Technology news

In 1966, WPIX in New York aired the original Yule Log show, a loop of a log burning in a fireplace. The station aired it for a few years before re-filming it in 1970, as the original had “degraded.” The original video was thought to be lost to history, but apparently it’s been uncovered, digitally restored, and will be making a return to the airwaves tonight at 11pm ET. As The Gothamist notes, it was shot in Gracie Mansion and was meant, in part, to help give TV station employe

Now through January third, Amazon and Audible are giving away the audio version of A Christmas Carol for free on Alexa-enabled devices, like the Echo. This version is narrated by Tim Curry, who as Engadget notes was once the voice of Ebeneezer Scrooge in an animated version of the tale. He also played (cosplayed?) Scrooge for Macy’s 2001 Thanksgiving Day parade. So, you know, he has Scrooge bona fides in addition to being an excellent butler and singer.To hear it, you’ll need to nail

As a child, NORAD’s Santa Tracker served as irrefutable evidence that my belief in Santa Claus was completely justified. If the military was tracking Ol’ Saint Nick, then clearly he must be zooming through the sky at near the speed of light on Christmas Eve. The largest and most sophisticated armed forces in the world surely wouldn’t waste resources on following someone who wasn’t real.
Well fast forward a few years later, and I was forced to reconsider my rationale for s

In the last couple of months, both Amazon and Netflix seemed to find a winning, easy approach for creating their own content: find a beloved, nerdy reality show, sign the original cast, and retool it under a new name. The two new shows, The Grand Tour and The White Rabbit Project, brought on the casts of Top Gear and Mythbusters to reboot the concepts that made them great in the first place.
The White Rabbit Project, now streaming on Netflix, and The Grand Tour, which releases new episodes Frida

 T-Mobile’s no-data-charge-music-streaming-thing has been going strong since 2014 here in the States, with the company adding services to the offering one by one.
The Netherlands version of the promotion ran into significant headwinds this week, however, as regulators at the Dutch Consumer and Markets  (AFM) officially ordered the carrier to stop offering the “zero rating”… Read More

Guides, Pokémon, and porn. Those are some of the most common themes you’ll find in our 10 most popular stories of the year.
Our staff wrote hundreds of articles in 2016, covering news, reviews, interviews, opinion pieces, and more. And while we love all of our stories, some of them — for whatever reason — blow up. We thought it would be a fun way to look back on the year by sharing our 10 biggest articles of the year.
Above: NBA 2K16 lets you make your own star

GUEST: Santa can’t put an app in your stocking.
GamesBeat has partnered with attention analytic company iSpot.tv, which measures TV advertising in real-time, to bring you a monthly report on how gaming brands are spending their TV ad dollars and which commercials are generating the most digital response. Below are the top five most-engaging gaming industry brands from November 16 through December 15.As the holidays draw closer, the big publishers are going hard on TV to make sure all their

I can’t blame you if you haven’t been following the saga of Cyanogen, the company that started back in 2013 with the idea to take the vibrant world of Android modifications and turn them into an OS and a viable business. Over the past few months, as Android Police has dutifully chronicled, Cyanogen has beset itself with a relentless cycle of drama and confusion. It’s the sort of thing you can only really keep track of if you like train wrecks and are able to turn off the part o

On December 22nd, Consumer Reports said it could not recommend the MacBook Pro — a first for a Mac laptop. It caused a stir! Consumer Reports’ reasoning was simple: it got wildly inconsistent battery test results every time it tried to test multiple versions of the laptop. Its test is one that’s pretty common across the industry, loading up web pages one after another:
For the battery test, we download a series of 10 web pages sequentially, starting with the battery fully charg

OPINION: They say that the holidays make us feel charitable, and I hope that is the case. I believe that President Obama should pardon Edward Snowden, the man who blew the whistle on the National Security Agency’s global surveillance programs and revealed that the government was spying on all of us.
Once Donald Trump comes into office, no such pardon will be possible. In fact, Trump has suggested Snowden should be executed. Snowden can be viewed by patriotic Americans as a fellow

The best thing about the winter holidays is that no one expects you to play sports after dinner to “burn off some of those calories haha.” No, it’s too cold. You get to go to the movies instead, and even luckier — many of the movies that are in theaters right now are good. You don’t even have to have a family with you! You can go alone. You can go with your gal pals, your significant other, or your anger. You can take a neighbor, a plant, or a quiet pet. There are f

(Reuters) – California Attorney General Kamala Harris on Friday filed new criminal charges of pimping and money laundering against the chief executive and controlling shareholders of the website Backpage.com, reviving a case that was dismissed by a judge earlier this month.
The new charges against Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer and controlling shareholders Michael Lacey and James Larkin include 26 counts of money laundering and 13 counts of pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping.
While the

