Technology news

The Ohio State Marching band showed off its precision and knowledge of slightly nerdy viral dance moves on Saturday.
During the Ohio State band's halftime show, the marching musicians got in formation to reenact the dance of .... The Backpack Kid.
SEE ALSO: Katy Perry's 'SNL' performance was upstaged by a backpack-wearing teen
You know, the Backpack Kid! Also known as The Floss, also known as the dance move every annoying kid now does at wedding receptions to become the center of attention.
Hon

The GDPR is beginning to bare its teeth.
Irish authorities are investigating Twitter for not complying with a user request covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to Fortune.
A researcher asked Twitter to provide him with more information about the data it collects when users click an auto-shortened link in a tweet. But the social media company is refusing — which has prompted investigative action from European privacy authorities. 
SEE ALSO: Why you should

It's time to pack it in, my fellow Star Wars fans. The atrocious(ly amazing) Holiday Special is officially canon.
Jon Favreau treated Instagram followers to a teasing visual nugget tied to his upcoming TV series, The Mandalorian. You might look at the photo and think, "So what? It's just a funky Star Wars blaster, right?"
SEE ALSO: Star Wars has its first ever non-white, non-male directors. It's a start.
Right. And wrong. This image contains multitudes. Look upon it and weep, Star Wars faithful.

Amid the news of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance and likely death in Turkey sits a technological mystery involving an Apple Watch.
Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Turkish authorities had audio recordings that confirmed Khashoggi's death inside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul. The Saudi government maintains its innocence, but the audio reportedly indicates that a Saudi team tortured, killed, and dismembered Khashoggi inside the embassy.
But where did th

Googly eyes are hilarious. Put some googly eyes on literally anything and people are going to have a good time.
Unless it's the city government of Savannah, Georgia we're talking about. To them, googly eyes are no laughing matter — at least not googly eyes placed on a historic statue.The City of Savannah Government Facebook page posted photos on Thursday of a monument of American Revolutionary War figure Nathanael Greene with googly eyes plastered to his face. Accompanying the hilarious ph

Welcome to Fav’d For Later, a Friday Saturday roundup of our favorite memes, trends, and all-around good internet content. This week, our usual correspondent Megan Farokhmanesh is on a much-needed vacation. Tech reporter Dami Lee and internet culture editor Devon Maloney will be stepping in to completely ruin what she’s got going here, starting with arriving a day later than usual. Sorry, Megan.
If you’re on Twitter and are a fan of Tessa Thompson, you may be familiar with @te

Sometimes words deliver a punch to the gut. Not the kind of impact that knocks you down, but the kind that lifts you up.
Early Saturday morning, a descendant of the Confederate Civil War General Robert E. Lee, Reverend Robert Lee IV, posted a video message on Twitter taking exception to President Donald Trump's Friday evening statements praising Lee. 
"Last night I was disheartened to hear Donald Trump, our president, make comments about Robert E. Lee as a great general, as an honorable man

Richard Branson, founder and chairman of space tourism venture Virgin Galactic, says he is temporarily suspending his partnership with Saudi Arabia, which means the company may lose its promised $1 billion investment. The decision is directly related to questions surrounding Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, who went missing after stepping inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey on October 2nd.
Last year, the Virgin Group announced that Virgin Galactic and its spinoff companies, Th

At her royal wedding, Princess Eugenie wore a dress with a low-cut back that revealed a long scar from an operation on her spine, inspiring others with back scars to share photos and feel more comfortable with their bodies.
SEE ALSO: Royal wedding takes turn for the NSFW with BBC subtitle error
Eugenie, who had surgery to correct her scoliosis at age 12 according to CNN, worked with designers Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos on her wedding dress. The low-cut back is deliberate, and meant to

We’re big fans of Swedish designer Love Hultén, whose many retro creations have blurred the line between gadget and art piece. His latest, the Pyua, is both a tribute to Nintendo and console compatible with classic NES and Famicom cartridges. Hultén says the Pyua functions, ”without input lag or degradation to the original games.”
The Pyua can output up to 1080p via an HDMI cable and comes with two custom wireless NES controllers, built by the nostalgic folks at

“I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.” This phrase before is based on a quote from the 1977 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ short story “Empire of the Ants.” In the revised quote, “robot” replaces “insects,” the idea of the meme being that anything can: llamas, octopi, robo-dogs, you name it. When it comes to AI overlords, the joke hits closer to home. That’s because there’s a real fear that AI will assume godlike qualitie

Often when I’m scrolling through movies on Netflix, HBO, or some other streaming service, I feel like I’ve wasted so. much. money. going to movie theaters. Inevitably, everything shows up online and ready to stream, and instead I’ve spent more than $30 for a pair of tickets to go see these same titles just months earlier.
For whatever reason, I didn’t make it out to movie theaters at all this summer or much this spring, either. And I kind of thought, well, at least it&rs

If you’ve ever wanted to take a really goofy picture with your cat, Snapchat has rolled out a new update that will help you with that. The company has released a new feature called Cat Lenses, which lets you add filters to your favorite feline’s face.
TechCrunch pointed out that the system appears to build on an object recognition update that the company rolled out last year. That update recommends certain filters when it recognized certain object in your image, or could potentially

