Technology news

“Years and Years” is an unusual show. It’s a co-production of HBOand the BBC, and in the course of six hourlong episodes, it covers a span of more than 10 years in our near future.
During that time, we see the rise of a terrifying Trump-style politician in the United Kingdom named Vivian Rook (played by Emma Thompson), along with lots more political, economic and technological upheaval. All of this is seen through the eyes of Manchester’s Lyons family — grandmother

Inspired by a Twitter trend, everyone's texting their number neighbor. Unfortunately, not everyone's number neighbor wants to be contacted. 
"Number neighbor" is also known as text door neighbor, a term coined in 2008. In 2016, people began texting the phone number below theirs in an effort to strike up a conversation. Twitter user and Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners drummer Ryan Lavallee brought the trend back on Tuesday when screenshots of his number neighbor conversation went viral on Tw

What founders need to know about pro rata rights
Pro rata used to be reasonably simple. Venture investors who bought preferred shares in startups had the right to lock in a certain percentage of equity provided they continued funding the company in the future rounds of financing. But as VCs have raised ever larger funds and cap tables have become ever more congested, who gets pro rata — and who keeps it — has become a massive distraction for many founders during their fundraises.
And

It's always great when the internet serves up amazing, one-in-a-million viral surprises. But sometimes, you just want to watch a baby dog and a baby cat play together for a minute and a half.
This video falls into that latter category. When Shelby, a year-old Shiba Inu pup came back from her walk one fine day, the then-10-week-old kitten Simba was waiting and ready to pounce.
The two get a little rough, but it's all in good fun between these two obvious furfriends. Read more...
More about Puppy,

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Many companies set up their own, secretive divisions to develop new devices and technologies. There’s Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks division, which produced the U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird. Apple assembled a secret working to develop the iPhone. Facebook set up its own division as it delved into hardware in recent years. A new report from CNBC outlines the drama behind the company’s secretive hardware division, Building 8, a

The rare painted lady butterfly has been spotted in the U.K. and Ireland, a once-in-a-decade phenomenon. The painted lady or Vanessa cardui emerge every 10 years when weather conditions and food sources are ideal for their survival.
Over 11 million painted lady butterflies were spotted in 2009, the last time they emerged. Have you noticed the massive influx of Painted Lady butterflies around Glasgow? UofG Environmental Advisor Steve Johnson explains why 🦋🌺🌿 pic.twitt

We may never leave our Milky Way galaxy and see it from the outside, but the Hubble Space Telescope at least helps us imagine that view.
A newly shared Hubble image that NASA posted on Friday takes a look at NGC 3432. This not-too-distant celestial body (it's only 42 million light-years away!) is a spiral galaxy much like Earth's own Milky Way. But because of where we are and how it's situated, Hubble's photo amounts to a side view.On the edge of a galaxy. ✨Believe it or not, this luminou

Disney has shared a heartfelt tribute video for Descendants 3 actor Cameron Boyce after his sudden passing on July 6. Boyce, who was 20, starred in Disney Channel's Shake It Up and Jessie before he was cast in the Descendants trilogy.Tonight’s premiere of #Descendants3 is dedicated to #CameronBoyce and is a celebration of his talent and the joy he brought to the world. You’ll always be in our hearts, Cameron ❤️ pic.twitter.com/VWzyoPUghn
— Disney Channel PR (@Disn

A baseball fan threw a pitch that clocked in at 96 miles per hour during a stadium speed challenge. Two weeks later, he was signed to a team as a Major League Baseball player.
Nathan Patterson, 23, attended a Colorado Rockies game with his brother on July 15, and his pitch went viral on Twitter. 
His brother Christian tweeted, "Let's get him signed!"And 2 weeks later...he’s now a professional athlete@Athletics @MLB pic.twitter.com/zLnwQKMcRH
— Christian Patterson (@cpatterson_7)

Tesla announced today that it’s bringing back a useful perk new customers who buy a new Model S or Model X vehicle: unlimited charging at its supercharger stations. The announcement comes after sales of the two models have slowed and after the company had greater-than-anticipated losses in its latest quarterly earnings report.The company made the announcement in a Tweet (via TechCrunch), saying that all new orders would come with free unlimited charging at its network of Supercharger stati

Photo by Andrew Liptak / The Ver Genre is an odd thing. At times, it’s merely a sales tactic, where similar books are grouped together in a bookstore to make them easier to find. But it can also be a codified canon of literature in which authors are engaged in a decades-long conversation, bouncing themes and tropes off one another. Every now and again, a book or author will come along that really breaks away from the conversation and ignores those tropes and conventions. One recent exampl

