Technology news

National Geographic is featuring a transgender person on its cover for the first time in the magazine's storied history. 
Avery Jackson, a nine-year-old trans girl from Missouri, will grace a forthcoming special issue of the publication devoted entirely to gender identity and rights.
Jackson made a name for herself with a series of YouTube videos called "Avery Chats," in which she describes the process of coming to terms with her identity at a young age.
The stark cover contains little text

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is reach for my phone (surprise, surprise). For years, I had always found the same kinds of notifications, usually texts from my mom nagging me to call her, work emails from my boss, event reminders from my calendar, and funny Snapchats from my friends. But for the past year, I’ve been getting a new kind of notification — “X mentioned you in a comment” — otherwise known as a comment tag on a meme, one o

We've seen the future of fast food and it's full of secretive cooking, utensils popping out of walls and a whole lot of quinoa.
Eatsa, an innovative, vegetarian automated restaurant chain, which just opened its first East Coast location (in New York) on Wednesday, is looking to revolutionize the food industry by offering customers a one-of-a-kind food experience.
SEE ALSO: Amazon just revolutionized the way you shop, again
The tech-savvy restaurant aims to offer fresh, affordable food fast, but

Metallica is a rock band that is always rockin' — even if it's not on stage and no one is playing any instruments.
A new video from TMZ shows the band jamming to "Enter Sandman" in a Gelson's supermarket. Also present: Billy Eichner and a very enthusiastic deli counter employee who takes the mic for a delightful vocal solo midway through the song.
Here's hoping this becomes a regular concert series.'It burns': Holiday artichoke dip segment goes horribly awry on air
'Westworld' gets the be

On Thursday, a Chinese navel vessel seized an underwater drone from a US Navy oceanographic research ship, which prompted a quick call from the Department of Defense to return the vehicle. After “direct engagement” between the two countries, China will return the vehicle to the United States, according to Reuters.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook issued a statement earlier today, saying that the two countries had spoken and that "we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will re

Gatebox AI is a departure from typical digital assistants. While the Google’s and Apple’s of the world scrutinize the minutiae for outside-the-box solutions to humanize their offerings, Gatebox said ‘fuck the box’ — perhaps literally — and shoved a blue-haired teen anime girl inside. I don’t know about you, but the thought of giving a digital assistant a personified form and locking her in a glass cylinder sounds less like innovation and more

Sweden’s Stillfront Group, maker of games that include Call of War, has acquired Dubai-based Babil Games for $17 million.
The deal shows that the Middle Eastern and North African games market is becoming a significant market on the global stage of gaming.
Babil started in 2012, and it has 12 employees in Dubai and Amman, Jordan. It has several successful mobile games, such as Admiral, Niba Harb 2, Asefat Al-Dababat, and Jaish Al-Foolath.
Babil’s games are primaril

 When Niantic first showed a Pokemon Go app for Apple Watch back in September, the only sort of launch date the company would give was by “the end of the year.”
As December 31st quickly approaches, PoGo fans are starting to wonder if Niantic will ship things in 2016 after all. With wondering and doubt comes ample opportunity for rumors to spiral out of control.
An email started… Read More

With the news of Groups coming to Snapchat, and Tinder coming to Apple TV, you may have missed some of this week's best new apps.
Each weekend, we round up a few of our favorite new and updated apps. This week's list includes a darkroom-inspired photo app, an app that lets you download high resolution full-screen images for your phone's wallpaper and the latest game from the minds who brought us Dots.
Check out the gallery below to see our top picks. If you're looking for more items to fill up y

Microsoft Cortana has been playing catch-up with Siri and the Google Assistant, but that’s about to change.
The company Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded in 1975 has made no secret of the fact that it intends to become an AI powerhouse. Many of the recent changes in Microsoft Office have been related to productivity automation. You can click a button to create a slideshow in PowerPoint, use the Editor feature in Word to improve your writing, and find out whether you spend too much tim

