Tech Talk

LG's new sub-flagship shines with a striking design and Dual Screen, but fumbles some of the basics. The long-running LG G series retires this year, and in its place comes a new mid-level flagship built around design and aesthetic beauty. The LG Velvet mixes up the stale design language seen in some of the company's recent phones, and also boasts 5G connectivity thanks to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765G platform. In fact, it'll be among the first 765-powered phones to arrive in the West. LG's Dual Screen is back too, with a new, slimmer, and more stylish version of the accessory shipping for the Velvet. The Dual Screen was pretty goofy a year ago when it first debuted alongside the V50. In the past year, however, LG has refined the hardware and software to the point where it's genuinely useful, improving gaming and multitasking similarly to a phone with a true foldable screen. But even though this might be LG's best-looking and most useful phone yet, it&

AngelList, a platform that helps startup founders discover and connect to angel investors and job seekers, on Wednesday branched out to a new category in India to further serve the ecosystem. The startup platform said its new product, called EquityList , allows founders to easily manage their cap table, which as the name suggests, is a table that documents a firm’s percentages of ownership, value of equity in each round, and equity dilution. AngelList’s new offering pits it against the talk-of-the-town Carta’s core service — though by limiting EquityList to India, AngelList is tapping a booming market that the Palo Alto-based startup is yet to explore. By targeting India, AngelList is also ploughing through a field that is vast but doesn’t have as many challengers. Most startups in India currently rely on lawyers, papers, and Microsoft Excel to manage their cap tables. EquityList also enables startup founders to manage equity they are granting to employees. The tool, which allow

Some provoking thoughts from a massive former figure in Sony's development army. What you need to know Shawn Layden is the former Chairman of Sony Worldwide Studios. During Gamelab Live today, Layden noted that the cost of game development is continuing to rise. Layden also explained he'd prefer to see more 12-15 hour games making a return. Shawn Layden, the former Chairman of Sony Worldwide Studios , left abrubtly in September 2019. Since then, he's been on an extended hiatus but he made time to talk with VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi during Gamelab Live today. During the extended talk, Layden noted that the cost of game development will continue to rise even as the pre-remote development world is gone. "That world is gone. That world is now sealed in amber. Everything that was pre-virus is now a historical artifact," he explains, even as he remembers the days that games took $1 million to make — days long gone by, as AAA budgets now range from &

Each year, the hiring platform Hired produces a look at tech salaries based on the data it says it gleans from hundreds of thousands of interview requests and job offers. This year, as in past years, it looked at salaries around the globe for software engineers, product managers, DevOps engineers, designers, and data scientists. Of course, this year is a very funky year, one that, owing to the pandemic, looks to see an accelerated shift toward more remote work. So this year, Hired split its findings its two parts — pre COVID-19 and post. It published data about who was being paid what in 2019, but also how those numbers might change going forward, particularly if more companies adopt localized compensation as Facebook has said it will do with its own employees. First, a look at the world before the coronavirus swept through and upended so much. From San Francisco to London, everyone working in tech was seeing steady gains leading into 2020, according to Hired. San Francisco sala

Segway’s story can’t be told without rehashing its entry onto the scene as one of the most hyped tech products of the early 21st century. Alternately codenamed “Ginger” and “IT,” the personal mobility device engendered serious conversations among futurists about the ways in which it would transform sidewalks and cities. Nearly 20 years after its initial release, however, the two-wheeled Segway PT is done . Parent company Ninebot is ceasing production of Dean Kamen’s best-known invention, as it lays off 21 employees at its New Hampshire plant who worked on the project. As is so often the case, things didn’t go as expected. Along the way, the Segway found some love among tour guides and cops. Certainly everyone’s favorite Kevin James film wouldn’t have been the same without it. Ultimately, the company sold about 140,000 models over the two-decade life of the product, making it, at best, a personal mobility niche. In April 2015, the company was acquired by Ninebot. The Chinese robotic

France released StopCovid three weeks ago . The government is holding a press conference today to give an update on the app. In particular, this conference is a good opportunity to share some numbers. Over the past three weeks, 1.9 million people downloaded the app on the App Store or Play Store. Out of those 1.9 million people, 1,814,048 users opened the app and activated StopCovid. You can disable StopCovid and delete your personal data whenever you want. 23,953 people have deactivated the app over the past three weeks. And 460,000 people simply uninstalled the app. Given that the app doesn’t ask you to register with your name and address, the government has little information about who’s using the app and where. The government will run surveys to learn more. Over the last week alone, 190,000 people downloaded the app but “tens of thousands” of people uninstalled it. The government says that people may feel like the coronavirus outbreak is over in France — there are still new ca

In iOS 14 for iPhone and iPod touch , widgets can be pinned in different sizes on any home screen page, providing useful information at a glance. The same can't be said for iPad . In iPadOS 14, the use of widgets is limited to the Today View sidebar that only appears on the first screen of apps when viewing in landscape mode. When viewed in portrait mode, Widgets disappear along with the Today View and the user's apps are automatically rearranged in a typical grid to fill the screen. In other respects, Widgets in ‌iPadOS‌ 14 share the same new functionality as widgets in ‌iOS 14‌. Users can create a Smart Stack of widgets, which uses machine learning to surface the right widget based on time, location, and activity. Widgets also can be customized for work, travel, sports, entertainment, and other areas of interest. Currently, the App Library feature is missing in ‌iPadOS‌ 14, although it could possibly appear in a later beta. Apart from this and the limitation of wid