Technology news

Stripe will no longer supporting bitcoin payments by April this year, the company announced today. Stripe said that customers aren’t using bitcoin as a method of payment as often anymore. The company plans to slowly end support with the cutoff point being April 23rd.
It’s a total reversal of the company’s position four years ago, when it announced it would become the first payment platform to accept bitcoin, citing bitcoin’s potential to be bought by anyone. At the time,

Rapper and noted cannabis connoisseur Snoop Dogg — aka Twitch user Doggydogg20 — spent some some leisure time today streaming SOS, a survival game currently in early access that he declared was “dope as fuck.” Naturally, he spent the entire stream smoking a blunt.Snoop makes an appearance on Twitch from time to time; the multi-talented performer is actually pretty good at it, too, whether he’s on a killstreak out or offering advice to his fellow players. As Snoop s

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but a crawling baby picks up hella dirt — or, more specifically, a bunch of bacteria, dead skin cells, and maybe even some fungal spores. In order to better understand just how much of these gross particles babies are inhaling, researchers over at Purdue built a “simplified robot crawling infant.”This tinfoil-wrapped cyclops, spotted by Boing Boing, mashes its golf club-like — arms? — arms onto the floor to simulate how much dust a

President Donald Trump may be “terrified” of sharks — but, ironically, his wish that “all the sharks die” is inspiring people to give money to shark conservation groups, according to MarketWatch.Several non-profits have recently received donations that specifically mention Trump as the reason for charity. And many are new donors, including several from outside of the US. For instance, one donation to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society came with the comment “Be

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
For the past several years, theater owners have been visibly struggling to find gimmicks to keep film lovers from abandoning movie theaters in favor of their own audiovisual setups at home. The rise of 3D and 4D films, the movement toward luxury seating and gourmet food in theaters, the push toward higher technical st

Nothing’s older than a fear of the apocalypse. Popular stories about the apocalypse date back until at least The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian poem featuring a world-ending flood and a vengeful god, written around 2100 BC.But how have our visions of the end of the world changed through popular media like movies, and what can that tell us about staving it off?Scientists at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability — including director Peter Kareiva and undergra

Dom Hofmann, one of the co-founders of shortform video platform Vine, has been hard at work on a successor to the now-defunct mobile app he’s simply calling just v2. Since announcing his intentions at the end of November “without a plan” and to “force the issue,” former Vine fans, users, and those who just want to see the app’s more innocent and comedic spirit resurrected have offered feedback and seemingly endless enthusiasm for the project.Hofmann, whose da

Ahead of the National Association of Music Merchants show (NAMM), Alesis has announced the second generation of its legacy keytar, the Vortex Wireless 2. The keytar, which has 37 velocity-sensitive keys with aftertouch, features a new fader interface on the front and comes bundled with more software than its predecessor.
Alesis came out with the Vortex keytar in 2012, and the first generation of the wireless version debuted in 2014. While it wasn’t the first USB keytar controller (that no

Google has announced today that it’s expanding the Voice Match feature on Google Assistant to support separate Netflix profiles, via Android Police.
Now, you’ll be able to attach individual Netflix profiles on your account to the various Google profiles you have set up on a Google Assistant device (like a Google Home). Just like Assistant can offer personalized information through Voice Match for bringing up calendars or commute times, now, (at least in theory), when you ask Google

At this point, it’s practically tradition to see photoshopped Coachella line-up posters pop up right after the official line-up has been released, but there’s always a couple of gems that stand out from the rest. AI community Botnik Studios, makers behind viral hits like the AI-generated Harry Potter fanfic, just released their take on the Coachella band line-up poster. The list was generated by training a neural network on thousands of band names, and includes must-see acts like &l

Electronic cigarettes may be less risky than the regular kind, but that still doesn’t mean they’re safe, according to the most exhaustive review of the research yet.The booming, $10-billion vaping industry is expected to grow to $34 billion by 2021, but there’s still a lot scientists don’t know about how e-cigarettes affect health. So Congress asked a panel of experts to wade through more than 800 scientific studies. The result, published today by the National Academies

