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EA has announced that the popular Sims franchise is coming to the iOS and Android mobile platforms soon.

Almost two decades on since its successful debut on PC, the mega-popular social simulator is coming to mobile devices properly.

The Sims Mobile will be a port of the game for iOS and Android, whereas previous non-Desktop and non-Console releases were more limited, such as the The Sims Freeplay.

As before, you can customize and personalize your own Sims from their physical appearance to their personality traits and their goals for life.

When your Sims accomplish their career goals and retire, you'll be rewarded with Heirlooms that unlock hobbies and careers for future generations, allowing new Sims to tell deeper stories.

No details were given by EA on the cost or release date of The Sims Mobile, but here is a trailer:

Tesla has begun accepting pre-orders for its Solar Roof products ahead of installations that will begin in the United States in the summer.

Solar Roof aims to keep the typical appearance of a roof from street level. It combines both solar and non-solar tiles, based on your electricity consumptions estimates. A home that also charges an electric car frequently will require more solar tiles, for example.

It will generate electricity from sunlight during the day and with an integrated Powerwall, can make the energy available at night time too.

According to Tesla, the typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for Solar Roof, which is lower than an estimate of $24.50 cited by Consumer Reports to be cost competitive.

The cost of a Solar Roof can be offset when taking the prolonged reduction of electricity bills into account.

However, since there are a wide variety of circumstances to take into account, Tesla has created a Solar Roof calculator that lets homeowners estimate the upfront price of Solar Roof, as well as the value of the energy it can generate for their home.

The calculator takes roof size, the average local price of electricity, and how much sunlight a neighborhood receives annually into account.

Following announcements from its major competitors, wireless carrier Sprint has announced it will launch its own 5G services in 2019.

On Wednesday, Qualcomm Technologies, SoftBank and Sprint announced a joint agreement to develop technologies for 5G, including the 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard in Band 41 (2.5GHz) for accelerated wide-scale 5G deployments.

"The companies plan to provide commercial services and devices in late 2019," the trio said in a press statement.

Unfortunately that's as far as the details go. Given that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have already spoken on their plans for their next generation mobile networks, Sprint wants its customers to know it's not asleep at the wheel.

Verizon is already trialling 5G technology in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while AT&T will rollout a 5G network starting in 2018. T-Mobile has a similar timeframe set.

Research based on exclusive YouTube data and a survey of thousands of users in multiple countries shows that YouTube reduces music piracy.

The study itself was commissioned from RBB Economics by Google itself, as it tries to answer the question of whether YouTube is a net positive or negative for the music industry. The video sharing giant has repeatedly come under scrutiny from music companies alleging low returns to the industry from music on its service.

RBB Economics published its first paper as part of the study today, which tests the cannibalization effect of YouTube: whether or not the availability of music on YouTube cuts down use of other, potentially more lucrative, streaming services.

The researchers found that the absence of music on YouTube would instead push users to lower value music channels, including piracy websites.

Google has made some improvements to the offline viewing of webpages in the Android version of its Chrome web browser.

Users of the browser already download more than 45 million webpages per week since the feature was added to the browser last year.

Now, Chrome developers are just adding some improvements to make it even easier to accomplish.

You can now long-press on any link to get the option to download it, and you can do the same for an article suggestion on the new tab page.

Once you attempt to visit a webpage and are greeted with the "You are Offline" page, there is now an option to download the page automatically as soon as it becomes reachable.

Last but not least, the New Tab page will also display previously downloaded pages tagged with a new offline badge.

Improvements like this can be helpful for users with intermittent data coverage, or when dealing with an unstable remote server.

Host of HBO show had called on the public to flood the FCC with comments opposed to repealing net neutrality regulations.

Last Week Tonight host John Oliver made the plea in a segment on his weekly show on Sunday, mirroring a similar plea he had made a few years previously that led to the FCC's servers being overwhelmed with traffic.

This time, however, it doesn't appear to be concerned citizens that have caused an issue for the FCC's services. Instead, the regulator claims it was deliberately attacked on May 8.

