Technology news

Huawei will be able to keep sending software updates to its phones for the next three months despite an effective sales ban in the United States, after receiving a temporary license from the United States Commerce Department.Reuters first reported on the license, which is set to expire on August 19th.The license, effective today, allows Huawei to take action “necessary to provide service and support, including software updates or patches, to existing Huawei handsets that were available to

The first numbers are in for HBO’s massive Game of Thrones finale, and the final episode of the show’s eighth (and last) season has not only broken the record for the show, but with 13.6 million viewers on the live HBO channel, has become the most watched episode of any HBO show, ever, via The Wall Street Journal.HBO has a new king
Add in early numbers from streaming and on-demand rewatches, and the total goes up even more to 19.3 million viewers, which is also a record for both Gam

Maven, the car-sharing service owned by General Motors, is ending operations in several major North American cities. According to The Wall Street Journal, the mobility brand will wind down service in eight of the 17 cities in which it operates, including Boston, Chicago, and New York City. Maven will continue to operate in Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Toronto.
“We’re shifting Maven’s offerings to concentrate on markets in which we have the strongest current demand

A new lawsuit filed against Faze Clan, a popular e-sports organization and YouTube network, by one of the internet’s most popular personalities is shaping up to be a milestone moment for online content creators.
Turner “Tfue” Tenney is one of the most prominent Twitch streamers in the world, having catapulted to the upper echelon of online creators thanks to his prolific Fortnite playing and consistent performance in the game’s competitive circuit. But a new lawsuit file

Huawei had its Android license cut off by Google over the weekend thanks to a US government order. But Chinese users appear to be rallying around the company, with social media posts on Weibo and Douyin showing strong support for Huawei, according to What’s On Weibo.The debate over Huawei and national security was thrust back into the spotlight over the weekend, when, as part of a US government order, Google revoked Huawei’s Android license, which cuts the company’s phones off

Over the weekend, news broke that Google revoked Huawei’s Android license for new devices, cutting off the Chinese tech company’s access to critical Google apps. Now, longtime Huawei critics on Capitol Hill are applauding Google’s move and encouraging other tech companies to follow suit.
Lawmakers like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have been sounding the alarm on Chinese companies like Huawei for years, and in statements provided to T

T-Mobile and Sprint started the day with very good news when FCC chairman Ajit Pai said he would urge the commission to approve their industry-transforming merger. Stocks of both companies soared soon after. But only a few hours later, Bloomberg is reporting that the US Department of Justice is leaning toward blocking the merger over antitrust concerns. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that the Justice Department remains unconvinced that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint would be

Why did Daenerys Targaryen snap so suddenly in Game of Thrones’ final season? One fan in a New York bar has a theory he’s happy to share: Varys has been slowly poisoning her. “That’s why she looks so terrible,” Michael says of Daenerys in the penultimate episode, referring to a scene in which she looks exhausted and unwashed. “[This poison] makes you go crazy and violent before you’ve had the final dose,” he adds. “So the fan theory is that

Tana Mongeau is better known to those outside the inner circle of YouTube creators as “the girl who tried to throw her own convention and failed miserably.” Only one year after throwing “TanaCon,” a hastily thrown together convention born out of retaliation and vengeance, Mongeau is headed back to VidCon, this time as a “Featured Creator.”The decision to partner for this year’s convention “was made by VidCon after the two parties met with the same

Game of Thrones’ series finale streamed around the world last night, giving fans closure just about everywhere — except China.Thousands of Chinese users who rely on streaming platform Tencent Video were outraged to discover they couldn’t access the most recent episode. A message that read “transmission medium problems” appeared in lieu of the finale, according to The Wall Street Journal. An HBO spokesperson told the Journal the network had no issue with transmittin

Google has announced a new version of its business-focused Glass augmented reality headset, which it’s now designating an official Google product instead of an experiment. The Glass Enterprise Edition 2 costs $999, although, like its predecessor, it’s not being sold directly to consumers. It’s got a new processor, an improved camera, a USB-C port for faster charging, and a variety of other updates.
Google still isn’t positioning Glass as a mainstream product. But it seem

