Technology news

Google has officially released the Pixel 3A, its latest smartphone that serves as a cheaper, midrange entry point into the company’s Pixel lineup. For more on the phone, check out Dieter’s review, but we’re here to talk about the Pixel 3A’s name. Or more specifically: what does the “A” stand for?
Most of the Google Pixel 3A’s moniker makes sense on the surface: “Google,” who, you know, sells the phone. “Pixel,” to indicate that i

General Motors is in talks to sell one of the North American factories it recently closed. The potential buyer? Workhorse Group, an Ohio-based EV startup that has spent the last few years struggling to bring an all-electric pickup truck to market.The deal was prematurely announced by President Donald Trump in a tweet Wednesday morning. Trump has spent the last half-year chastising GM for closing the Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant in question (along with two others), saying CEO Mary Barra made a

Avengers: Endgame will stream exclusively on Disney+, the company’s upcoming streaming service, beginning on December 11th, roughly one month after the service’s launch. Disney CEO Bob Iger made the announcement as part of the company’s quarterly earnings report this afternoon.Iger also noted that the company is “very pleased with our Q2 results and thrilled with the record-breaking success of Endgame,” adding that it is currently the second-highest grossing film o

Slack,the ubiquitous workplace messaging tool, will make its pitch to prospective shareholders on Monday at an invite-only event in New York City, the company confirmed in a blog post on Wednesday. Slack stock is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange as soon as next month.
Slack, which is pursuing a direct listing, will live stream Monday’s Investor Day on its website.
An alternative to an initial public offering, direct listings allow businesses to forgo issuing new sha

On May 8th, ride-hail drivers in cities across the US went on strike to protest unfair pay, poor working conditions, and a lack of transparency from Uber. The strike, which was timed to coincide with Uber’s much-anticipated IPO, generated headlines in all the major newspapers, but it’s unclear whether those reports really grasped what was happening. This isn’t a strike in the traditional sense: it’s public relations.First off, Uber classifies its drivers as independent c

Between YouTube Music and Google Play Music, Google has now crossed over 15 million subscribers, according to Bloomberg. The report notes that free / promotional trials are included in that total. Like its two biggest competitors, YouTube Music charges $9.99 per month for a subscription, with a six-person family plan priced at $14.99.For comparison, Spotify recently passed 100 million paying customers globally, with Apple tallying more than 50 million. In the United States, specifically, Apple

Superheroes are basically cops in tights and capes, plus some enhanced abilities and generally minus any oversight or accountability to the law. As a result, they don’t always look so heroic from the perspective of marginalized communities, where people are disproportionately on the receiving end of violence from law enforcement. That’s a problem for Ben Hernandez Bray’s new movie El Chicano, which is billed as the first live-action film with a Latinx superhero in the starring

Dark mode is a feature that lets you switch the color theme of an app, or an entire desktop operating system, to black or something close to it. Beyond the thrill of invigorating a tired design, some like to have the option available because it makes looking at your devices a little easier on the eyes. If you use a smartphone that has an OLED display, it might save some battery life, too.
These days, you can find official support for dark mode in a lot of places; Google just added a system-wide

The first trailer for Damon Lindelof’s HBO take on The Watchmen universe has arrived, and with it are some callbacks to the original Alan Moore graphic novel.This isn’t a direct adaptation of Moore’s 1986 work, which focuses on vigilantes in an alternate United States operating during the Cold War and is widely regarded as one of the most important comic books of all time. Instead, Lindelof’s take is set within the world Moore created, using central Watchmen character Ro

Uber and Lyft have long argued that ride-hailing apps have the potential to make cities better by ameliorating traffic and reducing personal car ownership. But there is a growing body of research that suggests the opposite is taking place. The latest study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, underscores how Uber and Lyft are worsening traffic in the city that gave birth to the ride-sharing phenomenon.San Francisco, home base to both Uber and Lyft, is experiencing some of its w

Moleskine’s latest collaboration is with Dropbox, for a smart notebook that uses a companion camera app to send journal pages to your connected Dropbox account. Just use the Moleskine Page Camera app (for iOS and Android) to take a photo of a page in the Moleskine+ Dropbox Smart Notebook, and the pages will show up as an image, vector, or text file in your Dropbox account.The Dropbox Smart Notebook is a riff on Moleskine’s existing smart notebooks, which do the same thing, but with

Volkswagen has started taking preorders in Europe for its first long-range electric car, and is also finally sharing some details about how much it will cost and what it will be capable of.Dubbed the ID.3, VW will sell three versions of the all-electric hatchback. The cheapest will start at “under €30,000” (about $33,600) and will travel 330 kilometers (about 200 miles) on a single charge using a 45kWh battery. The car will also be sold in 58kWh and 77kWh configurations, which

