Technology news

Maybe it's time we stopped with the pearl-clutching over video games.
Fortnite was big news on Tuesday, when the Wall Street Journal published a feature looking at parents who hire tutors to help their kids (and themselves) get good. 
The article itself is a fine example of non-biased journalism: There's no agenda, and the story works to inform and help people understand this growingly frequent practice without casting any judgments. But the response has been something else.
In 2018, folks

Recently, Google removed its long-time unofficial motto, “don’t be evil,” from its corporate code of conduct. If you need an understanding as to why they’d make such an update, here’s the perfect example.
The Intercept is reporting that the company is readying a censored version of its search engine in a custom Android app to launch in China.
To comply with the Chinese government’s strict internet censorship laws, Google’s China-only search engine app wo

Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, said today that he’ll be leaving the company later this month. The announcement comes just a day after Facebook — and to a large extent, Stamos — revealed that Facebook had discovered malicious actors who continue to use the platform to manipulate political discussions and organizing in the United States.
Stamos won’t be replaced after he leaves, meaning no one will hold the title of “chief security officer&rdqu

In addition to being a place to buy discounted laptops and find DVDs of obscure anime you didn’t know people still watched, Best Buy will now be a place for budding photographers to take lessons, as spotted by PetaPixel. Best Buy will be offering lessons in its new Camera Experience Shop, which is sponsored by camera brands Canon, Nikon, Sony, and GoPro.Small camera experience shops have opened inside over 80 Best Buy stores across the US so far. Customers can either browse cameras in the

E-cigarette startup Juul Labs is planning to release Bluetooth-enabled vapes internationally, Bloomberg reports. The new tech could help lock out underage people who try to use the devices.
“We are actively evaluating new technologies and features to help keep Juul out of the hands of young people,” Juul spokesperson Victoria Davis says. The move comes as Juul faces down user lawsuits and an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general that accuse the company of hooking young

Prominent Republicans are always waltzing around, killing memes just by using them. We cannot, however, induct GOP senator Richard Burr into the murderers' club, because the meme he used was already dead.
During a hearing on Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman referred to the popular "this is fine" meme while discussing the Russian attack on the 2016 election. 
"Some feel that we as a society are sitting in a burning room, calmly drinking a cup of coffee, telling ourselves

If you’ve recently bought a MacBook, a Pixelbook, or a slim Windows laptop, there’s a somewhat high chance that you’ll find it has a sole USB-C port, or two if you’re lucky. That’s simply not enough for most people.Thankfully, USB-C hubs leverage the power of the port to greatly expand the capabilities of your machine. On the downside, not all hubs are created equal, with many of them being underpowered or lacking in useful expansions, like an SD card slot or an Et

Tesla may have struggled through “production hell” to build the Model 3, but the car has helped the company set a new record: $4 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2018, according to an earnings report published on Wednesday. It also reached another milestone: the Model 3 is finally starting to make Tesla some money.The Model 3’s gross margins, a measure of the revenue that the company retains after costs associated with producing it, turned “slightly positive&r

Guy Fieri isn't just the mayor of Flavortown. He's a national hero. 
As the Carr fire scorches through Northern California, becoming the seventh most destructive fire in the state's history, Guy Fieri rushed to feed the thousands of first responders and evacuees. Some people think the celebrity chef has been more helpful during this disaster than Elon Musk was during the Thai cave rescue. 
SEE ALSO: Elon Musk's kid-submarine was 'a PR stunt,' Thailand cave rescue diver says
The Carr fi

Thousands of fish are ripped to shreds along the Brooks River each July. 
With a glut of fresh salmon at their disposal, many brown bears just munch the fatty skin and brains of the fish, leaving the bright red meat for lesser bears. 
By later July, once the salmon run peters out, however, most of the bears usually vanish into the dense woods from whence they came, seeking fresher feeding grounds. 
SEE ALSO: Cannibalism, infanticide: The dark side of Alaska’s bear cam
But it

The very first Google Smart Display — basically, a Google Home with a screen on it — was launched by Lenovo last week. And now, JBL has started taking preorders on its own smart display, called the Link View, which looks like it’ll be the second model to hit stores. It’s supposed to start shipping on September 3rd, as spotted by 9to5Google.
JBL’s smart display sells for the same price as Lenovo’s, but it appears that it’ll fix one of the Lenovo model&rs

