Technology news

Orange Is the New Black will conclude after its seventh season next year. The prison drama based on Piper Kerman's memoir of the same name was one of Netflix's first original TV shows, premiering in the summer of 2013.
SEE ALSO: 'Orange is the New Black' Season 6 feels like the beginning of the end
Creator Jenji Kohan said in 2017 that she had plans to end the show after seven seasons. Kohan is now an executive producer on Netflix's GLOW, another hyper-specific female narrative that took viewers

A student in Davis, California has claimed that around two weeks ago, she and a co-conspirator gave nine classmates cookies containing her grandfather's ashes.
At least some of the students were aware there were ashes in the cookies before they consumed them, police told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. Others were apparently unaware and were "horrified" when they found out. 
So far, it is unclear why the student felt motivated to bring desserts with human remains in them to school. Since

Back in July, Tesla announced it had signed a deal in China allowing it to build up to 500,000 vehicles a year there. Now Elon Musk's company has acquired the land to build its manufacturing facility in Shanghai.
The location of the Chinese Gigafactory was set as Shanghai because it has a free-trade zone, which means there's no need to partner with a local Chinese company before manufacturing can begin. As Reuters reports, the Shanghai government sold Tesla a plot of land that's roughly 860,000

Is a hyperloop in the US feasible? Skeptics doubt whether the futuristic transportation system can ever become a reality, but a new study supported by Virgin Hyperloop One finds many possible benefits of a high-speed route between St. Louis and Kansas City.A coalition of Missouri business leaders and government agencies joined with the Los Angeles-based company a year ago to kick off a feasibility study of a hyperloop in their state. Released today, the study examined where the ultrafast transp

The New York attorney general’s office is launching an investigation into MoviePass’ parent company, Helios and Matheson, over allegedly misleading investors.A person familiar with the investigation confirmed to The Verge that an investigation is underway. The news was first reported by CNBC. The investigation is set to determine “whether the company misled the investment community regarding the company’s financials,” according to CNBC. The attorney general’s

Welcome to the beautiful world of watching Rihanna vogue to various songs on Twitter.
It's pretty straight forward: People have started editing a clip of Rihanna dancing during her ANTI tour to other songs like Azealia Banks' "Anna Wintour" or Lady Gaga's "Judas." Like the "Party Rock Anthem" meme, her choreography matches tons of songs. The meme's been around since at least April, but it seems to have recently resurfaced. Shortly after the A Star Is Born premiere earlier this month, Twitte

The Huawei Porsche Design Mate 10 RS is just over six months old, but the company is already back with a successor, the Mate 20 RS. It’s equally as expensive and excessive.
Like the car company it’s named after, the Porsche Design Mate 20 RS is pricey; it costs a steep €1,695 (or $1,950, at the time of writing) for its base 256GB storage option. For that high price, the Mate 20 RS has three cameras: one with a 40-megapixel main camera, a 20-megapixel wide-angle lens, and an 8-m

Nintendo's icon and star, Mario, just got the best Halloween tribute ever.  
A jack-o'-lantern that was carved in the shape of an 8-bit Mario back in his 2D days has circulated around Reddit. The carving is extremely detailed, and it nails the exact pixelated look of the character.
SEE ALSO: Playing 'Super Mario Party' alone makes me feel sad
Reddittor WobWobRob posted a photo of their jack-o'-lantern on r/gaming where it was praised by the community. Quite honestly, it's a really incredibl

Hard Refresh is a soothing weekly column where we try to reset your brain and cleanse it of whatever terrible thing you just witnessed on Twitter.
In my opinion, one of the only reasons for YouTube to still exist is animal videos. 
Otherwise a cesspool of screaming vloggers and disturbing children's content, pages like the Sunflower Farm Creamery and the Cincinnati Zoo (home of Fiona the hippo) lend the overstuffed platform a little joy. One of my favorites, though, isn't a page but a genre

Yesterday, the world’s most ambitious media blockchain company had a very public embarrassment. It was the last day of a public token sale for the Civil Foundation, a media project using blockchain to launch a new generation of ad-free media startups. But when it came time to sell the token at the center of it all, the project came up short. Civil had initially planned to raise as much as $24 million, and pledged to return the money if it raised less than $8 million. In the final accounti