If you want to buy a drone, your best bet has long been DJI. But even while it apparently has the market cornered, DJI seems intent on filling it up with incrementally better models so that no one else can squeeze in.
The introduction of the Mavic Air today gives DJI an even tighter hold on the sub-$1,000 space. As of last year, DJI’s drone lineup started at $500 (since reduced to $400) with the Spark. But now, instead of forcing you to jump straight up to $1,000 for something more capabl

Blizzard’s colorful team-shooter Overwatch is getting a big update today. That includes a new map, the theme-park inspired “Blizzard World,” which was first announced at Blizzcon back in November. The new level is essentially an amusement park based on all of the developer’s properties, with everything from a Hearthstone tavern to a Diablo crypt to do battle in. “Blizzard World” is available for all players now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Perhaps even more exci

No one is going to win the X Prize Foundation’s competition to send a spacecraft to the Moon, the foundation announced today. Only five finalists remained in the Google-sponsored Lunar X Prize competition, and in order to win any grand prize money, the teams had to launch and complete their missions to the Moon before March 31st, 2018. But with only two months until the deadline, no team is ready to launch, so Google will keep the prize money instead.
“After close consultation with

Apple has rolled out a new security update to protect older operating systems against the Meltdown bug, the most easily exploitable of the processor vulnerabilities made public earlier this year. Patches for macOS High Sierra were released on January 8th, but the patch did not apply to older versions of the operating system. Today’s update brings the same protections to Sierra (version 10.12.6) and El Capitan (version 10.11.6).
It’s the latest in a string of patches Apple has releas

Tinder isn’t using encryption to keep your photos safe from strangers who are sharing the same coffee shop Wi-Fi as you, security researchers found in a report today. Researchers from the Tel Aviv-based firm Checkmarx found that Tinder’s iOS and Android mobile apps still lack basic HTTPS encryption, meaning that anyone sharing the same Wi-Fi as you can see your Tinder photos or add their own into the photostream.The firm built a proof-of-concept app called TinderDrift, demoed on You

It’s officially 2018, which means the time has come to stop looking back at last year’s iPhone X and iPhone 8 models, and to start looking forward as the rumor mill starts to spin up for the next iPhones.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo already started this year’s rumor cycle off with predictions of three new iPhone models, and now he’s added some details as to what exactly to expect, via MacRumors.According to Kuo, Apple will release an updated version of the iPhone

Apple’s latest iOS beta release, under version number 11.2.5, arrived today with support for the company’s new HomePod speaker. More importantly, for those who don’t intend to buy Apple’s $350 Sonos competitor, this newest iOS release is also bringing a Siri-delivered news briefing. Now, iPhone and iPad owners can ask Siri to read the news and get a daily podcast briefing from The Washington Post, which is the default. Other options include Fox News, NPR, and CNN. News o

The driver of a Tesla Model S who crashed into a fire truck on a California freeway says he was using Autopilot at the time of the accident, and so far, Tesla isn’t refuting this claim.“Autopilot is intended for use only with a fully attentive driver,” a Tesla spokesperson said when asked to confirm the driver’s assertion that he was using Autopilot when his vehicle smashed into the back of a fire engine at 65 mph. Tesla has the ability to examine a vehicle’s data

Samsung’s 850 line of SSDs has basically ruled as the most popular and reliable solid-state drive for most consumers since it was released back in 2014. And while Samsung has released a few incremental updates over the years to increase storage capacity, the company has announced the first true successor to the iconic 850 Evo and 850 Pro drives: the 860 Evo and 860 Pro.
As one might be able to guess from the incremental shift in the names, the new models aren’t a massive leap forwar

Today, Apple finally announced a shipping date for its smart speaker, the HomePod. And something about the launch of this Apple music device reminds me of the launch of that other Apple music device, the iPod.“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” said Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda on Slashdot on October 1st, 2001. (The Nomad, if you’re wondering, was a pre-iPod MP3 player that was the size and shape of a Sony Discman in its early incarnations. So.) At the time, Slas

