Technology news

It only took 17 years, but Lando Calrissian himself will finally get his chance to play Two-Face — but in Lego form. (Good enough!) During an exchange with a fan on Twitter, director Chris McKay revealed that Billy Dee Williams is voicing Harvey Dent in the upcoming The Lego Batman Movie, a movie that is already doing all it can to look amazing. It’s a role he hasn’t played since 1989’s Batman, and is sure to make the fans wishing they could forget the Schumacher films ve

If you're a drone pilot who wants to fly a drone somewhere you shouldn't, there isn't a whole lot anyone can do right now to stop you, due to a variety of legal complications that govern drones in flight and jamming equipment. But that hasn't stopped an industry of potential anti-drone solutions from springing up, with products like last year's Drone Defender, or DroneShield's new Dronegun. The Dronegun looks like some sort of futuristic sci-fi weapon ripped straight out of the hands of a space

Writer Rahawa Haile’s new Tumblr Gilmore Blacks spotlights every black person who appears in Netflix’s massively hyped Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. One of them is a secretary who gets fired moments after she first appears on-screen, others are deep in the background of a given shot, and very few of them speak (and if they do it’s for one sentence). For each entry, Haile includes the character’s name (if any) and spoken lines (if any), as well as their purpose, which

We’ve all had a lot of fun playing around with image recognition machine learning AIs from the likes of Google and Microsoft. Today, Amazon’s getting in the game with the launch of its own tool, Amazon Rekognition, which aims to provide deep-learning services to developers.
While the tool isn’t public-facing like Google’s drawing game or Microsoft’s age-guessing bot, Amazon Rekognition does appear to do much of the same: it can look at photos and recognize human fac

The British Film Institute announced a five-year plan yesterday that includes the promise to digitize and preserve at least 100,000 “at-risk” TV shows. The shows span genres, and include comedies, dramas, documentary series, children’s TV, and “breakfast television.” You likely haven’t heard of most of these shows, as they date back to the 1960s, but just for fun, here’s a few: At Last the 1948 Show, Basil Brush, and Nationwide. The institute hasn’

Today in Northern California District Court, a federal judge ordered the Bitcoin wallet service Coinbase to hand over records of all transactions that took place during 2014 or 2015, as part of a larger investigation into possible tax fraud by Coinbase users.“The taxpayers being investigated have not been or may not be complying with U.S. internal revenue laws requiring the reporting of taxable income from virtual-currency transactions,” the IRS wrote in its request. As a result, the

The United States’ fourth largest cable provider is making a big expansion into fiber. Altice USA — the owner of Optimum, Suddenlink, and Lightpath — intends to build out fiber connections to “all” Optimum customers and “most” Suddenlink customers within five years, beginning in 2017.
Altice hasn’t said which areas it intends to build out first. Initial markets will be announced “in the coming months.”
Five years is a very aggressive ti

Pokémania is in full effect: Nintendo says that the recently released Pokémon Sun and Moon are the fastest-selling games in the company’s history in both Europe and the Americas.
According to Nintendo, the 3DS games sold a combined 3.7 million units in the Americas since they launched on November 18th. That marks an 85 percent increase compared to Pokémon X and Y — Nintendo’s previous fastest-selling games — over the same span in 2013. Sun and Moon so

Your phone had a long day. Think about all those texts you sent. And all that internet you browsed. What about those Snapchat selfies? You recharged your phone twice today, and you expect it to be a dutiful servant to you? All your phone wants is a nap. If only it had a place to sleep that wasn’t the floor, your bedside table, or pillow (where most humans like me keep their phone at night). Thrive GlobalThe Phone Bed, as first pointed out by congressional reporter Joe Perticone, is a $100

Seagate and Amazon have partnered up on a $99 1TB external hard drive that automatically backs up everything stored on it to the cloud. The Seagate Duet drive’s contents are cloned to Amazon Drive, so you can be pretty confident that your important stuff will be safe. Both a physical backup and Amazon’s reliable S3 cloud infrastructure is a pretty killer combination.Getting set up with the cloud backup process requires plugging in the drive, signing in with your Amazon account &mdash