It's hard to believe that Beats by Dre was launched ten years ago as another competitor in the audio space. Today, it's one of the the biggest brands with plenty of options when it comes to headphones and speakers. However, that also means paying more premium prices for Beats headphones. But don't worry, if you're a Beats fan and are looking for new headphones, Walmart has just the thing.
SEE ALSO: Best headphones for every situation
The Beats Solo3 Wireless On-Ear Headphones are available from

Finally, Tesla has a response. 
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the head of the Democratic National Committee, wrote to Elon Musk's electric car company two months ago concerned about union busting and worker safety.
SEE ALSO: Tesla is the latest Silicon Valley company to run smack into human limits
This week, Tesla decided to respond to Ellison's concerns and doubled down on the health of Tesla's employee-management relationship. Everything is honky-dory at Tesla according to Tesla.Tesla and Elon

ÆWhile we’re talking about companies like Apple getting alarmingly close to a $1 trillion market cap, both of Jack Dorsey’s companies — Twitter (at least before its earnings last week) and Square— have been on considerable runs, and it looks like the latter won’t be coming to a major halt after today’s quarterly report.
The company reported its second-quarter results today, which were somewhat mixed compared to what Wall Street was expecting but didn&rsq

Many French students will have their social media scrolling forcibly ended during school hours this upcoming year, after French lawmakers voted to ban smartphone use in schools.
On Monday, lawmakers decided that students under the age of 15 must leave their cellphones at home, or at least have them turned off during the school day. French high schools will be allowed to decide whether they implement the ban in their classrooms.
The measure prohibits the use of tablets, computers, and other inte

Vizio is partnering with Pluto TV to add a free video streaming service, called WatchFree, to “nearly all” of the company’s SmartCast televisions. WatchFree will get its own dedicated input, so it’ll have nearly the same prominence as your HDMI inputs and the main SmartCast screen. WatchFree is rolling out starting today.When you switch over to it, you can browse between “more than 100 live and linear channels” covering TV shows, movies, news, sports, concert

Jennifer Lopez was spotted wearing jean boots from Versace on Tuesday, and all I want to know is: Why does JLo hate pants? Or, does she hate boots? It's honestly very hard to tell. 
SEE ALSO: 8 terrible jeans that prove denim has gone too far
Either way, the otherwise very stylish singer's new footwear raises several important questions, like: What's wrong with keeping jeans and boots separate? Why do the boots need individual belts if they're just going to sag anyway? Why are you trying to

In a Senate Intelligence hearing today about Russia-backed misinformation campaigns, chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) invoked a meme to describe Congress’ inaction on the issue. It’s as if, Burr said, Congress was “sitting in a burning room calmly with a cup of coffee, telling ourselves ‘this is fine.’”
The panel of experts at today’s hearing included directors and researchers from organizations like the German Marshall Fund, the Oxford Internet Institute,

President Donald J. Trump has made a lot of absurd promises over the course of his career, but free cryptocurrency is still not one of them.
Though you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise, as a verified Twitter account bearing his name today offered that very thing. Yep, the ether giveaway scam we've come to associate with Elon Musk has branched out to our very own commander in chief. 
SEE ALSO: For the love of god stop sending 'Elon Musk' your Ethereum. It's a scam.
"Good news," read

When New York’s Public Service Commission ordered Spectrum to pack up and end operations in the state — and even come up with a transition plan within 60 days for switching customers over to a replacement internet / TV provider — I don’t think anyone believed things would actually play out that way. Sure enough, the CEO of Charter (Spectrum’s parent company) says his company is willing to engage in a “lengthy” legal battle in New York if the situation c

Tesla’s 9.0 vehicle software update will include several playable Atari games as new Easter eggs, according to CEO Elon Musk. He said that the update should be released in “about four weeks.” In a follow-up tweet, Musk said that he’s hoping to include Pole Position, Tempest, and Missile Command “in this release,” which obviously opens the door for more to be added in the future.Pole Position’s controls will apparently be linked to the Tesla’s actu

While Samsung’s new flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S4, may be getting most of the limelight in the Android tablet world today (for whatever that’s worth), the company also announced a second tablet today: the cheaper, less powerful Galaxy Tab A 10.5.
Much like the Tab S4, the Galaxy Tab A 10.5 features a 10.5-inch display, but nearly everything else about it is worse.
The screen is a 1080p LCD panel, not the higher-resolution 2560 x 1600 AMOLED on the Tab S4, there’s 3GB of R

