Technology news

Last week, Dutch Police seized the servers for anonymous image board Anon-IB, after a year-long investigation. The image board has been notorious for its use as a repository for revenge porn, as well as well-trafficked threads from users that identified the women in the images.
Anon-IB was a free, anonymous message board that allowed users to post images, and was organized by location and subject. It was part of an online ecosystem where users traded images back and forth like trading cards.Thi

Lucasfilm has released a featurette called “Becoming Solo,” which delves into the world of its upcoming film, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and where its titular hero fits into it.
Solo director Ron Howard opens the video by saying that this film shows off a world that we really haven’t seen much of in the franchise: one in which the Empire holds complete control. He notes that everyone is struggling to survive, and that Han is a rare “free spirit.”“You end up get

For as wild as concept cars tend to be, they can also be pretty similar. They all boast beefy specifications, extreme designs, and — these days — lots of the same futuristic features. They tend to fall into three camps: flashy luxury or sports cars with lots of bells and whistles, more utilitarian concepts built to embrace our seemingly inevitable autonomous future, or a mish-mosh of both. That’s what’s refreshing about this wild new one from DS, which is a division of t

Pop Camera is an app that turns your camera into an old-school toy camera without the clunkiness of buying said camera or fussing with film. The app has been around for a few years, but I’ve just started discovering how fun it can be to shoot with. The app lets you take photos using different modes that replicate effects from cheap cameras that produce random imperfections like light leaks, vignettes, and oversaturation in photographs.
This app simulates those and lets you have access to

Sprintand T-Mobile,after years of going back and forth as to whether they are going to tie up two of the largest telecom providers in the U.S., have announced that the two companies have entered a merger agreement this morning.
The merger will be an all-stock transaction, and will now be subject to regulatory approval. That latter part is going to be its biggest challenge, because it will not only tie up the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers into the U.S. into a single unit, but also that international o

The number of major wireless carriers in the United States could shrink from four to three. Sprint and T-Mobile have announced that they intend to merge. The merger will need to be approved by regulators and the company’s shareholders.The combined company will be based in Bellevue Washington and will be called T-Mobile. Current T-Mobile CEO John Legere will run the combined company, while T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert will become the new company’s COO and President. T-Mobile’s maj

A typical episode of reality TV show Shark Tank is all about talk. Hopeful entrepreneurs have just a few minutes to sell their strange ideas to a panel of potential investors; how they explain their product is often more important than the product itself. So when two contestants enter a room to be greeted only with the sound of shuffling papers and the wet slap of munching mouths, the vibe takes a sharp turn into uncomfortable.That’s the point of “no-dialogue” videos, a YouTub

In its opening weekend, Marvel Studio’s latest superhero film Avengers: Infinity War has broken the record for highest box-office total in its debut weekend, raking in $250 million, according to Deadline. It surpasses the record previously set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which pulled in $247 million when it debuted in 2015.Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of a decade of superhero films, and had a lot of momentum going into the weekend: it pulled in $39 million on Thursday ni

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play, we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
My first experience with an exploratory “walking game” was the 2008 Half-Life 2 mod Dear Esther. Half-Life 2 was several years old when the mod was released, approaching the twilight realm of last-generation graphics: too old to impress, too new to inspire nostalgia. A

Mild spoilers ahead for Silicon Valley’s Season 5, Episode 3
In a recent episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley, Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) reveals that he mines bitcoin as a side gig — but only when the price is above a certain value. He creates an alert that plays the 1.36 second death metal song “You Suffer” by Napalm Death whenever bitcoin rises or drops so he can remote toggle his rig at home. Given the volatility of bitcoin and the volume of the song, this quickly beco

A British driver has pled guilty to dangerous driving after a fellow driver took video of him sleeping in the passenger seat, while his Tesla S 60 drove on its own with Autopilot, according to BBC News (via Jalopnik).Bhavesh Patel was spotted by a fellow driver sleeping in the passenger seat while his Autopilot was engaged on the M1 near Hemel Hempstead on May 21st, 2017. The Hertfordshire Police note that the car was set to drive at 40 MPH, and that Patel had left the steering wheel and contro

A British driver has pled guilty to dangerous driving after a fellow driver took video of him sitting in the passenger seat, while his Tesla S 60 drove on its own with Autopilot, according to BBC News (via Jalopnik).Bhavesh Patel was spotted by a fellow driver sitting in the passenger seat while his Autopilot was engaged on the M1 near Hemel Hempstead on May 21st, 2017. The Hertfordshire Police note that the car was set to drive at 40 MPH, and that Patel had left the steering wheel and controls

Phone Case of the Month is a monthly series in which we live with, and subsequently review, our time with a phone case. Phone cases are one of our only ways to express individuality with our smartphones, so what do our phone case choices say about us?
I’ve found my favorite phone case. I’m done — let’s wrap this series up because this cherry case can’t be topped. I bought it in Flushing, New York at a store where I previously bought a different case. This cherry ca

Some places in the world are extremely well-suited to incubating and cultivating startups and startup culture. You’ve already heard of the most important ones, of course: Silicon Valley, New York, London… the big names. But there’s another place that you may not think of as being in the top worldwide locations for startups, even though it’s probably the most exciting place anywhere for business these days: China! Yeah, you heard that right! Your startup, whatever it is,

On Sunday, private space company Blue Origin will launch its third New Shepard rocket, according to founder Jeff Bezos. The launch is scheduled to take place at 11:15AM EDT / 10:15AM CDT, and will be live streamed.
This will be the eighth overall flight for the New Shepard, and the second flight for this particular vehicle. The first launched on April 29th, 2015 (three years ago tomorrow), but crashed. Blue Origin then successfully launched and landed its second New Shepard in November that yea

Type with your brain. “Hear” with your skin. And in the event of an emergency, here’s a helicopter to the rescue with some free internet access. The marquee announcements of last year’s F8 developer conference found Facebook at the peak of its ambition, as Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives sketched out a vision in which Facebook delivered bleeding-edge technology powered by state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and a thriving developer ecosystem.
Then the perso

  The plastic bottles we throw away today will be around for hundreds of years. It’s one of the key reasons why the mounting plastic pollution problem, which is having a deadly effect on marine life, is so serious. But scientists recently discovered a strain of bacteria that can literally eat the plastic used to make bottles, and have now improved it to make it work faster. The effects are modest – it’s not a complete solution to plastic pollution – but it does show

If you listen to headlines about Facebook recently you may be wondering if it’s still a good place to run ads for your business.  The Facebook privacy scandal that brought a ton negative press over the last month (and justly so), has already forced Facebook to change the way they handle and collect consumer information and data. This is now changing their advertising platform. And there are more changes to come. But before you have panic attack and pull your company’s or client

  In light of the Facebook data scandal, more people are beginning to challenge the web’s pervasive surveillance culture. But few British citizens seem to be aware of the government’s own online surveillance regime – significant parts of which have been deemed unlawful. The UK government broke EU law under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA), the Court of Appeal ruled in January. The regime – colloquially known as the Snoopers’ Charter &nda