Technology news

Netflix has been producing some fantastic animated shows over the past few years, using the flexibility of the medium to tell powerful stories by mixing zany comedy with heavier themes. With season 5 of BoJack Horseman premiering on September 14th and the second season of Big Mouth due out later in 2018, Netflix was clearly looking to add to its stable of successful cartoons for adults when it contracted The Simpsons and Futurama creator Matt Groening for a 20-episode series. Unfortunately, Dis

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel hoped that a Snapchat redesign would invigorate the platform’s advertisers and better cater ads to users. But in the months following its unveiling, 1.2 million users around the world signed a petition begging the company to reconsider. Snap followed through with its plans, and today, Snap confirmed that the redesign cost it to lose 2 percent of its daily active users — from 191 million to 188 million — in just a quarter.Spiegel said during today’s

Newton Mail is shutting down on September 25th, marking the formal end of the subscription-based premium email app.
Newton is the latest third-party email app casualty. It joins the ranks of gone-but-not-forgotten (by me, at least) apps like Sparrow and Mailbox as yet another victim of the fact that it’s really hard to come up with a viable business model for email apps.Turns out: it’s really hard to come up with a viable business model for email apps
As founder Rohit Nadhani explai

Following a full investigation by the Federal Communication Commission’s inspector general, what senior officials believed to be a cyberattack on their filing system last May was not a cyberattack at all. Instead, it was a combination of a drastic increase in traffic and flaws in the system’s design, according to the report first published by Gizmodo.
On May 7th, 2017, the commission’s comment system crashed after John Oliver encouraged the viewers of Last Week Tonight to navi

Infowars, a privately owned conspiracy blog, is currently being owned in public. After getting booted from platforms by Apple, Facebook, and other major companies, Infowars founder Alex Jones and his staff have been melting down even more than the usual amount. Their complaint: companies like Facebook are censoring them as part of a left-wing conspiracy to silence conservative voices, and this is unfair!Now let’s see what Infowars says about censoring people on its own website:You will no

In the aftermath of the violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, attorneys for injured counter-protestors have filed a subpoena for chat platform Discord, where they say members of the alt-right gathered prior to the event. The Washington Post reports that Discord messages discussing logistics, encouraging violence, and more have been cited in a federal lawsuit against Unite the Right organizers as evidence that they “conspired to commit acts of viole

Fortnite for Android is coming soon, and rumors have suggested it will be a 30-day exclusive to Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9. A newly leaked version of the game appears to confirm that Fortnite for Android will be limited in some way to Samsung’s latest devices. XDA-Developers has obtained a leaked APK of Fortnite for Android, and has discovered it’s restricted to both the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy Tab S4.
XDA-Developers reports that the game has a variety of checks for Sams

From metabolism to sex drive, hormones come in tiny packets that pack a powerful punch, and yet there is a lot of misinformation about these chemicals. So Randi Hutter Epstein, a doctor and medical writer, decided to set the record straight. The result is her book Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything.Though we throw around the world “hormonal” today, the concept didn’t exist before the 1900s. In the past century, we’ve gone from not

Elon Musk said on Twitter today that he is “considering” taking Tesla private “at $420,” and that he had secured the funding to do so.
The tweet seems to imply that Musk would make an offer to buy out Tesla stock at $420 per share. Tesla shares opened just below $344 today but have spiked as high as $371 after a report about Saudi Arabia taking a stake in the company worth $2 billion or more.
It’s often difficult to tell when Musk is serious and when he is joking,

The US Army has a new plan for microwaving drones out of the sky. In a public solicitation last Friday, the agency announced its intention to purchase an airborne high-powered microwave system from Lockheed Martin, which is intended for use against drones. The weapon, which would be mounted to an airplane, would disable fixed-wing or quadcopter drones with a beam of focused radiation.
Drone countermeasures are particularly relevant in the wake of an apparent assassination attempt against Venezu

You might recall the June oven: an appliance that’s supposed to be smarter than your average oven and much tinier. Today, the company is introducing a second version of the device that costs nearly $1,000 less than the original.
The new model sells for $599 and is also $100 off for a limited time. Much of the price drop came from nixing a knob and built-in scale, as well as optimizing their sourcing and manufacturing. The more interesting part of this new product launch, however, is that

Infowars Official, the app named after Alex Jones’ controversial radio talk show, has become the fourth most popular news app in the United States that’s currently available in the iOS App Store, according to public rankings. It was the 47th most popular just two days ago.The free app, which launched in June, streams live shows and written pieces from Jones and other conservative pundits. It also links to the Infowars store where visitors can buy T-shirts and skincare products. An A

Bobadilla, a tiny village in southern Spain that’s nestled between a 130-year-old railway and the Rio Guadalhorce, isn’t really known for much. But soon, it will feature a $500 million technical complex dedicated to an ultra fast, futuristic transportation system that was first conceived by Elon Musk.Virgin Hyperloop One announced a deal on Tuesday with the state-owned administrator of railway infrastructures to build a research and development center in the little Spanish village.

