Technology news

Hertz is now the latest in an increasingly long line of companies piloting car subscription services. The rental car giant announced Tuesday that it is launching a pilot version of a subscription service called “Hertz My Car” in Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia.The Hertz My Car subscription service will be offered in two tiers, both of which include full vehicle maintenance, roadside assistance, damage to the vehicle (though with a $1,000 deductible), and limited liability protect

On Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote to the FTC requesting a federal investigation into the sale of “detox teas” on social media that are pervasively marketed by influencers on social media.
Online influencers like the Kardashians have long peddled weight loss teas to their millions of followers on Instagram and YouTube. Companies like Flat Tummy Co use brand ambassador programs that pay influencers to post a certain number of photos and stories to their Instagram accoun

After spending a year and a half on the International Space Station, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s experimental space supercomputer is now back on Earth — and the company is poised to do an autopsy on the machine. Ultimately, HPE wants to know just how much wear and tear the machine sustained while in orbit. That way, the company can potentially build supercomputers for use on deep-space missions to the Moon and Mars someday.
HPE had a clear goal for this experiment, known as the Spa

The religious have been contemplating the existential threat of artificial intelligence for millennia. Long before Alexa listened in on our conversations or deepfakes threatened women’s safety, Judaism’s Golem and Greek mythology’s automatons roamed religious texts. Today, religious leaders are bushwhacking their way through the ethical implications of modern AI and, in many respects, they’re more organized and coherent than most politicians and academics. In fact, it&rs

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is the newest animated addition to the Jurassic Park franchise.The new Netflix series returns a group of unsuspecting teenagers to the dino-infested island of Isla Nublar, but this time, they’re going to travel to the opposite side of the island to visit “a new adventure camp.” You know what they say about visiting disaster-prone areas where people have died due to roaming bands of prehistoric predators — “Just try the other side of

Instagram is now allowing advertisers to promote branded content from influencers as ads in the feed and in Stories. That means you might start seeing an influencer’s paid partnership with Old Navy on your screen, regardless of whether you’re following them.
Plenty of creators make their living from posting sponsored content, but only their followers currently see their ads. Today’s announcement opens up creators’ sponsored content beyond their followings, just like how

Over the weekend, Elon Musk revealed to IGN reporter Ryan McCaffrey on a podcast that Tesla would be porting indie platformer Cuphead, of all games, to work in its cars. It can only be played via a USB gamepad and, given which game we’re talking about, I fully expect to see several of them launched out of the windows of Teslas. According to Musk, the game will be available on Tesla Models X, 3, and S. Like previous games that have made it into Teslas, it can only be played

A pair of developers say that Apple has for years maintained a monopoly over the sale and distribution of iOS apps, and they’re suing the tech giant in a US federal court in an attempt to break its “improper monopolization of this market.” The lawsuit seeks class action status, so it could potentially represent anyone who’s ever sold an iOS app in the US.
There’s no question that Apple has almost complete and total control over the distribution of iOS apps. With fe

As you can probably tell by the grad party invitations plastering your fridge, it's high school graduation season. Shopping for a high school grad can be daunting, though. Do you go for something fun or something practical? 
You know they'll need plenty of basic, essential items if they're planning on moving, whether that's to a college dorm or to their own apartment. The good news is that they're likely starting with nothing, so you have a ton of room to work with. You could help them stoc

The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and AI reporter James Vincent discuss AI ethics and bias, and, specifically, what companies like Google are doing to tackle such challenges.Earlier this year, James spoke to Google’s head of AI, Jeff Dean, about these questions.
Bias within AI is a huge problem. As algorithms are used to make important decisions in areas as varied as health care and housing, researchers want to make sure that these systems don’t reflect — or amplify &mdash

One thing Google really wants you to do is, well, stay in Google — because the more you do things the Google way, the more data the company can monetize. The result is that while it is possible to pull your emails, photos, and other material outside of the Googleverse, it’s just a little bit more difficult.For example, let’s say you want to show an album of family photos that are stored on Google Photos to your favorite grandparent. If they’re reasonably Google-savvy, it

