Welcome to your June Book Club open thread. Any and all thoughts you have on Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife are welcome here. Please just remember, this is strictly for fun—a lot of the topics touched upon in this book (religion, death, pseudoscience) are contentious, but, in the words of Fox News…
Xfinity Mobile is set to place limitations on the maximum video quality and hotspot speeds that customers can get when using cellular data. In case you’re not familiar, Xfinity Mobile is Comcast’s MVNO that’s available exclusively to the company’s home internet customers and runs on the Verizon network. In an email to customers, Comcast said that video quality will soon be restricted to 480p.
The company claims this change is meant to help its subscribers “conserve data,” saying “this can help you save money if you pay By the Gig and take longer to reach the 20GB threshold if you have the Unlimited data option.” Speeds drop to 1.5Mbps download and 750kbps upload after unlimited customers go over 20GB of usage in a month.
For now,...
I disliked many things about living in Florida, but my main complaint was that I could never quite cool down. For three-quarters of the year, going outside rendered me absolutely useless (because I’m a pale and pasty nerd), and taking a “cooling” shower didn’t help that much, simply because the water never got cold …
We start off the week with a rare discount on Dropbox Plus, a few security systems, early 4th of July sales, and many more deals.
I couldn’t name a single character in Fortnite. I’m not able to tell you anything about the lore or the plot, or even really explain where the game takes place. Yet somehow Epic’s multiplayer shooter has produced the most arresting video game narrative I’ve experienced in some time — and it’s only getting stronger as Fortnite evolves.
This weekend provided the most powerful example of Fortnite’s storytelling potential yet. At exactly 1:30PM ET on Saturday, a rocket launched from a mountain on the far west of the game’s ever-changing map. The launch was not a surprise: Epic had been teasing it for weeks, with a countdown displayed on certain in-game TVs and a loud klaxon alarm blaring from the mountain, which was also home to an...
Sha Sha Chu is the Android platform tech lead at Pinterest, the site that lets us keep all our favorite inspirational quotes, Instant Pot recipes and potential paint colors for the guest bathroom in one tidy place. Her first years of motherhood haven’t been easy, but she’s managing to make it all work. Here’s how she…
Are we focusing too much on analyzing exactly how many jobs could be destroyed by the coming wave of automation, and not enough on how to actually fix the problem? That’s one conclusion in a new paper on the potential affects of robotics and AI on global labor markets from US think tank, the Center for Global Development (CGD).
The paper’s authors, Lukas Schlogl and Andy Sumner, say it’s impossible to know exactly how many jobs will be destroyed or disrupted by new technology. But, they add, it’s fairly certain there’s going to be significant effects — especially in developing economies, where the labor market is skewed towards work that require the sort of routine, manual labor that’s so susceptible to automation. Think unskilled jobs...
Dell is returning to the public market in a $22 billion stock buyout that will still leave CEO/founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake firmly in charge, as reported by The Financial Times. The company went private in 2013 following a $25 billion buyout by Dell and Silver Lake. Since then, Dell has seen success both in the enterprise market and with its consumer-focused PCs.
By moving back to the public sphere, Dell and Silver Lake will solidify their control over VMWare — which Dell acquired back in 2015 when it purchased enterprise data company EMC to better appeal to business customers — and be placed in a better position to reduce its debts.
“Unprecedented data growth is fueling the digital era of IT,” commented Dell in...
Samsung announced the next generation of its design-focused Frame TV, which now comes with additional customization features and a much bigger array of art to choose from.
The TV has a 4K UHD screen (like its predecessor) with HDR10+ — an improvement over HDR Pro the original version came with — and features new smart capabilities so users can transfer Wi-Fi and Samsung account details from a phone to the TV without re-typing any passwords. It also comes with Bixby so voice commands can be used to bring up shows and control compatible home devices like smart lights and soundbars. (However, it should be noted that it’s been a rough time for Samsung to try and get people to use Bixby.)
The idea with the Frame TV is that when its not in use...
