Geek News

Attack on Titan 2 - A.O.T.2 - 進撃の巨人２ is Now Available on Steam! Abandon all fear. Attack on Titan 2 is the gripping sequel to the action game based on the worldwide hit anime series "Attack on Titan." Note: Interfaces and subtitles for English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish will be available on March 20th. via Steam RSS News Feed "http://ift.tt/2FAH34w"

Tinder’s Feed is now rolling out to users worldwide, the dating app company confirmed late Wednesday with a single-sentence blog update . Feed is a chronological timeline of recent activity from those you’ve matched with; it shows your recent matches, their latest photos, and new Spotify “anthem” choices added to their profiles. Everything is listed in order beginning with the most recent changes to a profile. Users are able to comment on individual items in the feed, giving hopeful swipers an easier way of firing off a first message. So instead of mindlessly just saying “hey,” you’ll now have photos and music interests to work with. Feed is also another way for users to kick off conversations with the long list of matches they’ve failed... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2pcg6tW"

The Making of Horizon Zero Dawn is Now Available to watch on Steam! How does a studio known for linear first person shooters design one of the most well regarded open world games of the generation on their first attempt? Noclip travels to Amsterdam to talk to Guerrilla about their epic journey bringing Horizon Zero Dawn to PlayStation 4. via Steam RSS News Feed "http://ift.tt/2FScAhH"

Google today announced a partnership with Dunkin’ Donuts to bring mobile ordering through the Google Assistant app, via AndroidPolice . Now, if you’re a Dunkin’ Donuts rewards member through the chain’s DD Perks program, you can link your account to Google Assistant and order with your voice, on both iOS and Android. To enable the feature, just speak or type “talk to Dunkin Donuts” within the Assistant app, and Dunkin’ Donuts’ mobile ordering bot will take over from there. Unfortunately, you can’t start a new order, but the bot does let you re-order past orders, with the data culled from your DD Perks account. Once you confirm the location and the order contents, you’ll be given a Google Maps-powered delivery estimate. It’s not exactly... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FUwE36"

Netflix has decided “not to move forward” with gamifying children’s shows, the company announced today. Previously, Netflix had been testing out a new feature for children that let them earn “patches” for watching episodes of certain shows. The feature was meant to incentivize kids to watch select Netflix Originals. Netflix said in a statement today to The Verge : “We’ve concluded the test for patches and have decided not to move forward with the feature for kids. We test lots of things at Netflix in order to learn what works well — and what doesn’t work well — for our members.” Shows that had been selected were marked with red locks (for some unclear reason) for the select users who had been included in the test. Netflix chose shows and... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2paS2HY"

Tech companies like Facebook and Google , have recently announced that they’re banning ads for digital currencies. It turns out that Reddit has been banning cryptocurrency ads since early 2016, but just never announced it outright in a press release, as first spotted by Motherboard . Today, Reddit extended its policy, to block cryptocurrency-related Google cached ads as well. The banning might seem odd, given that Reddit is a burgeoning platform for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and given its nature as an anonymous open-discourse forum. There are many subreddits that discuss the various cryptocurrencies and nuances behind mining , investing in different currencies, accessing the dark web, and even posts by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FLJHQU"

The Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of Firefox today that can prevent some websites from asking to send notifications to your device, as reported by Ars Technica . In addition, this version of Firefox — release number 59 — also stops some sites from accessing your device’s camera, microphone, and location unexpectedly. The new feature prevents your notification center from getting cluttered with piles of news stories from various sites. When turned on, all websites by default will have such requests blocked, but you can tell Firefox to accept notifications from trusted websites. To manage your notification permissions in Firefox 59, go to options in Windows, or preferences on Mac. Then, click on “Privacy & Security” and... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FBwFtj"

Technology The Svart Hotel will meet the stringent Powerhouse standard. Is that enough? Svart Hotel will produce more energy than it consumes. Is meeting the Powerhouse Standard enough? via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2FBjFEj"

Spotify is testing a voice search feature that lets users more quickly access their favorite artists, tracks, albums, and playlists. The feature, which appears based on a 2017 experiment involving a “ driving mode ,” has begun appearing inside the iOS app for a small number of users. I got early access to the test and tested out the feature set. In short, it’s an excellent step forward for navigation in app that has historically required too much tapping and typing to get where you’re going. Spotify confirmed the test but didn’t want to talk about it. “We’re always working on improving the Spotify experience for our users, but we don’t have any information to share at this time,” the company said. To access the new voice search feature,... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2pceWhX"

