Technology news

The first season of Netflix’s The Punisher arrived at an awkward time in America’s history with gun violence, but that isn’t stopping the streaming service from bringing it back for a second season. Netflix made the announcement today in a post on the show’s Facebook page, simply noting that “Season 2 is coming.” The Marvel series follows Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), who takes the law into his own hands — along with a whole lot of guns.
Almost as an unin

Twitter is seeing a Tuesday rush of spam from an unofficial app claiming itself to be “Twitter Video.” When a user falls for the guise and authorizes the app, it starts auto-tweeting from their account. A fake video titled “Baby Poops in His Onesie, But Dog’s Response Leaves Millions of People in Hysterics” has seemingly resulted in a wave of people falling for the hoax.The spam has affected Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, and others like Dwight Garn

A sweet older woman with the best intentions accidentally decorated her Christmas tree with a sparkly purple g-string. 
Twitter user Alex_Bermingham from Cork, Ireland shared the short story of her grandmother's hilarious accident on Monday. According to the tweet, her 74-year-old grandmother bought six Christmas ornaments that are see-through balls with g-string insides. And it looks like at least one ended up on her grandma's tree.
SEE ALSO: Pornhub gives you a whole new way to celebrate

The Moon glowed against tufts of eerie night clouds. A few hundred people joined Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, the Dutch founders of Studio Drift to wait in anticipation. If the winds kicked up, the hours of work invested in their installation would be for naught, but the sea looked calm. At 10PM an illuminated pack of 300 drones rose above the Miami beach shoreline, over high-rise hotels, and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean horizon.The work was called “Franchise Freedom” and w

Alabama election day has finally arrived, and Republican Senatorial candidate Roy Moore made his grand entrance to the polls on horseback. 
Moore — who's been banned from a mall, accused of sexual misconduct by 9 women, and alleged to have initiated a sexual encounter with a 12-year-old girl when he was 32 — probably thought arriving on a horse would be a nice distraction. But Twitter users and horse aficionados saw one glaring problem: the man's form was tragically terrible.&nb

A new generation of Samsung’s Galaxy A-series phones are rumored for a release this January, as reported by Android Police. A user manual was uploaded online to Samsung’s website, which provides minimal details on what we can expect for next year’s new A-series phones.It appears that the phones’ big highlight feature will be dual front-facing cameras, with Live Focus available for selfies, but there’s no information yet on how many megapixels they are. The manual al

Harry Potter fans who have already finished reading The Cursed Child and A Journey Through the History of Magic from the past two years have a new chapter in the story of the wizarding boy to tide them over—one brought to us not by J.K. Rowling, but by AI-generated text prediction. Botnik Studios created the three-page chapter, titled “Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash,” after training an algorithmic tool on all seven of the children’s

In February, Lana Del Rey decided to put a hex on the president.This was a month before she debuted the trailer for her album Lust for Life — a two-and-a-half-minute short film about how she recedes into her home (in the middle of the H in the Hollywood sign) to practice witchcraft and figure out what her “contribution to the world should be in these dark times.” Fans on Tumblr had long considered Lana a witch, mostly just based on her general aesthetic and some garden-variety

Take a ride on the Millennium Falcon made of cardboard, because you don't need CGI to visit a galaxy far, far away—just your imagination. Join the Homemade Movies crew for their last episode, on the appropriately titled, The Last Jedi.
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Watch the comparison with the original here
Watch the behind-the-scenes here Read more...More about Star Wars, Carrie Fisher, The Last Jedi, Homemade Movies, and Entertainment

Back in December 2015, the FAA announced that drone owners had to register any device over 0.55 pounds. The new rule was actually championed by big tech companies like Amazon and Google, and by drone industry players like Intel and DJI. Sensible regulations, they argued, would pave the way for faster growth of the industry overall.But lots of consumers, especially veteran hobbyists who had decades of experience flying RC aircraft under their belt, were upset. One drone owner took the FAA to cour

A new report from Norway’s Dagens Næringsliv claims that Tidal is running out of money while user growth has stalled. The report suggests that Tidal may only have around six months of working capital left.
In a statement to The Verge, a Tidal spokesperson said, “We have experienced negative stories about Tidal since its inception and we have done nothing but grow the business each year.”Tidal reportedly lost NOK$368 million (around $44 million) before taxes last year, acc

