Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Technology News and More-Wednesday Edition

Technology News and More...






Crypto Cloudflare Outage•
A Cloudflare outage on Tuesday knocked out numerous popular web services, including major crypto exchanges FTX, Bitfinex, and OKX, raising questions about the security of centralized crypto platforms. The CEO of OKX, which saw $1.47 billion in trading volume in the past 24 hours, tweeted asking for “web3 alternative in the future” after the company’s website was hit by Cloudflare’s service issues



Air Canada Thailand•
For the first time in around a decade, this winter we’ll see nonstop flights between Thailand and North America. We’ll also see Air Canada fly nonstop to Southeast Asia for the first time. Air Canada’s new Bangkok route Air Canada will be launching a new seasonal flight between Vancouver (YVR) and Bangkok (BKK) later this year. The route will operate 4x weekly between December 1, 2022, and April



100+Lifehacker / 14h
Last week, Netflix dropped the first trailer for Blonde , a Marilyn Monroe biopic from director Andrew Dominik, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ highly fictionalized novel of the same name (Ana de Armas stars). The Netflix-produced film received an NC-17 rating, a fact that reportedly caused some consternation for Netflix… Read more...




If SoftBank investors were already feeling shaken by the conglomerate’s poor performance this year, a news release out of the company tonight isn’t exactly going to assuage their concerns. The big news? French businessman Michel Combes, who was appointed as CEO of SoftBank Group International in January after longtime SoftBank lieutenant Marcelo Claure left the company over a pay dispute, is now



Thepeer , an African tech infrastructure startup connecting businesses’ wallets, has raised a $2.1 million seed round led by the Raba Partnership. The news comes a year after the startup raised $220,000 in pre-seed from a handful of angel investors, including Paystack CTO Ezra Olubi and Edenlife CTO Prosper Otemuyiwa. Participating investors in Thepeer’s seed round include Rali_cap Ventures, Timo
YESTERDAY



Meta Facebook Reviews•
Meta is updating its Community Feedback Policy to begin cracking down on people and businesses abusing its review system. Going forward, Facebook will apply stricter rules for what is allowed n Feedback posts. Apparently, some users and businesses were gaming the Community Feedback system to either trick people or manipulate reviews. Meta wants to keep things as honest as possible and (ideally) e



Meta says it has removed accounts and groups showing upskirting, after a BBC investigation.



GPU Crypto Miners Graphics•
We've all been waiting for graphics cards to make their way into our hands for a while now, and even though it might be tempting, whatever you do, resist the urge to buy a cheap graphics card right now on a resale site, even if it claims to be new. With the recent bursting of the crypto bubble, there is now a flood of the best graphics cards on the market hitting major resale sites and even live-



TL;DR: The Premium Microsoft Office Training Bundle and Lifetime License of MS Office for Mac 2021 bundle is on sale for £57.27, saving you 95% on list price. Working from home and using your own devices often comes with a few obstacles for Mac users. One being that they need Microsoft Office to interact and collaborate with their coworkers effectively. If you’re a Mac user who can’t hang with yo



Microsoft Xbox Series•
If you live in Europe or the UK, you may have recently noticed there's been stock shortages for Xbox controllers. Thankfully, Microsoft's now addressed this. The Xbox Wireless Controller shortage has quietly appeared across the continent and was highlighted in a recent ResetEra thread. Many players have been left frustrated they can't get their hands on an Xbox Series X |S controller to use with



Google News Local•
Google News turned 20 this year, and it's getting a major redesign that reflects changing priorities in journalism. The newly launched News desktop revamp now prioritizes catching up on important stories. In addition to top stories and personalized picks, there's a particular focus on local news. That section is finally at the top of the page, and you can add multiple locations in case one city's



Google News Opens Spain•
Google News is refreshing its desktop site with a new design that allows you to track global and local news on one screen. The redesign puts Your Briefing, Local news, and Top Picks section on a single page in different columns so it’s easier to catch up with news on topics and regions you care about. Until now, if you logged on to Google News, you’d see the headlines section first, along with th



Based in Vietnam, Anfin wants to turn more people into stock investors with features like fractional trading and in-app communities. The Y Combinator alum announced today it has raised a $4.8 million pre-Series A led by angel investor Clement Benoit, the founder of Stuart and Not So Dark, and Y Combinator. Participants in the round also included Rebel VC, Kharis Capital, Newman Capital, First Che



According to a study commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, blockchain technology might not be so decentralized and immutable after all.



We've all had awkward moments and accidents while staying around a friend's place, but they probably weren't as big as Tom Cruise's alleged incident.



