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Tech NewsGadgetsLenovo Says Its Snapdragon Surface Clone Gets 20 Freaking Hours of Battery Life
There’s a question I get way too often from a coworker. “When are we getting Snapdragon Surface devices?” The answer continues to be “I have no idea.” But today Lenovo’s announced the next best thing—a detachable two-in-one Windows 10 device with Snapdragon inside. Yeah, it’s basically a Snapdragon Surface. HP previously announced the Envy X2, … Continued
By Alex Cranz -
Tech NewsGadgetsAmazon and Google’s Dumb Fight About YouTube Videos Makes More Sense Now
The slap fight between Google and Amazon, in which the two corporations fought over whether the Amazon Show could display YouTube videos, just started to make a whole lot more sense. Google is pushing a whole range of Show-like devices out through Lenovo, Sony, LG, and JBL. They’ll all have YouTube baked right in. I’ve … Continued
By Alex Cranz -
Tech NewsGadgetsI Think Sony Realized Last Year’s Cool OLED TVs Looked Too Weird
Take a moment and step back to January 2017. That’s when Sony announced the A1E OLED, a cool new TV that used the display itself as part of the speaker. The big problem with the TV was how weird it looked. So Sony fixed that, and the new A8F series is decidedly more traditional. I … Continued
By Alex Cranz -
Tech NewsGadgetsQualcomm Claims Its New Chip Will Triple Battery Life on Wireless Headphones
There are currently two major annoyances with wireless headphones: the Bluetooth can cut out in areas with a lot of signal noise, and battery life is mostly terrible. Qualcomm thinks it’s packed a better solution to both of those issues into a new chip. “It’s a big step forward in the hearable category,” Anthony Murray, … Continued
By Alex Cranz -
Tech News
Environmental Disaster Looms as Oil Tanker Burns Off China’s Coast
This past Saturday, a tanker transporting oil from Iran to South Korea collided with a freighter about 160 miles off the coast of Shanghai. The tanker, filled with 130 tons of highly volatile condensate crude, has been burning for the past three days, raising fears of an environmental catastrophe. As Reuters reports, the tanker, named … Continued
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Tech NewsLG Unveils Voice Assistant That Ignores Your Questions, Just Like Real People
It would have been fair to call digital voice assistants the hot new game in town a few years ago. Now, that space consists of incremental advances by titanic companies pressing ever harder to make consumers reliant on AIs you already know: Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google’s unnamed, data-mining Assistant. The likeliness that a new … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsGadgetsVR Takes the Next Step Forward with the Vive Pro and Vive Wireless Adaptor [Updated]
Back in the 90s, companies tried making virtual reality a thing, most notably Nintendo, whose Virtual Boy was so distasteful that it caused people to abandon the entire category for the next 20 years. But then in 2016, headsets from Oculus and HTC/Vive showed that the VR experiences people had been writing about in scifi … Continued
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Tech News
Go Install the Apple Updates for the Spectre Vulnerability Right Now
Security professionals had an “oh shit” moment last week when two gaping vulnerabilities were discovered in the bulk of modern microprocessors. The first issue, dubbed Meltdown, was more or less taken care of in a previous Apple update. But now, Apple has released a fix for the second issue, Spectre. According to Google’s Project Zero … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech News
This Roku Sound Bar Is Part Smart Speaker and Part Remote Control
If the term “smart sound bar” seems unusual, that’s because it’s brand new. TCL just announced the first in a new class of gadgets that act a little bit like a smart speaker and a little bit like a remote control that’s powered by your voice. As the name implies, the new TCL Roku Smart … Continued
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Tech News
LaCie’s New Rugged Drive Can Backup All Your Footage On Location Without a Computer
LaCie’s rugged portable drives, distinguished by their bright orange padding, are popular with photographers and videographers who need to backup footage and photos while away from the safety of their desks. Taking that idea one step further, LaCie’s new DJI Copilot drive can ingest and back up your media all by itself, letting you leave … Continued
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Tech NewsCES 2018’s Hottest Tech Trend Might Be Gadgets for Old People
Before the show floor opens to throngs of tech enthusiasts, and before big companies like Sony, Samsung, and LG reveal their latest and greatest to the world, we get a sneak peek at the trends shaping CES 2018 at an event called CES: Unveiled. And millennials be damned, because this year, the best gadgets could … Continued
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Tech News
Anti-Diversity Memo Author Sues Google for Alleged Discrimination Against White Conservative Men
James Damore, the former Google engineer who wrote a lengthy memo outlining what he perceived as innate gender differences that made women less equipped to work in tech than men, is suing the company for discrimination. In a class action lawsuit filed today, Damore and another former Google employee, David Gudeman, claim that Google discriminated … Continued
By Kate Conger -
Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
Smart Toy Maker to Pay $650,000 After Millions of Kids Get Hacked
In recent years, a number of toy makers have come under fire for developing children’s smart devices that turn out to be privacy nightmares, and a company called VTech Electronics has just settled the Federal Trade Commission’s first case involving an internet-connected toy. VTech will pay the FTC $650,000 over charges it violated the Children’s … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgets
Report: GoPro Might Be Throwing in the Towel
And it just keeps getting worse for GoPro. To recap, the floundering action cam company has been in poor financial health for years. Hundreds of staffers packed up their desks and skateboards in a round of layoffs affecting between 200 and 300 staffers Friday afternoon. Many of those let go were attached to the company’s … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsGadgets
Panasonic Cut the Lumix GH5S’ Resolution in Half to Get Even Better Low-Light Images
Panasonic’s Lumix GH5 is already one of the top picks for people who want mirrorless camera that captures high quality 4K video. So what could the company possible do to make it even better? Apparently, it seems the answer is to slash its megapixels in half. On the new Lumix GH5S Panasonic is cutting the … Continued
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Tech News
GE Wants to Hang a 27-inch Screen and a Camera Over Your Stove
Screens dominate almost every room in our homes, but to date they’ve only made minor inroads into the kitchen. You’ll mostly find them sequestered onto tiny fridge doors, but GE wants to change that with its new Kitchen Hub range hood that hangs a 27-inch interactive screen over your stove. Like any range hood, the … Continued
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Tech News
Hundreds of Stone Tools Uncovered at Prehistoric ‘Picnic Spot’
Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered an ancient sweet spot in which early humans flourished some 500,000 years ago. The “mega-site,” located in Jaljulia near the town of Kfar Saba, was discovered in November 2016 by developers who were surveying the area in preparation for urban development. Over the past year, a collaborative effort by the … Continued
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Tech News
Pfizer Halts Drug Research For Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Because It’s Too Expensive [Updated]
Pfizer, one of the world’s largest drug companies, announced over the weekend that it would stop work on new drugs to fight Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The reason? Pfizer believes that research on the two diseases doesn’t make sense financially. Pharmaceutical research and development is notoriously expensive. And high-risk research doesn’t make a good … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Google Is Taking the Android Out of Android Pay
If you use Google’s products, there’s a good chance the company already has a copy of your credit card details stored somewhere—in your Chrome browser’s autofill settings, gathering dust in a Google Wallet, or inside Android Pay. But soon, “over the coming weeks,” Google says it will merge the various ways it gobbles up this … Continued
By Harri Weber -
Tech News
Activist Apple Investor Calls for Cupertino to Protect Kids from Tech’s Dark Side [Updated]
Two powerful Apple shareholders want Cupertino to better protect children from the dangers of its addictive gadgets. But their motives may not be purely altruistic. In an open letter to Apple published Monday, investment group Jana Partners alongside the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, outlined a long list of concerns about smartphone addiction among children … Continued