Technology news

Don't buy the crappy toilet paper — your body deserves better.
While most people purchase the good toilet paper to treat themselves to a bit of luxury, one pampered person discovered an unexpected benefit from upgrading their roll. He texted the whole story to his friend and later uploaded it to Imgur, because the internet deserved to hear the tale. 
SEE ALSO: Teen receives extremely blunt job rejection, fights back on Twitter
Imgurian warjerch was in the middle of doing a load of lau

Email by EasilyDo — currently my favorite email application on iOS — is now on Android. Like its iOS cousin, EasilyDo’s Email app promises the same lightning speed, simple one-tap unsubscribing to junk mail, smart sorting for things like package tracking and flights, and swipe-based inbox triage tools that the sadly deceased Mailbox made popular.While Android doesn’t have quite the same issue with email apps that iOS does with Apple’s lackluster Gmail support in the

Hollywood has a very well-documented problem of whitewashing its films.
Despite awareness campaigns like last year's #StarringJohnCho, these casting decisions have continued to happen — Emma Stone cast in Aloha as a part Asian/part Hawaiian character, Scarlett Johansson was cast in Ghost in the Shell as a character who has always been widely regarded as Japanese and so many more. 
And then there was the casting of Matt Damon to play the protagonist/hero in a movie where China needs to

Playing with fire is probably not the best idea, but what if you do it in a super cool way? Like make a giant 20-foot tall spiral of flames trapped inside a huge metal cage that spins around continuously?
Well if you had that idea, sorry, it's already been taken by Colin Furze, a "British garage inventor/video maker." The Youtuber has already amazed the internet with a number of mad scientist creations, like a homemade hoverbike, a giant Star Wars AT-ACT garden den, and, of course, fully automat

Researchers have detected organic compounds on the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Organic compounds are the building blocks of life on Earth, and the discovery could mean "that primitive life could have developed on Ceres," Michael Küppers, a planetary scientist with the European Space Agency, writes in a commentary piece published today in Science.
“primitive life could have developed on Ceres”
The organic compounds were de

Just when you thought he was off the radar, Chris Christie is back making new friends. 
Just kidding. 
SEE ALSO: Get to know this NBA rookie now — you'll be talking about him all weekend
Christie — who is still governor of New Jersey after a brief stint playing Reek on the new American reality show Trump of Thrones — was a Wednesday night guest on SportsNet New York. He was his usual charming self. 
Here's what Christie had to say about the Philadelphia Phillies

Serenity now, America.
Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli, Donald Trump was angry during his press conference on Thursday. 
SEE ALSO: Twitter's backend is breaking under Trump's tweets
He was mad at the "out of control" press. He was livid at the "criminal leaks" that led to the resignation of Michael Flynn. He ranted about the "fake news" overshadowing all his tremendous accomplishments. "It was unhinged. It was wild." @jaketapper reacts to President Trump's press conf

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Star Wars Aftermath: Empire's End.
If you've ever found yourself wondering "I wonder what that lovable scamp Jar Jar Binks ended up doing for a living," a new Star Wars novel reveals the official, canon answer. 
It's appropriate. It's a little sad. And no, it isn't "Sith Lord."
SEE ALSO: 27 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' questions answered by the novel
In Star Wars chronology, the accident-prone Gungan hasn't actually shown up much beyond his much-m

Like any sensible person who's ever had their heart broken, you probably have a folder of half-cocked texts you've considered sending your ex but held back on.
Well, now you can take a peek into humanity's drafts folders thanks to a viral Google doc with the simple name, "texts i wanna send my ex."
Select All reports it was created by Sean Drohan on Valentine's Day, and it's currently got 540 entries and counting. It's a real who's who of twisted human emotions, and lots of them are pictures of

August announced today that its smart lock can now be locked and unlocked through Alexa-enabled devices. This is legitimately practical and good for people who are immobile, but August doesn’t focus on that. No, instead, August wants us to rememberthat this feature might work best for people who are too busy chopping onions to answer the door for their visitors. What the heck! That’s so rude.
Someone else on the Verge staff informed me that this might also be good for people with thr

The most powerful posture for a modern media figure is to play the martyr. Just after noon today, PewDiePie, the biggest star on YouTube, released a video in which he half-heartedly apologized for his use of Nazi imagery and anti-Semitic language, blamed the media for unfairly targeting him, and teared up as he thanked his fans for their support. Less than an hour later Donald Trump kicked off a press conference with a long monologue railing against the media for criticizing him, blaming them fo