Google has begun experimenting with using light field photography to capture more realistic virtual reality scenes, the company announced in a blog post today . A new demo app was also released that will be available on the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets to show off what the company’s VR team has captured. Light field photography was made popular by futuristic camera company Lytro . Instead of only capturing the light that comes straight in through a camera’s lens, light field photography is where you capture all the rays of light from a scene, as well as information about where they came from. With the right hardware and software, the result is you can reassemble those light rays to create an interactive... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2GqlUqV"

WhatsApp has agreed to stop sharing data with Facebook (its parent company) until the two companies can do so in a way that complies with the EU’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) , according to a report from TechCrunch . The news comes after the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded an investigation into the two companies to determine whether or not WhatsApp could legally share users’ data with Facebook under UK laws. The ICO report determined that WhatsApp and Facebook can’t share data beyond WhatsApp using Facebook for basic data processing. France has also ordered Facebook and WhatsApp to stop sharing data, demanding that the companies stop within a month. Both the France and UK rulings on WhatsApp... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FBP8WN"

Tech billionaire Elon Musk may now be entering the media industry — or he may be joking about entering the media industry, or maybe he’s just joking about the name of the new media company he’s created. Or maybe it’s all true. On Wednesday, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla tweeted “Thud!” with no context, leading many to speculate for hours that it was just one of Musk’s now-signature idiosyncratic Twitter moments. Then, later on in the afternoon, Musk elaborated in a following tweet, “That’s the name of my new intergalactic media empire, exclamation point optional.” That’s the name of my new intergalactic media empire, exclamation point optional — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2018 We don’t know if Musk is joking about this, or if... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FSLEOP"

The European Union may soon require Google and other search engines to provide more information on their ranking algorithms and create a complaint process for those who believed they were unfairly demoted, according to the Financial Times . The requirements, featured in an unreleased proposal, are reportedly designed to level the playing field between tech giants and other businesses, which the agency believes might otherwise fear standing up to them. The European Commission has been planning to regulate “online intermediation services,” according to the report, to make sure they aren’t abusing their dominant position. It’s not entirely clear how the commission will define these services, but it was apparently looking first at companies... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FTNFu5"

After a rough infancy of scattered compliance and confusing specs, USB-C is starting to, well, work . Most notably, USB-C PD (power delivery) has rescued our Nintendo Switch batteries , fast-charges our iPhone Xs (irony, yes), and at long last given us portable fast charging for the juice-hungry 15-inch MacBook Pro. Griffin’s new Universal USB-C Docking Station (as spotted by 9to5Mac ) adheres to the USB-C PD 2.0 spec, and provides up to 85W of power (Apple’s official charger for the 15-inch MBP does 87W). The dock provides a Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB-A 3.0 ports, HDMI, and an audio jack. That’s not a lot of connectivity for $199. In comparison, OWC’s $299 dock includes some nice-to-haves like S/PDIF and FireWire 800, extra... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FDnQPK"

The American Dream is Now Available on Steam and is 15% off!* Look down the barrel of a future where all your everyday needs are solved with guns. Samurai Punk presents The American Dream, a satirical virtual reality trip through a 1950’s world’s fair where you learn to live your life with guns. *Offer ends March 21 at 10AM Pacific Time via Steam RSS News Feed "http://ift.tt/2tQzlOg"

A new Alexa skill has popped up called DeepMusic that enables you to listen to songs generated by artificial intelligence, as spotted by Music Ally . Per the official page on Amazon , the songs generated by DeepMusic are composed entirely from AI. However, it also says that it “us[es] a collection of audio samples and a deep recurrent neural network,” suggesting that it either a) has samples of individual notes from instruments or b) splices together or layers snippets of sampled audio the algorithm believes will work well together. It also says “there has been no post-production editing by a human.” AI was also used to create the DeepMusic artwork displayed on the Echo Show and Echo Spot speakers. So... there's now an Alexa skill called... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2tNkAfd"

Space I had a lunch with him I'll never forget. I do not regret passing up the chance to take a selfie with Stephen Hawking. I got something way better. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2FP5b2X"

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 SXSW Interactive Festival. For the documentary More Human Than Human , which premiered at SXSW 2018, directors Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting started with a hooky premise: to explore the current state of artificial intelligence, Pallotta (producer of Richard Linklater’s Waking Life ) was going to try to replace himself with a robot. The directors set a robotics lab to work on the project, building a “camerabot” that was meant to scan faces, recognize emotions, train its camera on its subjects, generate questions, and interview them. As the dev team works on that project, Pallotta — a... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FJcnu7"

At SXSW yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would start adding information from Wikipedia to conspiracy-related videos within the next few weeks. “We will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event,” she said. The company is “using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia” to pull from. However, YouTube appears to have left one party in the dark: “We were not given advance notice of this announcement,” said the Wikimedia Foundation in a statement on Twitter. According to Wikimedia, this partnership isn’t a formal one with either Wikimedia or Wikipedia. “We are always happy to see people, companies, and organizations recognize... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Gu1m11"

