Technology news

Can you make a large online space where people treat each other like human beings, without sacrificing the freedom of anonymity? It’s a question that social networks like Twitter, which just decimated its workforce in a push for profitability, have been struggling to answer. But a company called Imzy, founded by veterans of Reddit and Twitter, has spent the last several months laying the foundation for what it hopes will be a kinder and more manageable social network. This week, it’s

What you see before you, friends, is Apple’s brand new MacBook Pro, in the silver $1,799 configuration and space gray $1,499 variant without the cool new Touch Bar. Neither of them has an SD card slot. SD cards are those awesome things that practically every dedicated camera in the world nowadays stores photos on. Fujifilm, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic... the only thing all of these photo companies agree on is that SD is the storage medium of choice. And now Apple has dec

Lots of pharmaceutical companies want to make drugs targeting women who have low sex drives or trouble becoming aroused. And now, the Food and Drug Administration has new guidelines these companies should follow.
The new draft guidelines come a year after the administration approved the so-called “female Viagra”: a drug called Addyi that promised to make women want sex more. The decision was controversial, and many opponents said that side effects like dizziness and nausea outweighed

The top two tiers of Apple’s newest MacBook Pros have one hell of an eye-catching feature: a touchscreen that runs across the top of the entire keyboard. Known as “Touch Bar,” it changes dynamically depending on whatever application is being used at the time. (Example: type out a text in iMessage and Touch Bar will give you an interactive row of emoji to choose from!) Apple showed off a handful of Touch Bar demos on stage today, but the most curious came from Karim Morsy, CEO o

It's been brewing for a while, but the Mac vs. PC war is back. Apple and Microsoft have shared various battles over many years, in an ongoing rift over the direction of computing, but this week has marked a switch in both of their war strategies. Microsoft is now going after Apple's core customers, and the two are split over the role of touch and input interfaces for PCs.
The fundamental differences and disagreements between the pair of tech giants can be tracked back to the hardware and softwar

In Apple’s never-ending mission to make everything simpler, it’s gone and made them more complicated again. If you want to connect your shiny new iPhone 7 to one of the shiny new MacBook Pros, you’ll need to pay up for a new cable or dongle. See, the iPhone 7 comes with a lightning to USB Type A cable. The MacBook Pro comes with four USB ports – great! But they’re all Thunderbolt 3, USB Type-C ports. As Engadget notes, that means you’ll have to buy a $20

Alphabet, the holding company formed around Google, reported its third quarter earnings today. The company grew its revenue 20 percent over the same period last year, to $22.45 billion. Its profit also improved, climbing 27 percent over the same period last year to $5 billion. These numbers were only slightly better than analysts expectations, and shares of Google didn't move much in after-hours trading. But its nonetheless impressive that a company in its 18th year is still posting such strong

Amazon, once a company with a volatile profit capacity, has started stabilizing its money-making activity in recent years. It’s shown investors that it can turn out huge gains when it wants to, due to its more capable logistics network, Prime subscription service, cloud computing efforts, and growing family of Kindle and Echo devices. This past quarter, unfortunately, was the company’s first disappointment in quite some time. The culprit appears to be Amazon's retail operating expens

Stranger Things is absolutely a sci-fi horror series indebted to Stephen King, Stephen Spielberg, and a whole host of stories from the 1970s and ‘80s. But at the heart of the show and so many of its forebears is the anxiety and absurdity that comes with living in a seemingly ordinary American town. I don’t think it’s a stretch, then, to draw a thread between life in Hawkins, Indiana to the lives of Chuck Schultz’ Peanuts characters. All of that makes this mashup of Strang

Apple’s keynote today focused on the Mac and the company's vision idea for the future of TV. New MacBook Pros are coming, including one that’s thinner than the Macbook Air, as is a new feature called the Touch Bar. The Touch Bar replaces the function keys and adjusts to the software a laptop is running. Overall, it was a small event with not a lot of news, but hey, new laptops! Exciting!
The MacBook Pro has an all-new updateThis week marks the 25th anniversary of the original PowerBo

It’s October 27th, 2016, and Vine is being given its last rites. Twitter made the announcement today that it would be shutting down the video platform’s mobile app in the coming months, although its website will remain online. The news triggered an impromptu memorial service on Twitter, with users sharing dozens of their favorite Vines. Suddenly, Twitter felt a lot more fun than usual. In its brief lifetime, Vine managed to become a place for joy on the internet while everything arou

It’s a big day for Apple. The tech giant just announced the new and improved MacBook Pro at its event in Cupertino – and Twitter didn’t stay silent. As is often the case with these events, tonight’s keynote quickly became the hottest point of discussion in the Twitterverse, inspiring a barrage of hilarious reactions. So without further ado, here are some of the best reaction tweets from Apple’s October 2016 Keynote: Appl