Private spaceflight company Blue Origin is back to launching rockets again after pulling off another successful launch and landing of its New Shepard tourist vehicle today. The sub-orbital rocket took off from the company’s facility in West Texas around noon ET, a source at Blue Origin confirmed to The Verge.
It’s the first big test flight the company has done in more than a year. In fact, Blue Origin has had a relatively quiet 2017 compared to the company’s previous years. In

Hisense today announced new Amazon Alexa integrations for two of its appliance products: its Wi-Fi-connected HiSmart air conditioner and HiSmart dehumidifier. The products, which are mainly controlled through iOS and Android mobile apps, can now change cooling settings, dehumidifying modes, and other features via voice, so long as you have an Echo device and sync your Alexa account to the account in Hisense’s mobile app.It’s not a super groundbreaking development, but it goes to show

Apple’s GymKit is here, so you can wirelessly sync fitness data between your watch and cardio machines at the gym — if you work out at Equinox or Life Time Athletic.Apple first announced GymKit back in June. GymKit-enabled machines are available now at Life Time Athletic at Sky in New York City. They will also be available at the 14 new clubs Life Time will open in 2018. Similarly, starting next year, new Equinox clubs will have GymKit-enabled machines too.I went to a demo Apple held

You can’t watch YouTube on an Echo Show anymore, but you can watch Twitch now, with the popular streaming website releasing an Alexa skill to play and navigate through Twitch content, via TechCrunch.
In addition to all the usual stuff you’d expect to be able to voice command Twitch to do — play a channel, discover new streamers, or watch a particular game — you’ll also be able to have Alexa notify you when your favorite channels start streaming, too.In theory, the A

YouTube today announced that its YouTube TV subscription service is now available in 34 additional markets and covers 80 metro areas in total. The $35-per-month streaming TV service offers an unlimited cloud DVR and live programming from over 40 channels (including the “big four” networks of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC).
Those broadcast networks are usually the biggest hurdle that slows expansion for YouTube TV and its competitors Sling TV, DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue, and Hulu’s l

The Last Guardian wasn’t the most technically accomplished game of last year, or the best designed. But it was one of the most memorable, thanks in large part to its star, a towering bird-cat-dog hybrid named Trico. Playing as a young boy, you built a powerful and lasting relationship with the creature, which felt more like a real living thing than anything I’d previously encountered in a virtual world. I still get chills thinking about the first time we met, and a little weepy when

Storify, a service that let users create stories by compiling posts from Twitter, Facebook, and more into an embeddable package, is shutting down in May 2018. As of today, no new Storify.com accounts can be created. At its heyday a few years ago, Storify was popular with storytellers and journalists for being an easy way to create and embed a timeline of various social media content into their work — similar to what Twitter’s Moments is today.
Existing customers can continue to use t

There are lots of HDR standards out there. Some might even say there are too many. But those standards largely are for brightness and color levels of different types of content. So long as the hardware supports the requirements of, say, HDR10 or Dolby Vision, you’ve been good to go.Vesa is a standards organization for displays — which you may recognize for its most well-known standard, the Flat Display Mounting Interface (aka the Vesa mount) — and it’s trying to make HDR

AT&T introduced two new plan updates for its customers traveling abroad. Through the company's Passport program, you can now choose between either $60 for 1GB of data or $120 for 3GB. The price is a one-time fee in both cases, and the package expires after 30 days, although you can set up a monthly recurring charge. Previously, Passport started at $40 a month for 200MB of data.AT&T also offers an International Day Pass, which costs $10 a day. With that program, users can access their sta

With the net neutrality debate raging at the FCC, it’s easy to forgot that net neutrality remains an issue inside of Congress, too — albeit a much, much quieter one. But at least one senator is still hoping to see some movement: on the Senate floor today, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) asked net neutrality supporters on “both sides of the aisle” to come work with him on a legislative solution.
“Congressional action is the only way to solve the endless back and forth on net

We’re less than two months away from the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, and the Olympic torch has been making its way across the country through the hands of athletes, boy-band members, and proud residents. On day 41 of the Olympic Torch Relay, HUBO the humanoid robot had the honor of passing the torch at its birthplace of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon. It walked about 500 feet to a wooden wall (painted to look like bricks), used a

