Technology news

After detecting an unusual spike in energy consumption, Iranian authorities seized nearly a thousand computers being used to mine cryptocurrency, according to the country’s state media.Authorities discovered two bitcoin farms operating in abandoned factories in Yazd province, which caused a seven percent spike in the country’s power consumption this month. Iran’s central bank banned cryptocurrencies last year, citing concerns over money laundering. According to RadioFreeEurope,

A “very small number” of Apple’s 2018 MacBook Air computers suffer from an issue with their logic boards, and the company will replace the components for free, according to documents seen by 9to5Mac.
The site reveals that certain 13-inch Retina screen 2018 MacBook Air models have an issue with their logic boards. The documentation reportedly only says that the issue relates to power, and 9to5Mac found that some users have complained about their devices not turning on.The compan

Amazon is making it easier for users to find live television on its Fire TV units. The company says that it will soon roll out a “Live” tab that collects all of the various live programming across apps that users might have installed.Amazon describes the tab as a “single destination” that “brings together your live sports, news, and channels from select OTT services, streaming apps (e.g. PlayStation Vue), paid subscriptions, and over-the-air antennas into one consol

Apple’s head of services and programming says that the company has adopted a quality-over-quantity mindset when it comes to its forthcoming Apple TV Plus service. This weekend, The Sunday Times released an interview with Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, in which he talks about what to expect from the service forthcoming service, which is expected to launch later this fall.The revelation is a rebuke to Netflix programming model: releasing as m

It was inspiring to read about the launch of Waitrose’s trial in Oxford offering consumers a range of products free of packaging. Their system isn’t revolutionary – smaller supermarkets have been doing the same thing for quite some time, as have many committed people. But it’s the first time that a major supermarket has made a big move away from the packaging-dependent model that has dominated major supermarkets for years. Waitrose’s system, where customers can fil

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, will officially go to trial in San Jose next year, according to the US District Judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California.Federal prosecutors indicted Holmes and the company’s former president and COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani last summer, charging the pair with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. The pair face 20 years in prison and hundreds of

The US Army will soon be equipping some units in the field with tiny personal drones, reports Stars & Stripes. The 1st Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment will begin using the devices next month in Afghanistan as the military works to figure out the best way to use them.FLIR Systems has been testing the Black Hornet Personal Reconnaissance System with a variety of units — the US Army began testing the drone back in 2016 and 2017, and the co

Machine learning can be an incredible addition to any tinkerer’s toolbox, helping to fix that little problem in life that no commercial gadget can handle. For Amazon engineer Ben Hamm, that problem was stopping his “sweet, murderous cat” Metric from bringing home dead and half-dead prey in the middle of the night and waking him up.
Hamm gave an entertaining presentation on this subject at Ignite Seattle, and you can watch a video of his talk above. In short, in order to stop Me

When I started writing, it was really just a hobby. I thought – since I’m already always scribbling away and habitually putting to paper everything I learn, I might as well start sharing it with blogs and communities across the web, to teach and to be taught.  I was a complete noob to the world of content marketing. But soon enough, what started out as a hobby turned into paying gigs, and those turned into regular and steady work.  As I started collaborating more closely w

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
Gato Roboto opens with what has to be the worst possible outcome of a cat stepping on a keyboard: the misstep causes a spaceship to crash into a mysterious abandoned planet. For players, though, it’s a great outcome, because you get to play a streamlined Metroid game as a cat

Gail Ann Hurd ContributorShare on Twitter Gale Anne Hurd is a producer of films and television shows, including the "Terminator" trilogy, "Aliens", "Armageddon", and "The Walking Dead”.Ruth Vitale ContributorShare on Twitter Ruth Vitale, who has held top executive posts at indie film outfits including Paramount Classics, Fine Line Features, and New Line Cinema, is CEO of CreativeFuture.Internet platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are under incredible pressure to reduce the prolif