Everyone, from time to time—or at every single moment of every single day—wishes they could somehow escape technology. It’s not ultimately that fun to be inundated at all hours with the collapse of society, the weekend activities of people you barely knew ten years ago, bad memes, worse TV, etc. You can smash your…
Earther This Midwestern Pipeline Approval Just Pissed Off a Lot of People | The A.V. Club John Oliver rampages against the hysteria around gene editing on Last Week Tonight | The Takeout Great British Baking Show’s Martha Collison offers her veteran advice for amateur bakers |
Windows: Even if you’re the world’s biggest Microsoft fan, you have to admit that Apple’s “Quick Look” feature for macOS is pretty convenient. If you’re such a purist that you haven’t even touched a Mac in the last decade or so, here’s a brief introduction: You click on a file. You press the space bar. A preview of…
How long does it take for your credit score to rebound from a “soft inquiry?” That’s what Tiffany wants to know for this week’s Money Monday:
All right, freaky people. For Heat Week, Hack Your City is going to Black Rock City, the desert site of the annual Burning Man festival, where nerds and hippies camp out, make art, take drugs, and give everything to each other for free. This year will see the 33rd Burning Man. Whether you’ve gone since the beginning,…
DirecTV Now is raising its prices, following price hikes from rivals Sling TV and YouTube TV within the last few months, as spotted by Cord Cutters. Later this month, DirecTV Now will raise its prices by $5 on all packages, bringing basic service to $40 a month and the premium package with all the works to $75 a month.
The price changes go into effect July 26th for new customers and will vary for current customers depending on their next billing date. “This puts us in line with the rest of the market,” AT&T told The Verge, pointing out that there’s still a $15 a month WatchTV option.
The news comes a few weeks after AT&T fully acquired Time Warner for $85 billion, a deal that took a significant sum out of the carrier’s coffers. Now the...
DJI’s only real competitor misses the mark
HTC is laying off 1,500 workers from its Taiwan manufacturing division in an effort to recover from months of poor quarterly results and try to return the long-struggling smartphone manufacturer to profitability, via Engadget.
As noted by Bloomberg Taipei’s Samson Ellis, the layoffs are downsizing 22 percent of HTC’s entire workforce, marking a significant reduction of the company as it tries to reorganize itself to better weather the future.
June 26: @htc says it will return to profitability this year
— Samson Ellis (@samsonellis) July 2, 2018
July 2: @htc says it will cut its Taiwan workforce by 1,500 people (about 22% of total employees)
It’s important to note that these 1,500 employees aren’t coming from the 2,000 workers from...
The Verge revealed last week that Microsoft wants to create a “new and disruptive” dual-screen device category to influence the overall Surface roadmap and blur the lines between what’s considered PC and mobile. Codenamed Andromeda, Microsoft’s project has been in development for at least two years and is designed to be a pocketable Surface device. Last week, Microsoft’s Surface chief, Panos Panay, appeared to tease a folding, dual-display device in collaboration with LG Display. We’re on the cusp of seeing the release of a folding, dual-screen, tablet-like device that Microsoft has actually been dreaming of for almost a decade.
The original source for a lot of Microsoft’s ambitions was a device called Courier. The secret incubation...
Netflix didn’t stack its lineup with bingeable fare for the mid-week holiday, so you’ll have to content yourself with stalwarts from your queue if you’re planning to be an A/C hermit this 4th. (I’ll be diving into Mindhunter at long last.)
Well here’s something I didn’t expect to see today: Amazon is offering up $20 gift cards when you subscribe to a year of Dropbox Plus for $99, today only. That gets you 1TB in the cloud to store all of your stuff for a full year, and the Amazon gift card that’s perfect for buying a bunch of movies to house in your new…
Last week Vivo announced its latest innovation in the field of cramming innovative components into phone-sized devices: a time-of-flight 3D scanner with 300,000 sensor points. I had a chance to test the tech out when I dropped in on MWC Shanghai this week, and it’s clear that while things are still very early, we are rapidly approaching the point where your phone is just straight-up going to be able to capture a 3D representation of your head.
The demo Vivo set up starts with a face-registering UI very similar to what you’d see with Face ID — place your head in a circle, turn it left then right, and you’re set. Then, after a bit of loading, you’re presented with a fully textured 3D model of your head that you can rotate at will. You can...
Late last year HTC announced the Vive Focus, a standalone VR headset for China. The Focus signalled the end of HTC’s plans to bring a standalone Daydream headset to the rest of the world, instead seeing the company focus on its more vibrant Chinese market. That’s a shame, because I got the chance to use the Focus last week at MWC Shanghai, and it’s actually pretty great.
