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Elon Musk has given more details about Tesla’s upcoming pickup truck in a recent interview with Recode. The Tesla CEO noted that he wants it to be a “futuristic-like cyberpunk, Blade Runner pickup truck” and that he doesn’t care if many people want to buy it.
Musk has been open about his desire for Tesla to produce a pickup truck for some time now. Last year he announced plans for the truck at the Tesla Semi event, and later said that he expected it to be the next vehicle the company produces after the upcoming Model Y SUV. During an earnings call in August he said that the pickup was his “personal favorite” of the car maker’s upcoming vehicles.
Musk’s comments during the Recode interview with Kara Swisher suggest that the pickup...
Companies are not democracies. But companies born in democracies sometimes display their values, as when social networks give their users cite the First Amendment in drafting their policies around content moderation.
The act of protest is not not limited to democracies, of course. And yet there was something wonderfully democratic about today’s Google walkout, in which thousands of Googlers left their desks to demonstrate against their leadership’s problems with swiftly separating sexual harassers from the company. A large group of loosely connected people, moved to common action, came together to seek redress for their grievances.
And I suspect, in the long run, that they will be successful.
The proximate cause for today’s events was...
Samsung’s mobile phone sales have been taking a hit this year. It’s a downward trend that started during last year’s holiday quarter and has persisted throughout 2018. Both IDC and Strategy Analytics report that Samsung’s smartphone sales have dipped around 13 percent in the recent quarter. That follows a 10 percent decline in Q2, a 2 percent drop in Q1, and a 4 percent dip in Q4 2017. It’s a clear sign that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy S9 devices haven’t been competitive at the high-end, and Samsung is now losing ground in the mid- and low-end parts of the smartphone market.
Huawei, Samsung’s main Chinese rival, has soared this year. Huawei’s smartphone shipments are up around 32 percent this quarter, and the company has once...
Amazon’s 4-star store wasn’t just a one-off shtick. The e-commerce giant is going to continue opening up brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to its most popular online products just like the current one in Manhattan, but this time in Colorado. On Thursday, a midwestern location will be opening up in Lone Tree, Colorado — only a few miles away from Denver. The company has plans for its first West Coast store to open up in Berkeley, California in the next few months as well.
As the name implies, the 4-star stores sell products that are rated at least four stars or higher online. You can buy basically any kind of product you would find online, whether that be tech, children’s toys, or cookware. Special discounts are extended to Prime members...
Despite a zero percent change in iPhone unit sales year over year, Apple ended its fiscal fourth quarter with a 29 percent revenue increase in its smartphone division. It also met its overall revenue target of $62.9 billion — up from $52.5 billion this quarter last year. Both sales and profit exceeded Wall Street expectations for the quarter.
Apple’s Q4 quarter ended in September, meaning it only accounted for the first few weeks of the new iPhone XS and XS Max going on sale. (The iPhone XR, which was also announced in September, did not become available for preorder until October.) Despite the slow sales growth, the average selling price per iPhone is now $793, up from $724 in Q3.
The increase suggests that Apple’s price hike strategy...
Currant, a startup dedicated to making smart home devices that reduce energy consumption, has announced its first AI-driven product, as spotted by VentureBeat. It’s called the Currant Smart Outlet, and it sports two individually controlled outlets and can be rotated when plugged in to keep cords tidy. The company says its outlet has the highest safety ratings of any smart outlet on the market.
The gadget works with a companion app that tracks real-time electricity usage and displays graphs to show where energy is being consumed and how much it’s costing you. Through the app, you can also remotely monitor and control each outlet and connect it to Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices to enable voice control. Outlet-specific rules can be...
Target, along with pretty much every other retailer in the US, will ring in Black Friday (November 23rd) by offering deep discounts on something for everyone. The brunt of its deals will kick off on Thursday, November 22nd at 5PM when stores will first open doors for Black Friday shoppers. It will then close its doors at 1AM on Friday, only to re-open at 7AM for early risers.