Since its inception, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has been hampered by setback after setback, and it looks like even more delays are on the horizon for the fledgling initiative. The program — which tasks US private companies with building spacecraft that can transport NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station — was originally supposed to get off the ground in 2017. But SpaceX and Boeing, the two companies that are developing these crewed spacecraft for NASA,

So this is what it has come to.
Not even 100 days into Trump's presidency, we have resorted to Seth Rogen's Twitter DMs to save the country.
SEE ALSO: Celebrities shared their outrage following Trump's immigration ban
Upon noticing the president's son Donald Trump Jr. followed him on Twitter, the actor decided to tweet him a sincere political plea.Yo! @DonaldJTrumpJr! I noticed you follow me on Twitter. Please ask your dad to resign before he destroys the planet. Thanks dude.
— Seth Rogen

Facebook used to repeat its mission statement so often that most tech reporters could recite it from memory: “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” And it’s still the mission you see when you visit the company’s Facebook page. But in a remarkable letter published today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the severe shortcomings and blind spots that his company’s mission created. Going forward, he said, the company will consider

Just moments after President Donald Trump's surreal, whirlwind press conference came to a close Thursday, the Trump campaign sent out a very strange email.
The email posits that the media is an enemy that must be deflected, inviting recipients to take a survey about how much they hate CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and all mainstream media. "Instead, you — the American people — are our last line of defense against the media’s hit jobs." But there's more. As if to drive the point home wit

Pregnancy announcements have become just as much of a thing as extravagantly planned proposals.
We can't blame all those parents-to-be out there. The news that you are going to have a baby is a big deal, and it deserves to be shared in whichever way you see fit. But sometimes, the crafting of an elaborate announcement overshadows what is really important: the announcement itself.
Sometimes, the most touching way of sharing the news with your significant other is just to do it simply. The real tr

It's tough to say for sure that this is New York Knicks president Phil Jackson looking awkward as hell while riding a city bus. But this definitely for sure looks just like New York Knicks president Phil Jackson looking awkward as hell while riding a city bus. 
And it's a perfect bit of symbolism delivered straight from both the internet and basketball gods. 
SEE ALSO: The most dad-ass dad sneaker of all time just became even more dad
We recently covered how the New York Knicks, who ar

AT&T announced that it’ll be offering a new unlimited data plan starting tomorrow, following in the footsteps of its competitors Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, who all announced new plans with unlimited data earlier this week.The new AT&T Unlimited Plan offers unlimited data, calls, and texting, and includes HD video (although AT&T’s Stream Saver, which reduces data used by forcing standard definition video, is turned on by default). The new unlimited plan starts at $100

An iceberg the size of Manhattan has cleaved off of Antarctica's rapidly melting Pine Island Glacier on the southwest coast of the continent. NASA released the new data showing the iceberg's birth on Feb. 15, though the imagery was acquired between Jan. 26 and Jan. 31. 
The agency says "about a kilometer or two of ice" broke off the glacier's floating ice shelf during this period, making it a large iceberg but comparitively small in the recent history of this particular area. 
SEE ALSO

Woolly mammoths won't be trouncing through the Arctic tundra anytime soon.
Contrary to recent headlines, which herald the extinct beast's coming resurrection, scientists are still a long way from figuring out how to revive the elephant ancestor.
SEE ALSO: Humans will drive polar bears to extinction without climate action, feds say
Woolly mammoths roamed the planet for hundreds of thousands of years before they vanished about 4,000 years ago. Paleontologists say the culprit for the die-off was po

Lisa Frank's next canvas could be your glowing visage.
On Thursday the design company teamed up with Glamour Dolls Makeup to launch a Kickstarter campaign to create a cruelty-free line inspired by the rainbow-splashed Frank products of your childhood. 
Lisa Frank announced the campaign in a post to its official Facebook page.
SEE ALSO: Lisa Frank tarot cards make the future look brightA Lisa Frank angled brush is a potential product from the brand's proposed makeup line.Image:glamour dolls

Intel just shipped a new Windows driver for its integrated Iris 500 and 600 GPUs which finally supports the Vulkan graphics API. This is wonderful news for a number of people.
If you have a consumer Skylake or Kaby Lake processor and you run Windows 10, you're covered. Most Vulkan-capable apps right now are high-end or experimental games, so this won't make everything instantly wonderful, but it does mean you're now the low bar of Vulkan desktop performance, and the large install base makes you

