Technology news

Warning: Spoilers for Game of Thrones lie ahead.On a set where dragons live and the dead walk again, even the most mundane of details can seem pretty magical. Luckily, Game of Thrones: The Last Watch didn't settle for good enough — instead hunting down the best of the best behind-the-scenes nuggets to feed our mourning fandom.
On Sunday night, HBO aired the two-hour making-of special, chronicling the end of Thrones from the perspective of its creators and through the lens of documentarian

So we're doing this again, huh, IHOP?
A year after the restaurant chain caused a stir by changing its name to "IHOb" to tease its new burgers, and experienced some pretty hilarious burns as a result, it's right back to teasing a new name. 
But, this time, no one's having it.
On Monday, IHOP shared the following tweet:It's hard to make sense of this because the chain actually reverted back to its original IHOP name only a month after the June 2018 "IHOb" stunt, even shuttering its "IHOb" Twi

One sharp Australian teen caught a break this week after being caught hacking tech giant Apple. 
The 17-year-old Adelaide student was one of two teens who were charged with hacking Apple twice, once in 2015 and once in 2017, and downloading a digital ton of internal documents. 
After putting the teen on nine months of probation instead of jail time, Magistrate David White said, according to ABC News Australia: "He is clearly someone who is a gifted individual when it comes to informati

Everything is creepy in outer space.
It's a dark, hostile environment where sound doesn't travel and death comes quickly for those who lack the proper protection. Habitable spaces can be built, but these costly creations are cramped on the inside and fraught with danger. Even the smallest malfunction can turn deadly.
This is familiar ground for sci-fi thrillers, but none have taken quite the same approach as Observation, from No Code (published by Devolver Digital). The title is the name of a sp

Tonight, the National Geographic Channel will begin airing its six-part adaptation of Richard Preston’s book, The Hot Zone, which covered the first outbreaks of Ebola in Africa, and an outbreak in a Reston, Virginia laboratory in 1989 that required the US Army to clean up.The book was an immediate and frightening hit with the public, bringing Ebola to the forefront of the public’s attention. National Geographic’s adaptation of the book comes a quarter-century after it was firs

It's Memorial Day and Google is doing its part to encourage users to remember those who've died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
All day long, Google's logo on its homepage will be posted in gray. And starting at 3 p.m. locally, the official National Moment of Remembrance, the entire desktop version of the page will turn gray. Users will also be able to play "Taps," the bugle call performed at Armed Forces memorials and funerals. Clicking a U.S. folded flag featured on the homepage w

Adults are the worst but, thankfully, there was karmic justice for one baseball-loving kid.
At the Big Ten baseball tournament in Omaha, Nebraska on Sunday, one young Ohio State fan thought he was about to snag the ultimate game token, a foul ball, when a grown-up Iowa fan swooped in to swipe the ball for himself.The moment stirs memories of this drama that unfolded last year when an adult fan took a foul ball from a youngster at a Chicago Cubs game. There turned out to be more to that particula

Apple’s software chief, Craig Federighi, says he doesn’t “buy into” the criticism that Apple is turning privacy into a luxury good, an accusation that was indirectly leveled at the company by Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
In an interview with The Independent, Federighi dismissed “the luxury good dig,” just a couple weeks after Pichai wrote an op-ed in The New York Times saying that “privacy cannot be a luxury good offered only to people who can afford to bu

The standalone YouTube Gaming app is shutting down on May 30th. YouTube announced the impending shutdown last year, saying that the spinoff had caused “confusion” among gaming fans. It integrated the service into its main app instead, launching a games-focused hub that has already mostly replaced the old YouTube Gaming.
In a help page, YouTube directs any remaining YouTube Gaming fans to this newer hub. It’s also merged YouTube and YouTube Gaming subscriptions, although people

Even before the U.S. National Women's soccer team's match with Mexico kicked off on Sunday, the crowd at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey was brought to its feet by Pete DuPré, a 96-year-old World War II vet and his pregame harmonica performance of the national anthem.
While the crowd began the anthem in relative silence, they started sing along about halfway through before roaring as DuPré brought the anthem to a close. DuPré served as a medic during World War II

You know the Star Wars universe. You know the DC Extended Universe. You know the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 
How about the Talking Animal Cinematic Universe?
Movies and television shows allow us to peer inside other worlds, worlds where almost anything is possible. Sometimes these worlds are real. Sometimes they’re fiction. Sometimes they are shared worlds set across multiple features or series.
What if — and stay with us for a minute here — the live action movies and TV s