While you wait, Target is getting things started early this year with a few of its early access deals. You can find those linked below, along with a peek at what else will be on sale during the Black Friday weekend.
We’ll be adding and removing deals to this page in order to reflect what’s currently available, and what’s been confirmed to come later in November.
A state-owned Chinese company was charged by the Justice Department on Thursday for stealing trade secrets from an American chip manufacturer. It’s the fourth instance in which the Department has indicted Chinese conspirators for attempting to steal trade secrets in the past month, and with this momentum, the Department is announcing a new initiative to combat economic espionage from the country.
In its indictment, the Department claims that China’s Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) worked to steal trade secrets from a US chipmaker, Micron Technologies.
Micron is an Idaho-based chipmaker that, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is worth over $100 billion and owns 20–25 percent...
Welles struggled for years to make The Other Side of the Wind
Instagram announced a new feature today that lets you share IGTV videos to your Instagram Story. Tapping the paper airplane icon will open up an option to ‘Add video to your story,’ and your friends can tap the preview to go watch the entire video in IGTV.
Until now, its only been possible to add a link to an IGTV video on business accounts, which allowed users to swipe up and be taken to watch the full IGTV video. The new feature allows for users to share a preview of any IGTV video in their stories, similar to the feature that lets users instantly repost stories they’re mentioned in.
Now you can share your favorite IGTV videos to your story. Tap the paper airplane at the bottom of the video you want to share. When friends see your...
You don’t need to take a bartending class to convince your friends you’re a great mixologist. You just need, like, three cocktail recipes with more than two ingredients, and big, clear ice cubes. You all can jump into the comments to help each other with the former, but for the latter, I’m really impressed with True…
Lead is not something you want in your water, your food, or your personal care products. But until recently, the US FDA allowed lead acetate in one such product, a certain type of hair dye, on the basis of old studies that found it didn’t migrate from hair into the bloodstream. This week, they changed their mind.
Like every single component of Thanksgiving dinner, cranberry sauce inspires a lot of feelings. There are can purists—“We need the ridges!”—and there are homemade enthusiasts. Then there are those who like to play around with the genre, infuriating both camps. I bet you can guess which category I fall into.
With Apple transitioning their iPad Pros and MacBook Airs to USB-C, a lot of Amazon’s most popular tech brands are offering deals on chargers, cables, and dongles, and we’ve rounded up the best of the bunch below. Just be sure to note the promo codes!
It’s a human impulse to take action, especially in potentially dire circumstances. You might think striking out in search of help is the best thing to do when stranded in your car. It’s not.
In the quest to wring out as many pennies as possible from customers and compete with budget airlines, three U.S. carriers—American, Delta and United—now offer three distinct levels of Economy class tickets, and the differences between the tiers are potentially equal to hundreds of dollars in ticket fares.
You would think this whole “selling cars” thing would be easy for dealers, especially if an interested customer comes in with a serious intent to buy. But you would be surprised how uninterested some stores are in selling certain cars to certain buyers.
Are you embarking on a one-month quest to write the first draft of that novel you’ve been dreaming of? Or perhaps you just want to feed off the energy of the 400,000 people who are. Here are our top tips for aspiring novelists.
Thanksgiving demands a lot from us all, but it demands the most from the dishwasher. If you’re having a smol Thanksgiving, it might not make sense to bust out every single pot and pan, but luckily you don’t have to. A full Turkey Day meal—complete with cranberry sauce—can be cooked up in your oven on single sheet pan.
Sound the alarm: Taco Bell is giving away free tacos today.
Quick thought experiment: A bird has pooped on you outside a restaurant, and a kind bystander has offered you a paper napkin to clean yourself off. Do you use the napkin and go about your day, or do you go inside and wash off with running water in the bathroom?
