Last June Apple said it would be changing up its rules around subscription services for App Store developers, giving more of a revenue cut to app makers who maintain long-term subscribers. Now, those changes have gone into effect.Apple has put up a web page detailing the new guid … | Continue reading
Intel is making some weird naming changes to its processors this year that are certain to confuse people about what they’re buying. As spotted by Laptop Mag, the Core m name is largely going away in favor of Core i, which means it’s going to be much harder to tell exactly how pow … | Continue reading
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has completed its first flyby around Jupiter with its instruments switched on — and it sent us back the very first up close images of the gas giant’s north pole. The high-resolution photos are stunning, and are already revealing storms and weather activity … | Continue reading
Until I played the open beta for Battlefield 1 this week, I thought I was done with the series. And that was a pretty disappointing feeling, since I've played every game in it from 1942 all the way to Battlefield 4 — all in, I'm talking about thousands of hours spent capturing Wa … | Continue reading
The UK government has agreed to ban the sale of microbeads in beauty products, The Guardian reports. The tiny plastic beads, usually found in soaps and lotions, pose a threat to marine life once they end up in the water supply. Although some companies have already removed microbe … | Continue reading
For its next big feature update, Pokémon Go will let you become best buds with your favorite pocket monster. Called simply "Buddy Pokémon," the features lets you choose which pokémon from your collection you like best, and you’ll then reap a variety of benefits from your virtual … | Continue reading
Between one Trump tweet after another and inquests into Hillary Clinton’s emails, there’s been little attention paid to either party’s environmental policies. Yet, with devastating flooding in Louisiana and wildfires tearing apart the West, both parties’ environmental platforms d … | Continue reading
The US Food and Drug Administration has banned 19 active ingredients in antibacterial soaps — including the hotly debated chemicals triclosan and triclocarban. The rule is meant to help curb antibiotic-resistance and some other effects of the chemicals, including hormonal interfe … | Continue reading
Alcatel announced at IFA this week that it’s going to be releasing a VR headset called Vision that won’t require a phone. Engadget reports that everything, including an eight-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and sensors, like an accelerometer, gyroscope, and proximity senso … | Continue reading
Yesterday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, destroying its entire payload. Part of that payload was a satellite that would have provided a crucial data link for Facebooks’ Internet.org project. Experts are still sorting through what caused th … | Continue reading
Kris Helgen, the star mammalogist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) accused of research misconduct during an expedition in Kenya last year, will keep his job, despite a recommendation from his supervisor that he be fired. But he has been s … | Continue reading
One of the best things to come out of the whole EpiPen debacle is EpiPen Tycoon, a game that lets you jack up the prices of the lifesaving allergy treatment as much as possible before the angry Twitter mobs take over. Now we can all be greedy CEOs."You are Heather Bresch, the CEO … | Continue reading
At 11:20 pm Wednesday night, 40 minutes before California’s state legislative session was scheduled to adjourn for the year, lawmakers approved an obscure bill that, if signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, could spell serious trouble for the state’s nascent self-driving car i … | Continue reading
Our big feature this week was "Welcome to Uberville," a deep look by freelance journalist Spencer Woodman into what happens when a small town turns to Uber to meet its public transportation needs. We sent Woodman down to Altamonte Springs, Florida, and the story he came back with … | Continue reading
Remember the year 2000? NSYNC's daring frosted tips versus the Backstreet Boys' hometown authenticity. (Lol.) Christina's voice versus Britney's "voice." PlayStation 2 versus Dreamcast. (Dreamcast forever.) Back then, the world was a profoundly different place. Apple hadn’t relea … | Continue reading
Dyson sells vacuums. You know this. Dyson is now selling a canister vacuum that never topples over. Ever. It rights itself every time. Please see the gif above, and the gif here. Dyson This technology is exciting for a couple reasons. Probably the biggest reason i … | Continue reading