Rates of obesity worldwide have nearly tripled since 1975, and the prevailing belief is that city living is to blame. But a major study that covers 112 million adults suggests that weight gain in rural areas is responsible for much of this increase.
Members of the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration — an international group of health scientists — analyzed over 2,000 studies of how body mass index (BMI) has changed around the world from 1985 to 2017. (BMI is a height-to-weight ratio that i

John Wick: Chapter 3 isn’t your only chance to spend some quality time with everyone’s favorite hitman. The franchise is getting a promising video game spinoff as well.
Today, publisher Good Shepherd announced John Wick Hex, a strategy game helmed by game designer Mike Bithell. It’s described as “fight-choreographed chess” where players have to find the best route through a series of bad guys, planning each and every action in advance. It’s all packaged in a

The organizers of last year’s walkout of Google employees are calling on the company to investigate its human resources department, after some employees say they’ve faced retaliation from management.In a Medium post from the official walkout account, the employees released a series of demands. On the list: meeting previous demands made during the November walkout, having Alphabet CEO Larry Page address those demands, reversing alleged retaliation against organizers, and opening an i

Google has shown off a redesigned Play Store for Android TV at I/O 2019 that makes it much easier to download apps and sign up for new subscription services. Variety reports that the new interface will let publishers combine the installation of a new app with the signup and login processes, and 9to5Google adds that the new interface will support using PINs to log in, so you don’t have to type your full password as often using your TV remote.As well as showing off the new features and inte

The group behind the Consumer Electronics Show is returning an award it revoked from a women’s sex toy company earlier this year, which ignited a controversy around the industry’s inclusion of women and acceptance of sex tech. But for now, the show’s operator isn’t announcing broader changes that would actually allow sex toys to be exhibited and win awards in the future.
A CES Innovation Award was initially presented to Lora DiCarlo for its Osé Robotic Massager ah

On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced that he would be introducing a bill banning “manipulative” design features in video games with underage audiences, including the sale of loot boxes.
The legislation would, if approved, prohibit the sale of loot boxes in games targeted at children under the age of 18. Games marketed toward wider audiences could also face penalties from regulators like the Federal Trade Commission if companies knowingly allow children to purchase these r

Warner Bros. knows that people are anxiously awaiting Detective Pikachu, so the studio hit Pokémon fans with a trollish treat. A complete version of the film is available to watch on YouTube now, but while it’s labeled like an illegal rip of the movie — or the innumerable scams that try to lure naïve users by promising offsite illegal rips of movies — it’s not exactly the Detective Pikachu fans were expecting.This version of Detective Pikachu is a surprising,

Trying to find a personal trainer IRL can pose a lot of potential problems.
They include, but aren't limited to: Mismatched schedules, personalities that don’t sync up, high costs, and the somewhat awkward experience of working out in public with someone focusing all of their attention on you. It’s almost enough to make you want to give up on working out altogether.
And that is precisely why people turn to things like online fitness coaching or online yoga classes.
As the name sugges

Logitech’s new G502 Lightspeed is a wireless version of the company’s beloved G502 Hero gaming mouse that’s available today. At first glance, it doesn’t look very different; it still has 11 customizable buttons, it includes a range of weights to tweak how quickly (or slowly) the mouse can be dragged along your mouse pad, and it’s still comfortable to use for hours on end. Oh, and its Lightsync LEDs light up in some very nice ways.
These similarities are no coincide

Match Group, the dating app conglomerate that owns Tinder, Hinge, and more, had to pay Tinder employees $9.4 million in stock compensation this quarter because of the app’s rapid growth. That large number could have implications beyond the company’s finances: it might be consequential in the $2 billion lawsuit the company faces from Tinder co-founder Sean Rad.Rad claims Match purposely undervalued Tinder in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in stock to the team&rsquo

Wikipedia was founded with the aim of making knowledge freely available around the world — but right now, it’s mostly making it available in English. The English Wikipedia is the largest edition by far, with 5.5 million articles, and only 15 of the 301 editions have more than a million. The quality of those articles can vary drastically, with vital content often entirely missing. Two hundred and six editions are missing an article on the emotional state of happiness and just under h

If you’ve managed to break your Pixel 3A already, just one day after its launch, then you’ll be happy to hear there’s now a Google-backed repair service that’ll fix it. uBreakiFix now offers walk-in repairs for both the Pixel 3A and Pixel 3A XL across its 450 US locations. If you drop your phone off before 3PM, then it promises to have your handset fixed the same day.Google has yet to offer a repair service of its own for the new phones. A support page on the company&rsq

Microsoft first introduced the concept of “PowerToys” in Windows 95. It was originally a way for Windows engineers to test a prototype feature, and Microsoft packaged some of the best ones into a PowerToys bundle. These PowerToys included popular utilities like Tweak UI to customize the Windows user interface, Quick Res to quickly change screen resolutions, and Send To X that let you send files and folders to the command line, clipboard, or desktop.
PowerToys disappeared after Windo