SteelSeries Apex Mini•
Gaming peripheral-maker SteelSeries revealed its latest addition to the Apex line: the Apex Pro Mini and Apex Pro Mini Wireless keyboards. Each keyboard uses the OmniPoint 2.0 switch, which operates between 0.2mm and 3.8mm and gives users faster response, actuation times, and even more adjustment potential. It also features Dual Action keypresses, allowing users to program two actions on a single



Sci-fi thriller Gone in the Night has dropped its official trailer, featuring Winona Ryder doggedly investigating a mystery in a very familiar fashion. If you enjoyed watching Ryder snoop around and look concerned in Stranger Things , this film might scratch that itch. Previously titled The Cow , Gone in the Night follows the aftermath of a lovers' getaway gone wrong, as Kath (Ryder) searches for



Tesla Rejects Payout•
Last year Owen Diaz, a former contracted elevator operator at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant, successfully sued the automaker for creating a hostile, racially abusive work environment, and was awarded $137 million by the jury. That award was winnowed down to just $15 million by a judge who gave Diaz two weeks to accept or reject the new amount. As reported by Bloomberg, lawyers for Diaz have take



Activision Blizzard•
As Activision Blizzard faces numerous sexual harassment lawsuits and investigations , employee activists have rallied to get a seat on the company board to represent the voice of the staff. Despite major victories, like testers of Raven Software QA, an Activision division, winning the first union election at a major U.S. gaming company, shareholders quashed the organizers’ request to give the wor



This past weekend Lego held its second annual Lego Con : an online virtual event where the company revealed a collection of new sets for 2022 that would have otherwise been announced at events like Toy Fair New York which have been cancelled once again due to the ongoing pandemic. Read more...



The post appeared first on Popular Mechanics .



The 2022 Toyota Tundra brings the latest and greatest features to the automaker's full-size pickup truck, including a handful that buyers should know about.



Accel, the 39-year-old venture firm, just pulled a major power move. It announced, via a simple blog post , that it has just closed a new, global, late-stage fund with $4 billion in capital commitments. The fund, which closed last week, would be notable in any market. It’s a lot of money. But at a moment when two of Accel’s fiercest rivals — SoftBank and Tiger Global Management — are low on capit




Shaving isn’t mere personal hygiene, it’s an art. Or it can be. If you’ve been using an aerosol shaving cream and disposal razor, you’ve certainly left room for improvement. When using the wrong tools, shaving can feel like a painful chore—literally, if nicks, cuts, and razor burn are an issue for you. That’s why true… Read more...



James Coates Contributor James Coates is the Health and Human Performance principal at Decisive Point , a venture capital and advisory firm that invests in and supports startups with emerging defense technologies. Future-proofing the finances of your biotech startup through a market collapse means more than just raising capital or rushing to close your round. I perform due diligence on dozens of



Blink EV SemaConnect•
President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill included a $7.5 billion tranche of cash set aside to build out a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers. Ever since Biden signed the bill into law, EV charging companies have been quickening their pace, eager to take advantage of national momentum and federal funding. Alongside the ambitious attempts at scaling, there has been a wave of con



COO Pornhub MindGeek•
The CEO and CEO of MindGeek, the parent company of porn streaming giant Pornhub and others like it, have abruptly and unceremoniously resigned. The company says the departures were planned, but a report on the company’s moderation policies in the New Yorker last week gives them the air of leaving the scene of an accident. Variety first reported the news , which MindGeek confirmed to TechCrunch. C



Uniswap Acquires NFT Genie•
The past few weeks have been a dark time for NFT lovers and players in the cryptocurrency industry, but for startups and executives that are dug into the vision of a crypto future, it’s also been an opportunity to double down. This week, Uniswap announced that it has made a new acquisition, buying up NFT marketplace aggregator Genie for an undisclosed sum. The purchase was made by Uniswap — the s



Energy bars—those dense squares of nutrients that bring to mind 1970s dystopian sci-fi movies—offer obvious benefits. They’re convenient, delivering a full serving of calories and nutrition without any prep; they’re shelf-stable; they’re perfect for those busy moments when preparing a more traditional meal isn’t… Read more...



Mites Face Study•
Scientists have finally unraveled the genetic secrets of humanity’s coziest roommates: Demodex folliculorum , also known as the skin mite. Among other things, the findings confirm that these mites actually do have anuses, contrary to previous speculation. They also indicate that the microscopic animals may not be as… Read more...



Elon Musk Dogecoin•
200+Mashable / 8h
With the entire cryptocurrency market currently tanking and major crypto firms becoming insolvent, one would think Elon Musk might reflect on some of his recent statements with a little contrition. After all, Musk is a big proponent of cryptocurrency, right? "I have never said that people should invest in crypto," Elon Musk told the crowd during his virtual appearance at the Qatar Economic Forum



Enlarge / A box of Paxlovid, the Pfizer antiviral drug. (credit: Getty | Europa Press News ) Pfizer's antiviral pill Paxlovid is among the most treasured tools for hammering COVID-19; it can knock back the relative risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent in unvaccinated patients at high risk of severe disease. But, as use of the convenient drug has grown in the US, so have troubling repor



Reddit is an invaluable internet community, but when it comes to search, it’s far from perfect. This network of communities is full of useful information, on-point memes, and interesting debates, but trying to find the specific content you’re looking for is far more difficult than it should be (so much so that many… Read more...