Is the world more distracting? Sometimes it seems that way. With our digital devices buzzing, world events demanding our attention, and more things to entertain us than ever before, it certainly seems harder to focus on what’s really important. And yet, focus is exactly what it takes to get things done and get ahead. Distraction might appear more available than ever, but it is nothing new. Over 2,000 years ago, Socrates and Aristotle debated the nature of “akrasia,” (pronounce

Data centers essentially serve as second headquarters for many businesses — a nerve center critical to long-term success and security. With that kind of responsibility, running and maintaining a data center is a big job… with the paycheck to match. So it literally pays to learn what it takes to manage those facilities with this Data Center Infrastructure Mastery training. You can learn all about the care and feeding of data centers right now at over 90 percent off from TNW Deals. W

Starting this week, the federal government began asking some travelers to the U.S. to supply details about their social media accounts. As you can see below, Uncle Sam now wants visitors to disclose their presence on popular services like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in what appears to be a long shot attempt to screen for terrorists.
The collection of social media data, which was first proposed by Homeland Security this summer, does not apply to U.S. citizens. Instead, it is for now aimed at

Technology can be beautiful. Technology can also look like it was pulled straight out of hell, crafted from children’s tears. As we look back on the year, it’s easy to see 2016 hasn’t exactly been great for tech design. Yes, there were some beautiful products — just take a look at Sharp’s edgeless concept phone. But mostly everything else has been total shit. We saw the second refresh of a tired iPhone design and laptops that all looked like MacBooks

It happens. December is crazy. You get busy with work and shopping for your kids, and then you remember: you have to get your cousin Chester something for the family gift exchange on Christmas Eve.
Well, if Chester is a gamer — and you know our boy Chester loves his PlayStation — then we’ve got your back with some extremely last-minute gift ideas. With these gifts, you may not have a big package for your recipient to unwrap, but they probably won’t complain.
The big gift

(Reuters) — A cargo plane emblazoned with “Prime Air” descended from an empty sky at Lehigh Valley International Airport on Tuesday, ninety minutes from the bustle of New York City, loaded with crates of goods during the peak holiday shopping season.
It’s one of 40 jets leased by Amazon.com Inc for a new cargo service to meet delivery demand from the retail giant’s customers. Exclusive payload data reviewed by Reuters and interviews with airport officials aroun

 In a year that’s been largely lackluster for Apple and downright bizarre for battery technologies, Consumer Reports’ refusal to recommend the new MacBook Pro feels like a too perfect microcosm of the past twelve months. In the wake of online complaints surrounding the recently refreshed laptop line’s longevity, the review stalwart handed the 15-inch version of the laptop… Read More

(Reuters) — The Dutch Consumer and Markets regulator (AFM) on Friday ordered T-Mobile to stop offering a streaming music product which did not count toward customers’ data usage.
The AFM said the practice, often called “zero rating” is a violation of Dutch net neutrality rules, because it puts rival services such as Spotify at a competitive disadvantage.
Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile Netherlands, which had introduced the product on Oct. 10, must stop offering it or

Cloud Imperium Games announced today that its Star Citizen and Squadron 42 games will use the Amazon Lumberyard game engine. These are two of the most ambitious games being built today, and the switch from other engines is a coup for Amazon.
Previously, Cloud Imperium Games indicated it was using the CryEngine, from Crytek. But Crytek has been having financial troubles, and the Lumberyard engine is a derivative of the CryEngine, as Amazon paid $50 million to license it so that the comp

You can expect more than Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, and one other Nintendo game to hit your iPhone in 2017.
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima said the company will launch more than three games for tablets and smartphones each year, according to an interview with Japanese newspaper Sankei (as noted analyst Kantan Games consultant Dr. Serkan Toto has translated it). This counters a Kimishima quote from December 22, when he told Japanese news site Kyoto Shimbun that the company will laun

In professional sports, owners and players don’t always agree. And in esports, the same is proving true, as a player group launched a complaint this week and forced the owners to respond.
Players from five professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams sent an open letter this week to the Professional Esports Association, an owner-operated esports league. The players were upset that they were not properly consulted in the PEA’s decision to prohibit players from participating in

GUEST: “Disruption” is the buzzword du jour in tech. Every pitch in every coffee shop in Silicon Valley is peppered with the term. Such overuse risks rendering the word meaningless.
But in the weeks since the election, “disruption” has taken on a new and much more profound meaning. Long-standing institutions, treaties, and norms have been disrupted with little clarity as to what will replace them. These disruptions are the electoral result of an American society that is i