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At first, “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” might seem like an afterthought — or maybe a failed exercise in franchise-building.
This new take on the story of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” comes just two years after Disney’s version made nearly a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Plus, it seemed a little strange for director Andy Serkis to say he’d respect the “darkness” of the source material — this is, after a

Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about tough election losses.
That's apparently what compelled the former 2016 candidate for president to write a letter to 8-year-old Martha Kennedy Morales. The school-aged girl recently faced off against a boy from her class in an election for class president, and she lost by one vote.
SEE ALSO: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg face off in Epic Rap Battles of History
The story of what happened to Morales, who attends school in a Maryland suburb of Washington,

The Boring Company pushed back the opening of its Hawthorne underground tunnel in Los Angeles, but recent signs point to the Tuesday event happening.
On Saturday, the tunnel-digging company CEO Elon Musk pumped up fans with a tweet featuring a movie poster-like look at the tunnel and the light at the end of the tunnel. pic.twitter.com/E8fhyjN0pD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2018Earlier in December, Musk teased "more than a tunnel opening" for the high-speed transit project whe

In the earliest days of the iPhone, Cydia arose as a rival distribution channel to Apple’s App Store, built specifically for jailbroken smartphones. Now, more than decade later, Cydia founder Jay “Saurik” Freeman has decided to shut down in-app purchasing through the Cydia mobile store after he acknowledged a bug related to PayPal digital token authorization that affected “very few users,” via TechCrunch. Through Cydia, users could buy mobile software designed to r

White House Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller appeared on CBS news show Face the Nation Sunday afternoon sporting a... new hairdo. 
It's certainly new hair, anyway.
Well, paint. It looks like paint. And Twitter is having an absolute field day with his new look. 
SEE ALSO: Pauly Shore returns from the '90s to play Stephen Miller and oh, it's good
First they were all like "wait, what?"Does it look like Stephen Miller is painting the top of his head? pic.twitter.com/g5Y2TJQmAB
—

Here's your chance to go deep in the bowels of a man's soul — his bathroom.
A Twitter thread posted Friday asked women what's the weirdest thing they've seen in a dude's bathroom. It starts off with a plunger-hairbrush hybrid contraption that must be used for plunging and then scrubbing the bowl. Whatever it is, it's weird.ladies what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found in a boy’s bathroom? allow me to start pic.twitter.com/WbvwM86H4b
— jodie (@jodieegrace) Decem

Square Enix's hotly anticipated Kingdom Hearts III isn't supposed to be on the market until Jan. 25, 2019, but some copies have already made it to market, leading fans to brace themselves for a deluge of early spoilers. 
SEE ALSO: All the best and biggest games from Xbox's E3 press conference
On Sunday, the director of Kingdom Hearts III, Tetsuya Nomura, issued a statement via Twitter confirming the leaks as legitimate but also assured fans that the game's most surprising twists were spoile

Starting in 2017, Joel Kurzynski started to make life hard for his enemies. According to his plea agreement, he targeted four people in particular — a man and a woman — with a sustained cyberstalking campaign, sending harassing spam calls at odd hours and over a thousand texts. As time went on, he got more creative, starting a dummy account with one target’s name and picture looking for “dom guys into treating me like crap.” He registered another target with with a

Starting in 2017, Joel Kurzynski started to make life hard for his enemies. According to his plea agreement, he targeted four people in particular — a man and a woman — with a sustained cyberstalking campaign, sending harassing spam calls at odd hours and over a thousand texts. As time went on, he got more creative, starting a dummy account with one target’s name and picture looking for “dom guys into treating me like crap.” He registered another target with with a

Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better. From Twitter to Reddit to Instagram, tons of internet folks are raving about a glorified tarp. 
Weighted blankets, also known as gravity or anxiety blankets, gained the attention of the self-care community late last year and have been picking up widespread (and emphatic) support ever since.
Purported to assist with stress and sleep, weighted blankets are exactly what they sound like —

In a stunning if ultimately unsurprising display of ashiness, Cardi B's recently estranged husband Offset showed up onstage at the Rolling Loud festival to beg Cardi to take him back after he cheated on her.
Offset's "apology" included flowers and a series of cakes that spelled out "TAKE ME BACK;" he was escorted off the stage after Cardi B expressed discomfort that he interrupted her show. 
SEE ALSO: Cardi B reverses over a camera in 'Carpool Karaoke' trailer
As and after the drama unfolde

