Technology news

Android’s back button might be going away entirely, replaced with a quick swipe to the left from the home button. XDA Developers has been digging into a leaked, early set of code from the next version of Android, codenamed Q, and the latest discovery from those forays is this potential demise of the back button, as well as a quicker app-changing animation when you swipe to the right.The way that gestures and buttons work in Android 9 Pie (the current iteration, at least if you’re lu

Last year, Xiaomi released a cool-looking, transparent version of its Mi 8 phone, the Mi 8 Explorer Edition, which claimed to have a see-through back to reveal the internal parts of the phone. There was just one problem: the “parts” were fake, revealed to be just a cool-looking plate covering the real (and much less photogenic) parts.
Today, Xiaomi announced that it’ll be offering a similarly see-through Mi 9 Explorer Edition for the upcoming Mi 9, but there’s one crucia

Nissan has sold more than 350,000 Leafs since the car debuted in 2011, and as they’ve aged, the company has thrown around a lot of ideas about how to recycle their batteries. The latest idea: a smart pop-up camper powered by old Leaf battery cells.The camper concept was developed in partnership with off-road camping manufacturer Opus. The Leaf-powered pack in the concept camper stores just 700wH, and has a maximum output of 1kW — a small slice of a typical Leaf battery, but still pl

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei basically just said his company is too big and too important to fail.In his first public interview since his daughter — Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou — was arrested in December, he tells the BBC that the US government’s accusations and criminal indictments, including fraud and the theft of trade secrets, won’t be enough to “crush” Huawei.
“There’s no way the US can crush us,” he said. “The world cannot leave us be

Instagram is experimenting with a potential donation sticker for its Stories feature, as spotted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong. The feature seems similar to what Facebook offers with its fundraising and donation tools for charity or personal reasons. Based on Wong’s screenshot, it looks like users will be able to search through a list of nonprofits to link directly to the sticker.
Facebook has had fundraising tools since 2015, but it only recently dropped fees associated with those

Over the weekend, in a speech at the Cinema Audio Society’s CAS Awards, director Steven Spielberg reminded listeners yet again that he’s specifically dedicated to a theater-based cinematic experience as “a firm believer that movie theaters need to be around forever.” Accepting the Filmmaker Award at the event, Spielberg said, “I hope all of us really continue to believe that the greatest contributions we can make as filmmakers is to give audiences the motion pictur

Web artist Neil Cicierega has created a new bot that’ll forever distract us on Twitter. His new Twitter account, @endlessjeopardy, creates “randomly generated clues” that fellow Twitter users can reply to with an answer. A new clue comes every hour. There’s no correct answer, but whoever’s response receives the most likes will win points. A bot keeps score, and it seems some users already have multiple wins.
Here’s a sample statement and the winning question.

Even though I’ve been playing Fortnite for the better part of a year, I still get surprised by the butterflies. There I am, running along the edge of a giant crater or sneaking through a dense forest, and some blue, fluttering wings catch my eye. I don’t exactly stop and stare — that’s too dangerous in a battle royale where everyone is out to kill you — but it’s enough to capture my attention for a brief second, before I move on to explore other parts of the

An adorable video that shows how beavers can fight wildfires is making the rounds on Twitter, and it’s everything science communication should be: short, compelling, clear, and about beavers.The stop-motion video is the work of Emily Fairfax, a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder. It shows a beaver building a dam and transforming the forest upstream into a marshy wetland filled with splotches of vegetation in shades of green. When a fire rages through the forest, the po

A complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission is accusing Facebook of failing to protect sensitive health data in its groups.The complaint, filed with the agency last month and released publicly today, argues that the company improperly disclosed information on members of closed groups. The issue first came into the public eye in July, when members of a group for women with a gene mutation called BRCA discovered sensitive information, like names and email addresses of members, could be do

The first thing I saw on Twitter this morning was a video of a cat letting out sweet, little T-Pain yowls. Joaquin Baldwin, a Disney animation artist, had auto-tuned his cat Elton and then made a compilation video of his suddenly quite musical meows.
I sent it to everyone. Then, I decided I had to know what was used to auto-tune the cat: partially because I plan on auto-tuning my own cat, Crouton, but mostly because the auto-tune effect used in the video is actually quite good.
Autotuned the ca

After a few weeks back in the product lab, Amazon’s Echo Wall Clock is again ready to ship after the company released a software update to address connectivity issues plaguing the initial version of the product that began selling last month.The device, costing $29.99, connects to a compatible Echo product and mirrors the series of timers you set through Alexa with 60 LED lights around the edge. That way, you don’t have to continually ask the voice assistant for updates while cooking

The other day, the electronic musician Marshmello, real name Christopher Comstock — who wears a white, marshmallow-shaped helmet on his head while he’s performing or in public (and at presumably no other times) — stopped by Pleasant Park for his biggest performance yet: to 10 million virtual people in the massively popular battle royale game Fortnite. It was, by all accounts, a resounding success. Players loved the 10-minute, no-weapon experience, and according to the concert

Jessica Jones and The Punisher have been canceled by Netflix, bringing an end to all five of Marvel and Netflix’s live-action TV series.“Marvel’s The Punisher will not return for a third season on Netflix,” a Netflix spokesperson told The Verge. “In addition, in reviewing our Marvel programming, we have decided that the upcoming third season will also be the final season for Marvel’s Jessica Jones. We are grateful to Marvel for five years of our fruitful part

Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, was down for hours today. Users were having issues connecting to the chat service, leaving many businesses falling back to email and the ancient form of face-to-face conversations to keep communication going. Microsoft acknowledged the outage, and the company managed to restore access for all Microsoft Teams users after around four hours of issues.
Microsoft Teams has replaced Skype for Business as the main communications tool for Office 365

Apple is sending out push notifications to Apple Music subscribers, offering a month of free music streaming to friends they refer to the service, reports 9to5Mac. The previous week, the company generated notifications from the same app, offering a three-month free trial to lapsed subscribers.Technically, 9to5Mac notes that this breaks one of Apple’s own App Store review guidelines, which says that “push notifications… should not be used for advertising, promotions, or direct

PlayStation’s PSVR headset hasn’t exactly taken over the world, but the head of PlayStation says the company has big plans for its VR console.Shawn Layden told Game Informer that the next 10 years of the PSVR’s development will be dramatic, but he didn’t provide any specifics on what the growth will look like. Instead, Layden compared game development’s future to its past, acknowledging the dramatic growth in fields like virtual reality, augmented reality, e-sports

LG keeps making its ovens smarter — not by building its own software, but by outsourcing the effort to startups. The company announced today that its 2019 smart ovens will now recognize pre-packaged meals from Tovala, a smart oven company based out of Chicago. Owners of LG’s 2019 smart ovens will be able to scan meals through Tovala’s app, then have their oven automatically move through the correct settings to cook them.
While multiple smart oven companies, like June and Brava

Bay Area prosecutors were trying to prove that a man arrested during a prostitution sting was guilty of pimping charges, and among the evidence was a series of Instagram DMs he’d allegedly sent to a woman. One read: “Teamwork make the dream work” with high heels and money bag emoji placed at the end. Prosecutors said the message implied a working relationship between the two of them. The defendant said it could mean he was trying to strike up a romantic relationship. Who was r

Australia’s three largest political parties have been hit by a cyberattack from a “sophisticated state actor,” the country’s prime minister Scott Morrison announced to Parliament this morning. As reported by The Guardian, hackers are believed to have accessed the networks of the Labor, Liberal, and Nationals parties, though it’s not clear if any data was taken.The news comes just three months before Australian parliamentary elections are due to take place, and ther

My attitude toward health and fitness apps has long been one of deep-seated antipathy. I hate the cacophony of nagging alerts and prompts, and, maybe it’s just me, but I also draw no encouragement from the photos of perfectly tanned and toned bodies welcoming me into the typical app. Few things are as demotivating as using a piece of software listing all the dynamic activities I’m not doing.
Little did I know that a set of weighing scales would change all of that.
About a year ago,

Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth have been married for nearly two months now. But Cyrus is nowhere near done blessing our feeds with romantic (and hilarious) content from the couple's wedding.
On Twitter, Cyrus shared a photo from the ceremony of herself, her mom Tish Cyrus, and her wedding bouquet. 
SEE ALSO: Miley Cyrus tweets hilariously NSFW Valentine's greeting to husband Liam Hemsworth
"My mama told me this bouquet is for holding .... not eating .... or smoking..... or using as a 'penis

Sometimes, all you really want is for the DJ to put on an old-school banger.
And if there's one track that truly fits that bill, it's the memorably intense piano chords of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles".
SEE ALSO: John Boyega posts very teasing photo from the set of 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
As you can tell from the video below, John Boyega understands this perfectly.In fairness, what better way to celebrate wrapping up Star Wars Episode IX than by dancing to a bit of Vanessa in the club?
Th

We have make the decision to start the week with deals on personal care products designed to make you dazzle. We're not saying you need any help in this department, but Monday is definitely the day that this kind of product is needed most.
We have tracked down deals on electric toothbrushes, electric shavers, and epilators from leading brands like Braun, Panasonic, Oral-B, and Philips, to ensure that you not only get a great deal but that you receive a quality product too.
These are the best dea

There's no hard and fast rule that dictates when you need to say goodbye to your trusty old device and replace it with something shiny and new. You just know when the time is right. 
Maybe you glanced at your tired old laptop recently and got that feeling, and now you're in the market for something new. Congratulations on taking the first step. We are here to guide you through what to do next.
Dell is launching a UK flash sale with the chance to save up to 12% sitewide on selected products.

In the year 2044, our cities might be energized by fusion power plants, our sleek cars may all run on electricity, and our doctors might regularly employ gene-editing to cure blindness. 
But our airplanes will probably still fly at the same speeds they did half a century ago: between 550 and 600 mph. 
Supersonic flight — which is to say speeds that exceed the speed of sound (768 mph) and can dramatically slash flight times — died out for civilians in 2003 with the reti

Future versions of Chrome will fix a loophole that lets websites detect and block users who attempt to access them using the browser’s Incognito mode, reports 9to5Google.As well as not storing any local records of your browsing history, Chrome’s Incognito mode stops websites from being able to track you using cookies. However, because so much of the web’s ad revenue relies on this tracking data, some sites, such as The Boston Globe and MIT Technology Review, prevent you from r

There are some anecdotes that are just so embarrassing, you can't help but cringe for the people involved.
And cringe we most certainly did when we read Jenna Coleman's most embarrassing moment in an interview with the Guardian. 
SEE ALSO: It's time to reclaim singledom as a symbol of power
The Doctor Who actor recounted the time she was buying a sandwich at Leeds train station when a man spoke to her. 
"The man said to me: 'Do you want to go for a drink?' I said, 'I am so sorry, I&rsq