Technology news

Podcasters can now breathe easy.
Apple is walking back an emailed statement to podcasters on Wednesday that seemed to suggest shows would be rejected or removed from Apple Podcasts if the episode numbers were included in episode titles.
The Cupertino, CA-based company rushed to send a clarification email on Thursday making clear that shows were not going to be removed if they historically included episode numbers in their titles.
SEE ALSO: Even Apple’s self-driving car safety report is sup

China banned people from buying plane or train tickets 23 million times last year because their social credit scores were too low, according to the Associated Press, which obtained a copy of a government report.
The government rolled out the travel ban on people with low social credit scores last May. According to a report from China’s National Public Credit Information Center from last week, people have been blocked 17.5 million times from purchasing airplane tickets, and 5.5 million tim

Apex Legends’ bigger characters are colorful, interesting, and full of gameplay potential. So it’s a shame that, thanks to a design quirk spotted by gamers, no one wants to play as them. Respawn Entertainment’s unexpected battle royale was surprisingly polished at launch, with tight, fun gameplay that didn’t require months of post-release patches to whip into playable shape. But now that it’s been out for a while, users are starting to spot some problems. The bigge

Phone case companies are already starting to figure out what a case looks like for the coming wave of foldable phones. Spigen is one of the first to work out a design, and it’s shared mock-ups of three products it plans to release for Samsung’s Galaxy Fold.
The cases all share similar designs, with front covers protecting the top and bottom bezels of the 4.6-inch outside display and cutouts for the triple-camera system on the back. There’ll be three models — the Tough Ar

Had your fill of all those dockless electric bikes and scooters littering the streets of cities across America? Hankering for something new, something different, maybe even something that looks sillier than a scooter? Gotcha, the bike- and scooter-share service, has got you to covered. (Pun intended.)“reimagined moped”
Gotcha, which operates bike and scooter-sharing services on dozens of college campuses, is adding a new vehicle to its product lineup: a three-wheeled, battery-powere

Microsoft has announced today that it plans to kill off its Microsoft Band and Microsoft Health Dashboard apps and services on May 31st. The software giant already discontinued its wrist-worn Band fitness tracker more than two years ago, but the company has kept the Band apps running to support existing users. That will now change on May 31st, with the backend services ending and the apps being removed from the Microsoft Store, Google Play, and Apple’s App Store.
Existing Band users will

ViewRanger
$Free (with in-app purchases)View Product
The Good
Extensive collection of maps that you can download for offline use • User-shared routes can uncover hidden gems in your own backyard
The Bad
Some features can be less robust depending on your location • Difficult to find trails and routes not already shared by another user • No in-app tutorials for easier user experience
The Bottom Line
ViewRanger boasts a robust collection of maps and features that can greatly enhance

Uber rides can go a lot of different ways. George the Uber driver is giving you options. 
George Ure is quickly becoming the internet's favorite Uber driver. Ure, in an attempt to make his passengers laugh, The Seattle-based driver made a menu of "ride types." The now-viral list consists of The Stand Up, The Silent Ride, The Therapy Ride, The Creepy Ride, and The Rude Ride. Each ride offers a different experience for the rider.Every Uber should have a menu, honestly.Image:george ureSEE ALSO

The dark jungle is full of terrors. 
As it should be, because chaos reigns in the wild, and spotting the peculiar or unexpected is the norm.
"We're always seeing crazy things," University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Daniel Rabosky said in an interview. 
Each year Rabosky travels to the Amazon to observe and document the flourishing biodiversity deep in these jungles. On a recent trip to the Peruvian Amazon, his team filmed some nightmarish predator-prey interactions, including a

The Captain Marvel marketing team is back on the nostalgia hype train with the release of five "Magic Eye" posters. 
These 3D optical illusions were first made popular through the Magic Eye book series known to pretty much any '90s kid with a library card, and now continue to haunt those of us who could never see their hidden secrets in the first place.
The pictures' colorful, abstract patterns are supposed to reveal hidden images when stared at long enough, but personally they make me feel

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 is $799 right now at Amazon, Best Buy and the Microsoft Store, and it’s being bundled with a free Platinum-toned Type Cover — usually an extra $129 purchase. The Type Cover is an accessory that most Surface owners are likely to buy at some point, so it’s a stellar deal to have it tossed in at no extra charge. This configuration has an eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 128GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM.This isn’t the only Surface co