You'd think one scandal would be enough. 
Mylan, the company that came under fire this summer for systematically raising the price of the EpiPen, is caught up in another drug price scheme. 
The pharmaceutical player is one of six companies accused of inflating prices of a diabetes drug and an antibiotic, according to the New York Times. The complaint centers on generic, rather than brand-name, drugs. 
A civil complaint filed by 20 states claims that the drug companies coordinated

Waluigi is a strange fellow. Nintendo created him simply because Wario (the rude, evil counterpart of Mario) needed a tennis partner. He’s a lanky, maniacal stereotype of dastardliness. And we love him for it.
But he’s probably not the first video game character you’d think of when you hear the word “Christmas.” But the greatest Christmas song that’s in any way related to our beloved industry actually stars Waluigi. OK, I know that a lot of gaming-themed

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a pretty good sense of humor, but sometimes we can't tell when he's just joking or mulling his next big idea. 
For example, on Saturday Musk took to Twitter to say out loud what every traffic-plagued Los Angeles resident is silently screaming inside: The city is a gridlocked hellscape.  
SEE ALSO: Elon Musk thinks universal income is answer to automation taking human jobs
"Traffic is driving me nuts," wrote Musk. 
But he didn't stop there. He

April Simpson has been living in the Queensbridge Houses, a public housing development in Queens, New York, her whole life. “From day one. I was born here,” she says, proudly.
When she walks among the iconic six-story, red-brick buildings, passersby say hi to her and kiss her on the cheek. Everyone seems to know her. Simpson, a charismatic 54-year-old with buzzed short hair and a broad smile, is the Queensbridge tenants’ association president. She’s also a smoker. But com

Each year, Microsoft founder Bill Gates puts his name in the hat for Reddit's annual Secret Santa event. And every year, one lucky Redditor gets the Gates-made gift box of their dreams.
This year, it was user Aerrix, who came home from the post office one morning to a truly gargantuan delivery.
SEE ALSO: Weed lovers will find this Reddit gift exchange mixup hilariousImage:reddit gifts"So then I get the box open," she wrote in a Reddit Gifts post, "and there's just bubble wrap EVERYWHERE, but und

Pro tip: do not subject your coworkers to your ill-fated cooking attempts.
In honor of the holidays, Leslie Horton of Global News Calgary made a thick artichoke dip to taste test on air. Unfortunately, she appears to have used pickled artichoke hearts instead of regular artichokes — a big, vinegary error.
The result is a dip that ... burns. Horton's coworkers, understandably, could not keep it together.
Please remember to follow the recipe, everyone.'Westworld' gets the best '80s retro op

GUEST: Google first made waves in the hardware market when it purchased Motorola in 2011 for $12.5 billion. A company on the scale of Google getting involved in hardware put some established manufacturers on edge, though anxiety abated when Google later sold Motorola to Lenovo for $3 billion.
Without being directly involved in hardware production, Google has continued to exert a huge influence over the market. Numerous hardware companies supported Android early on, helping it beco

In the heat of posting a provocative tweet early Saturday morning, Donald Trump's spell checker apparently failed him.
The president-elect called China's seizure of a U.S. Navy drone on Friday an "unpresidented [sic] act" before deleting the typo and replacing it with a correctly spelled statement.
SEE ALSO: Trump didn't invite Twitter's CEO to Trump Tower tech summit
Yet the intervening hour and a half in which the mistake sat unfixed gave the Twitter-sphere plenty of time to get in a few jokes

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is almost here, and there’s a lot of pressure riding on the film, as the first Star Wars universe spinoff movie that could either launch or kill the fledging “Star War Story” brand. But that hasn’t stopped fans from theorizing what the future spinoffs could be about.SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR ROGUE ONE (AND THE GENERAL STAR WARS FRANCHISE):
One of the things that makes the Star Wars universe special is the lived-in feel — characters drop casual

Germany isn’t confident Facebook can self-regulate its fake news problem. After announcing it was partnering with third-party fact-checkers earlier this week, Facebook now faces the possibility of massive fines for each piece of misinformation. The proposed legislation would levy a €500,000 ($523,320) fine if Facebook and other social networks failed to remove offending messages containing hate speech or fake news. The language used suggests this would be for all social media sites,

