Technology news

Earlier this month, reports surfaced that hackers stole Disney’s upcoming film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, threatening to release the film online if a demand for ransom wasn’t met. Speaking to Yahoo! Finance, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that the company had not been hacked, and that the threat was a fake.“To our knowledge we were not hacked,” he said when asked about the role of technology at Disney. “We had a threat of a hack of a movie being sto

Donald Trump's using his iPhone wrong.
The President reportedly (finally!) has an iPhone. And yet, he's only installed a single, solitary app on it: Twitter.
Of course.
SEE ALSO: Twitter has all the answers for Trump's 'orb of doom' photo
No matter what side of the political aisle you fall on, most of us can probably agree that more access to Twitter isn't exactly something Trump needs, well, more of. That said, he probably could use a few other apps, though. 
Here's what he should download

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today urged college graduates to follow their sense of purpose and enable others in order to build a better world together. And yet, standing onstage at Harvard University in a crisp suit instead of the traditional hat and gown, Zuckerberg looked and sounded a lot more like a presidential candidate than a tech CEO.
Zuckerberg has denied interest in running for president of the United States before — most recently three days ago — but today

You don’t kill 99 digital strangers without making a few bucks.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is making bank. We already knew this because the Battle Royale-like online multiplayer shooter has topped the best-selling games on Steam for more than a month. But what does this translate into in dollars? Well, in April, Battlegrounds generated $34 million, according to market-intelligence firm SuperData Research’s estimates. That was enough to make it the No. 7 highes

Apple dropped another entry in its animated Earth Day shorts series — and this one grapples with a pretty heady concept: Does my iPhone believe in reincarnation? 
The 50-second spot was a tie-in to Apple's participation in the Sustainable Brands 2017 event, which explains the late rollout. The reincarnation angle comes via LIAM, the bot helping to fulfill the company's pledge to stop mining and use a closed-loop supply chain by recycling iPhone parts.    Read more...
More a

Amazon has opened two drive-up grocery stores to the public after testing the locations first with its own employees. Both are in the Seattle area, and allow Amazon Prime subscribers to place an online order and choose a two-hour pickup window for when they’d like to drive over and retrieve it.Despite the stores being called “AmazonFresh Pickup,” a membership to the company’s home delivery grocery service isn’t required. But if you do pay for AmazonFresh (an extra $

If you've got $12,000 to blow and already own every Apple product under the sun, we've got great news — you can now buy this impeccably sophisticated hourglass to fill the void in your life.
Channelling the tech company's innovation, Apple designer Marc Newson revamped the traditional hourglass to create this ridiculously expensive, limited-edition product for HODINKEE, a publication specializing in wristwatches.
SEE ALSO: Tim Cook will take his Apple Watch secret to the grave
Now okay, su

Katy Cats are in for a treat — Katy Perry is playing a surprise show in front of 90 fans in London and live streaming the whole thing. 
Perry just announced the intimate gig at the Water Rats, where she played nine years ago, on Twitter. You can tune into the show on YouTube now. 
SEE ALSO: Katy Perry brings the Taylor Swift feud to Carpool Karaoke because nowhere is safe👁 me play a live show from LDN to about 90 ppl in about 15 min! GO HERE, you'll have the best seat in

Bear is a note-taking app from Italian design firm Shiny Frog that’s seen a recent spate of popularity as a replacement for apps like the bloated Evernote, primarily due to its simple design and quick speed.
And Shiny Frog has been good about keeping Bear up to date, with today’s 1.2 update (as noted by MacStories) adding some new features in the form of sketching, custom app icons for iOS, and support for Apple’s VoiceOver accessibility feature. The sketching feature is the mo

Jupiter looks like hell.
The huge planet in the middle of our solar system has giant Earth-sized storms, a powerful magnetic field, and extreme auroras, a series of new scientific studies published this week show. 
The new findings come from data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been studying Jupiter since it arrived in orbit around the huge world in July 2016. 
SEE ALSO: A lava-filled crater larger than Lake Ontario lurks on Jupiter's moon Io
And wow, are there surprises