The Focus’ neon blue design isn’t subtle, but it sits comfortably on the head and feels a lot more ergonomic than the regular Vive. It’s powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor, and has a resolution of 2880 x 1600 with a 75Hz refresh rate and a field of view that felt every bit as wide to me as the Vive. It charges over USB-C and the battery lasts between 2 and 3 hours,...
Nvidia launched its current generation of GeForce gaming GPUs more than two years ago, and we might just see the next generation, rumored to be named the GeForce GTX 11 Series, in August. While Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the next GeForce GPUs would be “a long time from now” recently, all signs now point towards next month for the launch of the GeForce GTX 1180. Nvidia was supposed to be presenting at the annual Hot Chips conference in August, with a talk entitled “NVIDIA’s Next Generation Mainstream GPU.” Hot Chips curiously scrubbed any mention of this recently.
Nvidia is now reportedly sending invites for Gamescom on August 21st (just as Hot Chips ends) for a mysterious PC-related event. The invites follow a Lenovo product manager...
WhatsApp group chats can be incredibly useful — the perfect tool for organizing social events, or keeping up to date with news from places like your children’s school. But, everyone knows that groups can quickly descend into chaos as everyone starts, well, chatting with one another. That’s why WhatsApp is introducing a new option for group chats that lets only approved administrators send messages.
It’s a simple change, but one that will make group chats more functional and appealing for certain use-cases. WhatsApp obviously knows group chats are a big part of its appeal, and has been slowly adding more features. It recently introduced group descriptions as well as anti-spam tools and a catch-up feature that shows users replies and...
Do you really know how to cut broccoli? How about a Kiwi?
Tesla just barely missed its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 electric cars a week, according to Reuters, which says that the company reached the mark “several hours after the midnight goal.”
Reuters spoke with two factory workers who say that the final vehicle completed its “final quality checks” around 5AM PT Sunday morning, just shy of the midnight deadline that CEO Elon Musk set in early June. According to Electrek, a Tesla employee posted a celebratory picture on Twitter after the final car was completed. Tesla is expected to officially release its numbers for its second quarter in the coming week.
Tesla has a lot riding on its Model 3. The electric car company hopes the cheaper vehicle be widely adopted by consumers, and thus help...
AudioKit Synth One, a free and open-source iPad synth, is now available for download in the Apple App Store, developer Matthew Fecher has announced. The Synth One, which Fecher describes as “the largest free and open-source iOS music project in history,” is a professional-level polyphonic synth created by a team of over 100 volunteers over the course of several years.
The Synth One is a robust piece of free software, and many of the volunteers involved are professional sound designers and techs who have worked with artists like Neon Trees, Rihanna, M83, and software companies like Valhalla DSP. Right now, it works with audio routing tools Audiobus 3 and Inter-app Audio so you can bring the sounds into other apps like Cubase and...
Over the past year, sharable bikes have become a huge thing in my home of San Francisco. It started with the bikes you can rent by the hour from Ford, I think, but then quickly expanded to a zillion other options ranging from Jump bikes to Bird and Lime scooters.
The National Security Agency says that it began deleting “call detail records” in May after it determined that some of the information provided by telecoms included information that it wasn’t authorized to use. The New York Times says that the number of records is in the “hundreds of millions.”
The agency says that the records date back to 2015, and that it began to delete the records on May 23rd, after realizing the the records were contaminated with additional data that it wasn’t authorized to use — call and text data from people who never connected with people the agency had targeted for surveillance. The agency says that it was “infeasible to identify and isolate properly produced data,” and opted to destroy the records.
The NSA’s...
Game Freak’s free, “rambunctious action RPG,” Pokémon Quest, is finally available for mobile devices. Though it may have launched on the Nintendo Switch first, it’s the iOS and Android versions that feel like the most natural place to play the game.
Pokémon Quest’s model is not conducive to long stretches of play time. The cube-y, cutesy adventure is a mix of tap-driven battles and passive gameplay popularized by games like Neko Atsume. You split your time between a base camp, where you can train your pokémon or cook up food to attract new friends, and adventuring through the island. But your actions are gated by time limits. If you want to fight, you’ll have to make sure you have the battery energy to do so; cooking meals requires you...
Photography platform 500px will no longer allow photographers to license their photos under a Creative Commons license, and is removing the functionality to search and download such images. The site also closed down its stock photo platform, 500px Marketplace yesterday, replacing it with distribution partnerships with Getty Images and Visual China Group.