Love is in the air as penguin breeding season begins at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium in Australia, and one adorable penguin couple is stealing the show.
Two male gentoo penguins, Sphen and Magic, became inseparable in the Macquarie Island exhibit, the aquarium explained in a blog post. They were so successful at building a nest together and taking care of a dummy egg that the love birds were given a real penguin egg to incubate.
SEE ALSO: Emotional support squirrel gets kicked off airplane
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Privacy regulators in Ireland have launched an investigation into exactly how much data Twitter collects from t.co, its URL-shortening system.
The investigation stems from a request made by a UK professor named Michael Veale under the General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR), a comprehensive European privacy law that took effect in May. Under the GDPR, EU citizens have a right to request any data collected on them from a given company — but when Veale made that request to Twitter, the

This week gave us a healthier variety of deals than usual. Whether you’re interested in a new smartphone, gaming consoles, smart speakers, or smart displays, there’s a lot to parse through, and that trend is going to continue through early 2019.
The Google Pixel 3 can now be preordered, and there are a few special offers for those who buy in early. Both Verizon and Google’s Project Fi are offering buy-one-get-one promotions for the new phone, though each have different terms.

Last year, Martha Wells published All Systems Red, the first installment of a Tor.com novella series called The Murderbot Diaries, which follows the adventures of the titular android as it is pulled into various adventures while traversing inhabited space. Wells earned considerable acclaim for All Systems Red: it became a New York Times bestseller, and earned her the Hugo and Nebula Awards earlier this year. Since then, she’s published three new installments concerning the adventures of t

Marvel’s Iron Fist won’t get a third season. Disney has confirmed that it has canceled the show, but hinted that it might not be the end of the road for the superhero.Iron Fist is one of several in a joint Marvel/Netflix shared universe, set alongside Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and The Punisher. It follows billionaire Danny Rand (Finn Jones), who reappears after vanishing fifteen years ago, who trained as a monk to become a martial arts master known as the Immortal Iron Fi

It seems like there are two words on the tongue of every tech entrepreneur, VC, or industry observer: artificial intelligence. This is without a doubt the hottest topic in tech at the moment and this technological transformation is touching nearly every industry from automotive, to marketing, and even health. Now, I’m not afraid of technology nor am I skeptical about the potential of AI, far from it. I’ve had the opportunity to work with multiple AI startups in my professional life

The good news about the Facebook data breach is that it affected fewer people than previously believed — a rarity, in the cybersecurity realm. The bad news is that the types of data stolen were quite personal, and could have bad consequences for the 14 million people affected.
Facebook held a morning press call to discuss new details about the breach, which it discovered last month. Here’s Russell Brandom in The Verge:According to today’s statement, the hackers stole access to

Coral reefs are vanishing from the world’s oceans. At least three quarters of these tropical marine habitats are severely threatened globally and in 2016 alone, the Great Barrier Reef lost up to 30 percent of its coral cover. But could modern technology simply create more reef? It may sound fantastical, but scientists are working on 3D printing new reef habitats to replace those lost from climate change, overfishing, and pollution. Coral reefs are important ecosystems for people in tropic

“Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” Donald Trump, the president of the United States, once said at a rally. There is no doubt that we have entered a new age of bewilderment in which it is harder than ever before to decide where the truth lies. Before the explosion of social media, the world seemed an altogether simpler place, with information reaching us via a relatively small number of seemingly trustworthy sources. The rise

Inspiration for improvement can come from anywhere. Imagine getting a call from your security service during the weekend. Now, as a CEO of an early stage start-up, 10 times out of 10, if you get a call like that, you will have to deal with it. The service said there was an intrusion into the office. So I had to put down whatever it was I was doing and go check it out. When I arrived at the office, I found that one of our employees had a hobby drone he had designed and built and I noticed the em

The Galaxy Note 8 was one of the best phones of 2017, yet I couldn’t help but feel Samsung played things safe after the flaming Note 7 fiasco. Not so with the Note 9. The company has regained its confidence and returned the series to its overpowered roots. I’ve been using the device for over a month now, and it delivers on almost everything you’d want on a $1000 phone. Unless you’re looking for a small and cheap device, there’s something for everyone. The Note 9 is

Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming platform, is currently under investigation by the Brazilian government after allowing a controversial game to be sold on its platform. While the platform’s relaxed attitude towards games seemed like a commendable idea at the time, it’s starting to backfire. When Valve announced earlier this year it was taking a more hands-off approach to its own catalog of games, I initially called it a good thing. After all, it allowed the company to forgo

Apple has long been a proponent for strong on-device encryption, most notably for its iPhones and the iOS operating system. This has often frustrated law enforcement agencies both in the US and overseas, many of which claim the company’s encryption tools and policies are letting criminals avoid capture by masking communications and securing data from the hands of investigators.Now, in a letter to the Australian government, Apple says it thinks encryption is in fact a benefit and public go

Chinese company Dazzle is set to launch its Dazz 3D L120 Pro, an SLA/LCD-powered 3D printer hoping to fill the gap between cheaper no-frills devices and the $2,500 – $5,000 monsters that dominate the field. I put a review unit through the paces to see if it could deliver on its ambitious Kickstarter campaign promises. Typically, I don’t cover Kickstarter projects unless they’ve already started shipping, but Dazz 3D’s track record on the platform is impeccable, and the L1

Walmartcontinues to beef up its portfolio of digital brands, announcing on Friday that it had acquired Bare Necessities, an online retailer of lingerie, swimwear, hosiery and other intimates.
Walmart declined to disclose the terms of the deal.
The lingerie company, founded in 1998, will operate independently of Walmart. Over time, the e-commerce giant says it will make Bare Necessities’ products available on Walmart.com, as well as on Jet.com, which Walmart acquired for more than $3 billio