technology

Elon Musk's Boring Company has raised nearly $113 million — mostly from Musk himself. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the tunnel-digging company doesn't say what the funding is for. But the Boring Company is designing and planning to build a network of high-speed tunnels for mass transportation, which Musk has referred to as "an urban loop system." He's planning to build a network of these transportation tunnels under Los Angeles. According to the Boring Company, more than 90% of the funding this round came from Musk, with the rest from early employees. The company said there weren't any venture capitalists or outside investors involved. Musk has tried other ways to raise money for the drilling company, like selling hats and flamethrowers. Musk is also the founder and CEO of electric car company  Tesla   ( TSLA )  and of SpaceX, a private space company that plans to fly tourists around the moon later this year. M...

SpaceX plans to open up shop at the Port of Los Angeles where it'll work on research, design and development of its Mars rocket. Los Angeles officials said Monday that a tentative lease agreement would allow SpaceX to take over a dormant building at the port in a move that could bring as any as 700 jobs to the area. The deal is expected to be approved by board of harbor commissioners on Thursday. SpaceX won't have to pay rent for the facility for more than two decades. It will get more than $40 million in rent credits for renovating and upgrading the facility, which has been vacant since 2005. The company will not receive any subsidies from the city. The Big Falcon Rocket is at the heart of CEO Elon Musk's plan to settle a colony of humans on Mars. Musk said in February that SpaceX will soon go all-in on the bold idea and begin dedicating its engineering talent to developing the BFR. His remarks came after SpaceX aced the inaugural flight of the Falc...

Elon Musk has been working hard to convince Tesla investors that production of the company's first mass market car, the Model 3, is going just fine. But the electric vehicle maker has now temporarily suspended production of the sedan to work out kinks in its assembly line. Tesla   ( TSLA )  said Monday that it's pressing pause in order "to improve automation" and deal with bottlenecks. The company declined to say how long the stoppage would last. It's the latest issue for Tesla, whose stock has been battered by worries that it's behind on production of the Model 3. The sedan is an attempt by the company and Musk, its CEO, to shift from putting out small numbers of luxury vehicles to making cars on a much larger scale. The production halt was first reported by BuzzFeed, which said it would last four to five days. "Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1," a Tesla spokesperson sa...

On the second floor of an infectious-disease research facility in this African capital, Dr. Joseph Kamgno, the country's leading expert on parasitic roundworms, stood at his desk staring down at the black hard-shelled case that had just arrived from a bioengineering lab at the University of California-Berkeley. The case contained what appeared to be three ordinary iPhones. But the California researchers believed these phones could do something extraordinary -- help quell river blindness, the second-leading cause of preventable blindness in the world. There is already an effective treatment, a medication that can kill the baby worms that cause the blindness. And when nearly everyone in a community takes the drug every year for a decade or so, it can eliminate the disease from the area. But treating communities widely for river blindness is a risky proposition: The treatment can cause coma or death in a small segment of the population that harbors a different parasite --...

Some of the biggest tech companies pledged to stand up to governments that launch cyberattacks. On Tuesday, Microsoft, Facebook and 32 other companies signed on to the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a pact to work together on cybersecurity issues. In addition to stymieing governmental cyberattacks, the companies also agreed to collaborate on stronger defense systems and protect against tampering of their products. "We called on the world to borrow a page from history in the form of a Digital Geneva Convention, a long-term goal of updating international law to protect people in times of peace from malicious cyberattacks," Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote in a blog post Tuesday. The financial impact of cybersecurity attacks on businesses and organizations is expected to reach $8 trillion by 2022. Firms such as Cisco, HP, Nokia, Oracle also joined the accord. Notably, absent from the signers were Apple, Alphabet and Amazon. Microsoft called for a more uniform ...

What is the New Nintendo 3DS XL? Let’s cut to the chase. The New Nintendo 3DS XL is, without doubt, the best version of the 3DS ever, and the most feature-rich, comfortable and cleverly thought-out Nintendo handheld since the DS Lite. It has a fantastic 3D screen that actually works in 3D, a processor that’s better equipped for handling more advanced 3D games, and a built-in secondary analogue pad that – with some minor reservations – renders the old Circle Pad Pro accessory unnecessary. It’s a brilliant device. New Nintendo 3DS XL – Design In terms of weight and proportions, the New Nintendo 3DS XL is so similar to the old Nintendo 3DS XL that there’s barely anything worth mentioning. It’s a few millimetres wider and thicker and has a flatter top, while the weight has crept up by around 6g. The screens aren’t merely the same size, but the exact same resolution, with a 4.18-inch, 320 x 240 resistive touchscreen at the bottom and a 4.88-inch, 800 x 240 screen at the top. By sm...