Technology news

Carriers have been slow to address the growing robocall problem, but the Federal Communications Commission may be about to force their hand. In a letter to fourteen US carriers, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks today called out the confusing and often ineffective options available to consumers for fighting automated spam calls, and threatened regulatory action if the carriers do not improve.“Despite historically clamoring for new tools, it does not appear that all providers have acted with

If anything was discernible from the White House’s social media summit today, it was that President Donald Trump intends to bring representatives from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to the West Wing to talk about platform bias at some point in the future. When exactly? It’s not clear.
Right-wing figures and meme creators including Charlie Kirk, James O’Keefe, the pseudonymous Carpe Donktum, and the infamous duo Diamond and Silk, all came to the White

If anything was discernible from the White House’s social media summit today, it was that President Donald Trump intends to bring representatives from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to the West Wing to talk about platform bias at some point in the future. When exactly? It’s not clear.
Right-wing figures and meme creators including Charlie Kirk, James O’Keefe, the pseudonymous Carpe Donktum, and the infamous duo Diamond and Silk, all came to the White

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has wrapped up a more than year-long investigation into a low-speed crash between a self-driving shuttle and a delivery truck in Las Vegas on November 8th, 2017. The agency determined two main probable causes for the accident: the truck driver’s assumption that the shuttle would move to avoid him, and that the safety operator inside the shuttle didn’t have direct access to the manual override controls.That the truck driver was somewhat

Netflix has released a trailer for its upcoming science fiction series Another Life, starring Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff. The 10-episode series premieres on July 25th, and it looks like a fun cross between the first-contact film Arrival and the Syfy Channel’s Dark Matter.The series follows Commander Niko Breckinridge (Sackhoff), who’s selected to lead a mission to a distant planet after an alien ship touches down on Earth. All the tropes of a “reluctant leader

Twitter appeared to be down for a large number of users across the United States on Thursday. The company confirmed the issue to The Verge, saying, “We are currently investigating issues people are having accessing Twitter. We’ll keep you updated on what’s happening here.” The outage, which began around 2:40PM ET, took place as conservative activists gathered at the White House to complain about their treatment by social media companies.This month has seen several high-pr

The T-Mobile and Sprint merger was reportedly supposed to be a done deal weeks ago after much of their total spectrum assets were set to be allocated to Dish to spur the creation of another major carrier. But according to The Wall Street Journal, talks have slowed, and it’s unclear when the two parties will come to an agreement.
T-Mobile and Sprint announced their $26 billion merger over a year ago, and the Journal reports that it will once again push past another deadline, July 29th, befo

Microsoft is finally revealing exactly how many people are using its Slack competitor Microsoft Teams. The software maker says that more than 13 million people are using Microsoft Teams daily, along with more than 19 million weekly active users. This is the first time Microsoft has revealed an active user count, and the company’s previous update was that 500,000 organizations were using the service back in March.
This figure is above the more than 10 million people who use Slack daily. Sla

AI has definitively beaten humans at another of our favorite games. A program, designed by researchers from Facebook’s AI lab and Carnegie Mellon University, has bested some of the world’s top poker players in a series of games of six-person no-limit Texas Hold ‘em poker.Over 12 days and 10,000 hands, the AI system named Pluribus faced off against 12 pros in two different settings. In one, the AI played alongside five human players; in the other, five versions of the AI played

Samsung’s long history of including a 3.5mm headphone jack in its flagship phones is about to come to an end. Despite years of persevering after Apple, Google, Motorola, and other companies ditched the headphone connector, Samsung is about to follow the same path with the Galaxy Note 10. Photos published by the FCC depict both the bottom and top of the upcoming phone, and beyond the S Pen slot, there’s no other large circular cutout in sight.
The FCC seems to have briefly shared thes

Disney’s ambitious Star Wars land, Galaxy’s Edge, opened to visitors at its California Disneyland park in May. But when it did so, it opened with only one big ride: Smugglers Run, in which you get to pilot the iconic Millennium Falcon. Now, the company has announced when the next big attraction, Rise of the Resistance, will open: December 5th in Florida’s Disney World Resort, and January 17th, 2020 in Disneyland.This time around, the Florida park will get the flagship ride firs

There are successful companies that grow fast and garner tons of press. Then there’s Roblox,a company which took at least a decade to hit its stride and has, relative to its current level of success, barely gotten any recognition or attention.
Why has Roblox’s story gone mostly untold? One reason is that it emerged from a whole generation of gaming portals and platforms. Some, like King.com,got lucky or pivoted their business. Others by and large failed.
Once companies like Facebook,