Filming is officially underway on Star Wars Episode IX, with director J.J. Abrams returning to the helm. Abrams tweeted about the start of filming with a special mention of Carrie Fisher, whose untimely death in 2016 incontrovertibly impacted the series and its future.
SEE ALSO: Mark Hamill shared a nice post about Carrie Fisher in Star Wars and now we're crying again
Fans received a surprise in July when Fisher's name appeared in the cast for Episode IX. Abrams explained that she would appear i

Infamous mob boss Al Capone has an iconic look, and somehow Tom Hardy is nailing it perfectly.
SEE ALSO: Intense 'Venom' trailer introduces your not-so-friendly neighborhood parasite
A recent picture of Hardy surfaced Wednesday that shows the actor in full Capone dress and makeup for his role as the gangster in the upcoming biographical movie Fonzo (which stems from Capone's full first name, Alphonse — not to be confused with Alfonse). 
It's almost hard to believe that's Hardy under t

While streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix is more prevalent today, it's still a very good idea to invest in a solid Blu-ray player for a number of reasons. Here are two: the video and audio quality is much better and you own the content straight up. 
SEE ALSO: The Tech Behind the Film 'Gravity'
When you buy Blu-rays, you can watch them whenever you want and you're not at the whim of some faraway company that might lose the streaming film rights to keep Star Wars: The Last Jedi on its p

Buying a new Kindle is tough to justify if you already own one, so Amazon’s running a promotion to ease you into its more recent e-reader tech by giving some credit in exchange for your older model. You’ll also get a flat 25 percent discount that can be used immediately on any new Kindle e-reader.
The company will pay anywhere from $5 for the debut Kindle to $75 for the Kindle Oasis from 2016. It seems to be fairly lenient on the condition of older models, offering the same amount f

I studied military history in grad school, and in the years since, I’ve been keenly aware of how warfare is imagined in science fiction and fantasy. There are some books, like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, that have some pretty good portrayals that go beyond just arming characters with guns and pointing them toward the nearest hostile aliens.As such, I’ve been reading R.F. Kuang’s debut novel The Poppy War (which came out

Industry insiders were reportedly shocked about Disney’s sudden firing of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn two weeks ago, in response to an orchestrated outcry over tasteless jokes he’d made on Twitter years earlier. But the most surprising thing was how quickly the entire story moved. The right-wing troll attacks on Gunn, who was in the process of pre-production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, peaked late on Thursday the 19th; by mid-Friday the 20th, Disney had remove

Has Donald Trump ever even been to a grocery store? We may never know.
At a White House press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Trump's now-infamous line from his Tampa rally in which he said, "The time has come for voter ID, like everything else. You know if you go out an buy groceries, you need a picture or a card — you need ID."
When pressed about the last time Trump was actually in a grocery store, Sanders said, "I'm not sure why that matters," befor

I like to imagine there's an alternate reality where The Terminator turned Linda Hamilton into the blockbuster-fronting action star she always deserved to be. What a nice reality that must be.
Fortunately, in this reality, Hamilton is set to return to the role of Sarah Connor in an as-yet-untitled sequel to James Cameron's sci-fi classic from 1984. And today brings our first official look at Hamilton-as-Connor.
SEE ALSO: Sacha Baron Cohen, crime-fighting Obama show why satire is a dying art unde

The internet is forever, and, yes, that apparently includes your old Reddit private messages.  
The so-called front page of the internet today announced that it suffered a hack in June, and, as a result, Reddit private messages from 2005 to 2007 are now in the hands of the as-of-yet unknown culprits. 
That's right, your finely aged secret memes are on the loose. Oh, and also your email addresses and account credentials. 
SEE ALSO: Remotely hacking ships shouldn't be this easy, and

Thank goodness, CNN is giving Parts Unknown fans a proper send off.
The docuseries' home network has confirmed a final season of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown is in the works, according to an LA Times report. Plans are in place for CNN to deliver a fall premiere.
Bourdain's death in June left viewers speculating on the travel series' fate. Many believed the final episode of Season 11 (which aired on July 24) would mark the show's end.
SEE ALSO: How to bring hope and compassion to conversations

Three Ukranian nationals have been arrested in connection with a lengthy hacking campaign that targeted more than 100 American businesses, including the theft of credit card information from Chili’s, Arby’s, and Chipotle. According to the indictment, the group stole more than 15 million credit card records from more than 6,500 point-of-sale terminals over the course of the campaign.
Known to security researchers as the Carbanak group, the group used social engineering and phishing a