While you might think it's difficult to take a road trip with a Tesla, there are a number ways to make it much easier.



Personio Series $200M•
Personio — a startup out of Munich, Germany that styles itself as a Workday and ServiceNow focused on the small and medium businesses of the world — went on a funding tear through the COVID-19 pandemic after its recruiting, payroll, people management, development and training, workflow automation and other HR tools found traction particularly among organizations with remote or distributed teams.



Just before the Gaming Shelf takes an extended break (we’ll be back July 12!) I’m thrilled to be able to spotlight some tabletop games and creators who have been working hard over the past months to bring us some great pieces. We’ve got indie studio Possible Worlds Games as well as a bit of a new direction for the… Read more...



Twitter Chirp Years•
After a seven-year hiatus, Twitter is once again hosting an in-person developer conference . The company is bringing back Chirp, which will take place in San Francisco on November 16th. Chirp was the name of Twitter’s first-ever developer conference back in 2010, though the event was canceled in subsequent years. The last time the company hosted a live developer conference was Twitter Flight in 2



Located in the mountains outside Tucson, Arizona, the Kitt Peak National Observatory was threatened last week by the ongoing Contreras Fire. While the blaze has affected more than 20,000 acres and disrupted work at the facility, the major scientific equipment seems to be thus far unscathed. Update on #Contrerasfire at @KittPeakNatObs : NOIRLab leadership viewed all scientific structures from a di



100+Engadget / 9h
Astronomers, astronauts and other near-Earth object experts from around the world are gathering next week in Luxembourg to talk about asteroids . If you tune in to the Asteroid Foundation’s live event on International Asteroid Day (which is June 30), you can hear about the latest in space rock research. The four hour event will consist of panel discussions on future missions, advances in technolo



To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Good afternoon, you fine humans! We hope you had a lovely weekend. Christine is off on a well-deserved holiday, and I’m going to be working on some special projects for a few weeks (including my tan and my surfing skills), so starting tomorrow, we will leave this f



Adam Nash Contributor Adam Nash is the CEO and co-founder of Daffy. Why angel invest? There are three primary benefits to angel investing if you work in the technology industry: financial, educational and professional. Which benefits are most important to you will dramatically shape your approach as an investor. Everyone dreams of being a seed investor in companies like Google or Facebook, but th



We last updated our submission guidelines for TechCrunch+ guest posts in June 2021, but the world has changed a lot since then. These are uncertain times, but experience is the best teacher, which is why we’re looking for guest articles that can help others navigate this downturn. Because the stakes are so high, we are not looking for articles that share “thought leadership” about general challen



Are you trying to maintain your Wordle success streak? If so, we've got some hints to help you figure out the solution for June 22, as well as the answer.




We’ve finally reached a point where gaming laptops don’t suck. They’re relatively compact, quieter than a PlayStation, and often have amazing screens. But gaming laptops still have some major drawbacks, and due to the rise of cloud gaming and the Steam Deck, they’re no longer the only option for portable PC gaming. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



It seems like many Americans are flocking to Europe this summer and posting jealousy-invoking photos from trips across France , Italy and Greece. Instead of joining the tourist masses this summer, save some of your hard-earned cash and book a discounted business deal to Europe for travel later this year. Consider reserving these business-class fares to Italian destinations such as Milan, Rome , N



Warmer weather and boozy beverages go hand-in-hand. A beer on the beach, a mojito by the pool, a hidden flask at your niece’s graduation—day drinking hits different than your glass of wine with dinner. Read more...



GMC's Hummer EV is a beastly vehicle packing a variety of tech and features, not the least of which is one that uses body heat for energy efficiency.



The original 1958 Plymouth Fury from the movie "Christine" is being held at auction, valued between $400,000 and $500,000.



Games 2022 Nintendo•
KOTOR II Enlarge / A promised patch should soon allow KOTOR II players to beat the game on Switch. Last week, publisher Aspyr officially acknowledged the existence of a game-breaking glitch in the recent Switch port of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II . That glitch, which crashes the game after the "Basilisk Crash" cutscene on the planet Onderon, has the inconvenient side effect of makin



Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) In the decade since larger-than-life character Kim Dotcom founded Mega , the cloud storage service has amassed 250 million registered users and stores a whopping 120 billion files that take up more than 1,000 petabytes of storage. A key selling point that has helped fuel the growth is an extraordinary promise that no top-tier Mega competitors make: N



Read more...