The Daily Beast and TMZ are reporting that HQ Trivia and Vine co-founder Colin Kroll was found dead this weekend in his New York City apartment. He was 35.According to TMZ, Kroll’s body was discovered this morning after his girlfriend was unable to reach him. Sources tell the publication that they discovered “drug paraphernalia nearby” and suspect that he overdosed.Kroll was part of the team that founded short-form video platform Vine in 2012, and followed the company when it

Colin Kroll, the 35-year-old CEO and co-founder of mobile game sensation HQ Trivia, was found dead after an apparent drug overdose on Saturday night.
An NYPD official confirmed to The Daily Beast that authorities found Kroll in his bed, unconscious and unresponsive, shortly before midnight on Saturday. Police were there to perform a welfare check, though it's not clear who alerted them or when.
The unnamed official who confirmed the news — which was first reported by TMZ — also noted

In September 2017, a company called “Bird Rides” dumped several hundred electric scooters on the streets of Santa Monica, California, kicking off the scooter-sharing trend in the US. Fourteen months later, people are vandalizing those scooters and dumping them into lakes, and investors are losing interest.The explosive growth of dockless scooters and their contentious reputation was the surprise transportation story of the year. Bird and its main rival Lime are each worth an estimat

Colin Kroll, the 34-year-old co-founder and CEO of the HQ Trivia app, has been found dead of an apparent drug overdose in his apartment, TechCrunch has confirmed.
A spokesman for the NYPD told us that a female called 911 for a wellness check on Kroll’s apartment and he was found dead inside at 08:00 hours today.
The police department said the investigation is ongoing but added that the cause of death is “allegedly a drug overdose”.
“We’re still waiting on the M

In this Saturday Night Live sketch, a normal dinner party at a neighbor's house turns into an all-out duel when Leslie Jones and Matt Damon realize they have dissenting opinions about Weezer. In one corner, Damon has respect for the band's later work and considers himself a "ride or die." In the other, Jones stands as a Weezer purist who thinks everything after Pinkerton is trash. 
If you've ever wanted to see these two throw down like the world is going to end over the fate of Rivers Cuomo

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Bijan Stephens had an astute observation: 2018 felt different. It went by quickly, but there was so much to it that it was easy to forget that we had an Olympics, and that films like Black Panther hit theaters. I was reminded of this when I watched through Sleepy Skunk’s latest end-of-year film mashup, because I had completely forgotten that movies like Pacific Rim: Uprising and Ready Player One came out in 2018.End-of-year film mashups are a staple of

There’s a lot you can make with a 3D printer: from prosthetics, corneas, and firearms — even an Olympic-standard luge.
You can even 3D print a life-size replica of a human head — and not just for Hollywood. Forbes reporter Thomas Brewster commissioned a 3D printed model of his own head to test the face unlocking systems on a range of phones — four Android models and an iPhone X.
Bad news if you’re an Android user: only the iPhone X defended against the attack.
Gone

Google Photos will no longer let you upload unsupported video formats and take advantage of the free unlimited storage it offers, the company announced in a change to its support site earlier this week, as first spotted by Android Police. It’s a small change that won’t affect most users. Google Photos already supports the following video formats:
.mpg, .mod, .mmv, .tod, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .divx, .mov, .m4v, .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .m2t, .m2ts, .mts, and .mkv files,This leaves some RAW and

There's a lot of pressure around the holiday season. It's full of things for which it's easy to have overblown expectations — New Year's Eve, for example, and the unintentional friendship quality metric known as "giving gifts." Not helping: the state of the world, which is bad.
It's understandable, then, if you're not feeling particularly festive. This year, I've struggled to get into the holiday spirit (whatever that is) and my lack of excitement is matched only by my guilt for its absenc

There are two things the internet agrees on: dogs are great and so are Daddies. 
Saturday Night Live mashed up both concepts with the Westminster Daddy Show, a skit that put some common Daddy breeds (Golf Daddy, Business Daddy, and so on) up against each other for the prize of best in show. 
But who takes away the Daddiest prize of all? Well, maybe watch the sketch and find out. Read more...
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Now that Kevin Hart is out of the running for Oscar host, the deft impressionists at Saturday Night Live are putting some names in the hat as to who should replace him. 
Strap in for Kate McKinnon as Ellen Degeneres, Aidy Bryant as Hannah Gadsby, Pete Davidson as Rami Malek and so many more great celebrity impressions.  Read more...
More about Snl Oscar Host, Snl Impressions, Oscar Host 2018, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

