Technology news

To kick off its Investor Day presentation this afternoon, Disney laid out its direct-to-consumer strategy, going over the many assets that put the company in a strong position as it prepares for a major face-off with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other video streaming services. Kevin Mayer, chairman of Disney’s direct-to-consumer division, didn’t waste time stating the obvious: Disney will “likely” sell its standalone, paid subscription services — Disney+, ESPN+

Disney CEO Bob Iger criticized social media platforms for allowing hate to spread, saying they enable the distribution of misinformation and the propagation of “vile ideology.”Iger referred to social media as something Hitler “would have loved,” according to Variety, while accepting a humanitarian award earlier today from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human rights nonprofit that’s named after a Holocaust survivor. He added that social media is the “most powe

The lumbering behemoth that is iTunes may finally be nearing the end of its life.
According to 9to5Mac and a tweet from iPhone app developer Steven Troughton-Smith, the next version of macOS, version 10.15, will break up iTunes into different apps for music, podcasts, and TV.I am now fairly confident based on evidence I don't wish to make public at this point that Apple is planning new (likely UIKit) Music, Podcasts, perhaps even Books, apps for macOS, to join the new TV app. I expect the four t

In a new study published in Nature, researchers say that 390 billion metric tons of ice and snow from glaciers are melting globally every year. Over the last half century, melting from glaciers have also caused the earth's oceans to rise one inch. Meanwhile the warming oceans have expanded, amounting to over 9 inches, on average, in total sea level rise. Read more...More about Climate, Science, Mashable Video, Glaciers, and Climate Change

Every so often, the sun shines on Twitter.
Emoji Weather USA is just one of many bot-driven weather accounts on Twitter. However, this bot is a little special because it shows its forecast using only emoji.
Every six hours, the bots posts the weather forecast in the shape of the U.S. with emoji that corresponds to the climate in that portion of the country.  The bot tweets for morning, afternoon, evening, and night, every single day. #WeatherForecast - This afternoon :☁🌥&

Dragonglass, the all-consuming Game of Thrones weapon, can get a bit confusing.
It can instantly turn the White Walkers into ash yet it's what created the Night King and stopped Benjen Stark from turning undead? Yeah, it’s definitely a lot. 
Dragonglass has been around for centuries. In the context of the show, it was mentioned for a quick second in Season 1 but didn't make its big debut until Season 2. By the time Season 8 rolls around, it’s value has increased tremendously.&nb

Finally, after years of IPO chatter and expanding into food delivery, bikes, and self-driving cars, Uber has filed to go public. 
Uber was created in San Francisco back in 2009 as a vehicle-for-hire app and became the quintessential "gig economy" company with an independently contracted workforce providing rides. After Thursday's filing, the company is expected to start publicly trading in May.
Uber's smaller competitor Lyft went public as the first ride-hailing app with a $24 billion valua

Uberco-founder Travis Kalanick,who resigned from the company in 2017, still stands to make billions in the company’s initial public offering, expected in May.
The ride-hailing giant dropped its S-1 this afternoon, confirming plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “UBER.” The company did not disclose the valuation it’s seeking but is said to be planning to sell around $10 billion in stock.
The filing highlights Uber’s key stockholders,

Uber filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a public company Thursday, in what is expected to be one of the biggest tech IPOs in history. The company is seeking a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion, influenced by the rocky start to rival Lyft’s initial public offering late last month. As such, Uber will sell around $10 billion worth of stock in its IPO.The company said it lost $10 billion since 2016, underscoring the extremely precarious natur

Eight months after YouTube banned Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist returned to YouTube to sit down with Logan Paul for a two-hour episode of his podcast Impaulsive.This marked the second time in a month that Jones was allowed to appear on a popular YouTube personality’s channel, following a four-hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in February. During his latest appearance, Jones discussed dangerous conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and misinformation about aut

Uber has filed its S-1, setting the stage for the transportation company to go public next month. This comes less than one month after competitor Lyft’s debut on the public market.
Uberis listing under the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “UBER,” but has yet to disclose the anticipated initial public offering price. While Uber did not disclose the valuation its seeking, the company is reportedly looking to sell around $10 billion worth of stock, valuing the company betw

Pay no attention to the low-paid contractor behind the curtain. 
A Bloomberg report on Wednesday shocked readers with the news that the Amazon Echo devices in their homes are sporadically sending audio recordings to both contractors and employees around the world. Rather than an accidental bug to be quickly patched, this practice is key to what makes Alexa work: The workers listen to the recordings and transcribe them in an effort to improve the digital assistant's speech recognition capabi

A tiny robotic lander from Israel attempted to touch down on the Moon this afternoon, but ultimately failed to stick the landing during its final descent to the surface. As it was firing its main engine to land on the ground, some kind of failure occurred, causing the engine to shut down. The mission team got the engine back online, but could not regain communication with the spacecraft, suggesting the lander crashed into the surface.
“We had a failure in the spacecraft, Opher Doron, head

A lawsuit over Red Dead Redemption 2’s Wild West Pinkerton agents is ending quietly, with publisher Take-Two Interactive and developer Rockstar Games dismissing a defensive complaint against the modern-day Pinkerton agency.
Take-Two and its subsidiary Rockstar filed the suit in January, striking back at a cease-and-desist notice from Pinkerton, which argued Red Dead Redemption 2 had infringed on its trademark. The publisher wanted a court to rule that its use of the Pinkerton name —

Disney is dropping trailers for its highly anticipated The Lion King remake, and as fans impatiently await the movie's release this July, they're taking comfort in making memes.
As you probably know by now, Beyoncé is the voice of Nala in the film, which makes for a perfect meme setup. The most recent trailer also shows Scar looking quite different from his animated likeness, along with other lions that don't appear to show much facial emotion.
It should come as no surprise that fans of t