Smart thermostats are cool. They save energy, lower bills, and they make your house look like the futuristic residence of a Star Trek character. The problem is, I live in an apartment in New York City that only has a radiator, so I can’t really get in on the connected home action … | Continue reading
Sony's Xperia Agent is just a prototype, but it's the nearest thing I've seen to a home robot I might actually want to buy. The core of the Agent is a digital assistant like Siri and Alexa, that lets you complete tasks like checking your calendar and calling contacts. But, Sony b … | Continue reading
Ireland intends to appeal the European Commission’s ruling that Apple must pay it around $14.5 billion in back taxes. The country’s cabinet agreed to appeal the ruling during a meeting today, with the decision to be finalized by a full vote in parliament next Wednesday, according … | Continue reading
No Man’s Sky is an almost impossibly huge game, an entire virtual universe filled with 18 quintillion planets, each one different from the next thanks to the powers of procedural generation. Instead of a typical review, I’m going to be writing regular dispatches from No Man’s Sky … | Continue reading
Amazon sent a mysterious invite out to UK publications this morning, hinting that the company might be about to launch its popular Echo voice-controlled speaker. Amazon originally launched the Echo in the US last June, but has not yet made it available in Canada or internationall … | Continue reading
The word "innovation" is so overused during a show like IFA that it quickly loses its meaning. It’s hard for me to therefore convey the sense of true innovation that I got when I first laid my hands on the Lenovo Yoga Book. This device is a whole new thing. Calling it a mobile pr … | Continue reading
US carriers are taking swift action on the global recall of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 issued early this morning. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have announced that sales have been suspended as they work with Samsung to handle the recall process and take care of customers who've already … | Continue reading
The IFA, or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin, is upon us and we are looking at the best tech announced at the show. Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, Ashley Carman, and Dan Seifert give us the scoop on the birth of new gadgets, the death of others, and the continuation of the boomin … | Continue reading
I don't like horses, for a lot of reasons. I don't like them because they have inscrutable lizard eyes, because they have weird spindly backwards legs, and because — for an animal that big — they have no right to be as skittish as they are. Take a lesson from cows, horses! Walk u … | Continue reading
Wait, are you still using your phone as your primary GPS? That’s so 2007. TomTom’s got you, though, don’t worry. When you’re ready to finally make the switch to a dedicated GPS unit, the company’s Go devices might be what you want. The line was just revamped to include Wi-Fi, so … | Continue reading
A few years ago, I wrote about how VR was turning into a vehicle for media tie-ins. I wasn’t really surprised when it started showing up in Mountain Dew or Absolut Vodka promotional campaigns; after all, they’re "lifestyle" brands selling a fantasy. But I will admit to not forese … | Continue reading
Let's review what’s been happening at Alphabet in the past months. We’ve been seeing a lot of bad news come out lately, and I figured it’s time to try to make sense of it all — or at least to put all of the bad news in one place. The very latest is that the new head of hardware a … | Continue reading
On Thursday, September 1st, one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The incident occurred as SpaceX was preparing the vehicle for an upcoming launch, which would have sent the Israeli communications satellite Amos 6 into orbit. To s … | Continue reading
The Samsung Notebook 7 Spin feels like it just might languish in the land of the in-betweens: it’s got a lot of oomph, including a dedicated graphics card, but it isn’t meant for hardcore PC gamers; it can handle video and photo editing, but it’s too heavy for producers to lug ar … | Continue reading
The Blade Stealth, Razer’s 12.5-inch ultrabook, only made its debut in January of this year, but it’s already getting its first significant upgrade with a major spec bump. Headlining the new changes is a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-7500U processor, part of the brand-new Kaby Lake genera … | Continue reading
Nvidia’s Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card is coming to the 14-inch Razer Blade gaming laptop. Making the news official alongside an Intel Kaby Lake upgrade for the slimline Blade Stealth, Razer is opening preorders immediately and anticipates delivering on them in Octo … | Continue reading