Spotify announced today that it’s rolling out a new Wear OS app in the coming week. The standalone Wear OS app is a vast improvement over the previous Spotify app for Android Wear, which left so much to be desired that users were relying on third-party apps to play their music through the streaming service. The new Spotify for Wear OS brings better controls for music playback and browsing playlists. Most importantly, it adds Spotify Connect features that let you play music from your conne

Just short of a year ago, Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy made headlines around the world when she said, in an interview with Variety, that the franchise hadn’t had a film directed by a woman yet because there wasn’t a woman with the appropriate resume.
“We want to make sure that when we bring a female director in to do “Star Wars,” they’re set up for success,” says Kennedy. “They’re gigantic films, and you can’t come into them wit

In the world of PC gaming, only a handful of companies have the kind of history that MSi does. From producing motherboards in the 1980s to the high-end gaming computers of today, you can't argue with the company's pedigree in the space.
SEE ALSO: 10 best gaming headsets for PC gaming, PS4, and Xbox One
That also means their computers typically have a "healthy" price tag attached, so any sale you can find is worth taking advantage of.
Speaking of which, the MSi GP73 Leopard 636 VR Ready Gaming La

By the end of the month, Google will charge a licensing fee in Europe for the Play Store and apps like YouTube and Gmail in order to comply with the European Commission’s antitrust ruling. Device makers will soon have to decide whether using Google services is worth the fees, while Android as an operating system will remain free to use. With these new conditions, the future of Android in Europe could dramatically transform, becoming a pared-down version that retains the OS but offers frag

In 2007, The New York Times published an op-ed titled “This is Your Brain on Politics.” The authors imaged the brains of swing voters and, using that information, interpreted what the voters were feeling about presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.“As I read this piece,” writes Russell Poldrack, “my blood began to boil.” Poldrack is a neuroscientist at Stanford University and the author of The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Can

The New York Attorney General’s Office subpoenaed over a dozen different telecommunications lobbying groups on Tuesday to help determine whether they were behind an estimated 9.5 million fraudulent comments posted in support of the rollback of net neutrality, according to a report from The New York Times.
The investigation was launched last November, only a month before the Federal Communications Commission was set to vote on a proceeding that would roll back the open internet regulations

Solo: A Star Wars Story was always going to create waves in the Star Wars community — after all, how could you possible recast a role like Han Solo with anyone else other than Harrison Ford? Well, it turns out that there’s always a way: in this case, using AI-based deepfake techniques to replace Solo actor Alden Ehrenreich with Ford’s famous mug.
The footage comes from YouTuber derpfakes, who rose to prominence in the community around the machine learning-based tool by using i

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple could kick off its switch from Intel to ARM-based processors in Mac computers as early as 2020 or 2021. That target echoes a report from Bloomberg in April that also cited 2020 as the year we’re likely to begin seeing MacBooks running on Apple’s own ARM-based chips. Kuo says the changeover will come with the obvious upside of Apple being freed from relying on Intel’s processor roadmap and the delays that can disrupt it. 9to5Mac reported on

Warning: light spoilers for The Haunting of Hill House lie ahead.
Pop the champagne! Hand out the cigars! Open up the Red Room! It's time to celebrate one of the most richly developed lesbian characters to ever grace the horror genre. 
Last weekend, The Haunting of Hill House swept over Netflix like a wildfire as tons of terror loyalists and curious newbies streamed the new saga. From reflections on family trauma to contemplations on the never-ending cycle of grief, post-show discussions ha

The Anker Nebula Capsule is our favorite mini projector, and it’s over $80 off right now on Amazon. At $264.99, this is the lowest price we’ve seen on this portable projector yet, which runs on Android and has access to the Google Play Store. This means that plugging your phone, laptop, or streaming stick into its HDMI port is not necessary, as the projector can play content from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and other video streaming services.
This mini projector is said to la