3D Levitating Sound•
500+Futurism / 9h
Levitating Researchers have come up with a new and improved way to levitate objects using sound waves alone , an impressive feat of mixed-reality technology that could pave the way for some seriously futuristic hologram-like displays. As seen in a new video , the researchers were able to levitate individual polystyrene beads and water particles inside a special enclosure, making them move in thre



Personal routers can often give you better speed and network control and security. Spectrum is like most internet service providers (ISP) in that they provide a modem (sometimes free), router (also sometimes free, depending on the package), or both with their internet packages for a rental fee. The best routers for Spectrum are compatible with Spectrum’s protocol, have speeds that match your inte



100+Futurism / 9h
NBC News reporter Kevin Collier had a bizarre encounter at this year's NFT NYC conference — not with acclaimed rapper Calvin "Snoop Dogg" Broadus Jr, he says, but a lookalike. "I'm at the NFT NYC conference again in Times Square, and Snoop walked by, flanked by security," Collier recounted today . "I grabbed his handler, said I'm a reporter, would love a few minutes. The guy said actually that's



Zuckerberg Meta VR•
500+Futurism / 9h
Holocake Butterscotch, Starburst, Holocake 2, and Mirror Lake aren't military codewords, up-and-coming Soundcloud rappers, or Petfinder pups . Instead, they're the names of four newly-unveiled, purportedly advanced virtual reality headset prototypes by Meta Reality Labs — devices, Meta claims, that represent movement toward a virtual experience that's "indistinguishable from reality." Revealed by



99Gizmodo / 9h
Just in time for the release of Thor: Love and Thunder or San Diego Comic-Con convention season, here are some worthy fashions, collectibles, and accessories to add to your Marvel Studios collection. You can find them at ShopDisney, Disney Parks , Box Lunch, Hot Topic, HerUniverse, Ulta, and other retailers. Read more...



Four British Airways•
Priority Pass holders traveling through select U.S. airports now have access to four additional British Airways lounges — two on each coast. For a fee (or complimentary with some credit cards), Priority Pass lets members access more than 1,300 airport lounges in nearly 150 countries and 600 cities globally, and the BA lounges are the latest addition to the Priority Pass roster. Be sure to read ou



JetBlue Spirit Frontier•
Spirit's board almost has to take JetBlue's offer now unless Frontier comes up with more cash. The federal government then has to make a choice whether to sign off on it in order to kill the JetBlue-American Airlines Northeast Alliance. If they make that offer, JetBlue almost has to take it. Frontier winds up with divested slots and gates in the Northeast anyway. JetBlue massively overpays. Ameri



1Password Insights•
Password manager firm 1Password has released a new solution it claims will help firms improve their overall security posture. Insights from 1Password contains tools to help firms monitor data breaches, password vulnerabilities, and team usage within shared vaults, while also providing suggested next steps and allowing businesses to notify employees of data breaches. The news comes as fatigue rega



37Gizmodo / 9h
Microsoft’s turning its back on its scientifically suspect and ethically dubious emotion recognition technology . For now, at least. Read more...



100+Gizmodo / 9h
Today is officially the first day of summer, but seriously hot weather first arrived in some parts of the country over a month ago . And the scorching trend is set to continue. The National Weather Service is forecasting more triple-digit temperatures across large swathes of the U.S. this week. Read more...



Opera has a version of its browser designed specifically for gamers and it comes with a bunch of useful features, including a simple way to clear its cache.



The Google Pixel line has reshaped the smartphone and what we thought was possible with it. The year-over-year progression is impressive.




Flying economy can be a nice experience, and you can make it as enjoyable as possible by ensuring you get the best seat in the cabin. If you’re flying with Virgin Atlantic , there are some clear winners. For more TPG news delivered each morning to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter . To make things complicated, Virgin has three fare types in economy. Of the three types, Economy Delight



Kyle Poyar Contributor Kyle Poyar is a partner at OpenView . More posts by this contributor Usage-based pricing is a company-wide effort Inside the rapid rise of usage-based pricing It’s no secret that 2022 has been a brutal year for software companies. Valuations have been slashed, inflation keeps climbing and layoff announcements abound. The whispers of a potential recession have morphed into f



400+Gizmodo / 10h
IGN has revealed a series of photos from the new Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power , this time showing off the “new and unimproved” Orcs of this age. And for once, worse is actually better here. Read more...



Joe Biden’s administration is looking to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes sold in the U.S., the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The move could be a big blow to the tobacco industry but may help curb smokers’ dependence on cigarettes. Read more...



