Geek News

Apple may not be as loud about its plans to create a self-driving car as Google or Uber , but the company is still in the game. According to The Information , Apple has just hired Jamie Waydo, a prominent engineer from Waymo's autonomous vehicle unit. Apple's project, currently code-named Titan, could likely benefit from the excitement over such a high-profile executive. It could mean that the company is closer to a prototype, or that it's ready to start showing off its progress. Either way, Apple needs to ramp things up if its to remain relevant in the highly-competitive (and scrutinized) arena of self-driving cars. According to The Information's sources, Ms Waydo was the head of systems engineering at Waymo, and was instrumental in the company's tests in Phoenix as well as upgrades that let Waymo remove human backup drivers from vehicles. ...

If you've ever used Venmo to pay someone your share of the electric bill or for a half a pizza, you probably did it from your smartphone. Most of the service's users do. There's a loyal subset of people who prefer using Venmo's website for all that, too, but they're all pretty upset right now. According to a statement included in users' May 2018 account summaries, Venmo will "phase out some of the functionality on the Venmo.com website over the coming months," and it's starting with the ability to send payment requests and complete charges from inside a web browser. (In a chilling coda, the company reiterates at the end of the statement that "this is just the start.") All told, it's probably not a huge surprise to hear that a company with a long-standing focus on mobile payments will, you know, continue to focus on mo...

If there's been a constant in Sony's ever-evolving Xperia phone lineup , it's the software -- that not-quite-stock Android interface has stuck around for years. Even that fixture is going to change, though. After Sony decided to wind down work on its existing Xperia Home launcher, the company's Erika Prymus revealed that the there's a "new Home Application" in the works. There aren't any details surrounding the new release, but it's possible that Sony may be adapting to Android P's new gesture-driven navigation. The tech firm didn't say when users could expect the new interface, either. However, Sony is still pursuing its rapid-fire strategy of releasing smartphone roughly half-year intervals. If the new launcher is relatively close, you could see it as soon as the late summer or early fall. It's just a question of wh...

Jared Taylor, founder of white nationalist publication American Renaissance , can proceed with a lawsuit against Twitter. Taylor sued Twitter in February, alleging that the company had violated civil rights and contract law by banning two of his accounts. Yesterday, California judge Harold Kahn narrowed the suit's potential scope, but he said that Twitter hadn't made a strong enough argument for throwing it out altogether. Twitter argued that Taylor's complaint violated California's anti-SLAPP law, which penalizes malicious lawsuits meant to suppress speech. Taylor wants a court to make Twitter reinstate his accounts and stop enforcing a rule that lets it ban any user for any reason, which Twitter argues is akin to controlling which... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts https://ift.tt/2lc4qEY ...

If you're a Fortnite gamer who wants to play on the go, you've got two options. Either deal with touchscreen interface on the title's mobile port , or grab the recently released Switch version of the multiplayer Battle Royale shooter. Regardless, you'll likely encounter some visual downgrades if you've been playing on a high-end console or PC. Digital Foundry has created a video to compare the differences between Fortnite on the Switch and the game on an Xbox One X to sus s out what, exactly, that means. Over the course of the 11 minute video, narrator "Tom" runs a single game of Fortnite on both consoles, recording what he can see. The Switch version runs at 30 frames per second (fps), while the Xbox One X typically sees a 60 fps speed, though both consoles see frame drops and slowdowns in areas with a large amount of competitors. T...

CNBC is reporting that Elizabeth Holmes has stepped down from her position as CEO of Theranos and the Department of Justice has indicted her on alleged wire fraud. Both the company and Holmes have been embroiled in scandal following reports that the blood tests it claimed to be working on weren't actually effective. Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Holmes and Theranos with fraud. In March, the SEC said the company made "false statements" about its technology, business and finances, raising over $700 million through "an elaborate, years-long fraud." Theranos claimed its product could test a small drop of blood for a number of diseases, but it was never able to back that up. Prior to being charged with fraud, Theranos also went through some serious financial troubles , laid off hundreds of employees and was hit w...

Jaguar's battery-powered V20E boat just broke a maritime speed record. Peter Dredge, the co-founder of Jaguar Vector, piloted the boat at speeds of 88.62 miles per hour across eight miles of the Coniston Water lake in Cumbria, England. His speeds broke the previous record of 76.8 mph set ten years ago. #ICYMI earlier - A new world record! @jaguarvector & @Jaguar with @WilliamsAdvEng break the #maritime #electric world #speed record #JaguarElectrifies #AdvantageEngineered Find out more at https://t.co/qvlLQPKVJr pic.twitter.com/DPQLlFiI0W — Williams Advanced Engineering (@WilliamsAdvEng) June 15, 2018 The small and speedy boat was developed with racing experts over at Vector, as well as Williams Advanced Engineering, from which it... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts https://ift.tt/2tcScQ2 ...

Let's read 170 pages of dunking on Professor Carl Shapiro together Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts https://ift.tt/2JO24a8 If New feed item from http://www.theverge.com/tech/rss/index.xml , t

In two weeks, he'd be sitting in a federal prison in Oregon. On the first day of June, the magnitude clearly hadn't hit e-waste entrepreneur Eric Lundgren. "You're just being dropped in a new culture," he said from across the dining table of his childhood home in Lynden, Washington. He wore a white T-shirt with the words "strength," "freedom" and "nobility" printed alongside 20 stars. "I love extreme experiences. I honestly think there's going to be something about prison that's going to be really interesting to me. Anywhere that I go, I'm going to learn, and this is a place where I can learn a whole new type of life." Calling Lundgren an optimist would be an understatement. Yet the 33-year-old millionaire founder of several technology-recycling and -repair companies has spoken this way ev...

VR cautionary tale Kiss Me First finally has a release date and an official trailer . The sci-fi gaming drama is coming to Netflix June 29th. From the creators of UK television series Skins , Kiss Me First revolves around a lonely woman who connects with a "party girl" and discovers a virtual world full of excitement... and murder. The movie is made by the same people who brought UK drama series Skins to life, which ran from 2007 to 2010, with a final season broadcast in 2013. Kiss Me First is based on a YA novel by Lottie Moggach, about Leila, a teenager who gets addicted to a video game called Agora. She meets Tess and the pair quickly become friends. Tess then disappears, Leila takes on the missing friend's identity in the game, and secrets are revealed. The mix of live action and CGI is on display in the trailer, though it's hard to say whet...