Synthesizers are mysterious and intimidating boxes to me, but electronic music company Ableton is setting out to explain and demystify the instrument. The company has created an interactive browser game called Learning Synths that teaches users the basics of synthesizers. The friendly tool is thoughtfully designed with fun illustrations and widgets that make it perfect for beginners to tinker around with.
Learning Synths starts out with a lesson on amplitude and pitch, but if you want to skip ah

“How Will The Movies Survive The Next Ten Years?” demands the New York Times, in a series of interviews with 24 major Hollywood figures. Good question! I’ve been asking it myself, here, for six years now. Very unlike music, television, books, and home video, the theatrical movie experience has proved remarkably resistant to online disruption…
…so far.
I’ve argued before that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have many parallels: VCs are like studios, angel invest

At a recent talk on the UK’s energy sector, the head of an electric utility company claimed that “the problem of decarbonizing our electricity sector is fixed”. Eyebrows were raised at this, but his point quickly became clear. The technologies needed to decarbonize the UK’s electricity system now exist, he explained. Indeed, grid operators in the UK expect a zero carbon electricity system by 2025. But far greater challenges remain in the heat and transport sectors. Elect

Welcome to CHEAP, our series about things that are good, but most of all, cheap. CHEAP! Even though it’s less common than it was, one of my favorite aspects of gaming is local multiplayer. Yeah, you can still have a great time playing online, but there’s nothing quite like handing your friends a solid beating, and then chatting shit right to their face. God, it makes me feel all warm inside. Now, one of the issues with actually doing this is price. Specifically, controller price. Ye

French startup Cozycozy.com wants to make it easier to search for accommodation across a wide range of services. This isn’t the first aggregator in the space and probably not the last one. But this time, it isn’t just about hotels.
When you plan a trip with multiple stops, chances are you end up with a dozen tabs of different services — on Airbnb to look at listings, on a hotel review platform and on a hotel booking platform. Each service displays different prices and has a dif

Hello, weekend readers. This is Week-in-Review where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on TechCrunch this week to surface my favorites for your reading pleasure.
Last week, I talked about how YouTube was letting its commenting system turn from a festering wasted opportunity into a liability.
The big story
Plenty happened this week, though most of the news signified something larger looming on th

TL;DR: Snag the AWS Master Class Bundle in the Mashable Shop for just $39 and kickstart a whole new career.Who runs the world? Amazon. Plain and simple. If you don't have your own Prime membership, you probably depend on someone else's, because who could survive without two-day shipping?
The thing is that most of Amazon's operating income doesn't even come from their retail site. Instead, the tech beast earns most of its billions from its cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

TL;DR: Grab this pet allergy test for $69 from the Mashable Shop.You may find your pet's sneezes, scratching, and occasional face rubbing charming, but those "cute" snuffles may be indicative of severe health issues. Before you "ooh" and "aah" at the sight of your pet stifling a sneeze, you ought to find out whether or not poor little Fido is suffering from an uncomfortable condition.
Instead of heading straight to the vet, though, you can save on ridiculous fees by conducting an at-home test yo

TL;DR: Need new sheets? Snag these for 70% off in the Mashable Shop.Here's a not-so-fun fact to think about the next time you hop into bed: The number of dead skin cells you shed in a mere day can feed one million dust mites. And unless you diligently wash your sheets once a week at the very least, you can count on those dust mites being joined by all sorts of sweat-loving bacteria as the weather turns warmer this summer.
Suffice it to say: You should replace your old sheets, like, now.
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Welcome back to the transcribed edition of the popular podcast Equity. This week, TechCrunch writers Kate Clark and Connie Loizos were joined in the studio by Canvas Ventures’ general partner Rebecca Lynn.
This week, the crew talked about the big rounds raised by shoe resale marketplace StockX, which raised  $110 million at a $1 billion valuation. And Cameo, which provides personally recorded messages by celebrities and influencers to whomever will pay for them, raised $50 million at