A little over 10 months after the Harvey Weinstein revelations brought #MeToo to the fore, we're finally seeing films set to tackle workplace sexual harassment take shape.
According to a report in Variety, Nicole Kidman is "in talks" to play former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson in a yet-to-be-titled Annapurna film about the women who brought down Fox News titan Roger Ailes. 
She isn't the only A-list, Oscar-nominated actress joining the projects. Margot Robbie is rumored to be in talks t

This post is part of Hard Refresh, a soothing weekly column where we try to cleanse your brain of whatever terrible thing you just witnessed on Twitter.
In times of crisis, I turn to ancient gelatinous Cnidarians to soothe my soul. 
They call these creatures "jellyfish." As the victim of multiple jellyfish attacks, I prefer to ogle them from a remove, either from behind an aquarium glass wall, or failing that, a computer screen.
They and all their delightfully lethargic underwater friends p

Not to be too "old man yells at cloud," but I realized the other day that the average freshman entering college this fall probably has no idea what it's like to not have any song they want to hear available within moments.
These lucky individuals will never know the torment of waiting half an hour for one 30-second clip of the new Weezer single to load over that 28.8k modem connection, praying no one calls to interrupt the transfer so you can finally — finally — hear that sweet music

Reddit informed its users today that a hacker broke into some of its systems and accessed user data, including current email addresses and a 2007 database that contained usernames and passwords that were already salted and hashed (or scrambled for protection).
Reddit is sending an email to all affected users — mostly people who joined Reddit in 2007 or earlier. The hacker was also able to read the email digests Reddit sent out in June 2018 as well, so they could see users’ email add

New Avengers-themed coding kits from littleBits will allow young inventors to unleash their inner Shuri or Tony Stark. 
The electronic pieces, or "bits" – which look like tech straight out of the MCU – fit together in many possible combinations and come with a series of "hero training" modules from different Avengers on a mobile app.
SEE ALSO: How to learn coding online at a rock-bottom price
“From creating circuits to introducing super powers like stealth mode, rainbow co

If we're being honest, most speakers on TVs today aren't that great. They aren't very big and are built into spots that can only impede the sound, which is where a good sound bar comes in. But with all the sound bars available, it can be hard to figure out which ones provide that perfect balance of quality and flexibility you need. Well, good news, LG and Amazon have a sound bar that delivers on both.
SEE ALSO: Amazon has deals today on KitchenAid appliances, Bissell and Dyson vacuums, 4K smart

Facing a new regulatory crackdown that they say will severely impact their business, Uber and Lyft made an unusual proposal to New York City’s government: stand down, and in exchange we’ll bail out struggling yellow taxi drivers. The response they got was a curt no thanks.The proposal — to create a $100 million “hardship fund” to support individual taxi medallion owners — was “summarily rejected” by the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio’

For more than two decades, NASA has been developing what is being hailed as the most powerful space telescope ever created, a technological masterpiece that will live 1 million miles from Earth and unlock the mysteries of the distant Universe. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will have a 25-foot golden mirror that will be able to collect light from the first stars and galaxies that sprung to life just after the Big Bang. But the space agency just can’t seem to get the telescope off t

As the rise of ASMR videos indicates, it’s becoming more apparent that good audio is as important as what we see on screens. Sennheiser’s new Memory Mic is an interesting concept designed for the smartphone videographer. The mic attaches magnetically to your clothes and can record up to four hours of audio at any distance from your phone. The audio is synced via Bluetooth to a companion video app, in which you can mix both audio recorded by the mic and ambient noise picked up by you

RED’s upcoming Hydrogen One smartphone still doesn’t have a concrete release date, but we’re presumably getting even closer to launch, given that the phone has cleared the FCC’s approval process this week, via PhoneScoop.
In addition to confirming that the Hydrogen One is in fact a real device that RED will legally be allowed to sell in the United States, the FCC filing confirms a few smaller details about the phone: it’ll have a 4,510mAh battery, dual SIM slots, a

Here's one way to crack down on phone use.
The French Parliament voted overwhelmingly (62-1) on Monday to ban smartphones and personal tablets from schools.
France already restrained students from using smartphones and personal tablets during instruction hours since 2010, but the new ban prohibits students aged 3 to 15 from even bringing their devices to school.
SEE ALSO: The 'pee after sex' meme is doing a better job at sex ed than some schools
And for those 15 years and older, it is up to thei