Technology news

While everyone on the ground is stressing about self-driving cars, the future of flight is also moving more toward autonomous planes, as seen at the 2019 edition of the Paris Air Show.
The air show is one of the biggest aerospace events annually and everyone from established names to newer companies showed off concept craft and prototype vehicles. 
Boeing (yes, the same company reeling from two deadly plane crashes and grounded 737 Max planes around the world) displayed its idea for the aut

It's June 22, the first Saturday after the official start of the summer season. And just like they do every year, revelers gathered in New York's Coney Island for another round of Mermaid Parade celebrations.
Since 1983, the annual Mermaid Parade has come to Coney Island every summer with three major goals (according to the FAQ): to "bring mythology to life for local residents who live on streets named Mermaid and Neptune"; to "create self-esteem in a district that is often disregarded as 'enter

We just can't stay away from our phones, even in the car. 
The drive safety app Drivemode looked at driving data from 2.7 million U.S. drivers using Android phones between Jan. 2018 and April 30, 2019 and found that over 167 million miles and 13.3 million hours, Americans use their phone for a better part of an hour in the car on average.
Keep in mind, only drivers who had the Drivemode app on their phones were tracked, so these are already fairly connected users who are probably more likel

Amazon Prime subscribers in Canada now have access to Prime Reading, a membership perk that offers access to “a rotating selection of books, comics, and more” at no extra cost. This content can be accessed from Kindle and Kindle Fire devices, and also via the Kindle app on Android and iOS. You can download up to 10 Prime Reading titles onto your device at one time.As for selection, Amazon says its Prime customers in Canada can expect “hundreds” of options — some boo

Can you believe it's been an entire year since the bulky English bulldog Zsa Zsa was crowned as the World's Ugliest Dog for 2018?
Well, here we are. It's June 2019 and the latest edition of the World's Ugliest Dog competition was decided on Friday. And the winner is... Scamp the Tramp.Congratulations to the 2019 #WorldsUgliestDog Contest WINNER Scamp The Tramp! 🏆 Charming the judges with her beauty and talent Scamp The Tramp pulled in front of the pack, taking this year’s crown at

Attention power users: Netflix is testing a new feature that'll allow you to watch videos without disrupting your work.
According to Engadget, the streaming video service is testing a "pop-out player" that shrinks the video player into a smaller window. Basically, it's picture-in-picture mode on desktop.
SEE ALSO: Here’s what’s coming to Netflix in June 2019
Following Engadget's initial report on the experimental feature, Netflix responded to the tech site with an image featuring "it

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (think Pokémon GO, but with wands and giant spiders instead of pokéballs and Pikachus) officially launched earlier this week, but with a catch: it was only available in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Why? Amongst other reasons, a country-by-country rollout helps Nianticensure that their servers stay stable. By spreading the launch out over time, they’re (hopefully) able to figure out where potential server scaling issues might be before ha

“When They See Us,” a new miniseries on Netflix,can be so infuriating that it’s hard to watch — especially its first hour, which depicts the arrest of the teenaged boys who became known as The Central Park Five, and shows police detectives coercing them into confessing to a brutal rape.
We review the series on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast. Some of us struggled to get through that first episode, and the episodes that follow have plenty of painful mome

Volkwagen's electric race car took on one of the toughest courses in the world — and set a record. 
The VW ID.R with two electric motors took on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife 12.9-mile lap through Germany earlier this month and finished faster than any other all-electric vehicle had ever done: 6 minutes and 5 seconds. 
That's an average speed of 128 miles mph and faster than the previous electric record by 40 seconds.In 2018, the same ID.R vehicle set a record at Colorado's P

Neon Genesis Evangelion has returned for a second life on Netflix, legally available for the first time in a couple decades. Watching Neon Genesis Evangelion in 2019 is fascinating for a number of reasons — namely, seeing what a new generation of people will make of the show — but the most interesting is the new world it’s been released back into. The anime was always apt, but in the two decades since the original series was first broadcast on TV Tokyo, it’s become the id

Think nobody's going to notice if you don't scan that gallon of milk at the self-checkout register? Think again.
According to Business Insider, Walmart's using new cameras with computer vision to aid in catching thieves at over 1,000 of its stores.
SEE ALSO: Toys 'R' Us stores are coming back in time for the holidays
The company confirmed to Business Insider it has a technology program called "Missed Scan Detection" that uses AI-equipped cameras to "track and analyze activities at both self-chec