ByteDance, the company behind video app TikTok, is reportedly building its own smartphone too. According to two unnamed sources in a Financial Times report, the phone would come preloaded with ByteDance’s many apps — which include the news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, the ubiquitous TikTok, and according to some rumors, an unreleased streaming music service.
ByteDance’s smartphone patent acquisitions suddenly make more sense
The Financial Times says that ByteDance CEO Zhang Yimin

Imagine taking an Apple MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, then stretching that Touch Bar down to occupy nearly half of the space where the keyboard usually resides. 
That's pretty much what Asus' new ZenBook Pro Duo laptop looks like, and while we're not quite sure about the concept's usefulness yet, we have to give Asus credit for the sheer bravado it takes to launch such a product. 
The concept is similar to HP's Omen X 2S laptop, which also has a smaller screen below the regular screen

Disney's highly anticipated Aladdin is here, but we know better than to expect anything groundbreaking from another needless live-action adaptation. While remake has pleasantly surprised most critics with colorful costumes and charismatic leads, Aladdin's signature songs are its biggest disappointment.
From Mashable's own Angie Han: "Guy Ritchie and his team seem to have no idea how to stage and shoot a musical number," which is precisely the opposite of what you want to hear about the director

Let's be real. You're going to take your phone to the beach. How could you not? So let's make sure it doesn't meet its untimely end there.
There are three main issues to consider when beach-proofing your device: sun, sand, and moisture. You don't want your phone to overheat, you don't want it to get sand in its ports and crevices, and you definitely don't want it to get wet. 
Take these precautions and you'll be able to enjoy your beach day in peace. Unless you get sand under your swimsuit,

Last year’s ZenBook Pro wasn’t a very good laptop, but we found ourselves pleasantly surprised with its key selling point. The ScreenPad, a smartphone-like screen that replaced the traditional trackpad, turned out to be less of a gimmick than one might have expected, and so Asus is going all in on the idea for its 2019 lineup of mainstream laptops.
Basically, the ScreenPad 2.0 works a lot more like a smartphone. Asus has revamped the interface with Android-style menu buttons and ico

Asus was one of the first companies to release portable USB-C monitors, and at Computex this year it’s releasing two unique new designs.First up is the ZenScreen Touch (pictured above), a 15.6-inch 1080p touchscreen designed to be hooked up to smartphones or laptops. The primary use case demonstrated at an event ahead of Computex Taipei this week was for productivity-focused smartphone apps with complex UIs that are easier to operate on a larger canvas.
The ZenScreen Touch has a 7,800mAh

Asus always likes to use its hometown trade show of Computex, which also happens to be the world’s biggest computer hardware event, to show off a wide and occasionally wild lineup of new products. And it’s really outdone itself this time — the headline announcement is one of the most decadent laptops ever created.The ZenBook Pro Duo has not one, but two 4K screens. (At least if you’re counting horizontal pixels.) There’s a 15-inch 16:9 OLED panel where you’d

Asus is celebrating its 30-year anniversary with a special edition laptop. The Asus ZenBook Edition 30 includes a white leather lid cover and an 18-karat rose gold logo that looks a lot like Star Trek’s starfleet insignia. Asus hasn’t gone full leather like HP’s leather Folio tablet / laptop hybrid, but that does mean this latest ZenBook is a traditional laptop through and through.“Every piece of genuine leather is hand selected,” explains Asus chairman Jonney Shih

Upcoming iPhones might get the ability to send Bluetooth audio to two different devices. 
This is according to a report by Japanese blog Mac Otakara (via MacRumors), which cites sources from the Asian supply chain. 
You can already connect one iPhone to several Bluetooth devices — a watch, a speaker, a car — but you currently cannot send Bluetooth audio to two different audio devices. 
With this new functionality, two users could listen to tunes on one iPhone using two

For better or worse, wireless audio is slowly becoming the norm for mobile phones and tablets. This has caused a lot of annoyance, but there are benefits, too. One is the ability to send audio signals to two separate Bluetooth devices simultaneously. Some Samsung phones can already do this, and according to a rumor from Japanese blog Mac Otakara (spotted via Mac Rumors), Apple might be bringing the feature to future iPhones as well.
Being able to connect to more than one Bluetooth device can be

ARM, the blueprint maker and instruction set designer for all the mobile chips we enjoy using in our smartphones today, has unveiled its latest set of premium mobile designs, slated to feature in 2020 devices. This includes two main components: the Cortex-A77 CPU core and the Mali-G77 graphics part.
The immediate highlight with the A77 is a 20 percent improvement in IPC (instructions per clock) performance, which should translate into a tangible acceleration in completing complex tasks. Most sy

