Technology news

Valve’s product page for the Valve Index headset has gone live a little early with a release date pegged for June 15th of this year. First spotted by Twitter user @Wario64, Valve’s page is scarce on information regarding features, but it’s still giving us more information to work with than that teaser site did last week, including several specs for Valve’s upcoming and mysterious VR headset.Immediately, you’ll notice the integrated open-back earphones flanking each

Audiences should always be a little wary of any new show or film that reportedly debuts on April Fools’ Day, especially if it seems too good to be true or too weird to believe. (We’re still withholding judgment on indie auteur Jim Jarmusch supposedly making a super goofy zombie comedy, for instance.) But for some shows, like Jordan Peele’s inherently twist-and-surprise-oriented reboot of the 1950s classic series The Twilight Zone, April 1st seems like an appropriate kick-off d

A resident of Washington, DC, is suing Uber for negligence and consumer protection violations, after she was sexually assaulted by one of the ride-hail company’s drivers. The victim, listed only as “Jane Doe” in court documents, claims Uber portrays itself as a safe mode of transportation for women, especially if they have been drinking, when in fact they are putting those women in harm’s way.The victim was sexually assaulted by an Uber driver named Raul E. Rodriguez Vas

Bose’s QuietComfort 35 Series II are almost $100 off of their usual $349 price today for anyone who makes a free Rakuten account. Even without the discount applied, the online storefront already offers them for $47 less than most retailers, but you can save even more at checkout until 11:59PM ET, April 3rd by entering the code ALT46 to pay $257.99 for these over-ear headphones.We’ve seen discounts like this from Rakuten before, so more are likely to come if you miss out on this one.

Google traditionally plagues the internet with April Fools’ gags on April 1st, but developer Chris Zubak-Skees has beaten the internet giant at its own game today with Suggested poems, a Chrome extension that replaces Google’s algorithmically generated canned replies with random lines of poetry.Introducing Suggested poems for Gmail, a Chrome extension that replaces Gmail suggested replies with lines of poetic verse! https://t.co/Xd8oYFLMkW pic.twitter.com/FnRMyxkiEk— Chris Zub

The moderators of Reddit’s popular r/Games subreddit are using April Fools’ Day to protest bigoted and “awful” comments. The subreddit, which boasts 1.7 million members, is closing for the day. Posts and comments are locked. In an announcement, the moderators highlight what they call a growing problem with discrimination, harassment, and vitriolic attacks.
“This April Fools’, we decided to take things a little more seriously and shed some light on a growing,

French startup ManoMano is raising a new funding round of $125 million (€110 million). The company operates an e-commerce website and marketplace focused on home improvement and gardening.
ManoMano is part of the great unbundling of general e-commerce platforms. By focusing on a vertical in particular, the company can provide a large product offering, competitive prices and better customer service.
The platform generated $450 million (€400 million) in gross merchandise value last year.

Mailgun, an email API delivery service, announced today that it was selling a majority stake in the company to private equity firm Thoma Bravo. The companies did not share terms, but this is the second owner in the company’s eight-year history.
Mailgunprovides API services for building email functionality into applications. It has more than 150,000 customers using its APIs, according to data provided by the company.
In a blog post announcing the investment, CEO William Conway said the new

Sony has enacted a refund policy for purchases made from the PlayStation Store. This is kicking off today — no coincidence, given that Sony just cut off third-party retailers from selling digital download codes for products redeemable on the PlayStation Store. The terms for refund differ slightly depending on the type of content you’re returning, but with the exception of subscriptions like PS Plus and PS Now, you won’t be able to get credit back on a purchase once you play it

Cloudflare has announced that it’s adding a VPN to its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver app. The 1.1.1.1 service, which first came to mobile back in November, currently attempts to speed up mobile data speeds by using Cloudflare’s network to resolve DNS queries faster than your existing mobile network. What’s new is Warp, a VPN built by Cloudflare that attempts to reroute your traffic to make it even quicker and also encrypts it where possible for added security and privacy.As well as off

Indie writer-director Jim Jarmusch isn’t exactly known for his wacky slapstick comedy. For decades now, Jarmusch has made movies that mostly reside in an area of cool, detached grunge. His early classics, like Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, and Mystery Train, all operate in a melancholy that’s removed from the world. That same drifting, dreamy tone extends to films like Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and his previous feature film, 2016’s poetry-focused portrait movie

Happy Monday, and happy April Fools’ Day, aka the day on which all brands come out in full force to take us by storm with bad dad jokes. As a reminder, today’s a day to not believe what you see, because most unbelievable sights could just be jokes made at your expense.Amid the overused and unremarkable jokes, though, occasionally some of these might even merit a chuckle. Usually not. We’ve collected all the best ones here and will continue to update throughout the day as more

When Google announced an external advisory board for AI projects last week, the company framed the decision as a step forward in accountability. Last year, the company had announced a set of principles for how to build AI tools, and this board, the company suggested, was the next step toward a more transparent Google.
“This group will consider some of Google’s most complex challenges that arise under our AI Principles, like facial recognition and fairness in machine learning, provid

Rod Serling’s anthology series The Twilight Zone has been remade, parodied, and imitated so many times since it premiered in 1959 that almost everyone can name its episode components: something weird happens, the narrator lets viewers know a bit more about what’s going on, then there’s a twist and a moral message, which is elaborated in the narrator’s parting lines.
What makes a good episode of The Twilight Zone is much harder to articulate. But it’s clear from CBS

On any given day, you might watch a YouTube video, laugh at a Facebook meme, upvote a Reddit submission, hear a SoundCloud banger, heart an Instagram post, read a webcomic, and consider backing some far-fetched but kind of brilliant Kickstarter project. This week, we’ll be publishing new stories every day about the creators, their tools, and the platforms they publish on.
More than ever, the web is centered around platforms that thrive off of content submitted by individual creators. Whet

