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Today DC Entertainment announced that its streaming service DC Universe was becoming the comics-only DC Universe Infinite, and while I had the urge to give myself a wedgie just for subscribing to such a truly stupidly named service, the thing that really sent me into a nerd rage was the realization that I would no…
The hoverboard is the cursed gadget that keeps on giving. Years after the devices became infamous for exploding, they’re back in the news. This week, Seth Lookhart, a former dentist in Anchorage, Alaska, was sentenced to 12 years in jail after a video of him removing a patient’s tooth while riding a hoverboard drew unwanted…
There’s another entry in the tedious log of tit-for-tat between Apple and Epic. In a press release, Epic says that Apple is no longer letting the company sign games or patches for distribution on Mac computers. What this effectively means is that Epic can’t sign updates or fix bugs. And as a result, Epic’s decided…
After two years and a ton of Twitter drama, it looks like Tesla’s suit against ex-technician, Martin Tripp, has hit a major development. Nevada District courts ruled late Thursday that Tripp—who was fired from the automaker in late 2018 on claims that he’d plundered trade secrets—had also fallen afoul of the state’s cybersecurity laws as…
The winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced, and the honored experiments include frozen knives made from poop, an alligator forced to inhale helium, and vibrating earthworms. This annual contest highlights achievements that make “people laugh, then think.” The 30th Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held online this year due to covid-19.…
You’re finally ready to pull the trigger on that great cabin you saw on Airbnb, and it’s time to create an account for the service. When you’re signing up for something new, it’s tempting to just sign in using whatever accounts you already have: Sign in with Apple, Google, or Facebook (and in other cases…
The U.S. Commerce Department said on Friday that social media platforms TikTok and WeChat will be banned from distribution in the U.S. starting Sunday, Sept. 20. But there’s one important caveat, according to the Commerce Department press release. TikTok has until Nov. 12 for the so-called “national security concerns posed by TikTok to be resolved.”…
Australia’s Qantas Airlines will fly a seven-hour “flight to nowhere” that takes off and lands in Sydney, a bizarre idea hinging on the belief that people who have been cooped up during the pandemic would want to just experience air travel, even if their destination is the same airport where they departed. And, strangely, Qantas…
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction regarding controversial changes at the U.S. Postal Service that have been pushed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major donor to President Donald Trump, ahead of the November presidential election. “The states have demonstrated the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of…
With iOS 14 now officially here, it was only a matter of time before we started hearing about the bugs. There are always bugs—and some are more inconsequential than others. One such silly, albeit annoying, issue that’s been discovered in the day and a half since iOS 14 rolled out wide to the public has…
One of Nintendo’s most beloved handheld consoles, the 3DS, has been discontinued. Nintendo confirmed in a statement today to Polygon that “manufacturing of the Nintendo 3DS family of systems has ended.” The announcement comes a little over a year after Nintendo said the Switch Lite wasn’t going to replace the 3DS. “We’ll continue to support…
The virtual home fitness start-up Tonal, which folks have already started calling the Peloton of strength training, announced on Thursday that it raised an additional $110 million in its latest round of funding, making it clear that investors are eager to get in on the increasingly crowded digital fitness market. A market that’s been fueled…
Facebook employees have recently been wondering if perhaps Facebook—which lets politicians lie in ads, festers with extremist movements like QAnon, and by design amplifies authoritarian propaganda, misinformation, and hate speech—is actually the bad guy. Hey, pal, why don’t you shut the fuck up, CEO Mark Zuckerberg responds. According to reports in CNBC and the Wall…
Among the sprawl of properties in the Facebook family, WhatsApp’s perhaps the only one that’s preached preserving user privacy and actually followed through. But that hasn’t stopped bad actors from finding new ways to spy and snoop without the platform’s—or any user’s—say-so. As a new investigation from Business Insider details, apps promising to probe the…
The easiest way to sell something is to tell people it will help them not die or get hurt. This is definitely true when it comes to the Apple Watch, a product whose—arguably excellent—marketing message is, “Wear this and you might survive a heart attack.” So when Apple announced Family Setup, a service that lets…
The RTX 3080 is already sold out everywhere, and as soon as something sells out people like to then resell it, which means there are plenty of auctions on Ebay. But who on earth just bought the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080 for $70,000. What the fuck?! $70,ooo?! Who would buy a graphics card for 9900%…
While a good chunk of Facebook’s Connect event was focused on tech you can use right now (or at least in the very near future) like the Oculus Quest 2, during yesterday’s livestream presentation Oculus chief scientist Michael Abrash also outlined a powerful vision of what Facebook is doing to create our future—and it’s in…
God help me, I cannot afford even one more streaming service—and yet. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference on Thursday, per The Wrap, Discovery CEO David Zaslav said that the company is “quite close” to laying out its plans for a forthcoming streaming service—a likely hub for Discovery’s portfolio of entertainment and home improvement…
Following a couple years of lackluster releases, Sony’s Xperia phones have sort of flown under the radar—especially in the U.S. where Sony phones are typically only available unlocked and not sold through carriers. But Sony just announced the Xperia 5 II, which looks like a sleek little phone with some surprisingly beefy specs and features.…
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, sales of vinyl records surpassed compact discs for the first time since the ‘80s. What’s more surprising is that people are still actually buying CDs, and if you’re one of the loyal few who refuses to let the medium die, there’s now a portable CD player that…