There have been a few good deals worth checking out this week, but the best one comes in today from Amazon and Walmart. Both retailers have cut the price on the iPad Pro (12.9-inches, 64GB, WiFi) down to $824.99. That’s over $150 off of its usual $999 price.
This is the lowest price that we’ve seen for this model, and it makes deciding between the 12.9-inch and 11-inch iPad Pros a little tougher. If you value screen real estate, the larger iPad Pro is the clear winner. However, if yo

Toys 'R' Us will rise again!
After breaking everyone's hearts with its store closures in 2018, Toys 'R' Us will reportedly re-open for business (albeit in a much smaller capacity) for the 2019 holiday season, reports Bloomberg.
SEE ALSO: 9 hidden iOS 13 features you need to know about
Tru Kids Inc. CEO Richard Barry, who used to be an executive at Toys 'R' Us, plans to open a half-dozen stores in the U.S. by the end of the year. A new online store is also expected to arrive as well.
The new Toys

Mac finally got his game of catch.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans should remember that Mac (creator Rob McElhenney) dreams of playing catch with retired Phillies second baseman Chase Utley. It almost happened in the sixth season of the FX series, in the episode "The Gang Gets Stranded in the Woods." But, well... the gang got stranded in the woods.
Now, almost 10 years after that episode aired, the dream came true. Utley threw out the Phillies' ceremonial first pitch on Friday — par

Welcome back to this week’s transcribed edition of Equity.
This week, TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton filled in for co-host Alex Wilhelm – who was out in preparation for his wedding this weekend – joining Kate to cover the big news of the week.
Kate and Danny dive straight into Slack’sIPO and the implications of its direct listing strategy, before shifting gears to discuss the launch of Facebook’s new ‘Libra’ cryptocurrency and the VCs backing th

Ten years ago this week, a video appeared on the Something Awful forum describing a trove of unlabeled tapes that had been recorded as part of a student film project. The director had supposedly instructed for the tapes to be burned. But years after the project was suddenly ended, the video’s narrator reveals that he kept them intact and decided to parse through the footage.
“Should I find anything in any of them I will upload it to keep as a permanent record,” the narrator wro

Microsoft has banned the use of the free version of Slack for its 100,000+ employees. GeekWire reports that Microsoft has a list of prohibited apps and services, and even Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Docs are “discouraged for use” inside the company. The Slack ban isn’t primarily driven by Microsoft’s competing Teams product, though. Microsoft is reportedly concerned about the security aspects of Slack Free and Slack Plus. An internal entry describes the situation

For centuries, rice farmers in Asia have used ducks as a natural alternative to pesticides. While paddling around in flooded paddy fields, ducks tear up weeds and snack on insects, with their manure even acting as additional fertilizer. In the 21st century, this practice is not widespread, but a new technological twist on the method could change that.An engineer working for Japanese carmaker Nissan has built a robot alternative to paddy field ducks. As reported by Nippon.com and Nerdist, he&rsqu

This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.When brands attempt to capture our hearts (and our wallets) it can either go surprisingly well, or be a complete dumpster fire of fake relatability. 
Denny's, often credited as one of the original brands to dabble in internet memes, often toes the line. But this time we are glad to report that they got it very, very right. Partially by just letting an already adorable and hilar

Before deepfakes and alternative facts, the online world was already telling us fibs. In our series Lies the Internet Told Me, we call 'em all out.Liar, liar, feed's on fire!
It's safe to say that in 2019 we're all trying to be on our best Instagram game. That means bright colors, no-filter filters, and FaceTuned perfection. 
What we also know, as people of the internet, is that most of it isn't real. The nonstop loop of highlight reels belonging to people we may not even know usually entai

Every day of Pride Month, Mashable will be sharing illuminating conversations with members of the LGBTQ community who are making history right now.Adam Rippon isn't afraid to speak his mind. 
The Olympic-medal winning figure skater made waves for criticizing Vice President Mike Pence over his anti-LGBTQ policies when he led the U.S. delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, and he hasn't stopped taking a stand since. He joined several of his fellow Olympians that year in skippi