Calling all space fans: Astronomers want you to help them hunt for a large planet that might be lurking on the outskirts of our solar system.
Scientists working with a number of institutions have created a website filled with data that will allow people to hunt for previously undiscovered objects circling the sun from beyond Neptune's orbit.
SEE ALSO: Scientists want you to help them find planets in this database of stars
The website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, asks people to look through

The latest rumor for Apple’s next iPhone comes from JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall who claims that Apple will be adding a front-facing 3D laser scanner for facial recognition to unlock the device, as noted by MacRumors.Hall claims that the 3D face scans will replace the fingerprint-based Touch ID system, which has been a part of Apple’s iOS platform since the release of the iPhone 5S in 2013. According to Hall, the new scanner is being added as Apple removes to home button for a new edge-

Sean Spicer, the new White House Press Secretary tasked with combating fake news – probably including this article, so don’t bother reading it – has mispronounced a couple of important names. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been lovingly dubbed “Joe,” and Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is now to be known as Mr. “Trumble.” If you’d like to know how Spicer might address you if you were the leader of

Facebook was about connecting with people — family, friends, old high-school exes. 
As of Thursday, it's about saving the world.
That's what Mark Zuckerberg announced in a 6,000-word manifesto detailing how Facebook will look to create the "infrastructure" that will help solve some of the world's biggest problems. 
Yes, really.
"Our job at Facebook is to help people make the greatest positive impact while mitigating areas where technology and social media can contribute to d

Thinking about charging your device from a public outlet? Think again. Drew Paik, founder of security firm Authentic8, told CNN that hackers access phones from public outlets and wi-fi via a technique called “juice jacking.” It works because your USB cable is designed to transmit data, even when you might not want it to. Paik warns that your whole phone is compromised if you plug into a jacked outlet. Hackers can see your photos, texts, emails, and potentially anything else on your

Verizon and T-Mobile aren't the only U.S. mobile networks with new "unlimited" data plans trying to win your hard-earned money.
Sprint, the fourth largest carrier in America, announced on Thursday a new "Unlimited Freedom" plan that matches Verizon and T-Mobile's and costs less.
SEE ALSO: Why unlimited data is making a comeback
Like its rivals, Sprint's "unlimited" plan offers unlimited calling, texts, and a solid amount of usable data (23GB) at 4G LTE speeds (speeds may be reduced during networ

"We are now stuck in the Upside Down. Right is wrong, up is down, black is white."
Washington representative David Cicilline took to the House floor on Feb. 16 with a visual aide and a handful of metaphors drawing the comparison between President Trump, the current political climate, and the hit sci-fi television show Stranger Things. Really. 
SEE ALSO: These 'Stranger Things' baseball jerseys will turn your world upside down
Cicilline used the extended metaphor to call out all the oxymoron

Gifs communicate to the internet generation what words and static images never could. For those interested in learning sign language, they’ll now help to communicate in altogether different ways. Giphy today released an extensive library containing more than 2,000 GIFs of words and phrases in American Sign Language. Clipped from the educational video series Sign With Robert, each image contains text descriptions designed to teach hearing people how to communicate with the deaf.

¡El drama!
Kylie Jenner's Snapchat soap opera has returned and this time it's set up like a telenovela. Jenner first debuted her opera last year during New York Fashion Week and it starred Kendall Jenner, Hailey Baldwin, and Harry Hudson. She released her Spanish follow up around the same time so it could become a fashion week tradition.
SEE ALSO: This fake Kylie Jenner story fooled the internet
The Snap sequel followed the previous one's plot line: a love triangle featuring Kylie, her ass

Google’s latest artificial intelligence experiment is a music-playing piano bot that digests whatever keyboard melodies you give it and tries to respond in kind. The neat tool is called AI Duet, and it’s part of an ongoing push from Google’s Creative Lab division to help the public familiarize themselves with AI and all the ways it can mimic human behavior — and even create art. A collection of music-focused AI tools were first shown off last fall, but now AI Duet in part