Around the same time that companies like Nike and Sony started realizing the powerful potential that online creators held for them, a group of established personalities banded together to create a guild meant to protect creators’ financial and personal interests. Three years later, that group, the Internet Creators Guild (ICG), is shutting down.
The ICG started out as a personal project from Hank Green, one of YouTube’s most respected and admired creators, to build a centralized orga

Valve is launching a new “Interactive Recommender” that generates personalized lists of Steam games users might like based on what they’ve played before. It’s not replacing the platform’s existing recommendation systems, but it’s supposed to give users another way to navigate Steam’s massive backlog of games — especially smaller titles that often get lost in the mix.
The Interactive Recommender uses machine learning, which Valve notes “all th

Sigma has announced its first full-frame mirrorless camera, the Sigma fp, and the company is looking to make an impression on the market with the claim that it’s the “smallest & lightest” full-frame mirrorless camera in the world.Designed as a “pocketable full-frame” camera, the fp measures 4.43 x 2.75 x 1.78 inches but still offers a 24.6-megapixel 35mm full-frame sensor. (For comparison, Sony’s RX100 VI, which features a 1-inch sensor, is only marginally

On Wednesday, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) hosted a Rocket League tournament in Congress, pitting members against each other in 2v2 matches.
The ESA paired up with Congress’ Future Forum caucus to teach members about the e-sports and gaming communities. A whole slate of members picked up the game and faced off head-to-head, teaming up with staff members. The two-hour event was streamed on Twitch and featured Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), Katie Hill

After cracking down on ICOs, the SEC just okayed the first two RegA+ tokens that offer an alternative way for anyone to gain a financial stake in a company, even unaccredited investors. Blockstack got approved for a $28 million digital token sale to raise money, while influencer live-streaming app YouNow’s spin-off Props received a formal green light for a consumer utility “Howey” token users can earn to get loyalty perks in multiple apps.
Props has already raised $21 million b

Disney is getting better at live-action adaptations — slightly.
That may seem strange to say about a powerhouse studio that has more than 80 years of hits under its belt and now owns a good deal of Hollywood’s overall output. But even with its storied history and its successful animated films as direct templates, it’s taken Disney three tries in 2019 to produce a live-action remake that doesn’t feel like a half-baked bad idea in search of a paycheck.
To be fair, 2019&rsqu

Microsoft is planning to make Windows 10 PCs work without passwords. While the company has been working on removing passwords from Windows 10 and its Microsoft Accounts for a number of months now, the next major update to Windows 10 next year will go one step further. You’ll soon be able to enable a passwordless sign-in for Microsoft accounts on a Windows 10 device. This means PCs will use Windows Hello face authentication, fingerprints, or a PIN code. The password option will simply disap

Nielsen, a company best known for tracking TV shows’ popularity, is getting into the podcast data collection business. The company will begin assembling information on podcast listeners’ consumption habits, like their genre preferences and how long they listen to shows, and it will then sell access to that data to podcasters and podcast ad networks. The information could help these companies sell ads, especially because they often have little insight into their listeners’ broad

France has passed a controversial tax on “digital services” that will hit American tech giants, as the United States says it will investigate the plan.Under the bill, just passed by the French Senate, tech companies with more than €750 million in global revenue and €25 million in French revenue will be required to pay a 3 percent tax on total annual revenue generated by providing services to French users. The move will affect major players like Google, Facebook, and Amazon,

Runa Capital, an international VC firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, has now closed $70 million for its third fund aimed at backing early-stage startups in so-called “deep tech.” There are rumors Runa is aiming for a $135 million final target for the fund. Last year, its total funding in the U.S. increased by 30%, tallying just shy of $100 billion across more than 5,500 deals, according to PwC and CB Insights.
Runa already has $270 million under management from its first two funds

The Switch Lite — the newly unveiled spinoff of the full-sized Switch console — doesn’t actually “switch.” Instead of the detachable controllers and TV dock that allows the standard Switch to shape-shift between a TV console, portable gamepad, and a mobile multiplayer machine, the Switch Lite has a much narrower focus on just one of those experiences — but that’s not a bad thing. Instead, it shows that the Switch’s audience and appeal extend to a d

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled that President Donald Trump couldn’t block his critics on Twitter. More specifically, the court determined that Trump’s Twitter account is a “public forum” where citizens have a right to engage with his comments, the same way they’d be able to attend a town hall. This ruling could shape how all government officials use social media — from the US president to local garbage collectors.
The Knight First Amendment I