TL;DR: Amazon Prime Day officially begins on July 12 and runs through July 13, but live deals are already trickling in. We've gathered our picks below. Amazon Prime Day is coming soon, and we personally can't wait to shop 'til we drop on July 12 and 13. But if you're anxious to shop now or are searching for a particular item, you'll be interested to know that a lot of early Prime Day deals are al



July’s full moon is the event of the year, lunatics: The biggest, brightest moon of 2022 rises on July 13. Look to the Southeastern part of the sky at moonrise for a lunar treat. Read more...



TechCrunch is pleased to announce the winner of the TechCrunch Sessions: Climate virtual pitch-off — AELER. As a part of the prize, AELER gets free exhibition space at TechCrunch Disrupt, a spot in the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 and bragging rights. You can watch the pitches from last week at the end of this post. Climate tech pitch-off companies AELER aims to reimagine the logistics indu



NASA wrapped up its fourth wet dress rehearsal of the Space Launch System yesterday, during which time ground teams achieved a number of key test objectives. That said, an unresolved hydrogen leak prevented a full completion of the test, in a development that could further complicate the Artemis 1 mission schedule. Read more...



Ceo MindGeek Pornhub•
On Monday, one of the world’s biggest purveyors of porn, MindGeek, announced that executives CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have resigned from the company following a string of controversies. Read more...



Higher Ground Audible•
Igor Bonifacic Contributor Igor Bonifacic is a contributing writer at Engadget . More posts by this contributor Jeep parent company Stellantis will reportedly plead guilty to emissions fraud Mercedes-Benz shows off the interior of the 2023 EQS SUV Barack and Michelle Obama are heading to Audible. On Tuesday, the Amazon-owned company announced an exclusive multiyear first-look production deal with



Tesla Rejects Payout•
A Black former worker at Tesla’s Fremont, California assembly plant has rejected a $15 million payout from the automaker in a lawsuit alleging racial abuse by co-workers. A judge gave the worker, Owen Diaz, a two-week deadline to accept the award, which had been slashed from the original $137 million jury verdict. Rather than being able to close the book on this one, Diaz’s rejection of the award



Today Air Greenland passengers were treated to a very scenic journey around Greenland and Iceland. Unfortunately they ended up exactly where they started, which wasn’t the plan. Air Greenland’s Copenhagen route Air Greenland operates a single wide body aircraft, which generally flies between Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (SFJ), and Copenhagen, Denmark (CPH). This service to & from Greenland’s largest



When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, but that only takes care of the fruit’s flesh. Lemonade does nothing to mitigate a barrage of lemon peels, but the solution is once again a beverage: Limoncello. Read more...



Out with the Shuttle and in with Main Select at American Airlines. The Fort Worth-based carrier’s newest fare bundle, dubbed Main Select, is now available for purchase, as confirmed by a carrier spokesperson. The new fare replaces the now-retired Shuttle product. Main Select is American’s new bundle of benefits that will be available on high-frequency business markets (at least to start). Want mo



Humans aren't the only ones working with Play-Doh . MIT CSAIL researchers have created a system, RoboCraft, that teaches robots how to work with the kid-friendly goo. The platform first takes the image of a shape (in this case, a letter of the alphabet) and reinterprets it as a cluster of interlocking particles. The bot then uses a physics-oriented neural network to predict how its two "fingers"



Luxury automakers make a lot more than cars -- and some have ventured into product lines that may seem far-fetched for four-wheeled enthusiasts.



Three more senior executives of digital mortgage lender Better.com have resigned, multiple sources tell TechCrunch. Those three executives are: Jillian White , general manager of Better’s affiliate businesses known as Better+, which consists of its title/settlement, insurance and home inspection departments; Megan Bellingham , who was senior vice president of sales and operations and John Moffatt



In what could be one of Twitter’s more significant changes since doubling the character count from 140 to 280 characters, the company is preparing to launch a new feature that would support the direct publishing of long-form content on its platform. With Twitter Notes, as the upcoming feature is called, users will be able to create articles using rich formatting and uploaded media, which can then



Successful founder stories are a trove of information and inspiration. They’re also a map of sorts, one that provides insight into the challenges of navigating the complex startup landscape. Hearing about the triumphs and challenges — and the inevitable missteps — can help new and aspiring early-stage founders stay the course and even avoid common pitfalls. When it comes to startup founder storie



One of the best things about video games these days is the nearly limitless selection of titles to fit every kind of playstyle. Whether you like the nitty gritty adrenaline rush of FPS games or you prefer to get lost in an immersive story, there truly is something for everyone. Just as gamers can find any game to fit their playstyle, there are also nearly endless different types of gaming PCs out




Microsoft Editor is an AI-powered writing assistant and grammar checker from Microsoft, similar to Grammarly and other services. It’s already integrated in some Microsoft apps, like Word, but now it’s rolling out to all Outlook applications. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



