Robotic news editors promise to save the trouble of picking and writing news stories (and might put people like me out of work), but are they really ready to replace human writers? Yes and no, if you ask NPR. The outlet held a showdown between Automa…
Technical
Spotify’s deal with Sony reveals the high costs of streaming music
Labels and streaming music services have spent ages bickering over payments for streaming music, but it’s never really been clear who was getting the short end of the stick… besides the artists, that is. We may have a better sense of things now tha…
LG’s super-thin OLED screen sticks to your wall using magnets
Forget buying a clunky wall mount for your TV… what if you could stick it up like a fridge magnet? LG Display is hoping you’ll do just that. The company has unveiled a 55-inch OLED screen that’s so thin and light (0.04 inches and 4.2 pounds) that y…
The top 15 smartphones you can buy right now
It’s been a while since we took time out to list our favorite smartphones, which means we’ve had to make more than a few updates to our buyer’s guide. Big players like LG, HTC, Samsung and Motorola have unleashed a flurry of updates to their previous…
President Obama gets his own Twitter account: @POTUS
The President of the United States of America is one of the most powerful people in the world. Now, whoever holds that office also has a Twitter account to match. The White House announced today that @POTUS is the official handle for the commander in…
Apple bought a company focused on super-accurate GPS
Apple has snapped up more than a few companies that know how to deal with your location data, but it now appears to be focused on improving the accuracy of that data from the get-go. MacRumors has discovered evidence that Apple recently acquired Cohe…
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: folding cars and an R2-D2 van
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green. Tesla’s on a roll lately — it’s planning to reveal a $35,000 electric car next year, and it just unvei…
No car, no problem: 17 of the slickest electric rides
All kinds of personal-sized, eco-minded rides have been popping up on the market ready to propel us through the streets. Whether it’s for a quick commute or a casual cruise, these electric rideables help save time and fossil fuels. Not only do they g…
Recommended Reading: The making of a self-driving semitruck
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. How Daimler Built the Wor…
Shutting down piracy sites is like playing Whac-A-Mole, says EU
The European Commission (EC) has finally confirmed what we’ve all known for years: if you shut down one online piracy site, another will simply take its place. A report published by the EC’s Joint Research Center found that the closure of Kino.to, a …
Etsy’s counterfeit problem is getting worse
News of Etsy’s battle against sellers pedaling knockoff goods on its site isn’t a recent revelation, but an analyst report this week details the extent of the problem. Investment firm Wedbush says that up to 2 million items listed on the marketplace …
NASA probe snaps Pluto’s smallest moons for the first time
Getting kicked out of the major planet club always seemed a bit unfair to Pluto, considering that it has four more moons than Earth. On the other hand, two of those, Styx and Kerberos, are so small that we only found out about them a few years ago. N…
Microsoft’s super-stable video recording arrives on PCs and phones
Microsoft’s Hyperlapse is now more than just a clever idea in a research lab — the folks in Redmond have released apps that help you record and produce super-stabilized videos on Android (in preview form), Windows and Windows Phone. Much like Instag…
Japanese smartphone gets iris-scanning for mobile payments
The common objection to using your phone for purchases is that any sufficiently-motivated criminal could lop off your thumb and go on a spending spree. That’s one of the reasons why Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu have teamed up to unveil the…
‘Angry Birds VR’ puts the infamous fowl on your face
In case you felt T-shirts, the silver screen, lunch buckets, go-karts or your smart device weren’t enough places to ogle Angry Birds, now there’s one more: virtual reality. A demo for the ubiquitous game about an avian-fueled, porcine genocide made i…