In a briefing with press today, Motorola Mobility chairman and president Aymar de Lencquesaing said that the company will likely develop a Tango augmented reality mod for the Moto Z line of smartphones. De Lencquesaing did not say when the mod would be released or how much it would cost. Other Moto Mods already released range in price from $99 to $299.
Lenovo itself recently released the Phab 2 Pro, the first consumer Tango phone, but it’s a 6.4-inch, near-tablet sized device. A mod for th

USB-C is here to stay, so it may be time to start investing in some compatible external drives. And the EX1, the first external drive from SSD manufacturer Plextor, looks like it'll fit the bill nicely.USB-C is here to stay
SSDs in general are faster and more reliable than disc-based drives, with Plextor claiming read / write speeds of 550 MBps for the EX1. Additionally, the use of an SSD allows the EX1 to be much smaller than most disc drives, which is nice. Plus, it uses USB-C, which means tha

Amazon just announced a new service called AWS Snowmobile, which is a 21st century version of the classic "sneakernet" method of data transport. Basically, Amazon is offering to tow a 45-foot-long shipping container full of hard drives to your data center, plug in to your servers via fiber, and siphon off up to 100 petabytes (a petabyte is 1 million gigabytes) of data. That shipping container is then transported to an Amazon data center where all the data is uploaded to S3 or Amazon Glacier, Ama

Famed iPhone and PlayStation cracker George Hotz is resurrecting the DIY autonomous car project he canceled in October. But this time, there’s a twist: instead of selling a physical product, Hotz’s Comma.ai is releasing the company’s self-driving software, as well as the plans for the necessary hardware, which Hotz calls Comma Neo. All of this code will be available for free — in fact, it is already on Github.
Hotz framed the self-driving software, called Open Pilot, as a

Should Uber be able to track you even when you’re not using its app? Uber seems to think so, but some customers are worried that the ride-sharing giant is yet again overstepping its bounds.
Last month, Uber launched a major update to its app, streamlining many of its features in the interest of making it easier to use than ever. As part of the refresh, the company is now asking customers for their permission to collect location data even when they are not using the app. This includes track

The biggest problem with most smartwatches has been finding a way to deal with the "watch" portion of the design. When it comes down to it, it's difficult for even the nicest-looking smartwatch to compete with the classic style and look of an analog watch.Grayton, a mechanical watchmaker, is trying to take a different approach. Its latest watch is an Indiegogo project called the Origin, that aims to take a mechanical self-winding timepiece and embed smart features directly into the strap.
The Or

Final Fantasy XV is very different from past games in the series, and one of the biggest changes is the shift to a more open world. Along with that comes an important addition: the Regalia, a car that serves as your main form of transportation through the fantasy landscape of Eos.
But more than just a simple tool to get you from point A to point B, the Regalia is almost a character itself, factoring into the story in important ways. It’s a place where the four main characters can bond, cha

When FCC chairman Tom Wheeler passed the Open Internet Order in February of 2015, it was the culmination of decades of work. After countless advocacy campaigns and legal fights, the order classified internet providers as common carriers — falling under Title II of the Communications Act — which prohibits the companies from blocking or discriminating against traffic as it moves over their network. The move was met with cheers from net neutrality advocates and internet companies like N

This morning, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno unveiled a new website that allows satellite makers to figure out what it will really cost to launch a vehicle on one of ULA’s rockets. It’s like going to “Ford or Chevy and building your car,” Bruno said, except in the end you wind up with a more than $100 million rocket that can take cargo to space. And just like checking out on Amazon, the website allows you to save your rocket and submit it to ULA to start the proces

The holiday season brings with it surprises and wonder, and that holds true even in the world of online streaming services. Case in point? On December 9th, Netflix will be debuting the second season of Fuller House, just 10 months after the first season was gifted to the universe. It’s a case of millions of fans, having spent 2016 hoping and praying, having their holiday wishes come true. (Or maybe Netflix just wants to distract everyone from the less-than-enthusiastic reception Gilmore Gi

