Mike Murphy

Bill Gates has done a lot of good for the world since stepping down as CEO of Microsoft. The Gates Foundation, a charitable organization he founded with his wife Melinda, brings portions of their massive fortune to worthwhile causes, like fighting AIDS and malaria, and creating access to clean drinking water and financial services. But one recent initiative hasn’t gone down so well.

With every passing day, it feels like the robot uprising is getting a little closer. Robots are being beaten down by their human overlords, even as we teach them to get stronger. Now, they’re starting to break free.

Thanks to Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm, Star Wars will now always be everywhere forever. There are going to be new movies, new TV shows, new games, and new tchotchkes to buy for as long as Mickey can find new ideas to wring out of the 30 year-old space opera franchise. And now, Lucasfilm’s special effects division, Industrial Light and Magic, has partnered with a company rumored to be just as magical—Magic Leap—to bring Star Wars even closer to your eyeballs. Wired reported today that the two companies will be creating a “semi-secret” lab to develop Star Wars-centric augmented reality technology.

It’s safe to say that 3D printing hasn’t found the widespread commercial appeal that many predicted it would. We were supposed to be able to order a new pair of shoes or a pizza at the push of a button, but all we’ve got so far are trinkets and tchotchkes. 3D printing has, however, started to affect the way many industries think about manufacturing, from drug production, to clothing, and even medical implants. If it’s possible to build complete products on one machine as effectively as traditional manufacturing techniques, without having to hire humans or robots to assemble them, then perhaps 3D printing could spur that “next industrial revolution” we were promised. And Airbus, one of the largest plane manufacturers in the world, is experimenting with what the future of aviation manufacturing might look like with 3D printing.

Searching for a lost car in a sea of similarly shaped and colored vehicles is pain that every driver has experienced. But this could soon be a problem of the past: Apple’s forthcoming iPhone operating system, iOS 10, Apple Maps can now automatically remember where you parked your car.

Every other year since 2007, Apple has released an entirely new iPhone. In the intervening years, it’s upgraded the specs, added more functionality, but essentially left the phones unchanged, releasing an “S” version of the phone. Microsoft seems to be a fan of that strategy.

I’ve been a skeptic on the Apple Watch, but I’m thinking about changing my tune.

Apple announced countless updates to its software platforms today at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, but one of the biggest pieces of news seems to have slipped through the cracks of the keynote speech: In iOS 10, the next version of the iPhone operating system coming this autumn, you’ll finally be able to delete preinstalled Apple apps that you don’t use.

With roughly 400 million users, LinkedIn is one of the biggest household names in social media. But households weren’t what Microsoft had in mind when it agreed to pay $26 billion to acquire the company.

Apple delivered its keynote address at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this morning (June 13). Here are the major announcements from the event:

Microsoft would like to add LinkedIn to its professional network.

Billions of people every day search on Google for the answers to their questions, and increasingly, they’re not having to leave the search giant’s site to find their answers. From disease symptoms to restaurant reviews and even someone’s Bacon number, Google has more and more answers right on its homepage through its Knowledge Graph technology. And now, if you’re a musician looking for a little help keeping time as you play, there’s no reason to shell out for a metronome—there’s now one built right into Google.

What does it mean to represent a country if you’re from more than one?

It was like something out of a Batman movie.

On a routine trip on the Metropolis subway one morning, disaster struck.

Europe’s premier international soccer tournament, the Euros, kicked off in France today. The month-long contest will take place in ten cities amid heightened security, as 24 teams vie for the chance to be the champion of Europe.

Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo has already taken down the best European Go player, and swiftly beat Lee Se-dol, a player considered to be one of the best Go players of all time. But that doesn’t seem to faze Ke Jie.

Even though Magic Leap, the secretive virtual reality company, has raised millions of dollars from just about every tech giant and is valued at over $4.5 billion, almost no one has seen what its technology looks like, or what it actually does. But a patent awarded to the company today shines a bit more light on what its headset may look like, if not how it will work.

“OK Google, load up those packages for delivery and ready the drone.”

One of the most convenient changes in the modern era of air travel has been the ability to check in online, drop your bags at the counter, and stroll off to security, potentially without having to speak to a single human. But when everyone else started doing the same thing, the lines at check-in got shorter, but the drop-off line got longer.

Apple is in a bit of a rut right now—some may even say it’s boring. Recent rumors suggest that the company won’t be significantly overhauling its flagship product, the iPhone, in 2016, effectively shifting its upgrade cycle from two to three years. There are also rumors that at Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), one of the three major events that the company holds each year, it won’t be announcing any major hardware upgrades, and only minor updates to its software platforms.

Tony Fadell, who invented the iPod and helped to design the iPhone, announced in a blog post today that he is leaving Alphabet, where he had been CEO of Nest, the internet of things company known for its smart thermostat and smoke alarm that he founded. Google, back before it became Alphabet, bought Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion, which Bloomberg reports was the company’s third-priciest acquisition to date.

Much like Twitter and Facebook before it, Instagram announced today that it’s changing how users see photos in their feeds. In a short blog post, the company said that it will put photos that it believes users want to see first at the top of their feeds, as opposed to in chronological order, which is how they have appeared since the photo sharing app launched in 2010.

There’s a theory being bandied around that Apple is boring now, but according to a new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), people are most satisfied by Apple phones over any other brand.