Tech Soha

Volkswagen's ID.3 rollout might have hit a snag. Germany's Manager Magazin sources claim the EV's underlying software has been rushed and rife with bugs, including dropouts and other issues. Test drivers are supposedly finding up to 300 errors per day. The magazine even claims that the software problems are dire enough that they could lead VW to miss its summer 2020 launch window. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/32CAVRL

It's almost a cliché to say that Apple and Samsung dictate the tempo of the smartphone market, but there's now more evidence to support that claim. Counterpoint Research has calculated that nine out of the top ten smartphones sold worldwide in 2019 were made by either Apple or Samsung -- Oppo's A5 was the only exception at fifth place. The iPhone XR had the clear lead, representing 3 percent of all phones sold, while the Galaxy A50 was the top Android phone on the list with 1.8 percent. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Tp2mdD

Byte, the short-form video platform created by Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann, will soon start giving early creators a cut of its ad revenue. The company first revealed its plans for a Partner Program last month, publishing initial details of how it'll pay its stars, likely in an effort to lure users committed to making content. In a new post on its forum, Byte said it will start reaching out to creators "who are committed to furthering their craft" on the platform next week. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/32B4Utk

The FDA is determined to step up the pace of coronavirus testing in the US to cope with the recent coronavirus outbreak, and it's willing to greenlight technology at an early stage to make that happen. The regulator said it will allow new diagnostic tech to be used to test for COVID-19 before an Emergency Use Authorization request has gone through a review. This will only apply to validated methods from labs that are certified to handle "high-complexity" tests in line with key requirements, the FDA said, and doesn't amount to lowering standards -- this is only to ensure there's "wide availability" of testing options. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2vqwaOQ

Wear OS is struggling, in no small part due to its so-so health features -- there's a good reason Google bought Fitbit. However, Google has hinted that it intends to catch up. Droid Life has learned that an ongoing User Experience Research survey that asks participants how they would fix Wear OS, and there's a strong emphasis on adding health features -- many of them crucial features. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2I61Z2h

Samsung isn't the only Korean tech giant grappling with coronavirus infections. LG Display has temporarily halted work at a smartphone screen factory in Gumi, South Korea after a bank worker near the facility tested positive for COVID-19. The company expected to resume production on March 3rd, but didn't say what kind of effect it expected the closure to have on phone output. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2VxDmDy

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today that it would allow new diagnostics technologies to be used to test for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, at elite academic hospitals and healthcare facilities around the country. The agency's new initiative comes as critics have assailed various U.S. government agencies for being woefully underprepared to effectively address the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country despite being aware of the potential risks the virus posed since the first cases were reported in Wuhan, China in early December. As the first diagnosed cases of the new virus appeared in the country, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had conducted only 459 tests. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/388fmtd

On Saturday the Washington Post reported that an agency within the State Department had compiled a report of two million tweets, which peddled conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Among the hoaxes compiled in the report and reported by the Post included the suggestion that the virus had been created by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or was the result of a bioweapon developed by the Chinese government. Critically, the report indicated that some of the misinformation spread online appeared to be the result of "inauthentic and coordinated activity," the Post reported the document saying. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Tek5Wp

You may have to be pickier about your choice of phone if you're a mobile photography enthusiast. Moment has stopped working on its Pro Camera app for Android due to a lack of "engineering bandwidth" (read: enough available staff) to develop the software properly. Simply put, it comes down to the complexity of the Android ecosystem. Phone makers frequently create custom Android versions with different levels of access to "select camera features," Moment said, leading to wildly varying feature compatibility lists -- and that's before accounting for OS updates that break these manufacturer changes. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/388qUgk

Boeing Starliner's first unmanned flight failed in December, because the aerospace giant divided its tests in small chunks instead of conducting longer tests that simulate the whole process from launch to docking. Starliner program manager John Mulholland has revealed at a teleconference that the company thought it would be "more logical to break the mission phases into chunks and do a lot of testing in those smaller chunks." Doing a single test run from launch to docking takes over 25 hours, after all. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2PBr49m