Today, Apple announced the Touch Bar. And then demoed the Touch Bar. Then talked about the Touch Bar. And then demoed the Touch Bar… I think you get the point. What else was discussed today in Cupertino? Read on and find out. Apple TV With new app categories emerging and cross-device capabilities, Apple wants to control the largest screen in your house. The latest edition of Apple TV comes with a new app and it’s called… TV. Browse curated tv and movie collections and e

Apple just announced a lineup of three new MacBook Pro laptops, each of which is decked out with four (four!) USB Type-C ports. And as is the case with all things Apple these days, you know what that means — you’re going to need more dongles.More specifically, you now need purchase either a USB 2.0 (old USB) to USB Type-C dongle or a Lightning-to-USB-C cable to connect your shiny new iPhone 7 — or any old iPhone, to be clear — to use any of these new MacBook Pros. (There&

Apple has unveiled the new MacBook Pro and the most interesting part of it by far is the Touch Bar — a strip of touch-sensitive, context-aware display that replaces the function keys above the keyboard. Buttons on the Touch Bar change depending on the software you're using, so that when you're in your mail app, for example, it'll show you a button for deleting emails, whereas in a photo app it'll let you crop or rotate an image.
The most useful keys will stick round in most conte

I just got a chance to play with Apple’s new TV app on the Apple TV, which is... just called TV. It’s more of a second homescreen than an app, really — when you open it up you see a bunch of shows and movies that you can watch based on the video services you’ve subscribed to either directly or through your cable provider. If you don't have the apps installed, you won't see the stuff. That's the big thing to know — this is another frontend to apps, not a service on i

The new MacBook Pro is here — literally available for preorder today — and I’ve just tried it. The best thing I can say about is simple: everything about it looks and feels so good I almost didn’t believe it.
We’ll start with the marquee feature, the Touch Bar. What you might not have gathered from the keynote is that it has a matte finish, which makes the buttons on it somehow feel a little more physical. It’s bright, but not so bright that it distracts &mdas

Today, The Wrap released a report confirming that the upcoming film God Particle — directed by Julius Onah and produced by J.J. Abrams — is actually the next entry in the Cloverfield series.God Particle won’t be the last in the franchise, either. According to The Wrap, Abrams and Paramount have plans to release films every year within that shared universe. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Abrams has left breadcrumbs across the internet for months; even the films hint at

Apple just announced a new generation of MacBook Pro laptops, which means it's probably time to stop selling the prior range. Or at least the the one before it. Yes, the 13-inch MacBook Pro from June 2012, which made up for its lack of Retina display with an optical disc drive and an extra pound or so in weight, has finally been killed after inexplicably remaining on sale at $1,099 for years without a spec bump. New models are no longer on sale, although some refurbished units are still ava

Alongside the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, Apple just introduced a third new MacBook Pro model that's something of an unofficial successor to the MacBook Air. It slots in as a cheaper option next to the 15-inch and 13-inch Touch Bar models.  The company plans to continue selling its 13-inch Air, Phil Schiller said, but this specific MacBook Pro will likely be a preferable option for those who can afford its $1,499 price. (The 13-inch Air remains priced at $999.) It's 13 percent smal

The MacBook Air is dead. Long live the MacBook Pro. That’s because Apple just killed and replaced it with a (slightly) more affordable MacBook Pro model. So, what differentiates the new 13-inch MacBook Pro from the recently deceased MacBook Air? Firstly, there are now two ThunderBolt 3 ports, replacing the previous old-school USB ports. It also comes with an upgraded Skylake processor, which promises vastly improved performance, especially when it comes to graphically intensive

If you want the greatest external monitor for the new MacBook Pro, Apple says your best bet is the new 27-inch, 5K UltraFine Display from LG. The iPhone-maker unveiled the $1,299.95 display onstage at its Mac event today, saying it had worked closely with LG to make the product a perfect match for the Pro. This may not be the new 5K Apple Cinema Display some had hoped for, but it is, apparently, the best we're going to get.
The MacBook Pro can support two LG UltraFine 5K displays, with Appl

Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops are the fastest ever. They also come with the Touch Bar – a small, customizable display that occupies the space where the function keys used to be. Perhaps eager to demonstrate that this isn’t just a novelty, Apple demonstrated its use with Final Cut Pro, the popular video editing program.. With just a few taps on the multitouch bar above the keyboard, users are able to traverse through their timeline, trimming and zooming through the conte

The third season of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology TV series about technological anxieties and possible futures, was released on Netflix on October 21st. It's the first season of the show produced by Netflix, after two three-episode series and a special produced by Britain's Channel 4. In this series, six writers will look at each of the third season's six episodes to see what they have to say about current culture and projected fears. Read our thoughts on Episod

