Technology news

Tropical Storm Harvey has caused unprecedented flooding in southeast Texas — but other dangerous environmental disasters could be on their way, including the leakage of chemicals that could explode or harm people.Making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Harvey hit right into the heart of the state’s petrochemical industry. Several plants shut down to brace for the bad weather, but refineries and chemical plants have still been damaged.
Here’s a list of some of the most danger

Today is the last day US citizens can make their voices heard in the fight for net neutrality, or at least the last day the FCC will accept comments before the final voting process. Whether those comments mean anything or not is up for debate, but if you’ve got something to say you’d better make it quick. The FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, is expected to do everything within his power to ensure that net neutrality goes away — but just maybe the 20 million-plus comments already placed

An Instagram bug allowed hackers to access contact phone numbers and email addresses for high-profile users, the company said today. The bug was discovered recently in Instagram’s application programming interface, or API, which the service uses to communicate with other apps. Instagram declined to specify which users had been targeted, but the news comes two days after hackers accessed the account of its most-followed user, Selena Gomez, and posted nude pictures of her ex-boyfriend Justin

The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, a children’s book based around thinly veiled alt-right themes, will cease publication at the behest of Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie. Motherboard reports that Furie has reached a settlement with the author of the book, who admitted to copyright infringment of Furie’s creation. Not only will the settlement prevent additional sales of the book, but all profits must be donated to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim-American advocacy gr

Bringing back old tech is one thing, but what about reinventing it altogether? One Redditor named Abhishek Singh did just this after pondering if it would be possible to hold a GIF in your hand. The result: a DIY Polaroid camera that “prints” GIFs.
Inspired by the Polaroid OneStep camera (the SX-70, specifically), Singh’s version is called an Instagif and looks almost exactly the same, but instead of printing to film, it ejects a Polaroid-sized LCD that plays back a just-record

Have you ever wished you can shave your face with your iPhone? No? Well, whatever, because now you can. Japanese gadget company Thanko just released a tiny electric razor that plugs into your iPhone’s lightning port. It uses a single rotary blade, and looks as silly as it sounds. You’ll have a blast cleaning beard hairs out of the speaker grill, I’m sure. In all seriousness, it does only cost 980 yen, or around $9. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll work in a pinch. The bad news i

There is a lot of the future packed into the tiny footprint of the Smart Vision EQ fortwo Concept.
First, consider it as an evolution of the recognizable Smart-car shape that is a fixture of crowded European cities, or as a white and blue Car2Go vehicle. That’s the sharing aspect right there, as Daimler wants to grow its pool of 2.6 million car-sharing customers while people continuously weigh whether they actually need to own a car for daily functions.It lacks a steering wheel and convent

Few devices in recent memory have managed to create as much hype in so little time as the Essential Phone. The brainchild of Android co-founder Andy Rubin, the PH-1 (as the phone is technically known) promises the purest version of Google’s OS this side of a Pixel, with a premium, nearly-bezel-less design to make Apple raise an eyebrow. After using the PH-1 for a week, I believe that hype is largely earned, despite some baffling flaws. The Essential Phone is so spartan it borders on feeli

Audio-Technica has revealed both a new wireless Bluetooth over-ear headphone model as well as a series of wireless Bluetooth in-ear headphones. Unlike the brand’s other recent reveal — the upmarket ATH-ADX5000 (which comes with its own suitcase!) — all these newly released models are affordably priced, but still have quality-conscious listeners in mind.
The ATH-AR5BT over-ear model follows the ATH-AR3BT, released earlier this year. Many specs are shared between the two wireless

You know those gimmick-based dating shows about people going on dates naked, or in the dark, or with some other twist? Someone is doing this for virtual reality now, and while that already may not sound great, I promise that it is worse than it sounds. It’s not that Virtually Dating is dumb about VR, or that it sensationalizes it. It’s just a dating show that’s so boring it tarnishes the concept of dating itself.
The five-episode Virtually Dating is a partnership between Cond&e

Somewhere in the world there’s probably a developer working on an algorithm that can accurately predict the year in which future technology will become accessible. According to a report by Gartner, a technology research and analysis company, that technology should be mainstream in the next two years – if it’s based on deep learning. The company recently released “The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017,”  a report which details interest in nascent tech.

