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Assuming everyone was getting tired of spending every waking hour playing video games while socially distancing at home, Nintendo released two IRL video game experiences last year that, it turns out, can be unofficially combined to create an even better real-life Mario experience. Although a little pricy ($100 for one car, plus the cost of…
Quibi’s spectacular flameout in 2020 drags on into the new year. After raising a $1.75 billion war chest to launch the next big thing in on-the-go video, the streaming network only managed to keep the lights on for six months. Now the video vultures are circling over Quibi’s substantial catalog of content, and Roku is…
Earlier this year, a research team made waves by suggesting that we should disseminate Earth’s microbes on Mars in a preemptive effort to foster a climate hospitable to human life. To the “anti-contamination” school of celestial thought, this was heresy; to the most others, this was an obscure theoretical squabble over an issue they’d never…
Workers at Google announced on Monday that they’ve formed a union open to all workers of Alphabet, according to a press release published online. Dubbed the Alphabet Workers Union, the initiative was launched with the help of the Communications Workers of America. Members of the new union will also belong to CWA Local 1400. The…
A judge in the UK ruled on Monday that Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange should not be extradited to the U.S. to face computer hacking and espionage charges brought by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, according to a ruling posted online and statements made in court. The judge cited Assange’s depressive state and risk of suicide…
Facebook’s cross-platform chat app WhatsApp saw a record number of users on New Year’s Eve as some people smartly opted to celebrate the end of 2020 virtually this year. Because even if that cursed year from Hades is finally behind us, the covid-19 pandemic is definitely not. More than 1.4 billion video and voice calls…
Apple appears to be moving along in its development of a foldable iPhone, according to new rumors. The company has apparently asked its Foxconn, its biggest iPhone supplier, to create two prototype foldable shells with displays. As reported by Tom’s Guide on Sunday, which cites Taiwanese website United Daily News, Apple’s two prototypes reflect two…
A full list of affected devices and their patches is available.
What looks like a new version of the Tesla Model S was recently spotted cruising through Palo Alto, California, just a few weeks after the company hit pause on its vehicle production lines. The Kilowatts, a YouTube channel focused on electric-powered travel, posted a video on Friday of what appears to be a Tesla Model…
Just weeks after it shattered its yearslong aspiration of reaching $20,000 in value, Bitcoin is at it again. On Saturday, the cryptocurrency passed $33,000 in value, according to CoinDesk, before dipping slightly throughout the day. Bitcoin’s new gains represent an all-time high for the currency, a stunning turnaround considering where it was almost a year…
Facebook’s chief of advertising integrity Rob Leathern has left the company, he announced in a Twitter thread Friday. Leathern came onboard shortly after President Donald Trump took office, and some of the social media giant’s more contentious ad policies, including those regarding election and coronavirus misinformation, rolled out during his tenure. Leathern disclosed his decision…
In Apple’s world, an app can be inappropriate one day, but acceptable the next. That’s what the developer of Amphetamine—an app designed to keep Macs from going to sleep, which is useful in situations such as when a file is downloading or when a specific app is running—learned recently when Apple got in touch with…
Samsung may soon come out with a Bluetooth-based tracker to give Tile a run for its money. The sharp-eyed folks at 91 Mobiles spotted images of the purported Samsung tracker on Friday posted by the certification authority NCC, where it’s listed as the Samsung Galaxy SmartTag. Similar to Tile’s smart trackers and Apple’s long-rumored AirTags,…
Two of China’s biggest names in tech appear to be in an Apple vs. Epic-style spat over how to carve up the mobile game revenue pie. Huawei temporarily removed Arena of Valor and other games from Tencent, the world’s leading game publisher in terms of earnings, from its app store after revenue sharing talks between…
Chrome 87 brings with it a very handy new capability: Chrome Actions. Essentially, it turns your browser’s address bar (or omnibox) into a command prompt, so you can access various tools and functions without having to delve into menus and navigate around dialog boxes. The trick is in knowing what actions are Chrome Actions, though…
The inventor behind one of the worst gadgets of all time has joined the motley crew of quasi-experts trying to defend President Donald Trump’s unfounded election fraud claims despite being wildly unqualified to do so. His name is Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, and he testified before the Georgia State Judiciary Subcommittee this week, introducing himself as…
The hackers behind the massive SolarWinds cyberattack, an operation allegedly backed by Russia that compromised networks at many U.S. agencies and Fortune 500 corporations, also broke into Microsoft’s internal systems and accessed one of the company’s most closely guarded secrets: its source code. “We detected unusual activity with a small number of internal accounts and…
The second round of stimulus checks began rolling out through direct deposit this week, and the Internal Revenue Service says its Get My Payment tool for checking the status of your payment should become available “in a few days.” The agency said in a release on Tuesday that the $600 stimulus checks for qualifying U.S.…
More than two dozen dogs have died after ingesting specific lots of Sportmix pet food that contained potentially deadly levels of aflatoxin, the Food and Drug Administration said this week. Midwestern Pet Foods, the Indiana-based maker of Sportmix, has issued a voluntary recall of specific types of dog and cat food that were found to…
In January 2020, a second-floor lab at Northwestern University was filled with the mild-mannered clacking of three robots pushing each other around. The trio were in a small ring as they hit against one another, though the petite robots weren’t the rock ‘em, sock ‘em variety. These were smart, active particles—“smarticles”—outfitted with two paddle-like flaps…