I love spruce-up shortcuts. Company coming to your messy home? Just clean your bathroom. Look like shit today? Slap on some red lipstick. Here’s mine: Replace your shower curtain, and you’ll feel like you have a whole new bathroom.
When my sister-in-law was pregnant earlier this year with my nephew, I watched him get spoiled—consistently and thoroughly—despite not yet having even taken his first breath.
In a recent barrage of new products, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Lenovo, and HP have all shown off computers that are trying to tackle one of the industry’s most vexing problems: How do you make a keyboarded computer that’s also a great tablet? How do you attach a keyboard to a tablet without ruining the whole thing?…
Your Amazon Alexa device will now work a bit better with your calendar.
Thanksgiving menus aren’t exactly cradles of innovation. Some people refuse to mess with tradition, and tweaking the classics can be a real gamble—especially when it comes to pie. But if you’re sick of the same old pumpkin and pecan, slip in a little miso paste and watch as hardline traditionalists and radical pie…
Airlines are not allowed to charter flights between two countries if they are not based out of either. That’s why you won’t find Delta selling trips between Canada and France, or Malaysia Airlines flying between the U.S. and England.
AirPods, the Cricut maker, and an iRobot Roomba 801 lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.
We’ve squatted and we’ve deadlifted, so it’s about time we tackle the bench press. And we’re doing it with room for everybody: even if you’ve never tried, and are perhaps slightly terrified of dropping the bar on your face, you can still join in.
A few weeks ago, I began to have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. My body and brain felt sluggish and low, and I started swapping out exercise and socializing in favor of Rice Krispie treats and a seemingly endless Buffy the Vampire Slayer binge (thank you Hulu!). A fun fact about freelancing is that you…
Nintendo held a 40-minute Smash Bros. Ultimate presentation today, during which the company unveiled new combatants for the Switch platform fighter: Ken from Street Fighter and Incineroar from Pokémon. This brings the total to 74 playable characters.
Ken will be an “echo fighter” for Ryu, meaning that he’ll have a somewhat similar play style and move set — though Nintendo notes that he’ll be faster. Incineroar, meanwhile, will focus largely on grabs and throws as moves. Ken’s appearance is based on Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
Smash Bros. Ultimate is set to release on December 7th, and today marks the final Nintendo Direct showcase for the fighting game. Beyond including every single character that has ever appeared in a Smash Bros....
The Concourse A Truly Brilliant Solution To The Problem Of People Wearing Non-Spooky Halloween Costumes | The A.V. Club A very British Mike Myers talks Bohemian Rhapsody and George Harrison on The Late Show | Jezebel 10 More Spooky Stories to Keep You Up at Night | Splinter Here’s Jeffrey Toobin Calling Kris Kobach a…
Netflix has been wrestling with the film industry since it killed Blockbuster, and those struggles have only become more intense since the service began producing its own television shows and films. When it comes to screening its original films in theaters, Netflix has historically said that its projects have to be released simultaneously on its platform. That hasn’t played well with members of the film industry establishment, including theater chains and industry insiders. (Things came to a head earlier this year when Netflix, after being barred from competition in the Cannes Film Festival, exited the festival entirely.) This week, Netflix appears to have reversed its formerly ironclad policy: three of its upcoming releases — the...
Sonos is delaying support for Google Assistant until 2019, the company announced in a blog post. Back in October 2017, Sonos announced that Google Assistant would come to its Sonos One speaker in 2018 following its support for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, but over the past year that integration hasn’t materialized.
“While we originally planned to have the experience ready to ship in 2018, the reality is that we need a bit more time to get the experience right and will now look to lock down a date in 2019, and we’re continuing to make good progress,” Sonos stated in its blog post. In August, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told The Verge the company was pushing to have Google Assistant support ready before the end of 2018, but that timeline...
Nintendo held a 40-minute Smash Bros. Ultimate presentation today, during which the company unveiled new combatants for the Switch platform fighter: Ken from Street Fighter, and Incineroar from Pokémon. This brings the total to 74 playable characters.