Microsoft teased its Edge browser for macOS earlier this month, and now the company is officially allowing Mac users to download a preview version. While Edge for Mac leaked a little early during Microsoft’s Build conference, the company is officially supporting the daily Canary builds of Edge for Mac now for macOS 10.12 and above. Microsoft says the weekly Dev channel builds will be available “very soon” and you’ll be able to run both side by side.Microsoft has been wor

Voice is what makes artificial intelligence come to life, says writer James Vlahos. It’s an “imagination-stirring” aspect of technology, one that has been part of stories and science-fiction for a long time. And now, Vlahos argues, it’s poised to change everything.Vlahos is the author of Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). It’s already the case that home assistants can talk and show personalit

Microsoft’s Xbox chief Phil Spencer says he’s acutely aware of the problems the gaming industry faces from a cultural perspective — issues like toxicity, abuse and harassment, and exclusionary attitudes that can keep gaming’s benefits from spreading beyond its most hardcore, traditional demographic.So today, Spencer says Microsoft is launching an industry-wide initiative to combat these issues by sharing solutions and technology and committing itself to aggressive enforc

Students from Stanford University have welcomed a new addition to their campus: Doggo, a four-legged robot that hopes to find a home in research labs around the world.Doggo follows similar designs to other small quadrupedal robots, but what makes it unique is its low cost and accessibility. While comparable bots can cost tens of thousands of dollars, the creators of Doggo — Stanford’s Extreme Mobility lab — estimate its total cost to be less than $3,000. What’s more, the

Microsoft and Sony unveiled a surprising partnership last week that will see the companies collaborate to develop future cloud solutions for game and content-streaming services. While both companies have spent more than 15 years battling it out over PlayStation and Xbox sales, Sony is now looking to Microsoft’s vast cloud experience to help power its existing and future streaming services, and Microsoft is teaming with a rival to fend off far larger gaming threats.
It was a big surprise f

Noise-canceling headphones, especially ones that also have good sound quality and comfort, tend to be expensive. If you don’t have $300 or more to spend on a set of cans, Sony’s latest headphones aim to make noise canceling a little bit more accessible at $250.
Noise canceling aside, the design of the new XB900N over-ear headphones ticks a few important boxes. The ear cups can swivel and fold, making them easier to rest around your neck or bundle up in your bag, and the headband was

Internet radio platform Pandora finally has a native desktop app so you can access the streaming service without having to fiddle with a browser window. The app, which is available for Mac only with Windows support on the way, has a clean, mobile-influenced interface with a blue color scheme, lyric support, and easy-to-use recommendation tools. You can download it here.Pandora says it’s also shipping some new features exclusive to the app, including keyboard playback controls, on-screen n

In the past seven weeks, white hat hackers earned at least $32,150 by fixing security flaws in popular cryptocurrency and blockchain platforms like TRON, Brave, EOS and Coinbase. According to data reviewed by Hard Fork, 15 blockchain-related firms have paid rewards to security researchers between March 28 and May 16, split across 30 publicly-released bug reports. Omise, the software firm behind cryptocurrency OmiseGo, fielded the most fixes (six). Blockchain-powered prediction market Augur

Despite abandoning plans to build its own Bitcoin wallet, ABN AMRO is not quite done with blockchain tech. The Dutch banking giant has announced plans to launch a decentralized trade inventory platform in collaboration with Accenture and ING Bank, according to a press release (spotted by CoinDesk). Codenamed Forcefield, the project will employ Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to provide “real-time insight into trade inventories.” ABN AMRO claims the platform’s monitoring featu

What if I told you you’d get your next job by surviving on a deserted island? Or by thwarting a Dothraki invasion? Unfortunately, this isn’t a casting call for Game of Thrones. Gamification is getting ready to save us from that awkward pause after a recruiter sits back and says, “So tell me about yourself.” Not only will it make the hiring process more bearable, but a number of new startups also claim their recruitment games can help companies finally tackle unconscious