Target is betting big on mattresses in the mail.
The big box chain is investing $75 million in bedding delivery startup Casper as it looks to bolster its e-commerce offerings in the face of the tanking brick-and-mortar market, Recode reported Thursday.
A source familiar with the deal confirmed that amount. 
SEE ALSO: The mobile online shopping revolution is definitely coming—but nobody's sure when
Casper has sought to upend a $14 billion industry with foam mattresses that are folded i

Harvard dropout and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg found himself the subject of fake news on Thursday after the school's newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, was hacked.
Instead of the Crimson's regularly planned special commencement issue, the website showcased some not so flattering photoshops and strange headlines.Zuckerberg was parodied in a hack on the student paper's website.Image:crimson archiveSEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg awkwardly takes us inside his Harvard dorm room on Facebook Live
The fak

President Donald Trump's budget proposal would save an estimated $10 million in 2018 by allowing the United States's wild horses to wind up on someone's plate.
The U.S. has long rounded up and sold wild horses that roam through Nevada and other Western states, but buyers have always legally had to promise not to ship horses for slaughter. Horse slaughterhouses are outlawed in the U.S., but not in Mexico or Canada, nor in Europe, where horse meat is considered something of a treat. 
SEE ALSO

SPONSORED: For the past two years, GamesBeat has partnered with Epic Games to help showcase the best titles using Unreal Engine at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The Unreal E3 Awards honor the most creative, beautiful, and fun games that use Epic’s freely-available engine under the backdrop of the most important industry event in the U.S.
We’re happy to announce that this relationship is continuing. We’ll be giving out more Unreal E3 Awards at this year’s show, which

Man, Mark Zuckerberg is having a hell of a day. Earlier this morning, just before he was scheduled to deliver Harvard University’s commencement speech, his alma mater’s student newspaper website was hacked to elaborately troll the Facebook CEO. And while that got fixed by the time Zuck walked on stage, he’s now facing yet another technical difficulty: utter gibberish for captions.
Of course Zuck’s speech was going to be live streamed on his own platform, but wow, those of

HBO just renewed Silicon Valley for a fifth season, but one character won’t be returning. T.J. Miller, who plays Erlich Bachman, is leaving the series, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In a statement to THR, HBO called the decision a “mutual agreement.”
Neither HBO nor Miller has given any details about the reason for the departure, but as THR points out, Miller has recently started getting bigger roles that he wasn’t getting when the show started.But as he’s go

The Bachmanity Insanity is officially over. 
Silicon Valley is saying Avia-dios (get it, like Aviato and adios? Oh, never mind!) to star T.J. Miller for the show's upcoming fifth season, Mashable has confirmed. 
HBO renewed the Emmy-winning comedy — along with Veep — for a new season on Thursday, shortly before news broke that Miller would not be returning after the conclusion of Season 4.BOOM: T.J. Miller will not be returning for the new season of @SiliconHBO, @vulture ha

Sony is moving fast to create buzz for its own Marvel Universe. Deadline reports that writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct Silver & Black, the studio’s upcoming film starring classic Spider-Man characters Silver Sable and Black Cat. The decision will make Prince-Bythewood the first woman of color to direct a superhero movie, so long as the move isn’t derailed between now and the film’s release in 2018.
Prince-Bythewood is known for his character-driven work
Pri

Samsung Display is attending Display Week (a conference on display technology, hosted by the The Society for Information Display), and it’s got some wild new screen prototypes to show off.First up, a 9.1-inch OLED display that can roll, bend, and even stretch when pushed on before snapping back to its original position. And unlike most other flexible screens out there, which tend to only be able to be bent in one direction, Samsung’s prototype can bend in both. There’s no plans

You know what they say: this fidget spinner craze isn't over yet until the cookie crumbles.
Clearly Cookies, a Dallas based custom cookie company, has created a cookie fidget spinner. It looks exactly like the original toy and it even spins. Image:clearly cookies/facebookSEE ALSO: Fidget spinner nail art is a thing now so there's no where left to hide
"The idea for the fidget spinner cookie came from the guy I am dating," said Jessica Grose, the woman behind Clearly Cookies. "He has been as