Ken will be an “echo fighter” for Ryu, meaning that he’ll have a somewhat similar play style and moveset — though Nintendo notes that he’ll be faster. Incineroar, meanwhile, will focus largely on grabs and throws as moves. Ken’s appearance is based on Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
Smash Bros. Ultimate is set to release on December 7th, with today marking the final Nintendo Direct showcase for the fighting game. Beyond including every single character that has ever appeared in a Smash...
Making plans with your friends, loved ones, and romantic partners should be a straightforward process, maybe even an enjoyable one. And yet, so many people are absolutely god awful it, muddying the waters with dithering, failure to grasp or account for basic details, poor communication skills, and sheer laziness.
Your hands do a lot for you — why not buy them their own home gym? This set of exercise putty from CanDo includes six 2 oz. tubs of goo (in fun primary colors, no less), and unlike an elliptical or a set of dumbbells, it only costs $12. Playing around with the putty is basically a form of resistance training for your…
Uber drivers who maintain high ratings and low cancellation rates can earn rewards like increased take-home pay and free college tuition through Uber’s new rewards program, Uber Pro. It’s part of a broader effort by the ride-hailing company to improve relations with its drivers by helping them earn (and save) more money, but it could also have the effect of discouraging them from driving for other ride-hail apps.
Uber Pro divides drivers into four categories: partner, gold, platinum, and diamond. Drivers in the partner category need to maintain a 4.85 rating and a cancellation rate of 4 percent. To gain status, they must earn points on every trip during fixed three-month periods, and the points they earn in one period go toward...
For the last eight years, I’ve devoted my life to learning, appreciating, and respecting one of the world’s great culinary marvels. People have called me obsessive, over-the-top, bordering on mania.
Until very recently, the slider phone was a thing of the past, consigned to the annals of history along with polyphonic ringtones and BlackBerry’s scroll wheel. Now, however, it’s seeing a resurgence, revived by manufacturers as they attempt to push the screen-to-body ratios of their devices higher and higher. What started with pop-up selfie cameras on phones like the Oppo Find X has morphed into handsets where the entire screen slides down to reveal a camera. Xiaomi has the Mi Mix 3, Honor has the Magic 2, and now Lenovo has the Z5 Pro (via Engadget).
The big advantage of the Z5 Pro is its price, which starts at ¥1,998 (around $287) compared to the Magic 2’s ¥3,799 ($545) or the Mi Mix 3’s ¥3,299 ($475). The trade-off is specs:...
HBO’s channels have gone dark for Dish and Sling TV customers due to an ongoing dispute between the premium cable network and the satellite TV provider, according to a report from Variety. The blackout, which began at midnight last night, marks the first time that HBO has been intentionally blacked out in the history of the channel.
Cable blackouts are nothing new in the entertainment world. Every so often, distributors and content producers will come to an impasse, resulting in channels being blacked out for subscribers while the two corporate monoliths sort things out. Of course, most customers could probably care less about licensing term negotiations, so the people paying for the content are the ones who are most hurt by the...
This week Hack Your City took the Seoul train to South Korea. We got great tips on the city from locals and frequent visitors, and we put just a few highlights below. First off, here’s a great map guide—I love when people draw on maps—to the traditional village of Bukchon, depicted here overlooking the city’s modern…
The OnePlus 6T is now available, starting at $549 for the most affordable configuration with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Aside from its low price that undercuts much of the Android flagship competition, its standout features include a refined design with a teardrop notch, fast-performing specs, and an in-display fingerprint sensor. And it's the first OnePlus phone to work on Verizon's network.
Its just-okay camera isn’t up to snuff compared to the iPhone XS or Google Pixel 3, and the omission of rated water resistance, wireless charging, and a headphone jack are a few other compromises that may give some pause, despite the appealing price. But that already-tempting price is made even easier to spread out if you’re buying the 6T on...