Facebook, Twitter, and Google still aren’t doing enough to battle disinformation on their platforms, European Union officials said in a statement released this week.As part of a plan to fight disinformation on social media, the companies signed on to a voluntary proposal to crack down on the problem last year, which included making plans to increase transparency and fight fake accounts. The European Commission is now publicizing monthly progress reports on the topic, and has released the

Legend of Legends developer Riot Games has hired a chief diversity officer to help fix issues surrounding its sexist and toxic workplace culture, spotlighted first by an in-depth Kotaku investigation last August that has left the company reeling in the months since. Now, Angela Roseboro, who was formerly the global diversity and inclusion head at Dropbox, has been tasked with creating diversity programming at Riot.Riot confirmed the hire to The Verge, but did not immediately provide a comment o

Last year when Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi got behind the wheel to understand life as a driver for his ride-hailing company, he failed miserably. And it was all filmed. After Lyft filed to go public Friday, we learned that like its competitor, ride-hailing executives also gave rides on its platform in the past two years. 
While disclosing executive pay, Lyft shared that in 2017 and 2018 some of the executives, like the co-founders, executive vice president, and chief operating officer "provi

Look, we get it. Robots are here and they're totally awesome and everything. But do they have to be so goddamn cocky about it? 
MIT's new backflipping "mini cheetah robot" is the latest addition to a long line of electronic showoffs reminding us that we'll never be as agile as something cooked up in a lab. 
SEE ALSO: This 'blind' robot dog is great for hunting you on a moonless night
"At only 20 pounds the limber quadruped can bend and swing its legs wide, enabling it to walk either ri

Congressman Adam Schiff is putting pressure on Amazon to curb the spread of vaccine misinformation in its online store. Misinformation around vaccines — like the debunked myth that it causes autism — has led to some children in the United States not getting vaccinated, and is seen by experts as a ‘major contributor’ to recent measles outbreaks.
Schiff’s letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos follows two others letters Schiff sent to Google head Sundar Pichai and Facebook&

When Google Fi — until recently known as Project Fi — was originally introduced in 2015, it only worked on Google-branded devices, such as the Nexus and, later the Pixel line of phones. More recently, Google’s telecommunications service has been adding a number of phones from other companies such as Huawei, Samsung and, yes, Apple.
The latest addition to the Google Fi group of compatible phones is the Moto G7, which is being touted as designed with Fi on board. The Moto G7, Mo

The Canadian government will allow the US to extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. Canada’s Department of Justice announced today that the decision “follows a thorough and diligent review of the evidence in this case.” It called the evidence the US presented “sufficient.” The government’s decision will now be heard by a judge, who will determine whether the extradition process will move forward.
Meng, who’s also the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei,

Hulu and YouTube are faring very well with their live TV streaming services, according to a new report from Bloomberg, which says the two companies have around 3 million customers combined. (That’s strictly for their internet TV offerings; both obviously have many more people using their respective primary service.) Broken down, Hulu with Live TV is quickly “nearing” two million subscribers and YouTube TV has passed 1 million.Each company “continues to add hundreds of th

The Democratic field in 2020 got a little more crowded — and someone is finally putting climate change center stage.
Washington governor Jay Inslee announced on Friday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president. But what really sets Inslee apart is his  commitment to being the climate change candidate. In fact, Inslee seems to be the first major candidate in U.S. history to make climate change his main platform for running. The main mission statement on Inslee's ca

Ask anyone: Shaving first thing in the morning is a pain. Placing a sharp razor to your face when you're half-awake doesn't sound like a smart idea. However, shaving with an electric razor like the Braun Series 7 7865cc just might be one of the best ways to start your morning.
You can shop the Braun razor on sale at Walmart for $30 off its list price.
Normally priced at $229.94, this sale drops the list price of the razor down to $199.94. The Braun Series 7 features four foil razor shaving eleme

The marijuana market may be exploding, but there’s only so much land available for growing cannabis. In the search for a more efficient and environmentally friendly way of meeting demand, researchers figured out how yeast, the organism crucial for making bread and beer, can be turned into cannabinoid-producing factories.This week, the journal Nature published the first publicly-available study to fully demonstrate how this can work. “The simplest way to explain it is that we took th

Amazon is about to move even deeper into the grocery store business.
The retail giant plans to open several new physical grocery stores that would be entirely separate from Whole Foods, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
SEE ALSO: Amazon now lets Prime members pick a day of the week to get all their purchases at once
The first location will reportedly be in Los Angeles and could open this year. The company is also "in talks to open grocery stores in shopping centers in San Fra