Gixo, a fitness app that offers live classes for anyone to exercise anywhere, launched today and announced a $3.7 million round of funding led by Greylock Partners. Reid Hoffman led the round and joined the board.
The Gixo app, which is available on both Android and iOS, offers more than 150 live classes per week, ranging from 15 to 40 minute workouts. The added bonus? A coach can track your progress live throughout a variety of exercises that range from walking and running to strengt

We know about the problems with the gig economy: workers who drive for Uber, deliver food for Postmates, and run errands on TaskRabbit don't have health insurance or any other guarantees or benefits from their employers — and their ranks are only growing. 
While the growth of gig jobs has gotten lots of attention from major companies, research firms, and startups, national legislators haven't done much about it. (They've had other stuff going on, I guess.) 
Democratic Sens. Mark

Twelve years after Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard University, the Facebook CEO was set to give a commencement speech and receive an honorary degree today in Cambridge, MA. Leading up to the event, the CEO teased a lot of footage that highlight ties to his alma mater — from clips of the moment Zuckerberg read his college acceptance letter to a Facebook Live video of him touring his old dorm room, where he reportedly created the social network.
“OOPS: MINK PINKLEBINK ACCIDENTAL

Earlier this week, Snapchat released an update that quietly changed the way profile pictures work in Snapchat — users with Bitmoji avatars are now forced to use them as the image in their Snapcodes, instead of the previous method that allowed users to have an actual picture inside the ghost-shaped frame.It’s not a huge change on the surface, as Snapchat had previously allowed users to choose to set a Bitmoji as their profile if they wanted to, but the new change seems to automaticall

GUEST: Ford announced that CEO Mark Fields retired on Monday and will be replaced by Jim Hackett. After months of shareholder grumblings about Ford’s stock market performance, it’s obvious that his hand was forced, but he was allowed a graceful exit. Ford’s stock has tumbled 35 percent since Fields took the helm, so it’s no huge surprise to see him go.
Fields’ connected car dreams
Nobody ever said Fields was not ambitious. During his tenure, we saw a dramatic c

We don't know if Rosario Dawson set out to join every single superhero universe in existence, but she couldn't be doing a better job if she tried.
The Lego Batman and Daredevil actress is now in negotiations to join New Mutants, Mashable has confirmed. The X-Men spinoff is being directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) and already has Anya Taylor-Joy (Split) and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) set to star.
SEE ALSO: The 'X-Men' universe has two Stark sisters now
A sort of YA spin on the

A lot of movie magic went into the making of Beauty and the Beast, especially when it came to make the Beast as real as possible.
A behind the scenes video about the process of creating the Beast on screen has been released, showing us just how much work Dan Stevens had to do to become the Beast. Yes, it involved body suits. Yes, Stevens had to wear stilts. And yes, at the end of the day they filmed him doing all of his scenes again but just focusing on his face.
Thank you, Stevens, for making

"Star Wars is not science fiction" is one of those arguments that gets trotted out a lot, and it's fundamentally true — but tell that to a 4-year-old kid who's just seen the original George Lucas film in a theater in 1977. 
Because that kid is marching straight home to pretend to use a lightsaber, fly a freighter in hyperspace and talk to his sister on a "comlink." There was a lot of sweet, sweet gadgetry we'd never imagined before on that screen.
Some of it has aged well, but not all

President Donald Trump met with European leaders and attended his first NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, and boy did he have a great time.
While there, Trump shoved Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic so that he could get a better spot for a photo opportunity, and he also scolded a bunch of US allies. It was a great time for all  — the best time — and we have the pictures to prove that Trump enjoyed it very much and there were no awkward moments whatsoever. 
SEE