David Frankel ContributorDavid Frankel is a managing partner at Founder Collective. More posts by this contributorStartups should read this checklist before they go ‘whale hunting’ for big partners You earn a million dollars a year and can’t get funded?I’ve been fortunate to have been part of half a dozen exits this year, and have seen the process work smoothly, and other times, like a roller coaster with only the most tenuous connection to the track. Here are ten bits o

John Lennon and Yoko Ono's powerful Christmas ballad "(Happy Xmas) War Is Over" is a holiday standard, but Miley Cyrus, Sean Ono Lennon, and Mark Ronson's Saturday Night Live rendition brought new life to an old classic. 
The original was written to protest the Vietnam War, and it feels particularly poignant that Lennon and Ono's son was there to back Cyrus up for this mashup of holiday cheer and counterculture. 
The song was introduced by Pete Davidson, who did not appear in any live

What if Donald Trump had run for president in 2016... and lost?
It's a dream that at least 51.7 percent of the country thinks about frequently, based on Trump's most recent approval numbers. Not living in the darkest possible timeline sure would be nice.
The black & white cold open brings Trump (Alec Baldwin) and his angel friend Clarence (Kenan Thompson) to a holiday party in which various members of the SNL-ified Trump orbit appear to crack a few jokes and then fade into the scenery. It's

The best way to describe Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch is comprehensive. As the name implies, it’s designed to offer anything a Smash fan could want, with an absurdly huge cast of characters and a large array of play options, including a new in-depth single-player mode. That comprehensive nature extends to the in-game music player, which covers a range of different games and series. What makes it really great, though, is how Nintendo has built the player with the Switc

Well, it was surreal while it lasted, by which I mean the 2017-18 cryptocurrency bubble. For a while there, Coinbase was #1 in the App Store, Bitcoin was above $10K, and there were more notional crypto zillionaires out there than you could shake a Merkle tree at.
Those were the crazy days. Now, though, a rude awakening has come. Now Bitcoin is down to $3200 and counting, other cryptocurrencies are down well over 90%, and worst of all, none of the billions of dollars which poured into cryptocurre

Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.We've all been there: You're typing away at your keyboard, busily getting stuff done, and suddenly you hunger for a snack. You're like, hmmm, I sure would love to grab a bag of chips and devour each and every delicious, salty crisp!
As you reach your fingers into the bag, you realize you just unleashed hell: potato chip fingers. It's too late to stop. And the more savory the chips, the more seasoned yo

Epic, the maker of the insanely popular, cross-platform third-person shooter online game Fortnite, has ‘fessed up to a gameplay misstep when it dropped a super powerful new weapon into the battle royale arena earlier this month — triggering a major fan backlash.
Complaints boiled down to it being unfair for the overpowered weapon to exist in standard game modes, given the massive advantage bestowed on whoever happened to be lucky enough to find it.
Earlier this month Epic had trailed

Apple's AirPods have earned a spot on many a holiday gift guide this year, which isn't a surprise considering their covetable minimalist design and crisp, clear audio quality. But at $159 a pop, buying a pair for everyone on your list is virtually guaranteed to land you a spot on your accountant's naughty list.
For an AirPods alternative that won't bust your budget, look to the AirTaps, a pair of Bluetooth earbuds that make wireless listening both accessible and affordable. Featuring sleek, flex

Fun fact: It took 24 frames to create a single second of filmed animation for the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Great bouncing icebergs, indeed. 
A far cry from the stop-motion projects of yesteryear, modern animated works are created using (much more efficient) tools such as Adobe After-Effects, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. The development of those tools and other technologies — such as augmented and virtual reality — have made animation one of the fastest-g

I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need — and it's that gigantic 552-carat diamond recently uncovered by Canadian miners.
Because this isn't just your run-of-the-mill huge ass yellow diamond. The gemstone is actually the largest to ever be found in North American history, according to a press release by Dominion Diamond Mines. 
SEE ALSO: Watch this gymnast nail a massive backflip to set the world record
Coming in at 33.74mm by 54.56mm, this stocking stuffer bl

Zack Kanter Contributor Zack Kanter is the co-founder of Stedi.More posts by this contributorWhy Amazon is eating the world
While serverless is typically championed as a way to reduce costs and scale massively on demand, there is one extraordinarily compelling reason above all others to adopt a serverless-first approach: it is the best way to achieve maximum development velocity over time. It is not easy to implement correctly and is certainly not a cure-all, but, done right, it paves an extrao