This year's International Conference for Robotics and Systems was like a clash of the robot dog titans as a video emerged of the Boston Dynamics SpotMini hanging out with the ANYbotics robot, called ANYmal. 
According to ANYbotics' cofounder Péter Fankhauser, it's no coincidence that the design and technology is converging, but it's too early to fear the rise of the robot dog empire. Read more...More about Mashable Video, Boston Dynamics, Ai, Robot Dog, and Spotmini

Essential has laid off 30 percent of its employees today, the company confirmed to Bloomberg, coming on the heels of earlier reports back in May that Essential had canceled its upcoming second phone and was exploring selling the company.
While a sale still hasn’t materialized, the layoffs mark the latest storm clouds on the horizon for Android founder Andy Rubin’s fledgling firm, which has yet to release a new product since the original Essential Phone launched last fall. According

It wasn’t until The Detroit Free Press reported on General Motors’ radio-tracking program — which monitored the listening habits of 90,000 drivers in the Los Angeles and Chicago areas for three months in late 2017 — that it became clear that the future of targeted advertising in cars is… well, it’s practically already here.
GM used the Wi-Fi signal built into its vehicles to capture minute details such as station selection, volume level, and ZIP codes of veh

Postmates announced in a blog post today that it’s bringing its delivery service to 134 more cities in the US. The expansion brings the total number of cities served by Postmates up to 550, covering 60 percent of the US. (You can check to see if you live in one of the new cities below.) The expansion also brings in 300 new Chipotle locations, so Postmates is celebrating the launch by offering $4 off Chipotle orders, with code CHIPOTLE134.
Postmates says it’s “continuing to gro

Besides the flaming mess that is the current political climate, DNA testing is a huge thing in the news right now. If you've checked social media at all recently, you've more than likely seen something about it.
We're not sure if that has anything to do with Amazon putting AncestryDNA test kits on sale for $30 off, but hey — we'll take it.
Elizabeth Warren is usually making headlines for calling out Donald Trump — but this time, it's her recently released DNA test results that h

Hulu’s chief executive has said that the company is aiming to change up its live TV offering by breaking down its current $40-per-month channel package into smaller bundles. The current package has over 1 million subscribers, and CEO Randy Freer did an interview with The Information this week where he confirmed that the company is rethinking its approach to selling live TV.Freer said he wants to drop some of Hulu’s existing live channels in favor of on-demand programming and focus t

When Jeff Bezos took the stage at a Wired conference this week, he told the audience that it was part of a business leader’s job to make potentially unpopular decisions, like working with the military.One day later, on Tuesday, an Amazon employee explained exactly why those decisions might be unpopular. In a public letter posted to Medium, an anonymous worker at the company outlined concerns about Amazon’s facial recognition tool, Rekognition. The product has been under fire since M

Earlier this week, news broke that T-Mobile was testing a new 36-month installment plan that would let users pay off pricey smartphones over a three-year period instead of the usual two years. Those plans are officially launching this Friday.Full details aren’t available yet, but T-Mobile’s announcement notes that the Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy S8, LG G7 ThinQ, “and more” will be eligible for the plan. Combined with the company’s trade-in offers, customers could pay

Twitter is bringing some much-needed clarity to its reporting process. In an update outlined this morning on the company’s blog, Twitter will now clearly highlight when a reported tweet had an enforcement action taken against it. The goal, writes Twitter product manager Sam Toizer, is to help the public understand when a rule-breaking tweet was forcibly taken down and not just simply deleted by the user due to backlash.“Now, once we’ve required a Tweet to be deleted, we will d

Former Google employee James Damore, who was fired last year for circulating a memo arguing women were biologically less suited for tech jobs, is taking his legal complaint against Google into arbitration.
Damore sued Google early this year alongside fellow former employee David Gudeman, who is also moving into arbitration. The pair alleged that Google had “systematically punished and terminated” them for their political beliefs, and they sought class action status to represent cons

A security bug that hit Tumblr’s recommended blogs module may have exposed users’ private information, according to an open letter. Information like email addresses, passwords, IP addresses, and self-reported locations may have become exposed due to the bug if individual accounts were hit.It’s unclear if the bug affected individual accounts, according to the open letter, but an investigation concluded that the bug “was rarely present.”
“We’ve also thoro