Instagram DMs just got a whole lot more useful.
Instagram has infamously not allowed links in the app for years, except in a user's bio (which led to the "link in bio" phenomenon). 
But it looks like the photosharing app is finally easing up (partially) on its DM aversion — Instagram's new update just added the ability to share links in direct messages, the company announced on Thursday. 
SEE ALSO: Instagram's selfie 'face filters' are cute, but nothing special
Now users wil

If good literature moves you, then The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is a punch to the gut — sharp, visceral, and raw.
The Hate U Give follows Starr Carter, a black teen who witnesses her unarmed friend Khalil get shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop. In addition to having to face the trauma of witnessing the shooting, as the sole witness to the incident, Starr finds herself at the center of the trial against the cop that shot Khalil. 
SEE ALSO: 9 tips for rai

The Get Down was one of Netflix's most divisive shows from the get-go, with critics alternately describing Baz Luhrmann's hip-hop drama as a "masterpiece" and a "mess." 
It was also rumored to be one of the streaming network's most expensive projects to date, with a budget reportedly in the ballpark of $120 million for its first and only season. The series also faced a string of production woes, from delays to rewrites to budgetary concerns, not to mention the exit of showrunner Shawn Ryan.

Late last year, Kodak released its Ektra smartphone — a device with mediocre specs and a big ass camera bump — in the UK, and now it’s finally coming to the US. The Ektra has a vintage design and a pretty substantial 21MP camera sticking out of the back. Other than that we’re looking at midrange smartphone specs:
5-inch 1080p display
Android 6
MediaTek Helio X20 processor
3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage
3,000mAh battery, USB-C port
The Ektra isn’t actually built by Koda

Game of Thrones isn't one for fan service — unless it's the service of mashing our hearts to pulp — but Entertainment Weekly's latest cover story suggests we'll finally get to see Daenerys stir shit up in Westeros.
SEE ALSO: 'Game of Thrones' Season 7 trailer is finally here and we're still shaking
“Dany in Westeros makes Game of Thrones a new show,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman told EW. “It has this amazing ripple effect throughout every storyline that&rsquo

In what is now the natural order of things, Donald Trump made a mistake and J.K. Rowling tweeted about it.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump — currently in Brussels attending the NATO Summit — appeared to shove Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic while making his way to the front of a small crowd. Later the White House reportedly defended the gesture as a "casual greeting" between leaders.
SEE ALSO: Want Donald Trump's voice on your GPS? It's here anywayDid Trump just shove

Sony's been busy spinning its own Marvel universe, and they've just netted their first female director.
Mashable has confirmed that Gina Prince-Bythewood (Beyond the Lights) has entered negotiations to direct Silver & Black, a comic book movie centered around the characters Silver Sable and Black Cat. 
SEE ALSO: Spider-Man spinoff 'Venom' ropes in Tom Hardy
The news follows last week's reveal that Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) would direct Tom Hardy in Venom, another entry in Sony's Marv

Okay, so you’ve created a LinkedIn profile with your name, current job and title. You’ve got a thorough and well-formatted Word Doc resume, ready to hand off to hiring managers. Done, right? Wrong. You’re missing the point of LinkedIn if you think having a print resume, and a short LinkedIn profile is the entire arsenal your job search requires.  
Keeping your LinkedIn up to date is something that requires little time, but may end up having big benefits. Any recruiter can

SpaceX is marching ever closer to launching a brand new, huge rocket for the first time this summer.
A new video released by the Elon Musk-founded spaceflight company shows a test firing of one of the boosters that will be used for a Falcon Heavy rocket launch. 
SEE ALSO: SpaceX's most recent rocket landing looks like something out of science fiction
The "side booster" will eventually be strapped onto the main stage of the Falcon Heavy to help give it the extreme power it needs to fly heavy

Political campaigns are very important opportunities for candidates to show the world what makes them so special.
But since everyone hoping to be elected focuses on promoting their skills, beliefs, and the issues they care about, Mexican politician Javier Zapata, decided to stand out from his competition by crafting an utterly flawless campaign ... about his mustache and less than original™ social media hashtag.
SEE ALSO: Macron annihilates Trump in the most awkward handshake battle of all