Reddit has announced it is launching native promoted posts in its mobile apps, as reported by Marketing Land . The in-app promoted posts will behave like a standard Reddit post, and will be available as early as next week. In an email to advertisers, Reddit said that the app now accounts for 41 percent of all time spent on Reddit, with 330 million monthly users accessing the site via mobile devices. Of these users, those who are logged in spend 30 percent more time per day on the site than those who log in via desktop. About 80 percent of those who access Reddit on mobile do not visit the site on dekstop. The mobile ad posts should integrate into the existing Reddit experience, with the ability to upvote, downvote, and comment.... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2pajUMa"

Microsoft is beginning to roll out its new Outlook.com design to all users in the coming weeks. The redesigned Outlook.com first entered into beta back in August , and Microsoft also recently started testing UI and feature improvements to the calendar and people sections of the mail service. The new design for mail inside Outlook.com will now be standard for all users in the coming weeks, with no need to toggle the beta mode on. All Outlook.com users will also be able to opt-in to try out Microsoft’s calendar and people changes, which include a redesigned look and better contact information on profile cards. The overall changes to the mail portion of Outlook.com include improved Skype integration, with support for video calling within an... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2IowJug"

Nexus Media News Extracting methane from biogas could create fuel without fracking. Turning cow manure into natural gas would would turn animal waste into useful fuel without the damaging effects of fracking. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2pfH3vR"

Walmart is the latest retail company to step up its home delivery game for online grocery orders. On Wednesday, the Arkansas-based big-box chain said it would expand its online grocery delivery to more than 100 metro areas across the US by the end of the year, up from six markets now. Additionally, the service that allows customers to order groceries online and have them ready to be picked up at the store will be expanded to 2,200 stores this year, up from 1,200 now. Walmart is leveraging its vast network of physical stores to keep up with Amazon for grocery services now that the online giant owns Whole Foods. To that, Walmart is using 18,000 personal shoppers right now to pick groceries for customers ordering online, and that program... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2paJ6lK"

A nonprofit is trying to crowdfund a floating, trash-cleaning robot that anyone can remotely control over the internet. The nonprofit Urban Rivers already has a prototype running in the Chicago River and describes it as “so fun, we wanted to expand it into a game.” Now, if the Kickstarter gets funded, anyone will be able to remotely drive the robot through a website and harvest trash from the river, using basic WASD controls or arrow keys. Urban Rivers has named the experience “Trashbot Game,” and the robot actually collects trash in real time while players pilot it. “We really hope that one day, this game is just so boring, because there’s no more trash left to clean,” says Nick Wesley, one of the co-founders of Urban Rivers in the... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DsAKKt"

Beyond the general “space” conceit, NASA and Star Wars don’t have a ton of similarities. One is a very real government organization concerned with the complex realities of space exploration; the other is a science-fiction franchise about space wizards and with a very, very tenuous grasp of how physics work. But there are some useful scientific lessons we can still learn from Star Wars , at least according to one NASA robotics engineer. W. Kris Verdeyen, who spent years working on NASA’s humanoid robot Valkyrie , argues that NASA should strive to create its own Star Wars -inspired droids. In fact, robots like R2-D2 or BB-8 have features and functions that could turn useful in our own space-bound bots, according to an article Verdeyen p... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2It7vuW"

In a quest to make drones more functional (and just a little bit creepier), scientists have created a foldable robotic arm that allows drones to pick up objects inside narrow ditches. The arm, described in a study published today in Science Robotics , is made of seven plastic actuators that look like rectangular boxes stacked up on top of each other and stretching up to 27.5 inches (70 centimeters) in length. But what’s special about the actuators is that they can be folded flat, so that the arm is stowed away. Scientists attached the arm to a drone. When equipped with finger-like grippers, the arm could grab an object at the bottom of a ditch. When equipped with a camera, it could take video among tree branches. “Folding, packaging of... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DsvVRn"

Google Home devices now let you set location-based reminders. All you have to do is tell Google Assistant that you want to be reminded of something when you are at a certain location. You can say things like, “Hey Google, set a reminder to pick up more coffee at the grocery store.” Since your Google Home device stays at home, Google Assistant will then send you a reminder on your phone once you reached the location, assuming your location services are on. You can also specify the kind of store, like a Walmart or a Starbucks. Previously, users were only able to set location-based reminders on their phones and not on Google Home devices. Yup, we’ve all been there. Try saying, "Hey Google, set a reminder to pick up more coffee at the... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FWEDNj"