A man at an electronics store in China decided to give a smartphone battery his own litmus test by biting it. The battery ruptured and caused a small explosion. The spectacle, captured by the store’s CCTV security cameras, was uploaded to Miaopai, a Chinese video sharing platform similar to the now-defunct Vine. It has since garnered 4.69 million views.
According to Taiwan News, the man was in the store on January 19th to replace his iPhone battery. It’s not clear which store he was

Google has announced that it’s now selling audiobooks on the Google Play Store, filling out its offerings of movies, music, TV, and ebooks. The new titles are available on Android, iOS, and the web. They’re also available via the Google Assistant, the company’s biggest product push right now, meaning you can play an audiobook on your home smart speaker, continue it in your car, and keep listening on your phone.To go along with the launch, Google is offering very deep discounts

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Over the past decade, the world post-apocalypse has become a familiar setting, with numerous movies and TV shows exploring what happens to people when the order and structure of society falls down around them. For her newest film, I Think We’re Alone Now, director Reed Morano (The Handmaid’s Tale) jumps in

Elon Musk’s subterranean side project, the Boring Company, went before the Culver City Council last night with its proposal to dig a 6.5-mile “proof-of-concept” tunnel underneath Los Angeles, with the goal of solving the region’s traffic woes.The Boring Company has already received approval for and built a two-mile “test tunnel” underneath SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. This new, longer stretch would be used to perform verification test

Last week, right-wing circles were buzzing over a secret memo written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), ostensibly detailing corruption in FBI surveillance practices. It’s unclear how much is in the memo itself — even the FBI hasn’t seen it — but it didn’t stop skeptics from rallying behind the cause, launching #releasethememo into trending topics on both Twitter and Facebook.
Now, that campaign has come under investigation for Russian interference. In a letter to Mark Z

Last night, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck southeast of Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, prompting a tsunami warning that forced people to flee to higher grounds in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the tsunami waves were less than a foot high, and the advisories were canceled a little after 4AM local time. So why was Alaska so lucky?
Powerful quakes that happen out at sea are known to cause destructive tsunamis. In 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake in northeastern Japan triggered waves

After months of rumors and limited rollouts, Instagram is officially adding GIF support to its Stories feature. Starting today, you can now plaster dancing cats and flying cheeseburgers over your photos and videos. The options are endless with hundreds of thousands of moving stickers to choose from thanks to GIPHY integration. Instagram is also announcing an upcoming feature that will let users upload photos and videos of any size to Stories, so you’ll no longer be forced to awkwardly cro

KFC loves a good PR stunt, and Circuit Breaker is cool with them so long as they cleverly involve gadgets. Today, the fast-food chain announced that its new, India-only Smoky Grilled Wings will come packaged in a box with detachable drone parts. Although customers will have to look up instructions online, they can eventually assemble the box and its parts to turn it into a Bluetooth-connected drone.
The company’s calling the box a "KFO,” or Kentucky Flying Object," which I guess is

Half a year after taking preorders for its very first smartphone, RED says that the Hydrogen One phone is still months away from being released. But it does at least have a timeline: the phone is supposed to enter mass production and then ship sometime this summer.
Jim Jannard, RED’s CEO and founder, gave the update yesterday afternoon in a post on the company’s forums, where he also announced a few new specs for the pricey “holographic-display” smartphone and gave some

As if the Hawaii false missile alert incident wasn’t embarrassing enough already, Hawaii’s governor has now admitted that he took 15 minutes longer to tweet a reassurance because he had forgotten his Twitter password.Governor David Ige (D) was informed of the erroneous notification only two minutes after it was pushed out at 8:07 AM HST, but he didn’t tweet that it was a false alarm to his 7,687 followers until 8:24 AM. “I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitt

Adobe has updated Photoshop CC today with two significant new additions: first is the option to scale the interface all the way up to 400 percent, and the other is a new Select Subject tool that ameliorates the chore of separating your subject from the background of an image.
When I reviewed Dell’s excellent but also super expensive 8K desktop monitor last year, I was disappointed to find that Photoshop — one of the ideal apps to exploit such a pixel-heavy display — only had t