Electric cars tend to handle well thanks to a low center of gravity and instant torque, but they aren't usually light on their feet and can be harder to drift unless they're appropriately tuned. Audi, however, believes it can bring back that liveliness without compromising on what makes EVs special. It has detailed the S variants of the E-Tron and E-Tron Sportback, noting that they'll be the first mass-produced EVs with three motors -- one large motor producing a typical 124kW (150kW boost) at the front and two smaller rear motors that produce a combined 196kW (264kW boost). The results are livelier vehicles whose torque vectoring not only helps them take corners faster, but can produce "controlled drifts" on demand. If you're comfortable throwing an expensive SUV sideways, it's an option. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/388dRvm

Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Vxcofi

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. 5G is here, and to be honest -- I don't get it. I lived through the 4G wars with LTE vs. WiMax, and before that, it was the bad old days of HSPA+, EV-DO and Edge... but now I can't tell mmWave from mid-band. Luckily, Chris Schodt's latest Upscaled video addresses precisely the things I need to know before I (eventually) get a 5G phone. -- Richard from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/39hfOHi

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has been pressing for an auction of "mid-band" wireless spectrum that could be useful for expanding the reach of 5G, and on Friday the commission voted to approve rules for just such a redistribution. The rules cover "C-Band" spectrum that satellite companies like Intelsat, SES SA and Telesat are currently using, and include payment incentives for those companies to speed plans to shift operations away from those frequencies by dates in 2021 and 2023. Otherwise, the spectrum will need to be freed up no later than December 5th, 2025. Those payments could add up to $9.7 billion, and dissenting FCC commissioners argued that there wasn't enough consideration on how much they should be or how funds from the auction should be distributed, and that the FCC was misusing its powers under the law. Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement (PDF) that, "We could start a fund a new initiative to help with rural broadband. We could fund the nation...

5 terrific Siri tricks you’ll use time and again Siri means a secret in Swahili and in Norse, a beautiful woman who leads you to victory. To those of us in Appleland using the voice-controlled personal assistant, it stands for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Intelligence.” And when you put Siri to work, she can move productivity mountains.

The Geneva auto show was canceled after the Swiss government put an immediate ban Friday on all large events in order to halt the spread of the new coronavirus. The Swiss ban on public and private events involving more than 1,000 people will last until at least March 15. The move highlights the growing impact of the virus on daily lives and livelihoods, as governments try to fight an outbreak that has infected more than 82,000 people and killed over 2,700 worldwide. Outbreak concerns have already led organizers to call off several major industry events around the world, including a mobile technology conference that was due to happen this week in Barcelona, Spain, and Facebook’s developer conference set for May in San Jose, California. Still others, such as a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco and a popular video game convention in Boston, proceeded this week even after big companies dropped out. The Geneva International Motor Show was due to run March 5-15 and draws tens of th...

On Thursday YouTube TV announced that subscribers would lose access to Fox regional sports networks and the YES network because it couldn't reach a new deal with their owner, Sinclair Broadcasting (they got there as a part of Disney's deal to buy Fox, which required selling off the sports networks). Now the deadline of February 29th has arrived, and the channels are still on. Per the Team YouTube Twitter account, the two companies have arranged an extension while they keep working on a new deal, so we'll have to wait and see if this arrangement lasts or whether the carriage dispute actually leads to some blacked-out channels. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2I5yPQT

Some significant changes are coming to Cortana. Starting this spring, Microsoft said it plans to make productivity the focus of the digital assistant. As part of the shift, Cortana will lose some of its more consumer-facing features, such as the ability to play music and control smart home devices. More significantly, the company plans to remove the digital assistant from its Launcher app on Android. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/39liNOZ

SpaceX has won the contract for NASA's Psyche mission, and it's using the Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the spacecraft and ferry it to its target asteroid. NASA first approved plans to visit Psyche back in 2017 before finalizing them last year. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2uF8LsN

The holiday season may be over, but that doesn't mean the parties (and party games) have to stop. Jackbox Games unveiled this week that the seventh generation of its annually released Party Packs will arrive this fall. Today, the company released a trailer for Quiplash 3 at Pax East, and announced that the new game will be one of the titles in Party Pack 7. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2IhQrt3

After one big name participant after another (Facebook, Sony, Microsoft, Amazon) announced it would not send people to the show over concerns about the spread of coronavirus, GDC 2020 organizers have announced the event is off. It was scheduled to take place between March 16th and 20th, and in a statement, they said "we fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer." This announcement comes just hours after officials announced a second case of the virus in California with an unknown origin. After Mobile World Congress, this week we've already seen Facebook's F8 developer event and the Geneva Motor Show drop off of the schedule, and it seems unlikely that they will be the last ones. Developing.. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2wYx2uH