A mystery began unfolding at a correctional facility in Wyoming in the hours after lunch on October 11th, 2015. Inmates and staff became suddenly ill. Their stomachs cramped. They had gas, bloating, diarrhea, and burping. Some vomited. At the time, there were 254 inmates and 75 staff at the mixed-sex correctional facility — and eventually, 79 people reported getting sick. So the Wyoming Department of Health decided to investigate.
The Wyoming Department of Health decided to investigate
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At its keynote in Cupertino today, Apple unveiled the all-new MacBook Pro. The latest version of the popular laptop, which has gone more than a year since its last update, is the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever. It’ll be available in three variants: two 13-inch models (one with traditional function keys) and one 15-inch model – all in your choice of Space Grey or Silver. The 13-inch model is 14.9mm thick and weighs 3 lbs, which means it’s 17 percent thinner than its pre

Apple has added the Touch Bar to the new MacBook Pro the company announced during an event today. The new Touch Bar, which leaked out two days ago, replaces the row of keys and will allow app-specific commands to be displayed on the keyboard.Apple has also doubled the size of the force touch trackpad, and built a second generation version of the butterfly keyboard on the 12-inch MacBook for the Pro. A second generation Touch ID sensor covered with a sapphire crystal has been included t

The main attraction of Apple’s "Hello Again" event today has just been made official with the new 2016 MacBook Pro. It’s been a very long time since Apple meaningfully redesigned its flagship laptop, which has felt somewhat neglected with only the addition of a Force Touch trackpad as a major change in the past two years. But today Apple is rectifying all that in a big way with a fundamentally redesigned MacBook Pro.
Follow along here as we enumerate everything that's changed with th

Apple may not be building its own TV, but it at least has its own TV guide. Sort of. The company unveiled a new app — simply named TV — at its Mac event today, promising users it will unite of all their digital TV content in one place. The app brings together content from different services including the likes of Netflix and HBO, as well as iTunes purchases and live content.
The app is free, available on iOS and Apple TV, and works with Siri, so you can use voice commands to find sho

Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed today that Microsoft is planning to bring Minecraft to the Apple TV. While it was a brief mention on stage at Apple's event, Cook did reveal you'll be able to build worlds straight from the Apple TV. It's likely that the app will be similar to the existing Pocket Edition for iOS, allowing you to play with other Minecraft players across multiple platforms.
Developing. Check out our Apple MacBook event live blog for the latest updates and our Apple hub page for all the

Last week Nintendo finally unveiled its long-rumored next console, Switch. But while the console’s debut trailer provided a clearer picture of the device, it also raised a number of questions. Most notably: does Switch have a touchscreen? The answer, according to a new report from Eurogamer, is yes.
The site claims that Switch will feature a 6.2-inch 720p display and that, unlike past Nintendo hardware like the 3DS and Wii U which had resistive touch screens, it will also include a capacit

Vine is dead. Twitter killed Vine. What can we do? Nothing. We are not in positions of corporate power and we don’t know any effective hexes.The six-second, looping videos of Vine were a new art form when they debuted a little less than four years ago. Now they’re an old art form, a dead art form, a warning against betting big on fickle teens.
Dominated by peppy young folks, Ted Cruz (against his will), and smart puppies of all sorts, Vine was one of the brightest and weirdest patche

Samsung still has no idea what caused some of its Galaxy Note 7 phone batteries to explode, but that’s not stopping it from focusing on future phones. Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman and board member at Samsung, who’s also the apparent heir to the company, told the Wall Street Journal that next year's Galaxy S8 will come with a "slick design and an improved camera." It’ll also have better artificial intelligence, Lee said. That all sounds about right for a new phone. I’m gues

GIFs are the condiments of a healthy social media diet. The short visual loops are the best way to make pop culture references, avoid responding to emails with full sentences, capture a moment of natural beauty that can’t be done justice with a photo, save a precious memory of your friend or lover doing something embarrassing, or memorialize your own face with an animated alien munching your nose off.But how does one make a GIF without sinking cash into Photoshop and After Effects? In 2016

One of the most exciting things about CBS’s upcoming Star Trek Discovery was Bryan Fuller in the captain’s chair. Fuller has worked on shows like Pushing Daisies and Hannibal, and we were particularly excited to see his take on Gene Roddenberry’s universe. Now, Fuller is stepping back as the production’s showrunner, although he will remain the show’s executive producer.
Variety broke the news yesterday: Fuller will be stepping down to focus on two other shows he&rsq

Uber just published a massive white paper detailing its plan to launch an “on demand aviation” service called Uber Elevate. Yes, that’s right. Uber is working on a flying car project.We should have seen this coming.The ambitious project, which was first reported by Wired, would be a giant leap forward for a company that has already fundamentally altered the way we think about labor, transportation, and startup valuation. But more importantly, it could prove to be a way to liter

In a win for privacy advocates, the FCC voted this morning to place new restrictions on internet providers that limit the information they can share about their subscribers.
When the rules go into place, likely sometime early next year, internet providers will be required to get explicit permission from subscribers before sharing “sensitive” information about them, such as their browsing history, their app usage, their location, and the content of emails and other communications.
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