For months, it was rumored that Sidewalk Labs, the Google spinoff focused on smart city solutions, wanted to build its own city-within-a-city to trial self-driving cars, public Wi-Fi, new health care solutions, and other city planning advances that modern technology makes possible. Today, the company confirmed that it was indeed interested in creating its own urban district “from the internet up,” and hinted that it may even make a contest out of it.
Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk La

Alto’s Adventure was one of 2015’s best video games, a meditative snow ride dressed as a snowboard stunt fest. Creators Built by Snowman didn’t release a new game in 2016, but they did announce their new project Where Cards Fall for 2017. And now, they’ve announced a second game for next year, Distant, which the studio will be supporting in a publisher capacity.
Created by Slingshot & Satchel— the game will be the two-person studio’s “maiden” r

YouTube now supports 4K live-streaming, allowing content creators to broadcast using high-resolution video in both 360-degree and standard video formats at a rate of 60 frames per second, the company announced today.
The update comes just a few weeks after YouTube added 4K HDR support. Given that standard 4K content is still easier to film and is more accessible than 4K HDR content, it's a great update for both YouTube creators and viewers. Creators can start live-streaming in 4K today, but if y

Netflix’s six-hour Gilmore Girls revival A Year In The Life has been out for five days, and everyone who cared enough to watch it is currently brimming with opinions. The newly produced episodes continued a story that went off the air back in 2007, when President Obama was still Senator Obama, and our favorite fictional reporter, Rory Gilmore, was headed out on his campaign bus. We lived without Rory and her mom, Lorelai Gilmore, for nearly 10 years, and suddenly they were back. Now the se

We’re about a week away from the release of Google’s new Wifi mesh router system. And while the spotlight may be on Wifi as the new toy in town, that doesn’t mean Google has forgotten about its first router experiment, OnHub, which is now available on Amazon for a substantial discount.
The original TP-Link OnHub router is available for $117.49, over 40 percent off its usual $200 price tag (although it’s currently sold out), while the ASUS model is even cheaper, at $105.99

A new malware campaign has been discovered in over 1 million Android devices, according to a new report from the security firm Check Point. Dubbed “Googlian” by the firm, the campaign first emerged in August, and is currently compromising devices at a rate of roughly 13,000 per day.The malware targets vulnerabilities in Android versions 4 and 5 (Jelly Bean, Kit Kat, and Marshmallow), and spreads through seemingly legitimate apps in third-party app stores. More than half the infection

Congress has passed a bill protecting consumers’ rights to post negative reviews online. The law is currently awaiting a signature from President Obama.
Passed by unanimous consent by the Senate on Monday, the Consumer Review Fairness Act will make it illegal for businesses to include “non-disparagement” or “gag” clauses which limit a customer’s right to share bad reviews. The hearing on the bill highlighted the 2013 lawsuit Palmer vs. KlearGear, where KlearGe

Netflix just announced that it’s adding the ability to download TV shows and movies to your Android or iOS devices to watch offline. It’s a big deal for anyone who likes watching movies while flying on a plane or commuting to work on the subway.It’s not just for Netflix’s own original content: full runs of major network TV series and popular movies are available to download, too, although it doesn’t include the entirety of the streaming service’s catalog.
To h

A years-long patent dispute between Samsung and Apple might finally be coming to a close. This week, a federal appeals court denied Samsung’s request for a rehearing on a decision that it infringed on two Apple patents, effectively closing the case unless the Supreme Court is willing to hear it. So right now, Samsung still owes Apple nearly $120 million.
In 2014, a jury in San Jose, California found that Samsung infringed on Apple’s quick links patent, which turns addresses and

The biggest problem with the NES Classic Edition — besides it being sold out everywhere — is that the tiny console’s wired controllers are far too short, making it a challenge to play in most living rooms. There are a few solutions already on the market, but 8bitdo’s new NES30 Classic Edition Set might just be the best and most flexible so far.
The set includes two main parts. First, there’s an NES Classic version of the company’s Retro Receiver, essentially a