Well, after what I'm sure was a hectic few days for the folks planning the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the team announced today that they have officially decided to cancel the event happening this March, saying in a blog post that they hoped they would be able to reschedule an event for "later in the summer." Microsoft, Unity, Epic, Amazon, Facebook and Sony had all bowed out of the event. GDC's statement did not reference the virus. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2I5QZlr

A year ago, Lyft submitted a report to the California Department of Motor Vehicles that summed up its 2018 autonomous vehicle testing activity in a single, short paragraph. "Lyft Inc. did not operate any vehicles in autonomous mode on California public roads during the reporting period," the letter read. "As such, Lyft Inc. has no autonomous mode disengagements to report." from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/399gpe3

The next time you fly out of JFK, you may notice a self-driving wheelchair race past you as you make your way to your departure gate. British Airways shared today that it has been testing autonomous electric wheelchairs at the country's sixth-busiest airport to see how they can help passengers with mobility needs. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/397UWC0

By BY MIKE ISAAC from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2Pxk1OV

The game shot to the top of the charts in the coronavirus-plagued country and gained widespread popularity elsewhere as people sought a diversion -- albeit a macabre one -- during the real-life epidemic. from Technology News & Reviews | New York Post https://ift.tt/2voRJ2q

This week, it's all about Samsung's chonky boi, the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Cherlynn gives us a preview of her review for the new flagship phone -- including its 5G performance in NYC and its "100X" camera -- while Devindra wonders what's the point of an incredibly heavy $1,400 brick. Also, we chat about how the coronavirus is continuing to affect the tech world (and why that's not stopping anytime soon. Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News! Subscribe! iTunes Spotify Pocket Casts Stitcher Google Play Music Links Hands on with Samsung's Galaxy S20 series Sony and Facebook drop out of GDC Facial recognition startup Clearview AI's full client list was stolen Ultimate Ears Hyperboom speaker is a portable party powerhouse Credits Hosts: ...

Apple's factories in China are getting closer to resuming full production even as the coronavirus chokes the tech giant's iPhone supply. from Technology News & Reviews | New York Post https://ift.tt/2wbFXZe

Hillary Clinton is launching her own podcast. The former Senator and US secretary of state has teamed up with iHeartMedia, confirming an earlier report from Politico. It's yet another example of how big and influential podcasts have become in recent years, and the report comes just a couple of days after Oprah's company revealed that it's releasing 25 years' worth of episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show in podcast form. She's also hardly the first big-name politician to experiment with the format: in mid-2019, Spotify signed the Obamas to an exclusive podcast deal. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/32CuYnD

Amazon has revealed that Prime Video's upcoming sci-fi series Tales from the Loop will premiere on April 3rd -- and it has bundled that announcement with a trailer. The eight-episode show is based on the paintings of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, who's known for making illustrations that combine stereotypical Swedish landscape with futuristic elements like robots and other advanced technologies. Stålenhag's illustrations have been published in artbooks and even served as the basis for an alternate '80s universe tabletop RPG also entitled Tales from the Loop. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2TgYqLG

The Geneva Motor Show is the latest trade show to cancel over fears of the coronavirus. The Swiss auto show is one of the largest car shows in the world and is usually the venue where high-end and exotic auto makers roll out new models and wild concepts. The show, like most auto shows, is more than a trade show as its doors are open to the public. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/386hP7B

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. These days, the internet community experience centers around social networking apps. But some of us recall the old days when it was weird to talk to strangers online, whether via BBS, IRC or Kris Holt's preferred stomping grounds: a message board. The Foo Fighters fan page where he came of age has shut down, taking with it 20 years of memories and the usual share of low-grade internet drama. Its exit provides space to reflect on what that site (not #thatsite) got right and wrong in building space for all kinds of conversations. While Facebook, Twitter and TikTok struggle with issues of memes, disinformation and free speech at the billion-user scale, it certainly feels like they're just repeating work that small community-moderated sites figured out years ago. -- Richard from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/381gA9O

As more and more gargantuan data centers come on line, environmentalists have been concerned about massive increases in electricity consumption and pollution. However, according to a new study published in Science, that simply hasn't happened. While cloud computing output has jumped by 600 percent from 2010 to 2018, energy consumption rose by just 6 percent. That's because companies like Google have massively increased efficiencies with new chip designs, custom-tailored airflow solutions and other tech. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Ps8ZL1