Earlier this week, the site updated its contributor FAQ, explaining that the closure of 500px Marketplace, in favor of Getty Images and Visual China Group was “part of a strategic repositioning of 500px’s network of contributors and the licensable content they submit to 500px.”
Founded in 2009, the Toronto-based company, is a photography platform, and since its inception has gained 13...
Following complaints from users, YouTube has apologized for some of the problems that its LGBTQ creators have faced regarding its monetization and ad policies in recent months. The apology comes at the end of Pride month, and the video platform says that it will do better by its creators.
In a series of tweets yesterday, YouTube says that it “let the LGBTQ community down — inappropriate ads and concerns about how we’re enforcing our monetization policy,” and that “that we hear concerns about how we’re implementing our monetization policy, we take them seriously and make improvements if needed.”
But we’ve also had issues where we let the LGBTQ community down–inappropriate ads and concerns about how we’re enforcing our monetization...
Robots are a regular staple in science fiction, from Isaac Asimov’s book I, Robot to the latest episode of Westworld. So while I was at an event in Boston, I picked up Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation by Terri Favro. It’s an interesting and funny book about the intersection of science fiction and reality, and Favro blends memoir, tech reporting, and even a bit of science fiction to look at where robots have come from, and where they could be going in the coming decades. It’s a quick, light read, and it’s a good chaser to Paul Scharre’s fantastic Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War.
Here’s 12 science fiction and fantasy books hitting stores this month that you should check out.
GreenWorks trimmers, a YI security camera, Switch accessories, and more of Sunday’s best deals.
Earlier this month at E3, Bethesda unveiled a new Fallout game: Fallout 76, an online, multiplayer survival game. The game will be available on the Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PCs when it’s launched this November, but according to the game’s director, it won’t allow for cross-play, because of Sony.
Todd Howard told GameStar.de (via CNet) that “we would love to do [cross-play]” in Fallout 76, “but right now that’s not possible.” The reason, he says, is Sony, which is “not as helpful as everyone would like it.”
Sony has already irritated fans by blocking cross-play on Fortnite between Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch players, and during E3, issued a statement saying that “we’re always open to hearing what the PlayStation community is...
There are a ton of podcasts out there, but finding the right one can be difficult. In our new column Pod Hunters, we cover what we’ve been listening to that we can’t stop thinking about.
On November 29th, 1970, a family discovered the body of a woman in Norway’s Isdalen Valley in Bergen. It was a strange scene: the body was burned, and an autopsy later found at least 50 sleeping pills in her stomach. Investigators discovered a pair of suitcases at a nearby train station, loaded with money, clothing without labels, eight fake passports, and some other objects, only to have the case abruptly closed.
To this date, the so-called Isdal Woman has never been identified, and the case has stoked the interest of journalists, mystery authors, and...
We’re in the middle of summer-movie season, but while you may want to catch splashy, big-screen-friendly movies like The Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and the upcoming Ant-Man and The Wasp in theaters, there’s also still plenty of new programming on your streaming service of choice. This July, Netflix is adding a sixth season of Orange is the New Black to its lineup, as well as Extinction, the new science fiction / horror film from Hounds of Love writer-director Ben Young. The original Jurassic Park trilogy will also be arriving on the service as of July 1st, and for something more cerebral, Spike Jonze’s excellent AI love story Her will come to the service on July 29th.
Amazon Prime will once again add a number of...
This week, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced the conviction and sentencing of a Nevada corporation and its CEO on grand larceny and securities fraud, among other charges. Sungame Corporation and its CEO, Neil Chandran, were ordered to cough up more than $2.8 million in restitution to investors of the scheme, or face up to four years in prison.
Sungame offered an unusual deal: For every $1,000 paid upfront, the company would send you an experimental tablet that could render content in 3D. A few weeks later, Sungame would send you back $1,500 as a rebate, no strings attached. After that, you’d have the option to either hold onto the tablet itself or let Sungame resell it and send you back the profit. As Chandran...
If you can’t stand yard work, and Amazon’s discounting several GreenWorks trimmers and accessories in today’s Gold Box to make it just a little easier.
I have a massive list of books on my “to read” list, but somehow whenever I head to the library or bookstore I manage to pick up something else instead.