Spark, a sleek and customizable email app for iPhones and iPads, is debuting on the Mac today. The free app supports a variety of email services, including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, and other IMAP services. It boasts an intelligent organization system that automatically categorizes emails into different groups and will only notify for emails you actually want to see. It also has integrations with Dropbox, Box, iCloud Drive, and Evernote.
In addition to intelligence, Spark is highl

You can finally take Netflix with you onto a plane or the subway. Today the company announced that it’s launching offline playback for “many of your favorite streaming series and movies.” Right now, that selection includes stuff made by Netflix (Stranger Things, The Crown, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, etc) but also a lot of other random choices. You’ve got Breaking Bad. You’ve got Mad Men. You’ve got... Paddington and Minions and Kung Fu Panda 3. This is g

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a low point among Star Wars fans. Between the emphasis on CGI visuals over the story; the cheap, pandering humor; and the retroactive rewriting of continuity, Phantom Menace regressed a beloved older franchise to make it more palatable for a younger audience — one eager to buy countless toys. I recently watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for a second time over the holiday weekend, and one thing was clear from the repeat viewing: Fant

Totally false news isn’t a new thing in the United States. In our fourth presidential election, in 1800, two of our most brilliant founders — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — faced off in a vicious campaign that involved newspaper editors on the take, and numerous false, often personal attacks. Some historians even claim that partisans for Adams spread the rumor that Jefferson was dead. (He won anyway.)
But they didn’t have Facebook to present, amplify, and repeat those

AT&T kicked this week off with some big news: DirecTV Now, its internet TV streaming service, is here. You can sign up starting today for a free trial on a slew of platforms including smartphones, tablets, living room streaming devices, and PCs. No satellite dish or cable box required; it’s all over the web. I’ve been using DirecTV Now for a day, and my early impression is that there’s a lot of potential and value in it, but the first try feels a little unfinished.Four tier

GoPro is restructuring and cutting around 15 percent of jobs in an effort to improve its struggling business. The latest job cuts, around 200 positions, follow a cut of 7 percent of GoPro’s workforce back in January, and they include the closure of GoPro’s entertainment division. GoPro president Tony Bates, who was previously Skype CEO and a Microsoft executive, will also depart the company at the end of the year as a result of the restructuring.While GoPro is touting its Black Frida

Calendar apps have a tough job. Everyone needs one, but everyone is looking for something different out of them. I want a concise look at the day ahead, but you might want a spaced-out view of your week, and someone else might want a super-dense look at their entire month.The best calendar apps do a good job presenting your schedule no matter how you want to view it. They make it easy to understand your day and to plan out the weeks and months ahead.Google's app store is filled with a ton of str

Apple is turning its attention and resources back to a decade-long partnership with the Product (RED) campaign today. The company has kicked off an effort meant to coincide with Thursday’s World AIDS Day and is introducing several new products, special limited-edition items for games in the App Store, and donations tied to certain Apple Pay purchases — all intended to nudge customers to join the fight against AIDS.
At a small press gathering in New York City on Tuesday, Apple VP Lisa

Apple’s iPhone battery case finally comes in another option besides black or white: red. Today the company unveiled a Product (RED) edition of its $99 Smart Case for iPhone 7. Aside from the color, it’s the exact same case that launched alongside Apple’s latest smartphone — and as we noted in September, it also has a larger battery capacity than last year’s version for the iPhone 6S.
Before I switched over to the iPhone 7 Plus, I spent a couple weeks with the regula

There's something about getting older that makes us blind to the past. Unlike the "hosts" inhabiting Westworld, our human memory is imperfect. A saving grace that prevents us from having to relive the same traumatic episodes over and over again. It’s a defense mechanism that more often than not results in an over-romanticized past. We remember the good parts of toxic relationships or dim-witted sitcoms with the same sense of longing. Think about it: what sane person would give birth to a s