If you’ve ever wondered how valuable a company is — or in other words, its capacity to bring in revenue, as well as what its assets are worth — the most common way to do it is to look at its market capitalization. It’s the result of a company’s historically reported and expected — by the company itself and the outside world in the form of analysis and speculation — financial performance, further influenced by broader industry and market movements, and g

Sprint has promised to sell off Boost Mobile, one of its prepaid wireless brands, if its merger with T-Mobile is approved. Both Sprint and T-Mobile operate a number of prepaid subsidiaries, and the Federal Communications Commission was concerned that putting them all under one roof could stifle competition.
The promise was announced this morning along with further commitments about 5G deployment meant to win merger approval. FCC chairman Ajit Pai said he’d recommend approving the Sprint&n

Online advertising has become more invasive than ever, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced today that he plans to introduce a bill that would create a Do Not Call list but for data tracking.
Hawley’s Do Not Track Act would, if approved, allow people using an online service to opt out of any data tracking that isn’t necessary for that particular service to properly work. It would create a national list that would provide people with an option to block any secondary data tracking an

GDPR is an incredible piece of legislation that protects our personal data from being abused by companies and organizations. It keeps data handlers in check and gives us a say in the process, but it’s effectiveness is only ensured because it applies to everyone that has our data — and that includes emergency services. Even a whole year after GDPR’s implementation, there’s still a lot of confusion regarding how emergency services can properly operate under it. But despite

Facebook is certainly a high-tech company, but it’s not one you would necessarily associate with robots. However, as the firm revealed today, that’s exactly where its researchers are looking next — trying to see how experiments in robotics can further its work in AI.
This isn’t uncommon for big tech companies. A lot of firms, including Google, Nvidia, and Amazon, use robots as a platform to explore avenues of AI research. Controlling robots is, in many ways, trickier tha

If you have ever used smart light bulbs like the ones made by Hue or Lifx, you’re probably familiar with what happens when someone turns off the light switch that those bulbs are connected to: the lights lose all of their smarts and connectivity.
Some solutions to this problem have been taping over the light switch so those unfamiliar with your home’s smart lighting setup don’t use it, or going into the switch itself and wiring it so it’s permanently “on.” Lu

The fight for the entry-level segment of the European smartphone market heated up today, as Realme, a sister-company to OPPO and OnePlus, waded into the fray with the launch of its flagship device, the Realme 3 Pro. Specs-wise, the Realme 3 Pro is a standard, middle-of-the-road budget handset. That’s hardly surprising, given that the entry-level model retails at £175 (or €199). So, what do you get for your hard-earned money? Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 platform 4GB/6GB RA

Welcome to CHEAP, our series about things that are good, but most of all, cheap. CHEAP! While many creatures in the animal kingdom are born ready to take on the world, humans are not. A foal can stand-up and walk around within an hour of birth. But human babies? Those podgy meatsacks literally take years before they can walk around. And when that eventually happens, the little people have so little self-awareness or regard for danger, you’re shocked humanity exists at all. Unsurprisingly,

Ugh, the Gregorian calendar is so boring. That’s why we’re disrupting monthly series with a lunar cycle-based series about the best patents of the last synodic month, picked by the PatentYogi team. Get ready when that moon gets gibbous, y’all. This May-ish roundup lands on the beautiful Flower Moon! Since my last post, the US patent office issued over 29,948 patents and published over 33,636 patent applications. Each patent asset adds a little something new to the human k

The news from Sunday night that Google would be complying with a US government edict and suspending business with Huawei is one of the most dramatic moments in Android’s history. Huawei, China’s most prolific smartphone vendor, had started 2019 with explosive double-digit growth and was on a path to eclipse Samsung as the world’s number one phone maker by the year’s end. Without Google’s Android support, however, that’s simply not going to happen — not