Amazon plans to launch a new chain of grocery stores with dozens of locations centered around major US cities later this year, reports The Wall Street Journal. These stores would be distinct from both the company’s existing Whole Foods chain and its cashier-less Go convenience stores. The goal, the WSJ reports, would be to better penetrate the traditional grocery market dominated by companies like Albertson’s, Kroger, Publix, and Walmart.Amazon would reportedly use acquisitions of s

Microsoft is adding a very useful feature to its Excel mobile apps for iOS and Android. It allows Excel users to take a photo of a printed data table and convert it into a fully editable table in the app. This feature is rolling out initially in the Android Excel app, before making its way to iOS soon. Microsoft is using artificial intelligence to implement this feature, with image recognition so that Excel users don’t have to manually input hardcopy data. The feature will be available to

Space travel is set to take a pivotal step forward this weekend.
SpaceX, in the first test demonstration of a commercial crew capsule designed to eventually send astronauts to the International Space Station, plans to launch its Crew Dragon spacecraft on Saturday, March 2, at 2:49 a.m. ET, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The commercial spaceflight company has worked closely with NASA engineers to design a capsule that meets the agency's rigorous safety standards. This six-day mission — w

Yesterday Samsung confirmed that the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus will ship with a preinstalled screen protector. But if you’re not a screen protector type of person, you can rest easy knowing that the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor on both phones can withstand plenty of scratching and still function properly. Zack Nelson put the S10 through his signature durability test at JerryRigEverything, and as usual for Samsung, the company’s latest flagship proved well-constructed.However, we have

Who doesn’t love a good flash sale? The thrill of chasing down a great deal and making your purchase before supply (and time) runs out — it’s just exhilarating.
Get ready to scratch that flash sale itch, because Best Buy has some amazing savings on hot ticket items like MacBooks, KitchenAid Mixers, iPhones, and more — for the next 24 hours only. Scrounge up all the change from under your couch cushions and get shopping while this sale is still live. 
Here’s wha

Lyft filed IPO documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, beating its main rival Uber in the race to become the first app-based ride-hail company to go public.The company, which got its start as a college carpooling service called Zimride in 2007, says it has achieved 39 percent market share in the US as of December 2018, up from 22 percent in December 2016. This new growth comes from new riders and drivers, as well as more frequent rides from existing users. For the quarter

With the start of March, it's a good idea to upgrade your old HD TV to a bright and shiny 4K model, especially with all the great TV events coming up like the final season of Game of Thrones and the beginning of NCAA's March Madness college basketball tournament.
We found the best deals on amazing 4K smart TVs from the top brands like Sony, Samsung, VIZIO, and more. If you're looking for a new 4K TV, or searching for your very first, we found sets in various shapes and sizes that will suit any r

Earlier this week, Samsung released an update to the Bixby app for its Galaxy S8, S9, S10, Note 8, and Note 9 smartphones that finally addresses something we’ve been asking for since Bixby’s debut: the ability to natively reprogram the hardware button on the side of a Samsung phone to do something other than just launch Bixby.That’s right, you can now use the Bixby button to launch any number of apps, such as the camera, Twitter, Gmail, Google Maps, or whatever you want. But u

We’ve been seeing a surprising amount of good deals on Apple products today. The sixth-generation iPad has been discounted for some time, but other discounts, like the iPhone X and MacBook Pro deals at Best Buy are a today-only offer. There are other deals that are worth your attention, too.
Apple’s iPhone X with 64GB of storage costs $749.99 today at Best Buy. This unlocked phone is just a bit cheaper than the refurbished version sold through Apple, and is a good option if you want

Lyft filed for a $100 million initial public offering on Friday.
In its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Lyft released its financial history for the first time. With the public disclosure, we now know that for the past three years Lyft has been losing money ..a lot of money. 
SEE ALSO: Lyft rolls out its own version of Uber Express Pool called 'Shared Saver'
Lyft pulled in revenue of $2.2 billion in 2018, but also recorded a net loss of more than $911 million. It los

The day has finally come. U.S. ride-hailing giant Lyfthas unveiled its S-1, the official document required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public.
The San Francisco-headquartered business will debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “LYFT.” JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit SuisseGroup AG and Jefferies Financial Group Inc. will lead the initial public offering expected to value Lyft at upwards of $20 billion, a significant leap from its most recent p