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The US Senate Commerce Committee has unanimously approved a bill that would prevent states from creating laws that regulate development and performance of self-driving cars and help put more autonomous vehicles on public roads. Within three years, the bill would allow auto manufacturers to sell 80,000 autonomous vehicles annually as long as they are demonstrably…
The company responsible for AlphaGo—the first AI program to defeat a grandmaster at Go—has launched an ethics group to oversee the responsible development of artificial intelligence. It’s a smooth PR move given recent concerns about super-smart technology, but Google, who owns DeepMind, will need to support and listen to its new group if it truly…
When it announced the iPhone X, Apple pushed the expectations (and price tags) for flagships phones higher than they’ve ever been before. Now, Google gets a chance to hit back with its own homegrown handsets that will not only show how Google has matured as a hardware maker, but also what’s coming soon on Android…
On Wednesday, Tinder introduced a new “Reactions” feature which lets users send each other a range of animated emoji. And in support of this feature, the dating app has launched a bizarre new campaign to explain how these cutesy animations are the solution to skeezy behavior online. The Reactions are emoji responses—ranging from hearts and…
At today’s big event in San Francisco, Google confirmed what we’ve all known for the last two weeks: It has a slick looking new Chromebook, and it costs $1,000. However Google crucially expanded on those early details and has revealed a Chromebook that might actually be worth its sky high price tag, unlike the last…
Most people thought Google’s big event would be sort of lame, since all of the new products got leaked. And then, at the tail end of the Google Home announcement, the thump of a bass showed up. Meet the Google Home Max. Google Home Max is a smart speaker with better sound than the standard…
Google just announced a lovely hockey puck of a gadget called the Google Home Mini. As the name implies, the device does everything a Google Home does in a much smaller package. It’s also cheap! The Google Home Mini is four inches across, covered in fabric, available in three colors (coral, chalk, and charcoal), and…
A trove of new artifacts have been recovered from the Roman-era wreck that yielded the mysterious Antikythera Mechanism, including an arm made of bronze and a strange metal disc. But most intriguing of all, the latest survey suggests that seven bronze statues are still waiting to be discovered. The Antikythera shipwreck is the gift that…
By mounting a small camera looking out the sound hole of his guitar, musician Alan Gogoll was able to capture the oscillating wave patterns as each string was plucked. The result is a performance that’s as captivating to watch as it is to hear. Cramming a camera inside a musical instrument will almost certainly reduce…
Science, at its core, is a process. New advances in technology are as important as new discoveries they lead to. How can you understand a molecule, for example, if you can’t see it? Like yesterday’s physics prize, today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is giving the prize not to theorists who devised a crazy,…
At long last, Sonos is ready for small talk. The wireless speaker company—whose gloss has dulled as Amazon, Google, and soon Apple, have released increasingly decent “smart” speakers over the last couple of years—is finally releasing a speaker with built-in voice commands. It’s called the Sonos One and it comes with Amazon’s Alexa assistant built…
Today’s the day the world meets the Pixel 2, Made by Google. We’re also expecting a new Google Home device, a new Chromebook, some Android updates, and more. It will be a thing to behold. https://gizmodo.com/what-to-expect-from-googles-big-pixel-2-event-on-octobe-1818880633 We’ll be liveblogging the event here, but if you want to watch the livestream it’s easy. Google put it…
Are you ready for some surprises?! Just kidding. Leaks on top of leaks on top of leaks suggest that Google will announce the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones as well as a new Google Home Mini, a new Chromebook, and a new Daydream headset at Wednesday’s big Made by Google event. Even though…
As robots and AI start to play an increasing role in our lives, the question of how we want them to behave gets more pressing with each passing breakthrough. In the new book, Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence, robo-ethicists Will Bridewell and Alistair M. C. Isaac make the surprising case for…
While you can never be 100 percent safe from hackers, viruses, and other nasties lurking on the internet without going completely off the grid, you can at least cut out the dumbest security mistakes you keep making—seriously, now’s the time to address these, before you have a chance to regret it. 1) Using the same…
The European Union’s competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager issued a recovery order against Amazon on Wednesday over hundreds of millions of euros in back taxes the company avoided by routing its finances through Luxembourg. “Luxembourg gave illegal tax benefits to Amazon. As a result, almost three quarters of Amazon’s profits were not taxed,” Vestager said in…
Have you ever had the perfect photo ruined by someone with their eyes closed in the shot? You could fix the problem with a bit of cloning from an alternate shot using a photo editing app—but Adobe is making the process much easier in the new 2018 version of Photoshop Elements with a dedicated ‘Open…
About a month ago, Intel announced its new 8th-gen CPUs, so we put together a little roundup of all the coolest notebooks getting new Core i silicon. But one company was notably left off the list, because it didn’t have anything to share at that time. Now, HP is finally ready to show off its…
As criticism was mounting on President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—as well as several other White House officials including his wife, Ivanka Trump—for using personal email addresses in the course of their official duties, the couple was busy moving the emails to a Trump Org. server. According to USA Today, Kushner and Trump “re-routed their…
Travis Kalanick, the Uber co-founder who lost his CEO throne in June but remains on its board of directors, saw his grip on the direction of the company bludgeoned this afternoon following a vote to eliminate the special voting powers of stock owned by early shareholders. Fulfilling some earlier rumors, the Uber board voted to…