The fact that there's a multitude of potential threats to your personal information whenever you connect to the internet isn't really a surprise these days. It actually might be more shocking that you're not using a VPN yet to protect your data — including your location (creepy) and other sensitive information (like your credit card data or your SSN).
If you haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, there's no better time than the present to do so: Private Internet Access VPN is a PCMag Editor'

Summer is just around the corner, finally. And that means so are vacations, weekends spent outside, and, if you're the proud owner of a vehicle, a few road trips. As you make the necessary preparations to navigate the road for long periods, don't forget to stock up on trinkets that will make your trip infinitely safer and more convenient.
This Memorial Day weekend, we're holding a sale on car chargers, dash cams, smartphone mounts, and more for an additional 15% discount. Just make sure to enter

Memorial Day is here, and we hope you are enjoying your three day weekend. Whether you had a jam-packed weekend of activities, or you spent your time off lounging around and chilling with your loved ones, we think the rest time is well deserved. 
Why not continue treating yourself with a shopping spree todayMemorial Day sales this year is going strong, with deals ranging from iPad Pros, MacBook Pros, to Nintendo Switch bundles and Dyson V10 vacuum cleaners, we have you covered. 
Keep s

Nowadays, most computer users don't need to worry about the exact specifications of the chips running in their machines — a mid-range processor will run the majority of common tasks without issues. 
But every once in a while comes a processor that promises to make everyday computers far more powerful without breaking the bankAMD's new Ryzen 9 3900X, launched at the Computex trade show on Sunday, is one such processor. 
The Ryzen 9 3900X is a 12-core, desktop processor built on AM

Nvidia has kicked off Computex Taipei by launching a new software-hardware initiative aimed at creators, along with an extensive lineup of laptops to support it. Nvidia Studio is a collection of APIs, SDKs, and drivers for Nvidia RTX GPUs designed to boost performance and efficiency in creative software.Nvidia says its Studio Drivers, which are being renamed from the existing Creator-Ready Drivers, are tested against software from the likes of Adobe, Epic, Autodesk, Unity, and Blackmagic Design

We're into the final day of the Bank Holiday weekend, but don't be down about it, because if these last few days have taught us anything it's that summer is on its way.
If we are to expect more great weather, we ought to get the garden in order. Nobody wants to spend the whole day stuck inside, especially when the sun is shining and it's hot outside. That's why B&Q's outdoor and garden sale couldn't have come at a better time. 
This is your last chance to save 20 percent on a wide range

Slowly but surely, it feels like AMD is tracking towards building a graphics card that can truly compete with Nvidia for your high-end gaming dollars, and hopes are pinned on Navi — the next-gen graphics architecture that got a substantial vote of confidence when Sony chose it for the upcoming PS5 game console.But Navi is coming to PCs too, and the company has just revealed when and where: a new desktop GPU family called the AMD Radeon RX 5700 series, coming this July. That’s the wo

Facebook has come under criticism for not doing enough on dog fighting, a practice which is illegal in numerous countries around the world.
The report, published by animal rights organisation Lady Freethinker, highlights how dog fighting content is easily found on the platform, and how the company has failed to enforce its own policies against the practice.
Between Oct. 2018 and Feb. 2019, the organisation found 2,000 posts which promoted dogfighting or trafficking animals used for fighting, mor

Warning: The following post contains spoilers for the finale of Game of Thrones. You must know this by now.
No one was more emotional about the fate of Daenerys Targaryen than Kit Harington.
As seen in HBO's behind-the-scenes Game of Thrones documentary, The Last Watch, which aired Sunday, the star who played Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen can be seen during the cast's very last table read reaching the moment when his character kills his beloved queen.
Whether or not you saw it coming in the show, Har

Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei has been doing a round of interviews this past week, responding to his company’s placement on a US ban list. In speaking with Bloomberg, he’s made the assertion that he neither expects nor hopes for a retaliation from the Chinese government against the Trump administration’s ban. A resolute Zhengfei says, “That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if that happens, I’ll be the first to protest.”Notoriety swirls

When you first heard about Disney's live-action remake of the 1992 classic, Aladdin, you probably had a pretty strong opinion.
So did critics, throwing down divided reactions to the studio's latest major redo of an animated classic. But that hasn't stopped Aladdin from flying high at the box office.
Aladdin was one jump ahead of the competition, beating John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum,  Avengers: Endgame, and Detective Pikachu, along with fellow new openings Booksmart and Brightburn to to