To send or not to send the carefully composed text? It's a question many a love-seeking youth has asked themselves in an age in which swiping leads to texting leads to hanging out leads to banging leads to ... who the heck knows? Yep, we're talking about the dreaded "Define the Relationship" (DTR) convo, also known as the "Where is this going?" discussion.
Ideally, DTRs are open and honest face-to-face conversations between two people to discuss what they mean to each other. But that is not nece

As the chorus of Cher’s “Believe” pulsates through the building, skaters dressed in glittering jumpsuits and multicolored shirts with fringed sleeves glide across the rink. Some are first-timers, hesitantly gripping the railings for support as they will their bodies to stay upright. Others are more experienced, linking arms and waltzing along as if their skates weighed nothing at all.
A disco ball cuts through the fog machine’s plumes and sends beams of light across the s

With E3 done and dusted, What was the most memorable moment for you? For us, it would have to be Keanu Reeves on stage talking about the up and coming game Cyberpunk 2077. It was truly breathtaking when he walked onto the stage! From the makers of The Witcher, we are expecting great things from this game.
Now that pre-orders are available, secure your copy with Amazon, as they are offering 17% off retail price. Plus they provide pre-order price guarantee. Meaning if the price decreases between y

Microsoft first unveiled its new command line app for Windows, dubbed Windows Terminal, at Build earlier this year. It’s a new central location where you can access the traditional cmd line, PowerShell, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). While developers have been able to compile and use the Windows Terminal from the code available on GitHub, Microsoft is now releasing an easy installer through the Windows Store today.
The Windows Terminal app includes multiple tab support, alongsi

TL;DR: The eco-friendly Brio Phantom wireless headphones not only sound great, but they also reduce your carbon footprint — pick up a pair in the Mashable Shop for just $74.99.At this point, watching your impact on the environment is no longer a trend — it's a responsibility.
Not to alarm you or anything, but some are predicting that the world will meet its doom in 2050, and the only way to prevent that from happening is a global mobilization effort to mitigate the effects of climate

TL;DR: The third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat has been on sale in the PCMag Shop for a hot second, but you can save an additional $50  through Sunday by entering the code 50OFF at checkout.The first day of summer marked the official start of air conditioning season, although it might be more appropriate to call it air *pollution* season: With everyone's units running on full blast amid swelling temperatures, power plants are being pushed to their operational limits and thus crank out

TL;DR: The helpful Amazon FBA A-Z Bundle will teach you how to make passive income — grab it on sale for just $29 in the Mashable Shop.The sheer amount of get-rich-quick schemes you see plaguing Facebook is indicative of how badly people want to earn money without lifting a finger. You can't blame them, though. Who wouldn't want dollars hitting their checking accounts while they're sleeping?
Despite what those deceitful posts tell you, there's no easy way to build a passive stream of incom

TL;DR: These comprehensive online courses can teach you what you need to know about a variety of subjects, and you can score any one of them for $15 and under in the Mashable Shop. Gone are the days when scholarships, prior degrees, a trust fund, or even a physical classroom environment were needed to further your education. Today, all you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a pizza. Especially the pizza.
Anything you've been dying to learn? There's a course for that. No, seriou

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Today's lesson in Cooking as a Grown-Ass adult: Blenders are used for more than frozen margs in summer and collecting dus

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Today's lesson in Cooking as a Grown-Ass adult: Blenders a

Today's lesson in Cooking as a Grown-Ass adult: Blenders are used for more than frozen margs in summer and collecting dust in winter.
Hot soup without a stove, coffee without a coffee maker, and whipped cream without a hand mixer are just a few of the tasks these multitasking appliances can tackle. Similar to the way the mystical Instant Pot replaces a sauté pan or slow cooker, blenders can expand your meal possibilites tenfold without the clutter of multiple machines.
Healthy habits made

James Charles is back, proving that nobody stays canceled for long. 
The 20-year-old beauty vlogger's feud with his former mentor Tati Westbrook over his sponsorship of her company's rival hair vitamins rocked social media. In her now-deleted takedown "Bye Sister" — a play off Charles' chipper video introductions, "Hi sisters!" — Westbrook publicly ended their "transactional" friendship and said her former protégé sexually harassed other men, knowing that they iden