96Futurism / 10h
Straight from the depths of AI hell hails Crungus — or somewhere like that, because until a few days ago, nobody knew this thing existed. The monstrosity known only by his meme-y sounding name appears to have been birthed into this plane by Twitch streamer and voice actor Guy Kelly. Over the weekend, Kelly posted a screenshot of a DALL-E Mini — now known as Craiyon — prompt featuring the word "Cr



Budget camera phones used to be cheap in all aspects, including build quality and overall functionality. But fortunately there are now some high-quality, affordable options to choose from. Whether you’re simply looking to save money because you primarily use your phone for communication and taking photos, or whether you’ve learned that you’re simply too drop-prone to invest in the latest technolo



AI US Defence Intelligence•
99Wired / 11h
Artificial intelligence use is booming, but it's not the secret weapon you might imagine.



NASA Seconds Artemis•
75Wired / 11h
After three aborted attempts, engineers successfully completed a practice countdown that included filling the tanks with liquid oxygen and hydrogen.



500+Gizmodo / 11h
The best movie rewatches happen when you revisit a film you know you liked, but don’t really remember. That happened to me last week with Steven Spielberg ’s 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report . I saw it in theaters when it was released 20 years ago this week but have probably only seen it once since then. So I was… Read more...



Musk Tesla Mass 60-Day•
500+Ars Technica / 11h
Enlarge / Cars parked at the Tesla Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, on February 10, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Josh Edelson) A lawsuit filed by laid-off Tesla workers accused the company of violating federal law by failing to provide notice before the layoffs and said the former employees are entitled to 60 days of pay and benefits. Tesla's actions violated the Worker Adjustment and Ret



U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is still “hopeful, positive and in fact bullish” that Congress can agree on “a significant push into clean energy,” despite the regulatory body’s virtual gridlock on issues like climate. Before Congress breaks for August recess, Democrats have said they hope to reach a deal on a budget reconciliation bill. Effectively reviving aspects of the Build Back Bett



23Gizmodo / 11h
Nothing, the smartphone brainchild of CEO Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, is once again testing the efficacy of its hype machine. The company is currently known for its economical earbuds, the Ear (1) , which offer a pretty impressive bang for the buck at $100. It’s also been relentlessly teasing the upcoming launch… Read more...



You may have already bought your baby an adorable sun hat and a bottle of sunscreen, but there are a few other considerations you’ll need to make to be sure baby’s first beach trip is a success. (To be clear, you still need the adorable hat and the sunscreen, though.) Read more...



Buying miles & points strategically can represent a great value , especially for luxury travel. The Etihad Guest program has just launched a promotion on purchased miles . This promotion has the potential to be a pretty great deal. Promotion on purchased Etihad Guest miles Through Thursday, June 30, 2022, Etihad Guest is offering up to a 50% bonus on purchased miles . The bonus is tiered, as foll



NASA Nuclear Power Moon•
300+TechCrunch / 11h
Nuclear fission may have to overcome a public perception hurdle here on Earth in order to get the funding and development it needs to advance sufficiently to help our with our de-carbonization efforts, but the mostly empty lunar surface sidesteps a lot of nuclear’s image problem. NASA announced on Tuesday that it’s contracting three suppliers to provide concept designs for nuclear fission energy



Google French France•
40Gizmodo / 11h
After Google fought tooth-and-nail to weasel out of paying news publishers more ad revenue, journalists in France claimed victory on Tuesday. The Silicon Valley giant agreed to a new slate of licensing deals with publishers across the country and even quietly dropped its attempt to appeal a fine by the country’s… Read more...



Higher Ground Audible•
Barack and Michelle Obama are heading to Audible. On Tuesday, the Amazon-owned company announced an exclusive multiyear first-look production deal with the former first couple’s Higher Ground media company. The deal comes after it was revealed Spotify had declined to extend its exclusive podcast partnership beyond the end of 2022 the Obamas. According to a Bloomberg report published in April , th



Activision Blizzard•
Activision Blizzard shareholders on Tuesday approved a plan for the company to release an annual, public report detailing its handling of sexual harassment and gender discrimination disputes, and how it's working to prevent these incidences. The proposal was initially made in February by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. Under the proposal, Activision Blizzard will have to publicly d



With electric trucks on the horizon, the age of the big, V8 performance SUV may be over. If so, the Cadillac Escalade V will go out with a legendary bang.



New Philips Hue Lamp•
Philips is back with a new lineup of IoT lighting products, offering enthusiasts new ways to update their smart home's lighting and controls.



69Gizmodo / 11h
Introduced in season two as a power player at Delos, the company in charge of Westworld ’s parks and its resident “host” robots , Charlotte Hale ( Tessa Thompson ) has evolved quite a bit as a character , though she’s always been positioned as one of the series’ antagonists. Read more...