Teslais resurrecting a popular benefit that CEO Elon Muskonce called “unsustainable” as it attempts to boost sales of its more expensive electric vehicles.
Tesla announced Saturday that all new Model S sedans and Model X SUVs will come with free unlimited access to its network of electric vehicle chargers known as superchargers.
The move comes on the heels of a second quarter of wider-than-expected losses of $408 million despite record deliveries of its electric vehicles.
The au

Brian Kateman ContributorShare on Twitter Brian Kateman is President and Cofounder of the Reducetarian Foundation. More posts by this contributorFish replacement may be the next big wave in alternative protein development
The fashion industry has historically relied on exploitative, unsustainable and unethical labor practices in order to sell clothes — but if recent trends are any indication, it won’t for much longer. Over the last several years, the industry has entered a rema

Cryptocurrency fans who were hoping to use Apple’s forthcoming credit card to splash on coin are out of luck. You also won’t be able to use the Apple Card to buy lottery tickets, casino gambling chips in any form, physical or virtual, or foreign currency or travelers checks.
Reuters spotted the detail in a customer agreement posted to Apple Card’s card issuer partner Goldman Sachs’ website which lists restrictions on transactions it describes as “cash advance and ca

It wasn’t “system updates” as it claimed. StockX was mopping up after a data breach, TechCrunch can confirm.
The fashion and sneaker trading platform pushed out a password reset email to its users on Thursday citing “system updates,” but left users confused and scrambling for answers. StockX told users that the email was legitimate and not a phishing email as some had suspected, but did not say what caused the alleged system update or why there was no prior warning.

The Entertainment Software Association issued an apology of sorts after making available the contact information for more than 2,000 journalists and analysts who attended this year’s E3.
“ESA was made aware of a website vulnerability that led to the contact list of registered journalists attending E3 being made public,” the organization said via statement. “Once notified, we immediately took steps to protect that data and shut down the site, which is no longer available.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Many of this week’s best deals came from Best Buy, and most of them are still taking place this weekend. I’ve resurfaced a few of them below, including discounts on waterproof Kindles (without Amazon’s annoying ads built-in), and a Ring Video Doorbell that comes with an Echo Dot smart speaker. There are other good deals to sort through, like Google Play Store’s big sale, and a refurbished iPad Pro (2018) that’s hundreds o

Animals around the world are seeing their environments change. Climate change is causing heating and changes to weather patterns, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and previously undisturbed habitats are being altered and degraded by human activities. If we want to understand how these changes will affect animals around the world, we need a better understanding of how their biology might determine how well they survive these changes. My colleagues and I have just published research that demo

Photo by Andrew Liptak / The Verge N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy has become an acclaimed fantasy classic since its debut, earning three consecutive Hugo Awards in as many years. Now, fans will be able to explore the world on their own: Green Ronin Publishing announced that it’ll be releasing a roleplaying game based on the trilogy.
Over the course of the three novels (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky), Jemisin introduced readers to the Stillness, a far-fut

Don't love the idea of some random Amazon employee reviewing your Alexa query about whether or not it's safe for the dog to eat honeydew? Now you can opt out.
(It is safe, and even healthy, for your dog to eat some honeydew, by the way.)
The new privacy feature is a months-later response to the April revelation that some Amazon employees manually review recorded exchanges with Alexa, and can see where the user is located. You can find it in the Alexa Privacy section of Amazon's website or smartp

The Earth continues to drop casual hints about climate change, including a gigantic hailstorm in Alberta, Canada on Friday. The city of Edmonton was quickly placed under tornado watch, but in the meantime, residents found themselves the recipients of massive hail stones.Y’all!!!!!! LOOK AT THIS HAIL THAT JUST LANDED IN MY FRONT YARD!!! #edmonton pic.twitter.com/Gi0Q24oKaZ
— Antonia Musso (@robotonia) August 3, 2019The hail stones were large enough to use for baseball, or cricket, or

We’re just a few days away from Samsung’s big Galaxy Note 10 event, and the rumors and leaks are in full form, teasing details of Samsung’s latest super-sized flagship. Or rather, flagships, plural, with Samsung expected to take a page from its own Galaxy S line’s playbook and release multiple sizes of the Note 10.We already know some of the news, with Samsung announcing some of its smaller summer products — like the Galaxy Watch Active 2 and the Galaxy Tab S6 &mdas