Apple’s new Mac Pro is the supercar of desktop computers, but it’s also trying to be a modular, upgradable workstation, and it’s not yet clear how Apple has balanced those two things. But we do have our first indication that the Mac Pro’s fancy new MPX Modules may not be a totally proprietary solution, in the form of two upcoming storage modules from Promise Technology that will be sold in Apple stores.
Promise, known for its Pegasus external RAID arrays and rack mount h

Gaming lifestyle products have slowly but surely crept from the realm of clothing and specially designed furniture to food and drink. Perhaps you’ve seen Gamma Labs’ G Fuel or heard rumblings of Razer’s new Respawn energy drink mix. Maybe you even own a coveted gaming chair.Well, Microsoft is getting in front of an all-new trend — gaming-oriented personal care products — by partnering with the brand behind Axe body spray to produce new Xbox-branded body wash, showe

Ikea is partnering with prosthetics company Unyq and e-sports company Area Academy to create a line of accessories for gamers. Called Uppkoppla, which means “online,” the 3D-printed line is meant to provide custom-made fits for gamers, including those with mobility issues. The first products include a wrist brace, textured key caps for better grip, and a mouse bungee, which keeps cords out of the way while you play.The Uppkoppla line is created from a technique developed by Unyq, wh

If you’re one of the people who bought the new Pixel 3A that was announced last month at Google I/O 2019, it’s time for your first security patch. Google today released an update that addresses 11 issues, with vulnerabilities ranging from high to critical.
One of those notable issues is a security vulnerability in the media framework, which enables a remote attacker to run arbitrary code disguised as a regular file. Other patches fix a bug where information could be disclosed remote

In “Night,” the first episode of season 3 of Hulu’s dystopian drama The Handmaid’s Tale, the house where much of the first two seasons took place burns to the ground. The camera pans between the small room where handmaid June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) was imprisoned, the study where she bonded with her captor, Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), over tense games of Scrabble, and the master bedroom where he repeatedly raped June with the goal of producing a baby tha

Ikea is launching a new robotic furniture system called Rognan, developed in collaboration with American furniture startup Ori Living. The large storage unit, controlled by a touchpad, can slide across a room to divide a small room into two living spaces, and contains a bed, desk, and a couch for people to pull out when needed. It’s designed for people living in urban areas to maximize their small spaces, and will launch first in Hong Kong and Japan in 2020.
Rognan is built on Ori’s

Last week four security companies changed hands. The shopping spree continued this week with CDN company Imperva announcing it was buying bot mitigation startup Distil Networks. The companies did not share the acquisition price.
ImpervaCTO Kunal Anand says his company had a narrow bot capability, but was looking to bring a more complete solution to the platform and Distil fit the bill nicely.
“When we looked at all of these different variables, and when we looked at the capabilities and th

I had some brief time actually using an iPad Pro running iPadOS yesterday, and one of the first things I did was open up a Safari tab Apple had waiting for me: a Google Doc. Google Docs has long been a huge problem on the iPad, for two reasons. First, Google’s own iPad app is god-awful and the company seems hell-bent on not updating it to work better. Second, Google Docs in Safari on the iPad right now redirects you to that app even if you “Request Desktop Site.”
On iPadOS, ho

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. One of the best parts of buying an ebook from Amazon is the syncing. You can read on your Kindle Paperwhite, then open the Kindle app on your phone and pick-up exactly where you left off. It’s what digital reading should be all about. I thought this synchronization was only possible with ebooks you actually bought from the Kindle store

Riverdale, the CW soap that doubles as an alternate-world adaptation of Archie comics, recently wrapped its third season with a characteristic mix of utter nonsense and mic-dropping bravado. After a winding series of 22 episodes that saw some of the show’s weirdest, strongest storylines (the cult-like hold of a role-playing game called Griffins & Gargoyles; Archie’s prison break) as well as some of its most tedious, inexplicable detours (Archie’s boxing gig; endless Hiram

Another WWDC, another set of apps, products, and services that may have just been “Sherlocked” by Apple. The term, used as a colloquial way to refer to when Apple builds a native feature that effectively renders a third-party app or product useless, comes up every year as the company grows its OS offerings and introduces new capabilities worthy of your 30 or so minutes to update.
So what did Apple try to get rid of, or at least borrow from, this year? While not every single item her