Like Mobile World Conference and Facebook's F8, the 2020 Geneva Motor Show has been definitively canceled and will not take place this year. The Swiss government has imposed a ban on public gatherings of over 1,000 people that will go in effect immediately until at least March 15th, according to Swissinfo.ch and other sources. The Geneva International Motor Show (GIMS) has also started emailing manufacturers to give them the news, according to the BBC's Theo Leggett and other sources. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Tr2w4b

Now that we're well into 2020, it's about time Vivo gave us its annual update on the APEX concept line which, in its past two generations, had given us a taste of what was to come in the smartphone world -- namely in-display fingerprint reader, pop-up selfie camera, near-buttonless design and more. In the case of this 5G-enabled APEX 2020, it's all about the cameras, display and wireless charging. Starting off with the 16-megapixel periscopic camera on the back, it offers a continuous optical zoom range of 5x to 7.5x. This breaks the previous 5x upper limit on the likes of the Huawei P30 Pro and the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom, and will likely produce results that are almost as good as, if not better than, the 10x hybrid zoom offered by both devices. What's more impressive is that this camera module is only 6.2mm thick, which is slimmer than the 6.76mm-thick component on the Reno 10x Zoom. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2VwTNjl

BMW plans to have a million EVs on the road by the end of 2021 and one of the key vehicles is in that plan is the iNext crossover. The automaker has teased new images of a camouflaged iNext test mule taking part in hot-weather trials in the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. The aim is to ensure the vehicle's drivetrain and body can handle the scorching heat, along with dust, sand and rough road conditions. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2TArKNJ

A 9-year-old is smashing the shuttle far and wide, and frantically pacing back and forth on the court in Bangalore, India, as her competition refuses to back down. Kolla is a familiar name in the tech startup and business ecosystem in India. For the last eight years, he has been helming the research firm Convergence Catalyst, which covers mobility, telecom, AI and IoT. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/398bslC

The US Senate has unanimously approved a bill that would give rural carriers access to a $1 billion fund meant to help them remove and replace Huawei gear. According to The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch, the Senate has voted to send the bill to the President a couple of months after the House approved its own version. If Trump signs it -- and a previous Politico report said top administration figures expressed their support for it -- then 40 rural carriers currently using equipment from Chinese tech giants like Huawei and ZTE will have access to the fund. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Vsv3J5

Kenya's largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider — in a collaboration that could spell competition between American cloud providers in Africa. In a statement to TechCrunch, the East African company framed the arrangement as a "strategic agreement" whereby Safaricom will sell AWS services (primarily cloud) to its East Africa customer network. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/3cfTPCf

Citroën has launched a new electric vehicle that's a tiny car and an enclosed scooter at the same time. It's called the "Ami," a two-seater vehicle made for city transportation that's so small, it doesn't even require a license. That is, so long as you're at least 14 years old in France or 16 in other European countries. The automaker seems to have based it on the Ami One Concept it unveiled in 2019 with a few changes to its final design. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/3cgfhXS

It's been a few years since Crossy Road updated the Frogger formula to create a popular mobile game, and now developer Hipster Whale has returned with Crossy Road Castle. The Apple Arcade-exclusive title is available across iOS, iPadOS, macOS and tvOS devices and invites players into its obstacle course as they try to climb a spinning tower. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/32Da4ov

By BY JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2VxpCZt

After claiming that it would only sell its controversial facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies, a new report suggests that Clearview AI is less than discerning about its client base. According to Buzzfeed News, the small, secretive company looks to have shopped its technology far and wide. While Clearview counts ICE, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the retail giant Macy's among its paying customers, many more private companies are testing the technology through 30-day free trials. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2uCWAg7

After investing nearly $2 billion of its Innovation Fund in Latin America in 2019, SoftBank announced this month that it would add an additional $1 billion into the fund to continue supporting tech startups across the region. While the Japanese investor faces the challenge of raising a second global fund after its Vision Fund, SoftBank is still investing heavily in Latin America. One of its early Latin American investments -- and the first in Colombia -- Ayenda Rooms, is performing particularly well, raising $8.7 million from Kaszek Ventures this month. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2uG1oRU