September is upon us, which in the tech world means it's time for Apple news. As it's done for the past four years, Apple is holding an event to unveil the next generation of its biggest products. This time around, it'll be held on September 7th and is expected to bring new versi … | Continue reading
I’ve been at IFA, Europe’s biggest tech show, for three days now and I’ve had my eyes filled with a parade of all the shiny, beautiful new technology coming to an Amazon delivery drone near you. Much of that technology is powered by Google’s omnipresent Android software, but you … | Continue reading
In the first moments of the joltingly awful fantasy / mystery The 9th Life of Louis Drax, a nine-year-old named Louis plunges off a high cliff into deep water, narrating his death and conversing with a deep-voiced creature that promises to figure out why it happened. That should … | Continue reading
Wow, it’s the end of an ara at Google, Project Ara to be specific, Google’s ambitious modular phone project. I woke up this morning to the Reuters exclusive, citing Alphabet’s desire to kill the initiative in an effort to further streamline the company's hardware efforts.Project … | Continue reading
Nintendo is reportedly planning to return to old-school game cartridges for its next home console, codenamed the NX. This is according to The Wall Street Journal, which cites anonymous sources familiar with the matter. However, it's not the first time we've heard this rumor about … | Continue reading
Philips is throwing everything its got at its new 55-inch 901F TV. Not only is the 901F the company's first OLED set, but it also comes with 4K resolution, high dynamic range imaging (HDR), a built-in sound bar, Android TV, and Philips' Ambilight ambient lighting system. The resu … | Continue reading
Samsung unveiled a smart fridge with a giant 1080p touchscreen attached to it earlier this year at CES. Not to be outdone, LG is at IFA today in Berlin with its own smart fridge, except it goes one step further. While Samsung opted for Tizen in its own fridge, LG has gone for Win … | Continue reading
Apple joined Twitter in 2011, but the company's account has been dormant ever since, with zero tweets and a standard egg avatar. The account sprang to life on Friday, though, with a new avatar, verified status, and a background photo taken from the invitations Apple sent out this … | Continue reading
Samsung just announced a global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 due to a potential fire issue, in what has to be considered one of the most dramatic and high-profile quality control incidents seen in the tech industry's recent years. The company confirmed the recall in a press confer … | Continue reading
Vladimir Putin insists that Russia had nothing to do with the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails and documents in July, though he says it's a good thing that the information is now public. In an interview with Bloomberg this week, the Russian president said it … | Continue reading
Samsung has announced an unprecedented recall of the Galaxy Note 7 just weeks after launching the well-received smartphone. Sales have been halted globally, and Samsung will issue replacements to anyone affected. The issue is related to the phone's battery, with some scattered re … | Continue reading
Google will announce two new Pixel smartphones and an updated 4K-capable Chromecast at a hardware-focused event on October 4th, Android Police reports, a day previously flagged by Droid Life as a launch date for the phones. The company will also use the event to show off its Dayd … | Continue reading
Alienware is refreshing its line of gaming notebooks today with desktop-class graphics chips, just weeks after Nvidia announced its plans to bring the GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 to laptops. Alienware is taking all of Nvidia's graphics chips and putting each one inside an ap … | Continue reading
Apple has issued new security updates for El Capitan and Yosemite, as well as its Safari browser, fixing the same serious security vulnerability discovered in its iOS software last week. As with the urgent iOS 9.3.5 update, Mac owners should grab today's OS X updates as soon as p … | Continue reading
Google has "suspended" work on Project Ara, the initiative to build a phone with interchangeable modules for various components like cameras and batteries, according to Reuters. The company reportedly may license the technology to other partners, but will not release a phone itse … | Continue reading
Logitech is announcing the launch of its Prodigy gaming line today, which consists of a mouse, a keyboard, and a headset. All of them will cost $69.99 when they’re released later this month.Here’s what you need to know about the set:The G403 mouse has six programmable buttons, on … | Continue reading