Technology

Microsoft video tools take fight to Google, Amazon

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft, at the company's Build Conference.

​Microsoft has turned up the heat on other technology giants by launching new image and video recognition products which could help it court businesses worried about running ads next to offensive content.

Good work in Spectre gadget

HP's Spectre convertible: knocks the Surface into a cocked hat.

The second generation HP Spectre x360 has dethroned Microsoft's Surface Book as the best convertible PC on the market. Just like the Surface, it's definitely a laptop first, but here tablet mode feels far more useful, rather than an optional extra.

The curse of Newton's law

Not pretty, but pretty effective.

A Canadian company is making stands that not only isolate speakers but ensure that any movement resulting from Newton's third law does not move them off axis – pleasing the fundamentalists.

How Uber uses psychological tricks to push its drivers' buttons

Because Uber mediates its drivers' entire work experience through an app, there are few limits to the elements it can gamify.

​Even as Uber talks up its determination to treat drivers more humanely, it is engaged in a behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioural science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth – an effort whose dimensions became evident in interviews with several dozen current and former Uber officials, drivers and social scientists, as well as a review of behavioural research.