Technology news

Every two years, for a few weeks, we all get to enjoy a global phenomenon that brings many countries together: Leslie Jones live-tweeting the Olympics.
Since the Opening Ceremony kicked off the Winter Games yesterday, the Saturday Night Live comedian has returned to Twitter with her enthusiasm, her jokes, and her sheer patriotism. It is a joy.
SEE ALSO: The Netherlands celebrated their Winter Olympics win by trolling Trump
Two years ago during the Rio Summer Games, Jones was a breakout star for

All is not well for Snapchat. The app has ticked off its most loyal users with its latest redesign which merges your friends' snap messages with their Stories. 
It's the app's first major #facepalm. But good news! There's a way to switch back to the old Snapchat, and we're gonna show you how do it. But it does come with one big catch.
SEE ALSO: 9 Snapchat Sins You're Probably Guilty of
Twitter user Clare James posted step-by-step instructions Friday on how to revert back to the old Snapchat

GUEST: The decentralized age, enabled by cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, is coming fast. We are witnessing the wholesale reinvention of the world’s financial system. When all is said and done, it is going to be fairer, more democratic, and will empower billions of people. And those crypto-millionaires — who you secretly begrudge for ‘not having earned it’ or ‘just getting lucky’ — they’re the people who are going to make this happen.
Ea

What's the difference between BITCOIN and BITC0IN? 
Well, using latter might help you reach millions of people thanks to Facebook's poorly enforced rules of advertising cryptocurrencies. 
SEE ALSO: Facebook bans cryptocurrency ads due to frequent fraud
Facebook announced last month that it would begin prohibiting ads promoting "financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offering

There's a new music video app taking over the App Store.
It's called Like, and it combines Musical.ly-like videos with augmented reality effects, to create what the app's creators call "music magic."
SEE ALSO: Why Facebook and Instagram should kill the Like button
On its surface, the app is a lot like Muscial.ly or Dubsmash or number of other social music video apps. Users pick a song — the app features popular songs you can use as soundtracks for your creations — and record videos t

The 2018 Pyeongchang Games are officially underway and now it's a race to see which country scores the most golds and overall medals in the next two weeks.
On Saturday, The Netherlands pulled off a medals sweep in the women's 3,000-meter speed skating event, making them the first country to collect gold, silver, and bronze medals for this round of games. And how did they celebrate? By throwing some shade at President Trump, of course!
SEE ALSO: Ranking every sport in the Winter Olympics, even th

When it comes to worldwide revenue in mobile games, Chinese and Japanese companies are starting to dominate the charts, according to measurement firm Sensor Tower.
Sony has a big hit on its hands with the role-playing game Fate/Grand Order, which took the top position from Mixi’s big hit Monster Strike. While the two Japanese companies slug it out, Tencent’s Honor of Kings held the No. 3 position.
Candy Crush Saga from King and Clash Royale from Supercell were the only Western games

If you've ignored all of your friends and still haven't subscribed for MoviePass, because you're convinced that the absurdly low price will drop even further. Well, you clever bastard, you were right.
MoviePass has a new limited time offer that drops the staggeringly low price of their service from $10 per month to $7.95 per month (with a $19.95 processing fee). Of course, with the service you can see one movie a day at participating theaters, and have more in common with everyone you work with.

It turns out that Apple’s HomePod is expensive to repair: an out-of-warranty device will run 80 percent of the cost of a new one at $279. Fortunately, the company will repair the device’s built in cord for $29“in some instances,” according to 9to5Mac.9to5Mac viewed an internal memo sent to stores and authorized service providers, which includes directions for employees to diagnose issues, and to make sure that the device hasn’t been damaged by the user. If the devi

Elon Musk probably won't send you into space anytime soon, but if you want to see what it would like to be up close and personal with Starman and his Tesla, there's always Snapchat. 
SEE ALSO: SpaceX just launched the Falcon Heavy, its most powerful rocket, and landed 2 boosters
A new Snapchat lens appears as a portal to space. Users can enter, see Starman, and walk right back out. Here's a video of a user testing it in New York's Grand Central Terminal:
That lens is just one of the latest

VLC, the world's best open-source media player (it plays like virtually every format), just reached a big milestone in its 17-year history.
The free app's been updated to version 3.0 "Vetinari" and with it comes a hefty list of new features like the ability to natively play 360-degree videos and HDR content.
You can find the full list of detailed feature additions on the VideoLAN Organization's website. We've plucked out the four most important new features.
1. Supports HDR videosPhones like the

GUEST: Fran gracefully glides around the grand ballroom, sparkling pink ball gown flowing at her heals and the firm grip of her son’s arm around her waist. They are surrounded by friends and family as they elegantly move around the room in perfect harmony, looking as though they must have practiced for hours. Fran is celebrating her 90th birthday in style, and although Parkinson’s disease has limited her mobility over the last decade, today technology is enabling the joy of movement

Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, known for his moody, minimalist scores for films such as Sicario, and Arrival has died, according to a post on his official Facebook page. Jóhannsson was 48 years old, and no cause of death has been given.Jóhannsson grew up in Reykjavík, and played guitar in a variety of indie rock bands before founding a music label that encouraged collaboration between various musical genres, which sparked his own musical experiments. He

New Horizons, the first NASA spacecraft to fly by Pluto, is still making history as it cruises deeper into the distant edges of the Solar System. Late last year, the little probe used one of its cameras to take a picture of a galactic star cluster — officially snapping the most distant picture from Earth ever made.
The previous record holder for the farthest picture was NASA’s Voyager 1. The probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn before heading out to interstellar space, captured a

About a year ago, my team and I were just starting to build our MVP. Back then we were a small team of three and had a huge vision. Fast forward to three months ago: a team of six and an entry ticket to Y Combinator. And today, we’re an incredible team of nine, best I could think of, living in Sunnyvale, California and taking part in the prestigious Y Combinator program to accelerate our already rapid pace. All sorts of different startups, from different stages, take part in Y Combinator.

I got around to seeing I, Tonya last weekend, and it was just so good that pieces of it kept coming back to me for days. In particular, there are these wonderful moments where Margot Robbie is skating around the ice, the world spinning around her, but you can see her face snap back and forth between joy and exasperation — this wonderful, momentary elation of knowing you’re a success, and the terrible falls of realizing everything around you is breaking apart.
I’ve seen some pe

While the Olympics games kicked off, the stock market sinks, and a day after a government shutdown, President Trump tweeted in defense of an accused serial abuser.
The story of now-former aide Rob Porter has dominated much of the news cycle this week. After physical abuse allegations surfaced from two of his ex wives, Chief of Staff John Kelly sent out a memo defending him on Tuesday. When pictures of injuries that Porter allegedly caused came out the next day, he left the job, though it's uncle

GUEST: Today, Danilo Campos is a successful programmer in New York City. He previously served as the technical lead for Github, one of the rising giants in Silicon Valley and currently the largest open source web development platform in the world.
His story began in New York City at 2 years old. He grew up in public housing with a single immigrant mother. So how did he go from living in public housing to working at some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies? He cites one life-changi

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Ah, online dating. If you've dated in the past 20 years, you've likely encountered one – or all – of the myriad dating sites in some form. 
And as we've increasingly moved our lives online, digital dating's finally shed the stigma it once carried, leaving people free to meet others however they choose.
SEE ALSO: Ho

Roast Tinder bios that say "6'1", since that matters" all you want, but a good portion of us are goddamn thankful for online dating.
Some grandparents and fake deep Twitter still insist that online dating takes away from that raw conversation that can only be had in person. But if you think about it, online dating technically fosters many more face-to-face interactions with people that you probably wouldn't have met otherwise. And let's be real: As much as we all want a romance novel meet cute,

Three years ago, the National Park Service banned trucks and buses heavier than 10 tons from crossing over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, a major transportation artery connecting Virginia to Washington D.C. And there's speculation that the U.S. Secret Service now refuses to cross the 82-year-old concrete span, though the agency would not confirm whether this was the case. 
From afar, the bridge's neoclassical design — finished with sculptures of eagles and bas relief of bison —

Valentine’s Day is four days away, and if you need to get a gift for someone special in your life and haven’t yet, it’s crunch time. Amazon is already a major go-to when it comes to last-minute gifts with its free two-day shipping for Prime members, but now it’s slashed prices on a number of its major devices, so you can get a present at a discount and get it quickly.
If you’re not in the market for an Amazon device, other retailers are offering some really nice di

When North and South Korean athletes walked out together during the Pyeonchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony Friday, most people present cheered it as a sign of possible peace during a tumultuous time. 
But not Vice President Mike Pence.
Pence and his wife Karen were in attendance for the Parade of Nations as competing athletes of the world filed in. Athletes from North and South Korea entered together, wearing matching outfits and waving flags. The stadium erupted in cheers for the symb

Did you just pick up Apple's new HomePod smart speaker? Better pray it doesn't break, because it's expensive AF to repair it.
Apple's published service and repair details for HomePod on its website and — holy sh*t — it'll cost HomePod owners a whopping $280 to repair or replace the dang thing if they don't have AppleCare+.
SEE ALSO: 10 things you (probably) didn't know about Apple's HomePod
For those who are paying attention, that's nearly as much as the HomePod speaker itself, which

Traditional flush toilets aren’t an option in many parts of the world, but neither is leaving people with unsafe and unhygenic choices. Now, one company is piloting a new loo that’s waterless, off-grid and able to charge your phone. Lina Zeldovich travels to Madagascar to witness the start of a lavatorial revolution. Eleonore Rartjarasoaniony – a 47-year-old mother, daughter and small-shop owner in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo – s

