Twitter says you’ll be able to include up to three guests in addition to the host on a live stream. If any one guest drops off, new ones can then b

Google is opening up one of the nicest little features of its Chrome OS devices: Instant Tethering, which allows you to activate your phone’s hot spot and get online directly from a Chromebook. The feature will soon work with more than 30 Android phones and 15 additional Chromebooks, on top of the small selection where it’s already available — namely, Google’s Chromebooks and Pixel phones.
As it tends to be with Chrome OS features, the new option is rolling out to more d

Slack, the provider of workplace communication and collaboration tools, has submitted paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public later this year, the company announced on Monday.
This is its first concrete step toward becoming a publicly listed company, five years after it launched.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Slack has raised more than $1 billion in venture capital investment, including a $427 million funding round in August. The round valued the business at $7.1 bil

Is there anything quite as wonderful as unlocking the hidden potential of a gadget years after it first debuts? Today, owners of Google’s $400 Nest Secure home security system will find out as Google starts issuing an over-the-air update that adds Google Assistant voice assistant functionality so you can talk directly via your Nest Guard hub + keypad.
Technically, you’ve been able to arm the Nest Secure with your voice ever since it launched in November 2017 — as long as you h

Viacom has launched a new direct-to-consumer streaming app called MTV Play in the UK, reports Variety. The app combines on-demand access to MTV Shows such as Geordie Shore and Teen Mom UK with the ability to stream the MTV channel live, and is available for £3.99 (around $5.22) a month after a 30-day free trial.Although MTV Play will be offered directly to consumers, the company says it is also talking with telco providers to distribute the app to their subscribers. Previously, Viacom has

One of Microsoft’s oldest and biggest verticals for its Azure cloud business has been education, and today it announced an acquisition that it hopes will help it deepen its reach: it has acquired DataSense — a data management platform that can be used to collect, integrate and report information from across a range of online education applications and services — from an educational technology company called BrightBytes, to integrate the functionality into Azure.
DataSense

Productboard, the San Francisco and Prague-based startup that offers product management software, has raised $10 million in further funding, adding to its Series A in July last year. The round is led by Index Ventures, and sees Index General Partner Jan Hammer joining the board.
Also participating is previous backers Kleiner Perkins, Credo Ventures, Rockaway Capital and Reflex Capital. It brings total funding for Productboard to $19.7 million, while I understand from sources that the company&rsq

Instagram hasn’t effectively protected users from self-harm and suicidal content, Adam Mosseri, the head of the company, admits in an op-ed today, and he says that the company is working to remedy that.Mosseri writes in The Telegraph that the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell in 2017 moved him and pushed the company to take a deeper look at its self-harm content screening. Russell died by suicide, and her family says she followed multiple self-harm and suicide Instagram accounts, which l

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken just closed its biggest acquisition to date. The company is buying Crypto Facilities in a nine-figure deal.
Crypto Facilities is an exchange and index provider regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the U.K. In particular, Crypto Facilities lets you trade futures on multiple cryptocurrency pairs.
Following this acquisition, some Kraken users can now access both spot and futures trading. The company also has an OTC service for large orders. Futures are limi

Anker has discounted several of its phone and laptop accessories today, running deals on Amazon for its budget-friendly PowerWave wireless charging stand, braided USB-C cables, Lightning cables, and a USB-C hub to name a few.
If you have a phone that supports wireless charging, you’ll want to check out the PowerWave wireless charging pad, which should work well for charging overnight. You can get that for $16.99 instead of its usual $25.99 price. If you have an iPhone X, XS, or XR, though