The US Court of International Trade has ruled that the Snuggie should officially be classified as a blanket. It’s a tax thing. Sorry to anyone who considers a Snuggie their special robe.Bloomberg reported on the ruling, in which the court dismissed the massive wad of fabric as being anything other than a blanket because it lacks “closures.” Were you hoping to wear it as a clerical robe or for some other ceremonious outing? Tough luck. For it to officially work in that capacity,

Alphabet is changing the course of Project Loon, its plan to cover the Earth with a “continuous stream” of balloons that beam internet to the ground. Astro Teller, the head of the company’s experimental wing, announced today that the Loon team has learned how to control the navigation of these internet balloons so well that they can now concentrate them in areas of need.
The original plan for Loon looked like a reversal of the way our phones connect to cellular towers as we mov

April Ryan is a journalism institution. She has covered three sitting presidents as White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, regularly appears on MSNBC and is among the most visible black female journalists in the U.S.
Donald Trump clearly doesn't know all that based on how he treated Ryan during Thursday's press conference.
Ryan asked Trump a question about his previously stated commitment to improving conditions in "inner cities" in the U.S. 
"Do you want to set up the

I like the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, Apple’s baby step toward a touchscreen Mac that may never happen. It can be helpful (scrolling through a filmstrip of photo thumbnails) and fun (playing Pac-Man).
But the thin touch-sensitive screen that sits above the keyboard will remain a curiosity for most until it can partner with our most-used productivity applications, like Microsoft Office. Well, that's happening. Microsoft released a public update to Office that includes Touch Bar support

Genie Bouchard learned what we all did a couple a weeks ago — never, under any circumstances, should you bet against Tom Brady. 
The 22-year-old Canadian tennis star – and 2017 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model – ended up losing that wager to a dude on Twitter, agreeing to go on a date with him if the New England Patriots mounted a miraculous, 25-point comeback. The Patriots did, of course, win the Super Bowl, so Bouchard and 20-year-old Mizzou student John Goehr

From a presidential campaign riddled with connections to Russian officials to a hastily launched immigration ban that's been struck down by courts repeatedly, the White House isn't exactly in the best shape right now.
Even if Trump wouldn't tell you that.
SEE ALSO: Trump’s political appointees will vet EPA’s scientific work before release
That image — one of a presidency in the midst of chaos while still trying to deny the obvious — is at the heart of Time Magazine's newe

That weird, swollen, oozing bump you’re worried about? It’s not a bite from a brown recluse spider, a bug scientist and skin doctors say in an article aimed at combating misdiagnoses. For starters, brown recluse bites are usually flat, pale at the center, and don’t really ooze — unless they’re on your eyelid or toes, that is. The world is full of things that can kill you
The problem is that brown recluse bites are so attention grabbing that even doctors can see them

Sometimes, it's OK to do the dishonorable thing. Even when the game you're playing is literally called: For Honor.
If you've been keeping up with Ubisoft's just-released "knights vs. samurai vs. vikings" melee combat game — particularly the conversations going on in its subreddit — you might have noticed a debate brewing. One camp thinks it's cool for two people to gang up on a solo warrior; the other camp refuses, calling such a move dishonorable.
SEE ALSO: 15 years later, 'For Hono

I usually like multipurpose devices. After all, why carry two things when you can carry one that does two jobs or more? That’s just good common sense. But for some reason, the ChargeWrite pen has me uneasy. It’s a $29 device that has a pen, a stylus, and 1,000 mAh battery pack with a universal Lightning and Micro USB jack. A more expensive $39 ChargeWrite+ lowers the battery size to 650mAh, but adds 16GB of flash storage. Those are all good things. But how well do they work when cram

Belle from Beauty and the Beast loves books and, although she was birthed in the 19th century, also code. Or at least that’s Hasbro’s storyline for her. The new Dance Code Belle doll teaches kids the fundamentals of coding all in the name of getting Belle to dance. Kids can program dance routines through Belle’s companion Android / iOS app. Belle talks and sings, too. She’s a triple threat as we would say in the biz. I don’t know anything about the biz.The app, as i

While many Americans were left speechless, struggling to put their thoughts on Donald Trump's press conference into words, our British hero logged on Twitter to save the day.
J.K. Rowling, author, superwoman and avid Trump challenger, eloquently summarized POTUS's bizarre impromptu presser with a single powerful, humorous and eerily accurate burn.
SEE ALSO: Trump claims drugs are cheaper than candy, Americans collectively facepalm
On Thursday afternoon, Trump kicked the presser off by nominating