Not many investors have the expertise to invest in the hit-or-miss video game business. But Jon Goldman has figured it out.
He is a venture partner at Greycroft, the early-stage venture capital firm in Los Angeles that has had big exits such as Maker Studios (bought by Disney), Buddy Media (bought by Salesforce.com), and Braintree (bought by PayPal). He has invested in numerous game companies through Greycroft, but he recently created a new way to invest on his own through the GC VR Gaming Track

Throughout its history, science fiction has imagined how humanity might meet its cosmic neighbors. How would the first contact with aliens go? Authors have imagined a variety of scenarios, from the desire for amicable partnership between humanoid species, to genocidal hostility between lifeforms that we barely recognize. In Sue Burke’s debut novel Semiosis, she imagines contact in a unique way: first contact not with animal-like life, but between humans and a planet full of intelligent pl

I remember cringing when the video for Weezer's song "Pork and Beans" came out in 2008. Now, I look back on it with nostalgia for a simpler time on the internet.
Lead singer Rivers Cuomo wrote the tune after meeting with the band's label, Geffen. According to Rolling Stone, the band was asked during the meeting to produce more "commercial-sounding tunes," and as a result they created "Pork and Beans" as a defiant middle finger. 
Weezer may have been trying not to conform to conventional ste

I've always believed that virtual reality has huge potential as an entertainment platform, and clearly some directors are still with me. Oculus supported five "experiences" that premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, one of which landed a seven-figure deal. 
The experiences are innovative and interesting — but they're suffering from an identity crisis. 
SEE ALSO: Someone had a seizure in VR and nobody knew what to do
A few months ago I sampled "Coco VR," a "VR Experienc

There was no shortage of media from Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch this week. A computer-rendered animation prepared us all for the spectacle, set to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” as a kind of galactic music video. Everything was live-streamed as it happened. Then afterward, the viral video clip of the two booster rockets landing in tandem after the successful launch was certainly impressive, even if the third booster missed its mark. But the real iconic im

Microsoft has started testing a new Bluetooth feature for Windows 10 that will be available in the next major update. Windows 10 testers can try the quicker and more convenient Bluetooth pairing in the latest Windows 10 build 17093 released earlier this week. Surface Precision Mouse is the first device enabled with streamlined pairing, meaning Windows 10 will now produce a notification to quickly connect to the mouse and pair it.
It’s far better than having to dig into settings and find t

It seems like every year around this time — the down period between the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona — I find a new mobile game to consume my spare minutes and hours. In 2017, it was the dangerously involving Egg Inc., and this year it’s a beguilingly simple block puzzle title called Slidey.
Slidey is a member of the vast and diverse genre of games remixing the classic Tetris formula. You are faced with an endless supply of squa

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Creating a strong password requires a complex combo of letters, numbers, and special characters. Oh, and you should be able to remember it.
Of course, that’s the hard part. Most of us have lost hours of our lives pounding the keyboard trying password after password, before giving in and clicking &ldqu

Facebook’s VR app Quill is getting a major update with animation tools that can bring hand-made creations to life.
Quill was born during the development of Dear Angelica, an immersive story which puts you in a series of 3D scenes sketched in VR by hand. You can move through these scenes listening to audio which completes the impactful storytelling experience. But the Quill-based work, which was nominated for an Emmy, lacked animation which could make that kind of story come

The world of Monsters Inc. is coming to Kingdom Hearts III. The announcement was made, appropriately enough, at a Tokyo Disneyland theater as part of D23 Expo Japan 2018. The latest entry in Square Enix’s surreal, hugely popular Disney-meets-Final-Fantasy crossover series remains pegged for a 2018 release on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with nothing more specific announced today.
Series director Tetsuya Nomura showed some behind-the-scenes videos that detailed the game’s producti

You’ve likely heard of an elevator pitch, but have you heard of an ice hole pitch? 
SEE ALSO: Everything you need to understand the Uber-Waymo legal battle
Polar Bear Pitching, as it’s called, is perhaps the most extreme form of startup pitch competitions. Participants withstand snow, ice, and sub-zero temperatures for an opportunity to win €10,000, among other prizes. There is no time limit, but there is one catch: Entrepreneurs must stand waist-deep in the Baltic Sea for

More than 1,200 drones lit up the sky at the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics. 
That's a Guinness World Record for the most unmanned drones flown simultaneously, beating the previous record of 500 in Germany in 2016. Both records involved Intel's Shooting Star drones. 
The 1,218-drone light show in South Korea was pre-recorded. Still, 300 of them made a live appearance at the opening ceremony, forming the shape of the Olympic rings.
SEE ALSO: DJI Mavic Air is its smallest, smar