A WhatsApp VP says the messaging service will start showing ads alongside its popular Status feature, reports The Economic Times. Speaking at an event in New Delhi, WhatsApp Vice President Chris Daniels said that the ads would be the service’s “primary monetisation mode for the company” and would offer “an opportunity for businesses to reach people.” No timeline was given for the change.
WhatsApp Status was launched early last year as a knockoff of the Stories feature found in Instagram and Snapchat. It has since become very popular, even surpassing Snapchat usage. The feature allows you to add a combination of text, photos, and videos to your profile, which are encrypted in the same way as your messages. Status updates are visible to...
Astronauts will soon be able to use a supercomputer to help run science experiments on the International Space Station. The Spaceborne Computer, a joint project between NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, launched to the ISS in 2017. It’s been limited to running diagnostic tests, figuring out how well a computer built for Earth could survive in space.
Now it will be available to process data for space-based experiments, which should save researchers on the ground valuable time. It will also save precious bandwidth in the tightly-controlled stream of data that NASA manages between the ISS and the ground. The exact experiments that the supercomputer will run in the next few months have not yet been disclosed.
No one expected that the...
It’s officially November, which if history is any indication, is the best time of year to buy a robotic vacuum. This Roomba 801 normally sells for around $349, and includes up to 5x the suction of the 600 and 700-series Roombas, plus a cleaning head that automatically adjusts its height based on the type of floor the…
The Russian space agency Roscosmos has released footage of the failed Soyuz rocket launch that grounded a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut last month.
The two crew members were on their way to the International Space Station when the Russian-made Soyuz rocket (the only way to ferry humans to the ISS at this point in time) aborted about a minute and a half after takeoff. An official report detailing the cause of the failure is due to be published today, but Russian officials told news agencies yesterday that the problem was an on-board sensor used to track the separation of the rocket’s boosters.
The Soyuz is a multistage rocket, meaning it uses groups of engines that fire one after another to push the vehicle out of the grip of...
A little form field is giving Facebook a lot of trouble.
We’ve talked in recent weeks about the new “dark money” on Facebook. Earlier this year, the company began to require advertisers to verify their identities, a task they accomplish by typing in a code that they receive via a mailed postcard.
The trouble is that when advertisers post their ads, Facebook does not require them to post their verified identity. Instead, they can type whatever they want into a free-form field. And when people can lie on Facebook, they do.
Journalists have unearthed several instances of misrepresentation to date. There was the liberal group sneakily targeting conservatives with messages about universal health care. There was the anonymous person smearing a...
British Satellite TV broadcaster Sky is making Netflix available on its Sky Q set-top boxes today. The Netflix integration will allow existing or new Netflix customers to get access to shows like Stranger Things, The Crown, and many more within the Sky Q interface. Sky has built Netflix directly into its TV guide, and it’s accessible from the on demand tab.
Sky Q users in the UK will be able to link an existing Netflix account to Sky, or opt for the company’s new “Ultimate On Demand” package. This new package is priced at £10 per month and includes access to Netflix and Sky Box Sets. Separately, Netflix is usually £7.99 per month and Sky Box Sets £5 per month, so there are some savings for Sky Q customers. However, Netflix in 4K will be...
Twitter has begun testing a feature that will give you a shortcut to quickly switch between the latest and “top” tweets. Announcing the beginning of the trial, the @Twitter account said that a small number of users would see the new button, which gives fast access to functionality buried deep within the app’s settings menu. The company first said it was working on the feature back in September.
If you’re included in the trial you’ll see a new icon on the top right of the iOS app. Tapping it will give you an option to “Switch to latest Tweets” or “Switch to top Tweets,” allowing you to see your timeline organised in chronological order or by Twitter’s algorithm.
Sometimes you want to see the latest Tweets, first. We’re testing a way...