Beverage companies are continuing to drink Elon Musk’s Kool-Aid. A few days after Anheuser-Busch made the largest preorder of Tesla’s all-electric Semi trucks, PepsiCo swooped in with the new top order. According to Reuters, the soda and snack giant has reserved 100 Semi trucks in a bid to reduce fleet emissions and cut down on fuel costs.Each reservation requires a $20,000 deposit, so that’s $2 million in Tesla’s bank account right now (assuming PepsiCo placed its order

Facebook today announced a new suite of augmented reality tools for Messenger the company is calling “world effects,” which basically let users drop real-time 3D objects into photos or videos within the camera frame. The technology builds on Facebook’s existing AR features, like the ability to add filters and masks to your face in a selfie, and it’s designed to make Messenger more interactive by leveraging the increasingly sophisticated computer vision capabilities of sma

French children won't be allowed to bring their phones into classrooms starting in September. The Guardian reports that while kids can still bring their phones into their schools, the devices have to stay locked away until the end of the day. This will apply to kids starting at the age of six and will last until they're around 15, or starting high school (aka secondary school).In addition to trying to minimize distractions, the French government says the ban sends a "public health message" becau

If you’d asked me two weeks ago how I felt about the live trivia app HQ, I would’ve told you I loved it. I like trivia generally, because I like puzzles and I like to win. Before HQ launched in October, most of the trivia games I played took place at dark bars with big groups of friends, everyone trying whisper the answers just loud enough to be heard over 90 decibels of music, but not so loud that competing teams could eavesdrop. If we won, the prize was usually a gift card to the b

Net neutrality advocates are asking people to call members of Congress this week to demand action. It’s a good idea to contact your senators and representatives to let them know where you stand on any issue, and expressing yourself in your own words is more meaningful than signing your name on a form letter. I would know; I used to do this professionally to help protect the national parks (which also need your help right now).But before you call, be prepared. Here are some tips:
Be respect

Instagram has started testing a new “recommended for you” section within the feeds of a small group of users. The new section will show you Instagram posts that your friends have liked or that the algorithm thinks will appeal to you directly in your feed, which could mark another major shift for the photo sharing service if the feature is officially rolled out.In a statement to The Verge, Instagram confirmed the test. “We're always testing new ways to connect you to interesting

When J.J. Abrams and writers Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt rebooted the Star Wars film franchise in 2015 with The Force Awakens — the first in a sequel trilogy, following the original Star Wars trifecta of 1977’s A New Hope, 1979’s The Empire Strikes Back, and 1983’s Return of the Jedi — they found a fairly winning formula that split the difference between respecting fans’ love for the original trilogy, and nudging the franchise into the future. They intro

 People often describe work as a rat race, but for a lot of engineers, that isn’t too far off. Take one Jira ticket off the queue, fix the bug or add the feature, mark the ticket as complete and move as quickly as possible to the next ticket. Engineering for many organizations — perhaps despite the intentions of management — ends up being more like a deli counter or an I Love… Read More

Last year, police in the Netherlands were ready to deploy a team of eagles to take down rogue drones. Now the police say they’ve stopped using the birds because training them is more expensive and complicated than they anticipated, reports Nos, as spotted by Gizmodo. The eagles wouldn’t always do what they were trained to do, and the police also doubted if the birds would perform well outside of their controlled training environment. Dutch police bought four sea eagle chicks after co

In 2015, when the Democrat-led FCC passed strong net neutrality regulations, one widely circulated photo became emblematic of the moment. In it, the three Democratic commissioners — Mignon Clyburn, Jessica Rosenworcel, and Tom Wheeler — linked hands and smiled from the dais, enjoying the moment before the vote. The two objecting Republicans on the Commission, including now-chairman Ajit Pai, are nowhere to be seenThis week, the commission will vote on a rollback of those rules, spear

Life is Strange, Dontnod’s episodic adventure game about a teenager with the power to manipulate time, is coming to iOS on December 14th. The game is up for preorder now as part of Apple’s newly launched feature.Life is Strange is a five-part adventure game in which players assume the role of Max Caulfield, a photography student who discovers she can rewind time. The game was previously released on consoles and PC in 2015 and garnered critical acclaim for its handling of tense topics

Algoriddim’s next generation of its DJ software, Djay Pro 2, has just been released, available for macOS. The program, meant for both amateur and professional DJs, allows users to mix music entirely within the app, or use in conjunction with external hardware for performing, the way Traktor and other DJ apps are used.
The few things that prevented Djay Pro from being true crossover professional software have now been added with the new version. Djay Pro 2 comes with, among other changes, a