“Alexa, are you ready to have a body?” Steady advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing have made digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa increasingly capable of performing complicated voice commands under different circumstances. But does it mean that our digital assistants are ready to escape the confines of smartphones, smart speakers and computers (and a bunch of weird gadgets)? “The only way to make smart assistants really

Before WWDC 2019, Apple was rumored to be working on a new, Tile-esque Bluetooth tracking tag that would work with the company’s newly updated Find My app that it showcased. And while Apple didn’t announce any new tracking hardware, the iOS 13 developer beta reportedly references a device called “Apple Tag” that appears to be the rumored tracker, as spotted by Steve Moser and 9to5Mac.As Moser discovered, iOS 13 contains code for pairing a Bluetooth device with the hardwa

The Feminist Internet, a non-profit working to prevent biases creeping into AI, has created F’xa — a feminist voice assistant that teaches users about AI bias and suggests how they can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes. Judging by a recent UNESCO report, it’s not a moment too soon. In the report “I’d blush if I could,” (titled after Siri’s response to: “Hey Siri, you’re a bitch”) UNESCO notes that voice assistants often r

Justin Sun revealed he’s paid millions of dollars for a lunch date with investing legend Warren Buffet. As expected, Crypto-Twitter had lots to say. Sun, founder of the TRON blockchain and BitTorrent CEO, confirmed the ball-twisting $4.57 million bid late yesterday, a new record for the annual auction for dining exclusively with Buffet. Last year’s winner paid $3.3 million. In a blog, Sun pledged to sway Buffet, a notorious Bitcoin skeptic, towards cryptocurrency. Sun also said he w

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is ready to take on tech companies, saying in a tweet Monday night that “the era of self-regulation is over.”
The tweet comes only a few days after a distorted video of the speaker caught fire on social media causing an uproar among lawmakers who requested platforms, like Facebook, take down the false video. YouTube removed it, Facebook added a new menu directing users to “additional coverage,” and Twitter let it stand on President Donal

Scooter-sharing company Bird is adding an electric moped to fleets in “select markets” this summer. Called the “Cruiser,” it’s the first seated vehicle Bird has offered.The Cruiser can be used like a bike, with the electric motor offering assistance to make pedaling easier. But customers will also be able to simply ride with their feet on pegs, according to Bird. The company says the Cruiser will carry a 52V battery that will last for up to 50 miles per charge. It

Apple had big news for iPad users at its WWDC keynote yesterday with the announcement of a software update major enough for the company to rebrand the entire operating system. What would otherwise have been iOS 13 will be known as iPadOS on Apple’s line of tablets, and the changes look to be legitimately significant.
With these upgrades, however, will come the inevitable questions over whether the iPad is ready to be used as your main computer. No-one doubts the capability of the current

It’s been a long road to market for the Galaxy Home, and now, Samsung CEO Hyun-suk Kim (who manages the company’s consumer electronics division) has given yet another release window for the product: sometime in Q3 2019, according to an interview with The Korea Herald. “The Galaxy Home speaker, which will be the center of Samsung’s home appliances, is planned to be launched in mid-second half of the year,” commented Kim, which The Korea Herald clarifies that other S

Yesterday, at its WWDC developer conference, Apple unveiled the latest version of the MacOS operating system. Codenamed Catalina, it’s a fairly significant update for the platform, not least because of the changes that have taken place under the hood. Take, for example, the default shell, which has been migrated from Bash to Zsh. Oh shit! https://t.co/FweoKhQTNr pic.twitter.com/s74KeTKBPz — Christina "I Am Sadly not at WWDC" Warren (@film_girl) June 4, 2019 Bash has been the primary

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is stepping up its probe into defunct Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX. In an announcement yesterday, the FBI asked victims affected by the QuadrigaCX collapse to come forward and complete a questionnaire to aid with its “ongoing investigation.” “If you have questions or concerns about your QuadrigaCX account, or if you believe you are a victim, please complete the below questionnaire,” the announcement reads. “B

Tinder is now letting people identify their sexual orientation on the dating app and prioritize people with the same orientations. Users can choose up to three terms from the nine initial options — straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, demisexual, pansexual, queer, and questioning — and they can then decide whether they want that orientation to show up on their profile.
Current users will have to edit their profile to add an orientation while new users will be prompted to do so