"These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC," chief information officer Dr David Bray said.

"While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these distributed denial of service (DDoS) events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments."

FCC chairman Ajit Pai said earlier this year that Net Neutrality rules would be reviewed by the regulator, adding that the rules had impacted investment, innovation and job creation.

Microsoft has hit a milestone with the announcement that its Windows 10 consumer OS is now running on 500 million active devices.

The previous milestone was reached in September last year, when Windows 10 crossed the 400 million installed threshold. While adding 100 million additional devices in the mean-time is good news for Microsoft, it does suggest the company won't hit 1 billion devices for its flagship OS as early as intended.

Predictably, Windows 10 share growth has slowed quite a bit since the Redmond-based giant stopped offering free upgrades from older operating systems. Microsoft had hoped to reach 1 billion devices by the end of 2018, but now is targeting that milestone for some time in 2019.

Still, Microsoft did note a strong picking among businesses for the Windows 10 OS.

via: Engadget

Microsoft has quickly patched an unmasked security vulnerability in its software that potentially allowed attackers to hijack a PC.

The remarkable thing about this particular flaw is its association with Microsoft's anti-malware tool, Windows Defender. An attacker could target a victim with a malicious e-mail, an instant message or a crafted link.

According to reports, the victim wouldn't even have had to open an e-mail as the exploit would be triggered once the anti-malware tool scanned it.

The bug in question affected Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10, and was patched by an out-of-cycle update released by Microsoft in advance of the so-called "Patch Tuesday" round-up.

Researchers at Google's ProjectZero discovered the flaw at the weekend and expressed delight at Microsoft's speedy response.

Microsoft's HoloLens mixed reality system has been integrated into a new spine surgery solution from Scopis.

The Holographic Navigation Platform has been developed to offer greater precision and speed to surgeons, and better outcomes to patients undergoing open and minimally-invasive spinal procedures. By integrating HoloLens, surgeons can benefit from mixed reality in a number of useful ways. For example, surgeons can plan the positioning and alignment of pedicle screws during multiple vertebrae fixation surgeries.

While wearing the HoloLens glasses, the surgeon can see the planned positioning of the pedicle screws projected into view, overlaid exactly onto the patient.

"This allows the surgeon to find the screws' planned positions faster and to align surgical instruments interactively with the holographic visualization," Scopis claims in press material.

Watch Scopis' video on the Holographic Navigation Platform below:

Uber's controversial use of 'Greyball' to evade regulators and law enforcement is now the subject of a criminal investigation, according to a report.

Greyball would tag certain users and show them a different version of the standard app. Tagged users would see false data about the location of nearby Uber vehicles. Using Greyball, Uber protected itself and its drivers from fraudulent activity and also to prevent drivers from potential physical harm.

However, the same system was reportedly used to thwart regulators. The system identified local officials and would make it impossible for them to hail a real Uber ride. This was allegedly done to protect drivers from fines or from having their cars impounded.

In December 2014, Uber allegedly used Greyball to evade 16 Portland Bureau of Transportation officials, denying them dozens of rides, according to the Reuters news agency.

It has now cited sources in reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Uber's use of Greyball.

Raspberry Pi is where many ingenious gadgets of the future take their first steps. An affordable and very versatile platform allows tons of creativity and possibilities in molding your own gadgets.

Now Google is making the RasPi a little smarter.

The new edition of the official Raspberry Pi magazine MagPi includes a new type of accessory for the Raspberry Pi which lets you integrate Google's Assistant to your creation. In essence it's a piece of technology from Google Home that can be inserted into a Raspberry Pi 3, Pi Zero or Pi 2.

Obviously in addition to the actual Voice HAT, which stands for Hardware Accessory on Top, board the addon includes a speaker and a microphone for both delivering the voice commands as well as hearing the responses. You also get all the necessary wires.

The companies have coined a term Artificial Intelligence Yourself, or AIY, that describes the aim to make AI more accessible to hobbyist and homebrew software creators.