One of the most vehement arguments against Clearview AI's practice of scraping billions of photos from millions of public websites to build its facial recognition database was that the company's data storage and security protocols were both untested and unregulated. On Wednesday, Clearview AI claimed that its facial recognition database was hacked, giving intruders access the the company's full client list, which Buzzfeed News has acquired. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2VA7dLP

India-based SeeHow transforms sports equipment into sensors to do just that, and it does so without having to alter anything on the athlete’s body. Its sensors are baked into cricket balls and bat handles to track very specific types of data that batsmen and bowlers generate. "Putting the sensor inside the ball or bat handle where the action is happening is when you can capture data fundamentally at a higher accuracy,” says Dev Chandan Behera, founder and CEO of SeeHow . from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Vu8ljK

Pinterest is bringing on a new board member. The company announced today it has appointed Gokul Rajaram, Caviar lead at soon-to-go-public DoorDash, to its board of directors and as a member of its Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. The addition signals Pinterest's desire to bring more digital advertising expertise to its board, given Rajaram's experience as product director of Ads at Facebook and product management director at Google AdSense. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2I3pBVa

Waymo is the latest company to criticize "disengagements," a metric that indicates how often a human driver is forced to take over from a fully-autonomous driving system. At the moment, every company with a self-driving car program in California must report their disengagements to the state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). That includes Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, the General Motors-owned Cruise, Aurora and Nuro. The metric wasn't meant to create a public-facing leaderboard. However, industry onlookers have inevitably used disengagements to compare the maturity of these companies and the sophistication of their self-driving software. Why? Because it's rare for startups to give out lots of meaningful data, especially in a way that can be directly compared to their competition. Disengagements aren't perfect, but as the age-old saying goes, something is better than nothing. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2wSwhmS

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. Buying a gaming chair when space is often at a premium and when it has to at least make some effort to blend with your home is mostly impossible. Now, iconic furniture company Herman Miller and Logitech's gaming hardware brand, Logitech G, are teaming up to create a line of ergonomic furniture for gamers, starting with a chair -- of course. The companies plan to incorporate feedback from esports teams like Complexity Gaming, TSM and NaVi to make sure they deliver on gaming comfort and support. Herman Miller is perhaps best known for its legendary, thousands-of-dollars Eames Lounge Chair, but the company has been in the (corporate) smart-furniture business for a while. It'll be interesting to see how Herman Miller and Logitech split the difference on aesthetics and color palettes. Lest you forget, this is a Logitech keyboard. Hmm. That said I've never been more interested in a gaming chair. Let's see what it looks like. -- Mat fr...

Over the years, Google has digitized countless museums, galleries and landmarks for Arts & Culture, an encyclopaedic platform that anyone can access through a browser or mobile app. Today, the company is launching a new collection based on the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche, France, which contains some breathtaking prehistoric art. While the exact age of the paintings is unknown, radioactive dating has pinned the earliest to a period 36,000 years ago. The site was discovered in 1994 and, to prevent damage, closed off to the public that same year. Beyond a full-size replica, Google's new exhibit is the closest you'll ever get to standing inside the cave. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2vdbcmK

Microsoft has been gradually dropping nuggets of information about its next generation Xbox. The first Xbox Series X games will be cross-gen, the console with have a 12 teraflop GPU and -- possibly -- it will rely on one HDMI port instead of two. Now, Microsoft's Larry Hryb has revealed a feature: quick game resume following a reboot. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2Vnrggl

London-based insurtech AI startup Tractable, which is applying artificial intelligence to speed up accident and disaster recovery by using computer vision to perform visual damage appraisal instead of getting humans to do the job, has closed a $25 million Series C, led by Canadian investment fund Georgian Partners. Existing investors also participated, including Insight Partners and Ignition Partners. When TechCrunch spoke to Tractable's co-founder and CEO Alexandre Dalyac, back in 2018, he said the company's aim is to speed up insurance-related response times around events like car accidents and natural disasters by as much as 10x. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2w9N3xv

Raspberry Pi is celebrating its eighth birthday, and it's come a long way in those eight years. Since launching its very first computer back in 2012, the company has sold more than 30 million units. Every year since has brought a newer version with higher specs and better processing power, with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B arriving in 2019 with 40 times more speed than the humble original. Now, thanks to falling RAM prices, Raspberry Pi enthusiasts can get their hands on the 2GB device for $35 (around £35, depending on where you buy it) -- which is the same price as the very first version from eight years ago. from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/32vATel