The latest print issue of Variety, one of Hollywood’s main trade papers and websites, is a special report dedicated entirely to the state of transgender representation in the film and television industry. It features an open letter endorsed by 48 signatories, quoting some grim statistics about trans life in America. In the last 18 months, it notes, at least 44 trans women, mostly of color, have been murdered. The unemployment rate for trans people is three times the national average, and

Reviews for indie action game Dead Cells began to roll out yesterday, and while the Metroidvania has been well-received by critics, an assessment by the leading video game website IGN is drawing controversy due to its similarity to an existing YouTube review of the game.
On July 24th, YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming uploaded a four-minute overview of Dead Cells, a roguelite that it praised for its unique marriage of combat and exploration. With 16,000 followers, Boomstick Gaming is a small cha

Google has been adding new features to Classroom throughout the summer in order to prep for the upcoming fall semester, particularly with the recent launch of the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, which is the first tablet to run Chrome OS. Now, Google has announced it will bring ARCore support to the tablet, allowing educators to become a virtual Ms. Frizzle and lead their students on augmented and virtual reality adventures.
a virtual Ms. Frizzle
The Chromebook Tab 10 is compatible with all of Google&r

Last week, reports surfaced that Google is planning to return to China with censored apps alongside talks about bringing cloud services over as well. Naturally, its biggest rival in China has something to say about that. Baidu CEO Robin Li wrote on his verified WeChat account that if “Google decides to return to China, we are very confident we can just PK and win again.” By PK, he was referencing “player-kill,” Chinese slang that originated as a gaming reference for when

Instapaper is returning for users in member states of the European Union after a two-month service blackout now that the read-it-later app says it is compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Instapaper originally shut off service for EU users back in May, just days before the far-reaching privacy law went into effect. GDPR established stricter rules around data collection and user consent, and its complexity had many companies scrambling to ensure they were not f

WhoCanFixMyCar, the U.K. online car repair marketplace, has secured £4 million in new funding. Backing the startup is Shell Ventures — the corporate venture arm of Shell — in addition to chairman Sir Trevor Chinn (who previously chaired the boards ofAA, Kwik Fit and RAC), Active Partners, and Venrex Investment Management.
Launched in 2011 by former investment bankers Al Preston and Ian Griffiths, WhoCanFixMyCar.com claims to be the biggest online marketplace in the U.K. for mat

It’s about 15 minutes before sunrise, and we’re standing in the middle of a marsh listening for a bird call that sounds like TV static. The call belongs to the endangered California Ridgway’s rail, a plucky but shy marsh-dwelling bird. The rails are both the heroes and antagonists of a conservation paradox that’s unfolding here in the San Francisco Bay.
The ecologists we’re shadowing are trying to save the birds, but they’re also trying to eradicate the invas

Two years ago, we were enthralled with Hidden My Game By Mom, a surreal puzzle game in which you play a boy looking for his missing Nintendo DS. The escape room-style game was filled with twists and turns, and each of its 30 short levels was filled with new surprises and endearing mistranslations. A simple, relatable concept driven by unpredictable gameplay, the game was one of the biggest hits for Hap Inc., a one-man studio created by Tokyo-based developer Yuusaku Ishimoto.After another sequel

It’s been a long time coming, but it appears that the revival of Palm smartphones is imminent. It looks like, unfortunately, whatever’s in the works won’t be anywhere near as exciting as the Pre was so many years ago.
Android Police spotted that a device called the PVG100 made by Palm Venture Group — now owned by TCL — was filed with the FCC last week and passed through the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification program back in June. Those are both late stage steps i

Firefox is launching a new experimental browser extension called Advance, which recommends new websites and articles based on what you’re currently reading and your recent browsing history.
There are two parts to Advance: a “Read Next” section, which recommends related articles based on your current tab, and a broader “For You” section, which uses your recent history to populate its recommendations. In an example, Firefox said that when browsing, say, a list of pop

It’s August, which means two things: lots of tweets bemoaning the impending end of summer (there’s still plenty of time to enjoy the sun, folks!), and a new Samsung Galaxy Note device — in this case, the Galaxy Note 9, which Samsung is expected to announce on August 9th at its Galaxy Unpacked event.Samsung will officially announce the Note 9 on Thursday, despite the fact that it feels like almost every detail of the phone has throughly leaked at this point, including several d

Klook, a Hong Kong-based startup developing a travel activities platform, has pulled in $200 million in new capital to fuel a major expansion into the U.S. and Europe. A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the round values the company at more than $1 billion, although the company didn’t provide an exact figure.
Klook sets out to make booking travel activities as easy as arranging flights and hotels. That could mean visits to adventure parks, scuba diving, more localized tours or basi