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Netflix is certainly a popular service, but that doesn’t mean it’s totally devoid of flaws. I remember when I first took the plunge and signed up for Netflix. In minutes, I had a world of film and TV at my finger tips; I was so excited. But as time has gone on, I’m finding it harder to find good things to watch. I often find myself endl

Warner Bros. has shifted its release date for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune, bumping it from its original release date of November 20th, 2020 to December 18th, 2020. The film is the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 science fiction novel, set on a desert planet in a feudal galaxy.Along with the news, Warner Bros. says that the film will get an IMAX release. The new date will take up the slot that Disney’s typically released its Star Wars films, ensuring

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re a creative or other freelancer work, at some point you may start thinking twice about giving out your personal phone number to your clients or business contacts. Besides the possible privacy issues, do you really want your business connections to be able to call you at any hour of the day or night — and on the same number you give your family and friends? A new service called OpenPhone says it can solve that problem by providing

Amazonhas tweaked the settings for its Alexa voice AI to allow users to opt out of their voice recordings being manually reviewed by the company’s human workers.
The policy shift took effect Friday, according to Bloomberg, which reports that Alexa users will now find an option in the settings menu of the Alexa smartphone app to disable human review of their clips.
The Alexa T&C did not previously inform users of the possibility that audio recordings captured by the service might be man

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about SoftBank’s second Vision Fund. Before that, I noted some challenges plaguing mental health tech startups.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to [email protected] or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe

Still rocking an old generation high definition TV? If so, we think it's time you treated yourself and upgradedWalmart is currently offering a 75-inch Samsung 4K TV for $999.99, saving you $1400 off the listed price. Partner this with a PlayStation 4, and you can fully enjoy an immersive gaming experience.
Check out more of today's best deals from Amazon, Walmart, Dell, Adorama, Best Buy and Rakuten for Saturday, Aug. 3.Read more...More about Gaming, Tablets, Smart Home, Tvs, and Mashable Shoppi

Every morning, Cuthbert’s commute is broadcast to 53,000 people.Unlike most people’s morning routines, his rush hour journey is neither long nor stressful. But then again, Cuthbert isn’t a person. And his commute is best described as a gentle waddle from barn to farmyard.Cuthbert is a goose. Not just any goose, though. He’s a TikTok-famous goose.The daily rush hour at Caenhill farm in Devizes, Wiltshire in the southwest of England, has stolen the internet’s heart, b

Elon Muskwants to drill holes in China. The Teslafounder has tweeted to reveal that his tunnelling and transportation startup, The Boring Company, will be launch in China later this month.
Musk is due to speak at an AI conference, called the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, taking place in Shanghai on August 29-31. Replying to a tweet about the event he announced: “Will also be launching The Boring CompanyChina on this trip.”
Will also be launching The Boring Company China o

For the first time in more than half a decade, Facebook wants to inform you that it owns Instagram, the hyper-popular rival social networking app it acquired for a $1BN steal back in 2012.
Ditto messaging platform WhatsApp — which Mark Zuckerberg splurged $19BN on a couple of years later to keep feeding eyeballs into his growth engine.
Facebook is adding its own brand name alongside the other two — in the following format: ‘Instagram from Facebook’; ‘WhatsApp from F

Common wisdom is that if you're an actress over 30, it's time to pack it in. 
Not to give up, per se. But the rich leading roles have too often if not entirely been shuffled over to younger actresses, bastions of beauty and promise instead of reminders that time is unrelenting and coming for us all. After a certain age, actresses find a dearth of compelling roles, and that's if they're even still getting scripts and auditions.
But as with so many archaic Hollywood norms, that's changing. Th

TL;DR: Snag the Dolby Atmos-equipped Samsung Q90R Soundbar for just $899.99 when you order it through the PCMag Shop. It's normally $1,699.99, so you'll save $800.What was once a lovely place to spend a rainy afternoon is now a wallet-draining, ad-saturated hellhole starring overpriced, overly salty snacks, long bathroom lines, and bad-mannered kids who definitely aren't old enough to be in here. That's right — we're talking about the movie theater.
Mercifully, modern home entertainment sy

TL;DR: Get the reliable Embark Dog DNA test kit for $174.99. Usually priced at $199, you'll be saving 12% and learning more about your furry friend.No one is going to argue with you if you claim that your dog is the best, most unique doggo in the world. No one will really take issue if you claim that your pup is the Goodest Boy in the world, either. Because it's true: All dogs are good dogs.
But have you ever wondered what truly makes your furry BFF unique? If you want to know, you can rely on t