Meta Facebook Reviews•
Meta is launching an updated Community Feedback Policy in the United States to ensure that reviews on Facebook are based on real purchasing experiences. Although the company has already taken steps against abusive reviews, the new policy lays out these rules and guidelines in writing. In a blog post, Meta said businesses on Facebook must prohibit the manipulation of reviews, incentivization, irre



Lenovo ThinkStation•
Enlarge / Lenovo's P360 Ultra is a mini-workstation with a lot of power. (credit: Lenovo) You'll never find a high-end workstation or a gaming PC that's quite as small as Intel's original NUC lineup, but there are options if you want a tiny but high-performance desktop. One of those is Lenovo's new ThinkStation P360 Ultra , a mini desktop that crams Intel's 12th-generation Alder Lake desktop CPUs




Remember that story we posted a few days ago about how the debut of The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection might finally be at hand? Nevermind. The new cruising arm of luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton on Tuesday said it had pushed back the unveiling of its much-awaited first vessel, the 298-passenger Evrima, for a seventh time. In a statement sent to TPG, the company said a prolonged metalworkers strik



Last week, comedian Caleb Hearon took to Twitter to bluntly voice his displeasure with Airbnb, proclaiming , “i’m done with airbnb lmao these motherfuckers have curfews, quiet hours, and chore lists now. i will be at a HOTEL.” The tweet created a bit of a pile-on (33K retweets and climbing), with a… Read more...



Google Password Android•
Android smartphone and tablet users are set to get a neat new way to ensure they never lose track of all their important passwords. As spotted by 9to5Google , Android users will now be able to add a shortcut for the Google Password Manager tool directly onto their device's home screen. As suggested in the name, this password manager service is able to keep track of all your login information in a



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Save $100: Building a new gaming PC setup on a budget? As of June 21, the Samsung CRG5 24-inch curved gaming monitor is $149.99 at Amazon, which matches its all-time lowest price. A high-performance gaming PC or gaming laptop can be a hefty investment. But even with a limited budget for peripherals, you can still find an affordable gaming monitor that can keep up with the most powerful devices. C



Vertex EHA CRISPR Years•
500+Futurism / 11h
A long-running human trial has shown that CRISPR gene editing could prove to be a highly effective way of treating serious conditions. The trial, which was kicked off in 2019 by an international team of scientists, found that a new gene-editing therapy called exagamglogene autotemcel, or ex-cel for short, was able to essentially "cure" patients with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT) or



2KFuturism / 11h
Wave Rider Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says he often gives his students a particular thought experiment: to calculate the probability that they wake up on Mars tomorrow, due to the vagaries of the theory of multiple universes. Though the question seems decidedly wacky, Kaku writes in a New York Times column about the wondrous intrigue of quantum physics, which pits the possible versus the l



Meta Facebook Housing•
Meta has agreed to settle 2019 charges that it enabled housing discrimination through ad targeting. The deal with the Justice Department will have the company end use of a "Special Ad Audiences" tool that allegedly used a discrimination-prone algorithm to widen the reach of housing ads on Facebook. Meta is instead developing a new method, the "variance reduction system," to ensure home ads match



45Gizmodo / 12h
Unusually low water levels in Italy’s largest river have revealed a sunken World War II barge. Read more...



NASA Three Artemis Moon•
NASA and the Department of Energy have awarded contracts to three companies that are designing concepts to bring nuclear power to the Moon . The agencies will award Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX around $5 million each to fund the design of a fission surface power system, an idea that NASA has been working on for at least 14 years . The three companies are being tasked with developing a 40-



Sinclair Bally Streaming•
Sinclair Broadcast Group’s long-anticipated direct-to-consumer regional sports streaming app will have a soft launch this Thursday, June 23, 2022. While this isn’t a full rollout, Bally Sports+ will initially be available in five markets to stream Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins, Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays games. The app will be priced at $19.99 a month, or $189.99 a y



Metaverse Standards MSF•
100+TechCrunch / 12h
As more tech companies develop virtual and augmented reality products, some oversight groups are trying to keep the industry on the same page. The newest of these is the Metaverse Standards Forum , which aims to drive open interoperability, which could make it easier for developers to build across platforms. As announced today, the forum already has some major players on board, such as Meta, Micr



AI has the potential to revolutionize society, but that may not be a good thing if it leads to robots that harbor harmful stereotypes from humans.



Have you ever expected a small item in the mail, only to receive an envelope with a hole in it and no item to be found? It happened to me when a childhood friend said they would send me a special pen, and it happens to the recipients of untold numbers of spare keys, according to one postal worker who took to Reddit to… Read more...