Nintendo’s summer “Nindies” showcase took place today, and as expected the company announced a bunch of new indie games that will be coming to the Switch in the coming months.
Headlining the list of new titles was the announcement of a new No More Heroes game from Suda51’s Grasshopper Manufacture, called No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Again, set to be released exclusively on the Switch sometime in 2018.Other highlights included a new Meat Boy game from Team Meat set to re

Security researchers discovered a doozy of a spam list this week — over 711 million email addresses on it in total. That means it’s time to check your security again. A Paris-based researcher called Benkow uncovered the spambot, called “Onliner.” It uses a tiny, pixel-sized images hidden in spam emails to gather details about recipient’s computers. Security expert Troy Hunt says the list contains a “mind-boggling amount of data.” What makes Onliner part

Due to a DDoS attack, The Pirate Bay went down for several hours today. This is nothing unusual when you run the world’s largest torrent site. Perhaps more interesting is what caused slowdowns on both Monday and Tuesday: “Game of Thrones.” Once uploaded early Monday morning, the season finale sent a surge of users to converge on The Pirate Bay. According to Torrent Freak, this amounted to a 400 percent increase in traffic, and one that ultimately buckled the torrent site. Wint

Fitbit, the digital health company whose wristbands have become synonymous with the whole activity-tracking movement, is trying to bring its health monitoring game to the next level — by focusing on a sleep disorder that affects millions of Americans.Fitbit has said that it’s working with a combination of optical sensors and machine learning tools in its R&D labs to potentially address a condition in which people stop breathing in their sleep, called sleep apnea. Its new Ionic sm

Well before the deadly attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, GoFundMe banned hate groups and causes from its platforms. In its terms of service, the company says its services cannot be used to promote “hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind.”
A media group began leaking Discord chats this month
But alt-right groups appear to be skirting moderators, and campaigns set up before the Charlottesville protests may show just how easy it is to evade

The first cancer treatment that involves reprogramming a patient’s own blood cells to fight cancer has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, leading the way for federal approval of other, similar efforts.Kymriah is manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Novartis AG to treat children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). It’s shown very encouraging results in clinical trials, but the price tag will be hefty: Analysts say it will cost “a fortune,” or

In March of 1437, Korean astronomers in Seoul saw what they thought was a new, bright star appear in the night sky. Now, nearly 600 years later, astronomers have figured out what those stargazers actually saw: a thermonuclear explosion caused by the interaction of two distant stars. The new research pinpoints the location of those two stars in the sky, solving a mystery that’s plagued astronomers for decades and providing clues about what happens to pairs of stars centuries after they expl

Greg Isenberg has seen how other apps grow.
That's why he's at the University of Alabama with his new app, Islands. It's already the hot new thing as students start classes for the fall 2017 semester.
"Who wants to meet people the most? It’s people at college. College is the single greatest time for self-discovery. You’re deciding if you like X or Y," Isenberg said via FaceTime as he strolled the Alabama campus.
Like many apps before—think Yik Yak, Tinder, and even Facebook&mda

Amidst news of Tropical Storm Harvey's wide-reaching, catastrophic impact on much of the southwestern U.S., the people of Texas are offering comfort to one another in whatever ways they're able. 
In just under 24 hours, this clip of a gospel performance inside the Lone Star Convention and Expo Center north of Houston has been viewed more than 8.2 million times. 
SEE ALSO: Tropical Storm Harvey is the strongest to hit the US in 12 years
The center currently serves as a shelter for Harve

MD Anderson’s Houston-based primary hospital, one of the top cancer centers in the US, has flooded because of torrential rains from tropical storm Harvey — leaving cancer patients unable to receive scheduled treatment until at least Thursday, STAT reports.The cancer hospital’s main building, as well several MD Anderson satellites around Houston, will stay closed for appointments today, but emergency workers are trying to restore service, according to a statement reported in STA

Racism sucks. Oppression's exhausting. And navigating the world as a young, black person at times feels like swimming against a never-ending, upstream current—but that doesn't mean there aren't things to celebrate. 
In a time of political turmoil, amid a fraught racial climate, this year's Afropunk Festival (which has been thriving in New York for 15 years now, and expanded globally in 2015) was a necessary breath of fresh air. The music and art festival centers on black performers an

