Tech NewsApple

Sigh, Apple Is Apparently Launching Subscription Bundles This Fall

What does everyone want? Fewer subscriptions. What are we getting? Unfortunately, according to Bloomberg, a series of subscription bundles from Apple alongside the new iPhones this fall. The bundles, which are collectively dubbed “Apple One,” are an obvious ploy to hook more people on Apple’s services as smartphone sales produce diminishing returns. Bloomberg cites Apple … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Nivea Is Testing In-Store Dispensers to Refill Soap Bottles and Reduce Plastic Waste

It’s now more apparent than ever that the conveniences of plastic packaging are being outweighed by the environmental impact of the problematic material. Ramping up recycling efforts and minimizing one-time-use plastics are critical to reducing plastic pollution, so Nivea is testing a new kiosk that refills soap containers several times before they’re sent off for … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Intel’s Xe Graphics Might Mean You No Longer Need a Separate Graphics Card to Play Games

Intel has finally given actual details on its upcoming Xe GPU architecture that will power its future CPUs with integrated graphics. While Tiger Lake, Intel’s upcoming 11th generation, 10nm mobile processor, will be the first product to leverage Xe, the company also said it was designing a more powerful mobile CPU with Xe integrated graphics … Continued

Tech NewsCrime

FBI, USAF Investigating if Military Helicopter Shot at in Virginia Was Targeted or Hit by Random Gunfire

Someone opened fire on a U.S. Air Force UH-1N Huey helicopter while it was flying in Virginia around noon on Monday, injuring one of the two pilots on board, an Air Force official told CNN on Wednesday. Per CNN, the Air Force and the FBI are looking for the shooter and attempting to determine whether … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook Will Now Tell You Where That Viral Covid-19 Story Came From

Back in June, Facebook rolled out a new feature that tells its mobile app users if an article they are about to share is more than three months old. While users aren’t prevented from sharing an older article, Facebook said at the time it was an attempt to get people to stop and think about … Continued

Tech NewsPolitics

National Review, Daily Caller Help Publicize Lies About Former Kamala Harris Staffer

According to leading conservative columnists, Twitter has hired Nick Pacilio, a former staffer for Sen. Kamala Harris, to decide which of President Trump’s tweets deserve to be fact-checked and which should be labeled for the public as “potentially misleading.” That’s news to Pacilio. To be clear, Pacilio has worked at Twitter for nearly six years; … Continued

Tech NewsPolitics

Trump Kisses QAnon Right on Its Big Wet Mouth

Donald Trump went there on Wednesday morning and endorsed a crank conspiracy theorist who recently won the GOP primaries for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, calling her a “future Republican Star” and a “a real WINNER!” Construction executive Marjorie Taylor Greene ran a fanatically pro-Trump campaign that ended with her crushing her closest challenger, neurosurgeon John … Continued

Tech News

What the Fuck Is My Wifi Password?

I don’t really know how it happened, or why a thing with no moving parts suddenly fails catastrophically, but my modem shit the bed. Almost exactly a week after wifi in huge swaths of the country went down due to Hurricane Isaias, my internet stopped working yesterday again. My roommate and I went through the … Continued

Tech NewsStreaming Services

Crunchyroll Might Get Sold to Sony—Wait, What?

Just months after launching a tentpole service that touts Crunchyroll as one of its premium offerings, AT&T may be exploring a sale of the anime streaming property. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Information reported Wednesday that AT&T is looking to sell Crunchyroll to Sony—a deal that’s reportedly being held up by AT&T’s exceptionally … Continued

Tech NewsStreaming Services

Have You Tried Building Your Own TV Channels in Plex?

A wise colleague once told me I should never have anything on in the background just to have it on. He’s probably right, but I still like to pop on a show while I’m cooking dinner, tidying up, or working on home improvement projects. The noise is soothing to me, but cable, with its weird … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Did Neil Young Get Ripped Off in His Attempt to Delete Facebook From His Website?

Whether you believe that Neil Young is the lord of Luddites or a clear-eyed prophet of our impending digital destruction, most of us can probably agree that Facebook sucks. But not all of us take action to entirely disentangle ourselves from Facebook, and this is the difference between mortals and Neil Young. The 74-year-old rock … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Samsung’s Super High Variable Refresh Rate Screens Will Soon Come to More Smartphones, and I Can’t Wait

Following the debut of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, Samsung Display has officially announced commercial availability of its new mobile screens with support for variable refresh rates which offer both improved smoothness and lower power consumption. While it was easy to miss some of finer details about the Note 20 Ultra’s screen (which is the … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Area Ghoul Throws Corporate Tantrum

As Uber publicly grapples with the moral dilemma of having built an entire-ass company around exploitative wage practices, the CEO Dara Khosrowshahi now says that if California forces the company to reclassify its contractors as full-time employees, Uber will temporarily shut down in its home state. Conveniently, it appears this shutdown would last for exactly as … Continued

Tech NewsNews

This Site Shows You Where Big Brands Source Their Products

David Applegate runs a site called WrestlingMart. It’s an ecommerce store dedicated to, well, wrestling. In his five years in business, he always wanted to know where his suppliers were getting the gear he sold, including singlets, shoes, and mat tape. Instead of hunting through hundreds of records by hand, however, he figured out a … Continued

Tech NewsNews

NJ Court Says the Fifth Amendment Doesn’t Protect Your Phone From the Police

In a tale of an allegedly crooked sheriff caught abusing his power, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that forcing a suspect to unlock their iPhones doesn’t run afoul of the Fifth Amendment. The gist of the story, which was first reported by Ars Technica, goes like this: Former Essex County Sheriff Robert Andrews … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Pinterest’s Former COO Was Fired for Calling Out Sexism, Lawsuit Alleges

Pinterest might be known as a platform that caters to our nation’s moms and brides and makeup artists, but behind the scenes, the company may not be the female-friendly environment you’d imagine. That’s according to a new lawsuit filed against Pinterest yesterday by the company’s former COO, Francoise Brougher, who abruptly stepped down from the … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook Adds Blackface to List of Prohibited Content It Might Get Around to Enforcing

A month after Facebook reached a breaking point with civil rights leaders over its failures to police its platform for racist and hateful content, the social media behemoth has announced some changes to hate speech policies. Going forward, Facebook will prohibit certain depictions of blackface and content suggesting that Jewish people run the world. Facebook … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

This Case Gives Your Phone Robotic Legs So It Can Crawl to a Wireless Charging Pad

By now our brains are all wired with smartphone battery anxiety, and panic starts to set in when power drops below 50%. In one of the more bizarre ways to keep those stresses at bay, a team of researchers have developed a new smartphone case with a set of tiny robotic legs that allow a … Continued

Tech NewsMicrosoft

Thank God Microsoft Is Actually Trying New Things

Last fall, Microsoft surprised everyone when it announced the Surface Duo. Following months of development, Microsoft is finally ready to release the Surface Duo for real, and after learning more about it, I feel like the Surface Duo is so much more than just a dual-screen gadget or even Microsoft’s first Android phone. This phone … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Report: TikTok Collected Persistent IDs From Android Phones in Apparent Violation of Google Policy

TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app that Donald Trump’s administration is incoherently threatening to ban from the U.S. and may be gearing up for a court fight in response, quietly collected persistent identifiers from Android devices for 15 months, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, an analysis of numerous … Continued