Tinder today announced it has hired Facebook vet Ravi Mehta as its new Chief Product Officer, as the company continues to shift Tinder’s focus to the younger demographic still enjoying the “single lifestyle.” Mehta’s background includes over 20 years in the industry, including time at Facebook, TripAdvisor, and Microsoft. Most recently, Mehta had served as Product Director for Youth Engagement at Facebook.
This role involved research into how Gen Z spends time online and

Xing, the business networking platform that has been described as Germany’s answer to LinkedIn, has made an acquisition to beef up its recruitment business ahead of a rebrand of the business as “New Work.” The company has acquired Honeypot, a German startup that has built a job-hunting platform for tech people, for up to €57 million ($64 million). Xing tells us that Honeypotis its biggest acquisition to date.
The figure includes the acquisition (€22 million) plus a po

We’ve found a few deals today that you may want to know about. There are some pretty good sales in a few different categories. Following the surprising cancellation of Apple’s AirPower, it’s no surprise to see some discounts on wireless chargers.
A Philips Hue starter kit that includes four A19 white and color LED bulbs usually costs around $170 by itself, but Best Buy is bundling this kit with two Google Home Mini smart speakers for $169.99. Philips’ lighting system top

The meat substitute manufacturer Impossible Foodsand fast food giant Burger King are launching an Impossible Whopper.
According to a report in The New York Times, Burger King is launching the Impossible Whopper in stores in the St. Louis area with plans for a broader rollout later — and not as part of some elaborate April Fools’ day prank.
Burger King isn’t the first fast food chain to bring an Impossible burger to market. That’d be White Castle, which is selling Impossib

A quiet little update from Microsoft overnight, as the company bumped up a key spec on its 13.5-inch Surface Book 2. The 2017 two-in-one powerhouse is getting a nice little boost to Intel’s 8th gen quad-core i5 chip.That model run $1,499 and includes 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. Bumping up to the 8th gen Core i7 and 512GB of storage, meanwhile, will run you $1,000 more. The 7th gen Core i5 is sticking around, meanwhile, at $200 off.The news is a confirmation of recent rumors that the c

Discovery and BBC this morning announced an extensive,10-year content partnership deal for a new streaming service focused on natural history and factual programming. The subscription video service is expected to cost under $5 per month, and will be owned by Discovery. It will operate in all territories outside the U.K., Ireland and China when it launches in 2020.
This will make Discovery’s service the exclusive subscription video on demand (SVOD) home to series like “Planet Earth,&r

Burger King now sells a meat-free version of its flagship Whopper with a plant-based patty that’s designed to emulate the look and taste of beef. The Impossible Whopper is available at 59 locations in the St Louis area starting today, but The New York Times notes that Burger King plans to offer the burger at all of its 7,200 locations if the US trial goes well.
Despite the fact that the Impossible Whopper has 15 percent less fat and 90 percent less cholesterol than a standard Whopper, Bur

I know what date it is, but let me assure you this is no April Fools’ gag: Huawei’s P30 Pro has the best low-light camera, better even than Google’s Pixel Night Sight, and it sets a new benchmark for night photography. It’s so good that it will make iPhone and Samsung Galaxy phone owners question their fealty. Huawei has taken the most challenging situation for any photographer and made it as easy and casual as snapping a shot in broad daylight.
It will still be a few da

Google has stopped selling its Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones. As noticed by Android Police, URLs for the Pixel 2 at the company’s store now simply take users to the newer Pixel 3 instead. Some stock remains available from other retailers: Best Buy is currently selling its remaining stock of the Pixel 2 XL (64GB in black) for $399.99. Sadly, the black-and-white “panda” model is a goner. Verizon, the Pixel 2’s exclusive US carrier, ended sales back in October upon the

Google’s Android, now 10 years old, has not been a stranger to security issues over the years. But with the mobile operating system now installed on over 2 billion devices globally, Google has been taking an increasingly firmer grip on trying to bring the problem under control. Now, the company has published its lengthy annual update to take stock on just how well that is going.
It’s a slippery slope to be sure, with the number of apps and the enterprising attempts to maliciousl

Airbnb is continuing to widen its focus beyond ‘unconventional’ hotels as it gets ready for a much-anticipated IPO. Following its acquisition of HotelTonight last month, the company has picked today (April Fool’s Day) to confirm that it invested in India’s OYO — a startup that manages budget hotels and other stays.
The deal has been rumored for a couple of months and it is additional to OYO’s (then) $1 billion Series E round which was led by SoftBank’s V

Gmail turns 15 today, and to celebrate Google is launching some minor updates: improving Gmail’s Smart Compose function and giving users the option to schedule emails.The updates to Smart Compose are pretty vague. Google unveiled the feature back in May 2018, which suggests ways to finish sentences in emails. The updated version, says Google, “can now adapt to the way you write,” matching your individual writing style.Google says this might mean Smart Compose remembers your pr

Despite not being Brazilian and having their first exposure to the country only a few years ago, the two co-founders of Escale have managed to raise $22.6 million for their company, which provides customer acquisition services to companies in telecommunications and healthcare across Brazil.
Their secret? A knowledge of search engine optimization technologies honed through side businesses the two ran back in the United States.
The state of online marketing and digital sales was so woefully bad in

Exactly fifteen years ago, Google decided to confuse everybody by launching its long-awaited web-based email client on April 1. This definitely wasn’t a joke, though, and Gmail went on to become one of Google’s most successful products. Today, to celebrate its fifteenth birthday (and maybe make you forget about today’s final demise of Inbox and tomorrow’s shutdown of Google+), the Gmail team announced a couple of a new and useful Gmail features, including improvements to