Unfortunately at this point the Voice HAT is only available with the MagPi magazine, and is sold out, but Raspberry Pi has told Wired that it might release it separately. That would seem smart, at least after the HAT has done its job and attracted more subscribers.

One would have thought that the time of handheld consoles would have come to an end, after all many, if not most, of us have a very powerful computer in our pockets already. The two Japanese gaming powerhouses, Nintendo and Sony, have been in the forefront of handheld gaming but have they given up already?

Well, PlayStation Vita, the latest handheld gaming console by Sony was released more than five years ago. Sony has placed its bets on PlayStation 4, and seems to be doing really well. Perhaps it might even release a new PlayStation 5 sooner than you'd think as it is not investing in the development of handheld consoles.

Nintendo on the other hand has been relying on their success with handhelds. Within the past 5 years, after PS Vita was announced, the company has released several upgrades to the DS line. Even its new home gaming console Switch can be used in handheld mode.

This regardless that the company has seen huge traction in smartphone games with Pokémon GO and Super Mario Run. Now the company has announced another DS product.

Nintendo has released a product called 2DS XL which is an updated version of the 2DS console released in late 2013. Unlike the 3DS which is designed for stereoscopic 3D the 2DS XL plays only traditional 2D games.

YouTube turned 12 this year and to celebrate the last pre-teen year the video platform is updating its look. The new user interface has adopted a design philosophy from the parent company Google.

The new UI takes the Material Design from Google's Android operating system which makes the website look more simplistic but does not affect the functionality in any meaningful sense. The layout hasn't been changed which isn't a susprise, after all people are very familiar with how the platform works, but YouTube hopes the new UI gives a more spacey and less busy feel to the site.

In addition to the new UI there are some new features though. For example, now users can choose to use a Dark Mode theme instead of the normal lighter theme. The Dark Mode is obviously good if you use the website in a dark room.

YouTube has also introduced a slight technical change in the use of JavaScript. They now use Google's own Polymer JavaScript libraries which should prove to be more efficient and faster.

You can try out the new UI here even though it has not been finished and officially launched yet.

Microsoft unveiled yesterday the new Windows 10 S operating system which in effect is a lite version of company's flagship product. Also revealed was the first traditional laptop to come out of Redmond.

It was quickly argued that the biggest problem of the laptop is the operating system that cripples such a well equipped and at least seemingly well built machine. Windows 10 S allows app installs only from the Windows Store and therefore millions of programs are not available for the system.

Fortunately The Verge has found out that Surface Laptop owners will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free. Normally the fee is $49, which to be honest, doesn't sound too bad, considering the improvement that comes with app freedom.

This deal only lasts for the rest of the year, though, and if you are buying some other Windows 10 S product you are out of luck and have to shell out the money if you want to upgrade.

Microsoft also is giving away one year license of Office 365, which is coming to the Windows Store, with Surface Laptop.

Microsoft has today announced a new Surface product, which is the company's first traditional laptop. The device, aptly named Surface Laptop, is indeed not a hybrid like the Surface Book, and is more reasonably priced.

According to Microsoft, the 13.5 inch 3:2 display on Surface Laptop is the ever thinnest in a laptop. This and the fact that everything inside the device has been packed super tight means that at .57" and 2.76 lbs it is both thinner and lighter than even the MacBook Air.

The display is said to produce 3.4 million pixels so its resolution (2256 x 1504) is around the traditional QHD but with 3:2 aspect ratio differentiates itself from both the widescreen 16:9 or 16:9 (MacBook Air) laptops as well as the old school 4:3 displays.

According to Microsoft's own Panos Panay the Surface Laptop is also more powerful than the competition. With Intel's Core i5 and i7 processors Panay claims it is up to 50 percent faster than MacBook Air. With all that power the promised 14.5 hour battery life (with video playback) seems like a good deal, especially considering the weight.

The keyboard is surrounded by alcantara fabric that we first saw on Surface Pro 4 keyboard, and Microsoft has managed to retain a respectable 1.5 mm press depth.