Beats by Dre is partnering with Disney to release a Mickey Mouse edition of the Solo 3 Wireless headphones. The headphones were announced yesterday with a marketing campaign featuring Lil Yachty, among other artists. They will come with a felt case inspired by the materials from Mickey Mouse ear hats and include a 90th anniversary enamel pin and decal sticker.
The headphones only come in a gray color, and they are now available to preorder for $329.95 on Amazon, which is about $30 more than the

Microsoft is working on a redesign of its Cortana app for iOS and Android, reports WindowsCentral. Version 3.0 of the app has been released for those enrolled in Microsoft’s Beta program. It delivers a number of improvements, including an updated UI that lets you have “conversational experiences” with the voice assistant, as well as music and podcast support across both the phone and connected Bluetooth devices.The app now better integrates with the rest of Microsoft’s e

The RED Hydrogen One is finally set to start shipping preorders this week, following a few delays. But if you can’t wait until then, the full spec sheet for the phones has leaked a bit early through a new infographic, via UberGizmo.While we’ve known bits and pieces of this before, it’s nice to see it laid out all in one place. Most of the specs are on par for a high-end Android phone in 2018: 128GB of storage, 6GB of RAM, a hefty 4,500mAh battery, aluminum (or titanium, althou

Facebook knew about inaccuracies in the video viewership metrics that it provided to advertisers and brands for more than a year, according to documents filed as part of a potential class action lawsuit on Tuesday. Advertisers were duped into focusing on the social network under the belief that people were spending more time watching on Facebook than through other video platforms. The inflated data also led many media organizations to put an emphasis on Facebook video and chase views to the det

Last summer, OnePlus released the excellent Travel Backpack alongside its OnePlus 5 flagship smartphone, and this fall, the company looks set to do it again with the upcoming launch of the new OnePlus 6T and OnePlus Explorer backpack. I’ve just received the 18L Explorer for review, and it’s a major departure from OnePlus’ existing bag. Slicker, smaller, and more stylish, the Explorer is evidently an effort to appeal to a more image-conscious demographic. I’d say OnePlus

Roku is once again selling its products in Mexico after a court ruling overturned a July 2017 ban on the popular streaming devices due to concerns that hackers were using them to illegally stream pirated content.A new ruling from the 11th Collegiate Court in Mexico City has overturned the earlier ban, and the streaming devices should return back to stores “in the coming weeks.” Roku devices were originally banned following a court complaint from cable provider Cablevisión, wh

Shane Dawson’s coronation as the king of YouTube in 2018 is undeniable: whenever he uploads a documentary on a personality, it’s like the internet stops. Even if you dislike Shane’s style or approach, his investigations produce top-tier online gossip that no traditional media outlet — or YouTuber, for that matter — has been able to crack.While his current eight-part documentary Mind of Jake Paul has primarily billed itself as an exploration of Jake Paul’s pot

Starting on Wednesday, Apple will allow US users to download all of their data from the company, following a GDPR-mandated feature for EU citizens that launched in May. The download tool is accessible from the company’s Data and Privacy page, and it encompasses device-syncing data like iCloud bookmarks as well as iTunes purchases and retail-level information like your Apple Care support history. Users will have to authenticate with their Apple ID before receiving the data.
The new availab

SoundCloud is bringing lossless audio to its Go+ streaming service, the company announced today. Users who subscribe to the $10-a-month service will be able to listen to any music uploaded to SoundCloud in the high-quality audio format by opting in through the “streaming quality” option in settings at no additional cost.
Currently, Tidal and Deezer both offer lossless audio streaming, but you’ll have to pay a premium to access that audio quality: both services charge $20 a mon

Twitter has published an archive of nearly 10 million tweets from troll accounts today, providing a vast pile of data for academics to pull from as they continue to research the methods foreign trolls used to influence public and political discourse across the world over the past few years.
The tweets originated between 2013 and 2018. Nine million of them were published by 3,800 different accounts affiliated with the Russian Internet Research Agency, and the last million tweets were posted by 7