Windows 10 and 11’s BitLocker feature, for Professional and Enterprise editions, encrypts your drive to help keep your data secure. If you don’t want this encryption for some reason, it’s easy to disable BitLocker and decrypt your drive. We’ll show you how to do that. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



We already know Meta (previously Facebook) plans to release its latest Meta Quest Pro VR headset later this year. In the meantime, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is giving the world a rare look at several neat prototypes the company is busy testing out. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



We're eagerly awaiting the two-part finale to the fourth season of Stranger Things . Will Hawkins survive? It was admittedly an odd creative decision to split the fourth season of Stranger Things into two unequal parts. While Part 1 (consisting of the first seven episodes) was a bit bloated, it nonetheless told a compelling story, set up some real stakes, and left viewers mulling over multiple cl



We’re still far away from getting electronics from sustainable sources, but there are a few companies trying to make a go at saving some lost e-material from the landfill. Read more...



DICE Coutaz Battlefield•
While it's no secret that Battlefield 2042 had a rough launch, developer DICE is sticking it out. For the time being it will be working only Battlefield 2042 and no other projects, such as games like Mirror's Edge. "We are only focusing on Battlefield 2042 ," Coutaz told GI.Biz . "There is no time for anything else and this is what we want to do. In three years, we want to be the first-person sho



Early in the pandemic, scientists tried training dogs to detect COVID-19 infections in humans. The results were predictable. Man’s best friend proved adept at sniffing out the disease, but the question researchers kept asking themselves was how they would scale that approach. After all, training a dog is expensive, and taking care of one can be a handful. Still, the idea of using animals to spot




TL;DR: As of June 21, you can get a $5 Amazon Prime Day credit with any purchase of Lightyear merch or a ticket to see the movie in theaters. Buy both a ticket and merch and you'll get a $10 credit. These days, plenty of people are heading back to theaters and remembering what it's like to pay too much for popcorn in exchange for the ✨vibes✨. To incentivize you to have such an outing, Amazon is o



The Boeing 747, affectionately known as the “Queen of the Skies,” remains one of the most iconic symbols of commercial aviation. While the current number of these jets is dwindling thanks to more fuel-efficient twin-engine birds like the 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350, the 747 was once a mainstay of international travel. Related: 50 years of the Boeing 747 in 11 photos I have fond memories of fly



USPSTF Vitamin CVD Cancer•
An influential group of experts is recommending that people not take beta carotene or vitamin E supplements in hopes of preventing cancer or cardiovascular disease, arguing that they provide no clear benefits and may actually raise the risk of these health problems. They’ve also concluded that there’s not enough… Read more...



Meta Housing Facebook•
The U.S. Department of Justice today announced that it entered into an agreement with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to resolve a lawsuit that alleged Meta engaged in discriminatory advertising in violation of the Fair Housing Act (FHA). The proposed settlement is subject to review and approval by a judge in the Southern District of New York, where the lawsuit was originally filed. But assuming



A popular YouTuber has given Android fans their first detailed look at the design of the upcoming Nothing Phone (1), specifically its unique light strips.



With gas prices still rising, and little sign of motorists getting relief at the pump any time soon, finding the cheapest gas nearby could save you big money.



New iOS devices will soon be able to skip some of the most annoying CAPTCHA login security protocols thanks to a new process developed by Apple for iOS 16.



Meta Facebook US Housing•
The Justice Department had accused Meta’s housing advertising system of discriminating against Facebook users based on their race, gender, religion and other characteristics.



A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips. Continue reading ...



As reported by How-To Geek , Chrome 103 is arriving today for all Chromium-based browser users. While the list of new features is small this time around, there are three new options for desktop browsers, as well as one new change for Chrome on Android. If you want to see websites load faster and have more notification… Read more...



Microsoft Recognition AI•
Microsoft is keenly aware of the mounting backlash toward facial recognition , and it's shuttering a significant project in response. The company has revealed it will "retire" facial recognition technology that it said could infer emotions as well as characteristics like age, gender and hair. The AI raised privacy questions, Microsoft said, and offering a framework created the potential for discr



Microsoft Windows Russia•
200+Gizmodo / 12h
Downloads of the most recent versions of Windows have stopped in Russia, according to a new report from Bleeping Computer. Microsoft hasn’t publicly clarified why this is happening, though we’ve reached out to the company for comment and will update our story if they respond. Read more...



300+Gizmodo / 12h
Warner Bros. has opened its bag to just keep adding more and more names to its blockbuster sci-fi franchise as Léa Seydoux joins the ensemble for Dune : Part Two. Deadline reports she is set to play Lady Margot in the upcoming sequel based on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic from Denis Villeneuve, who is returning as… Read more...



Steam Summer Sale 2022•
Valve's next big sale gets a launch date, and if you're wondering what's up for grabs we've got you covered.

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