It's not easy being green or switching voices, but Kermit's making it work.
Muppet veteran Matt Vogel made his vocal debut as the iconic frog on Monday's episode of "Muppets Thought of the Week," allowing fans to hear the new Kermit for the very first time — and luckily not much seems to have changed.
Back in July it was announced that Steve Whitmire, who had voiced Kermit for the past 27 years, had parted ways with Disney. Vogel, who joined Sesame Street in 1996, has voiced several popul

As rescue crews field thousands of calls from Texas residents asking for help as flood waters rise in the wake of Tropical Storm Harvey, people are looking to help in whatever ways they can. 
Residents of Houston and surrounding areas have been taking their boats out to assist in rescues, and businesses are opening their doors to people displaced by flooding. Others others are using social media to communicate with one another about who needs help and where. 
Now, a new initiative call

Some fake stories depict an alternate reality that is close enough to the truth to be plausible. That's the case of a tale about UFC fighter Conor McGregor that has gone viral. 
SEE ALSO: Why the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight is so gross
McGregor's journey from humble beginnings in Crumlin (a working class part of the northside of Dublin) to MMA superstardom is the stuff that legends are made of.  
However, a version of his personal story claims his longtime girlfriend Dee Devlin "resc

Weather forecasters have a difficult enough time convincing people of the forecast on a typical day. But what happens when an event like Tropical Storm Harvey comes along, bringing hazards well beyond anyone's experience?
Meteorologists expressed a sense of queasiness and helplessness as their worst fears about Harvey were realized. Yes, they accurately communicated the potential for epic amounts of rain and life-threatening flooding. But still, lives were lost. 
In the days leading up to t

Last night, some customers who had preordered an Essential phone received an email asking for a copy of their driver’s license, ostensibly to verify their address in an attempt to prevent fraud.
Dozens of customers replied with their personal information, but those emails didn’t just go to Essential; they went out to everybody who had received the original email. That means that an unknown number of Essential customers are now in possession of each other’s drivers license, birt

It's called "batting the cycle" in the Cracker Barrel community and few, if any, have ever done it.
Ray and Wilma Yoder, a couple from Indiana, have done the unthinkable. After forty long years, they have finally accomplished their goal of visiting every Cracker Barrel location in the United States. 
It is an unprecedented feat, and one of humanity's greatest achievements. 
SEE ALSO: Amazon is already slashing Whole Foods prices by up to 43%You'll never guess how many Cracker Barrel lo

The start of Blizzard's premiere Overwatch esports league is just around the corner, and the owners of London team need help coming up with a name.
SEE ALSO: 'Overwatch' League pros guaranteed at least $50,000 a year plus benefits
The Overwatch League's London franchise, owned by Jack Etienne, CEO and co-founder of esports team organization Cloud9, reached out to the world through Cloud9's Twitter with a link to a survey asking for team name suggestions (which would manifest as London [Team Name

If you've been feeling like something is missing with your sneakers—something like neon flowers, animals and rainbows—you're in luck. 
Two pairs of the Reebok Classic Leather shoes have been totally revamped with a '90s Lisa Frank aesthetic, thanks to a new collaboration between the two companies. Finally, some footwear to match those Lisa Frank pajamas. 
SEE ALSO: This unicorn tape dispenser basically poops rainbows, like any good unicorn should
Only here's the catch: they

There’s a new smartwatch in Samsung’s portfolio and its purpose is stated by its name: the Gear Sport. Launching at a gala event at Berlin’s Tempodrom today, the Gear Sport follows in the path defined by the Gear S3, marrying familiar design cues from the traditional watch industry with the functionality people expect from a modern smart device.
As a fitness tracker, the Samsung Gear Sport will be able to record swimming sessions with the preloaded Speedo On app (it’s rat

Accompanying the new Gear Sport smartwatch, Samsung is introducing a new fitness band, in the shape of the Gear Fit2 Pro, that shares the same highlight feature of being able to track swimming. In terms of appearance and basic specs, this is no great departure from the Gear Fit2 that the Pro is replacing, but the big deal is that Samsung has upgraded the waterproofing to a depth of 50 meters and it’s also added a continuous heart rate tracker that will keep a constant watchful eye on your