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested today after Ecuador’s UK embassy revoked his asylum status, ending a stay of more than six years. The US Department of Justice revealed that Assange is charged with one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). It’s a far less aggressive charge than many people feared Assange would face — but one that could still be ominous news for the free press.
The US government’s case against Assange has remained myster

Google and Huawei have preliminarily agreed to settle a class action lawsuit from Nexus 6P users who say their devices experienced a bootlooping issue that caused the phones to shut down randomly, regardless of the battery level. Pending court approval, the companies would be liable to a $9.75 million settlement for the class action that began in April 2017, which may result in payments of up to $400 for participating plaintiffs.The lawsuit alleged that Google, which contracted the design and m

Plenty of people hate politicians, Peeps, or both. Nearly everyone, however, should love Peeps modeled after politicians. CongressPEEPle are universally lovable.
Artist and crafter Barbara Martin, who has been  Peeps-based art for several years now, understands this magical combination well. Her Instagram account, @WeThePeeple, features Peeps modeled after famous liberal and left-wing politicians involved in the #Resistance.
This is peak political diorama art. View this post on InstagramShe

Now that Julian Assange's stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London has come to an end, First Amendment advocates are worried about how his prosecution could affect the rights of journalists.
The Wikileaks co-founder is wanted in Sweden for allegations of sexual assault. But it's not that charge that worries free speech advocates. It's the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges against Assange for "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a class

A 12-month subscription to PlayStation Plus usually costs as much as a new top-tier video game: $59.99. But at StackSocial, you can buy it for just $42.99 with the offer code PSPSAVE used at checkout once you create a free account.
PlayStation Plus enables online multiplayer and gives subscribers free games (for as long as they remain members) and discounts to game purchases. It’s free for anyone to change their PSN username, but if you want to do it two or three times (for whatever reaso

Scarlett Johansson took a shot at the hot seat for the season eight finale of Hot Ones by First We Feast, where celebrities eat increasingly spicer wings as they're interviewed by host Sean Evans.
Johansson was on the show to promote her love of chicken wings, but more notably her upcoming movie Avengers: Endgame. 
She discusses everything from her role as Princess Mindy in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie to attempting to not leak Avengers spoilers. She even learns about the "Infinity War i

Will we ever tire of tortured teen TV shows? All signs point to no as with the gripping teaser for HBO's upcoming Euphoria starring Zendaya.
In the show's first teaser, we meet Rue (Zendaya) whose declares that "if I could be a different person, I would."
The tone points plaintively toward darkness – more 13 Reasons Why than Riverdale and with HBO's freedom regarding sex and cursing. 
The cast is rounded out by Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud, Eric Dane, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, Barbie Fe

Whether you work for a major corporation or your own tiny startup, you need the flexibility to work anywhere. To do that, you need the right business laptop that's super portable but powerful enough for all of your spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. For right now, you can take advantage of Dell's latest Deal of the Week to get the perfect laptop that helps you get down to business. Get work done wherever you roam with the Dell Vostro 15 5000, available for 42% off at just $899 direc

Like many game designers, Chandana Ekanayake keeps a big document full of potential concepts, one that he keeps updating as ideas come to him. One that’s stuck around is the concept of being a falconer: having a bird that you could train and care for, while working together to solve problems. “I thought the whole idea of having a falcon as a mechanic might be interesting,” he says.
So when Ekanayake formed Outerloop Games, and began exploring ideas for the studio’s first

When astronaut Scott Kelly landed in the frigid Kazakhstan plains on March 2, 2016, a team of responders pulled Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts from the charred capsule and carried them to chairs, set out in the crisp morning air. After nearly a year in space, Kelly looked pale but appeared alright, joking about the weather with the crew and media.  
Three years later — after scrutinizing Kelly's blood, arteries, genes, eyes, bones, and gut bacteria in the aftermath of the historic v

Acer announced two desktops in its new ConceptD lineup, a series that’s targeted toward professional creators who have a lot of money and are in need of a lot of power and particularly, a pre-built Windows 10 PC. Compared to most Acer products, one of these desktops features a wood-patterned panel on its top.
Starting off with the ConceptD 500 desktop pictured above, it’s a hulking tower that’s powered by a 9th Gen Intel Core i9 processor, an Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 graphics ca

The SoftBankVision Fund has been screaming from the venture headlines the last few months, driven by eye-popping rounds (and valuations!) into some of the most notable startups around the world. Yet, SoftBank isn’t the only player rapidly buying up the cap tables of top startups. Indeed, another firm, more than a century old, has been fighting for that late-stage equity crown.
Baillie Gifford .
… Who the what?
When our fintech contributor Gregg Schoenberg interviewed Charles Plowden

“It is our contention that the investment industry may be experiencing a peak of its own, in this case the point of the maximum rate at which it extracts value from its clients’ assets. Let’s call it Peak Gravy.” That’s a recent quote from Tom Coutts, who is one of a few dozen partners at Baillie Gifford (See Arman Tabatabai’s profile here). It’s also typical of the provocative sentiments offered by this band of fund managers who are based in Edinburgh,

Are you mentally and physically prepared for the three hour crucible of Avengers: Endgame? If you got your tickets before every movie theater site crashed, there's still time to catch up with a Marvel movie marathon. But do yourself a favor and just stream all your Marvel movies at home so you don't have to worry about bathroom breaks. And with that, you will need a nice giant 4K TV to make the most of your time honoring the dearly departed Loki. 
With help from Dell you can upgrade your li