Michael Sheen is leaving acting for activism. 
The Passengers actor is quitting his profession to fight far-right populism in the Trump era. 
“In the same way as the Nazis had to be stopped in Germany in the Thirties, this thing that is on the rise has to be stopped,” Sheen told British newspaper The Times. 
Sheen will move to his hometown in Wales to start organizing. The town, Port Talbot, voted to leave the European Union in the United Kingdom's Brexit vote, accordi

When Apple's head of design speaks, Apple fans and design pros alike listen closely. Which is why a video promoting Apple's new book and starring Jony Ive is getting more attention than a normal product spot. 
SEE ALSO: An Apple fan just saved you $300 (Apple Book not included)
Since the announcement of the $300 book, "Designed by Apple in California," Apple has received a few choice shots over the high price of what some are calling nothing more than a nicely bound product catalog. Im

Second Life is by far the most successful virtual world ever created. And with Project Sansar, the creators of Second Life at Linden Lab believe they can use virtual reality to create a far more immersive experience.
Just as Second Life democratized the creation of virtual objects in a virtual world on the PC, Sansar is meant to democratize VR, empowering people to easily create, share, and monetize their own multi-user, interactive virtual experiences without requiring engineering resource

SPOILERS for Passengers (and Titanic) below
Passengers is a creepy, disturbing movie that’s different from James Cameron’s massively popular 1997 film Titanic in a lot of ways. But here’s the big one: Titanic features two decent characters who are consensually in love. Passengers features one decent character who is ripped from suspended animation (effectively dooming her to die of old age on a spaceship) by one terrible character who wants to have sex with her. Another differe

HBO's hit robot apocalypse show Westworld is, sadly, gone until 2018. But there's still a bit of Westworld content out there, thanks to one talented YouTuber who came up with an '80s style retro version of the show's opening credits. And we're not just talking synth music and wireframes. This designer paid attention to the little details (the maze! the gun!). 
And while Westworld, the film, was released back in 1973, if the movie had been turned into a series sometime in the late '70s/earl

Useless knowledge can become lifesaving in the blink of an eye.
Paige Perfect saved her young British Timber dog, Kenai, from a two-on-one dog attack with information she read years earlier on Reddit.
SEE ALSO: Watch a firefighter save a dog's life by giving it CPR
"It was just one of those weird moments of clarity where you think 'Oh, I know exactly what to do," Perfect told Mashable in an email, "You go into auto pilot and do what you need to do."Image:paige PerfectWhile walking around her apa

GUEST: Throughout history, Italy has been recognized as an excellence for creativity, style, and outstanding entrepreneurship. This creativity, however, hasn’t translated to tech startups. Italy trails behind every other major European country with an abysmal share of the overall startup investment.
As Europe takes off, will the BelPaese be able to follow?
As a young Italian working for a leading European Venture Capital, I was always tempted to look into Italy’s potential. So,

 The California Department of Motor Vehicles sent Uber a notice asking it to terminate its pilot self-driving car service in San Francisco last week, but Uber has continued to operate its vehicles in spite of that order. Now, the California State Department of Justice has followed up, with an order from the Attorney General’s office that adds some teeth to the DMV’s earlier request.… Read More

A group of convicts sentenced to hard labor.Image: Library of CongressAfter surveying a route for a telegraph line through Siberia for the Russian-American Telegraph Company in 1864, American George Kennan found success in selling articles, lectures and a book about his travels through the region and his encounters with its diverse native cultures.He soon made another trip through the northern Caucasus, became famous in America as an expert on Russia and earned the approval of the Tsarist govern

I believe that these tweets, from the CEO of two major companies, speak for themselves:
Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging...— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016It shall be called "The Boring Company"— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016Boring, it's what we do— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016I am actually going to do this— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016@elonmusk Should I be writing up your

To this moose, a car is but a delicious lollipop.
Days after the government in Alberta, Canada warned residents about car-licking moose, Theresa and Gerhard Malan spotted one slurping away at a parked car in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park.
Curious, the Malans decided to pull over, staying very still as the moose made its way over to them.
SEE ALSO: This Jeep towing snowboarders through city streets is so Canada
Turns out, their car was an appetizing snack, too.A video posted by Theresa Malan&tra

Remember that first teaser for Rogue One? It had a lot of cool shots in it: Jyn walking into the hanger bay on Yavin IV, her declaration that she rebels and that iconic shot of her in her Imperial disguise? None of those were in the final cut of the film.Spoilers ahead for Rogue One.A couple of months after that first trailer came out, word broke that Disney was bringing on Tony Gilroy (who wrote the films in Matt Damon’s Bourne series and directed Michael Clayton and The Bourne Legacy) wa

Here's something you don't see everyday.
When a man came to rob adult toy store Lotions & Lace in San Bernadino, California, two female employees thwarted his attempted attack by hitting him with a bunch of dildos. (You read that correctly).
SEE ALSO: Service station employee defends himself from robbers with candy
The man, with his face covered, walked into the store just before close around 9:45 pm. He pointed what appeared to be a gun at the two women behind the counter, and they quickly

A YouTube star and a stuffed bear caused quite a social media stir this week after Transportation Security Administration officials found out they were being pranked. 
The buzz began after TSA posted an Instagram photo of a sad looking bear at the airport. 
"He was abandoned by his owners at LAX after the airline and TSA determined that he was just too big to be screened as a carry-on and taken on the plane," TSA wrote in the initial photo caption, using the image as a reminder to pas

Oculus is one of the most prolific stimulators of virtual reality content in the industry today. The Facebook-owned company has been funding VR games and projects for years now through Oculus Studios. In October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally put some numbers onto these ongoing efforts when he revealed that his company had spent $250 million on VR content with a plan to spend at least that much over again in the coming years. These are impressive numbers but it has still never b

I love that Amazon has decided to specialize in seriously artsy affairs when it comes to which films it buys, but I absolutely hate how long it takes for those films to go from theaters to digital rentals to actually playing on Amazon.
At long last, The Neon Demon made its way to Amazon last month (after premiering in June), and I finally sat down to watch it this past weekend. It's just an insanely gorgeous film. But the thing that stood out to me most was its use of silence — like dead,

Of course, it was only a matter of time before Cruz Beckham launched his singing career.
The 11-year-old son of David and Victoria Beckham released his debut single, "If Everyday Was Christmas," earlier this month on Capital FM. On Friday, he released a festive music video to go along with it. There's snow, there are glitter angels, there's  his brother skateboarding, Brooklyn — basically, let the Bieber comparisons continue.
According to a tweet from Victoria Beckham, all proceeds f

As always, a crazy amount — and we really mean a ton — of devices landed on our desks this year.Looking back, there weren't many unexpected surprises, which is kind of a bummer. In a way, most of the gadgets of 2016 were kind of boring.But not boring in the sense that they were all lame. Quite the opposite, actually. As we learned, most of the best products were "boring" in that they were mature for their product categories andpushed form and function to the extreme.From the very bes

Keegan Michael Key, one of the stars of the new movie 'Why Him?', guesses which quotes were either said by a Bond villain or by a tech billionaire.
Subscribe for more like this: http://on.mash.to/SubscribeWatercooler'Homeland' Season 6 trailer definitely hits a little too close to home
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Kid's sensational Fifth Harmony lip sync would make Michelle Obama proud
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M

Global warming has taken yet another thing from us: reindeer. The Christmas icons are shrinking because climate change has hurt their food access, researchers say, just in time for the start of the holidays.
Every year since 1994, ecologists have gone up to the Arctic to measure the reindeer. Their data shows that adult reindeer have shrunk by about 12 percent over the years. They were about 106 pounds in 2010, compared to 121 pounds back when they first started measuring. These findings were pr