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Friday, December 17, 2021

Friday Technology News and More

Technology News and More




Hevo Raises $30M SCI•
100+TechCrunch / 10h
Hevo Data, a SaaS startup that is helping firms collate troves of data they generate and accumulate to make better use of them, has raised $30 million in a new financing round following a strong year of growth. Sequoia Capital India led the San Francisco and Bangalore-headquartered startup’s $30 million Series B round. A number of investors, including Qualgro, Lachy Groom and Chiratae Ventures, a



Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information. Since the first cruises allowing Americans restarted in spring 2021, all major lines are sailing with at least 90% of passengers vaccinated. That means they require just about everyone onboard to have their shots, with few exceptions allowed for young children and people who can’t be vaccinated due to medical conditions or religious



Anti Radioactive Dutch•
Conspiracy theories about 5G have fuelled a market for "anti-5G" accessories.




With Christmas just one week away, the latest Best Buy flash sale has just launched as a last-minute rush to sneak in one final round of bargains. This 3-day event is live from now until Sunday, with savings up for grabs across a whole range of top tech, including iPads, TVs, laptops, headphones, appliances, wearables, and toys. We've taken a look through everything that's on offer to bring you 9



There’s no question that Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card is the most exciting new premium rewards card of the last couple of years. It has a huge up front bonus offer, strong points-earning, airport lounge access and a host of premium benefits. Here are the 19 things I’m loving about the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card. Continue reading ...



22The Points Guy / 29min
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years, you’ll know that the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card has long been heralded as the best travel credit card on the market — even winning the award as the best travel rewards card for the fourth straight year at the 2021 TPG Awards . If you don’t already carry this prized



64The Points Guy / 29min
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, two days after appearing unmasked at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing with executives from other airlines. The positive test was first reported by Reuters . Want more airline-specific news? Sign up for TPG’s free new biweekly Aviation newsletter! Kelly appeared unmasked at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday



Lifehacker / 30min
This week, kids are watching season 2 of The Witche r, navigating the pitfalls of virtual reality (spoiler: the problem is other people), and enjoying some old fashioned glitter bombing. They are not, it seems, posting school shooting threats on TikTok. Read more...



How-To Geek / 33min
To capture an image of what you see on your iPhone 13‘s screen, it’s easy to take a screenshot. We’ll show you how with instructions that also work for the iPhone 13 Mini, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



How-To Geek / 33min
Back in October, we had the chance to review Vizio’s excellent 70-inch M7 QLED TV. It scored a 9/10 thanks to its beautiful 4K panel, impressive color accuracy, and shockingly low price. But if you bought the Vizio M7 QLED TV for $1100, I suggest averting your eyes—Best Buy is offering the TV with a crazy $350 discount. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



Engadget / 33min
AT&T and Verizon are among four providers that have agreed to settle FCC investigations into outages that led to failed 911 calls. CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies) and Intrado will also pay settlements and enact measures to ensure they adhere to the agency's 911 rules. Verizon (Engadget's former parent company) will pay $274,000, the smallest settlement of the four, to resolve an investigatio



Mashable / 33min
No matter how well-received it is at the start, the majority of fitness equipment eventually flames out hard. Shake weights, toning shoes, and vibration belts, to name just a few, were all considered must-have items at one point that are now more commonly used for comedy sketches and throwback costumes. Foam rollers have not suffered that same fate. I came across one for the first time in the loc



TikTok March US Hundreds•
TechCrunch / 38min
TikTok is preparing to launch a new service that will turn its viral food videos into meals you can actually order and enjoy. The social app is partnering with Virtual Dining Concepts to launch “TikTok Kitchen”-branded delivery-only restaurants across the United States next year, as first reported by Bloomberg . The menu at the restaurants will draw upon the most popular viral food posts on TikTo



Gizmodo / 42min
Let’s be clear: if Hollywood mega-producer-turned-convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein had actually fired Peter Jackson as director of Lord of the Rings and replaced him with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ’s Quentin Tarantino , it probably wouldn’t have cracked the Top 100 of the most monstrous things the former Miramax… Read more...



Engadget / 51min
One of the trickier aspects of EV ownership is finding charging stations. The infrastructure improves every year, but it’s still not as widespread and robust as what’s available to those who drive gasoline cars. That’s where apps like PlugShare and Chargemap can be a godsend, helping you not only find nearby stations but also plan your routes. Now there’s another option you can turn to for help.



33Futurism / 56min
The ousted CEO of a SpaceX copycat — and the man who gave Elon Musk his first rocketry books — is being sued for, among other things, allegedly embezzling money to fund his vintage racecar obsession. As Ars Technica ‘s Eric Berger reports , Jim Cantrell, the onetime executive of the micro-launch company Vector Launch, is being sued as part of the company’s bankruptcy filings. In the motion filed



JetBlue is out with a revamped elite status program for 2022. The New York-based carrier is adding new perks to Mosaic status, as well as introducing a whole new tier to the program, dubbed Mosaic+. There’s a lot for members to like about the update, including the ability for new top-tier elites to receive complimentary upgrades to the airline’s award-winning Mint business-class cabin for a limit



Lifehacker / 58min
When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019, it also acquired that once-venerable studio’s slate of animated films in development, which included two comic book-based properties I was very excited for: Mouse Guard , axed two weeks before production was to begin , and Nimona , which was just 10 months from completion… Read more...



Gizmodo / 1h
Crypto King and Tron founder Justin Sun is pivoting to politics but not exactly where one would expect. The 31-year-old billionaire announced he’s stepping away from his previous cryptocurrency projects and will instead take on a role as ambassador of the Grenada government to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Sun… Read more...



29Gizmodo / 1h
Apollo mission planners were really smart. Recognizing that future scientists will have better tools and richer scientific insights, they refrained from opening a portion of the lunar samples returned from the historic Apollo missions. One of these sample containers, after sitting untouched for 50 years, is now set to… Read more...



Nissan Bluebird Newbird•
Nissan UK’s Sunderland manufacturing facility celebrates 35 years of manufacturing heritage this year. Commemorating this momentous occasion is a one-off T12 Nissan Bluebird station wagon running an all-electric powertrain from the Nissan Leaf. Affectionately called the ‘Newbird’ by Nissan UK, this vintage restomod brings back memories of simpler times. “The Newbird represents all that is great a



Judge Purdue Sackler•
Enlarge / Frank Huntley, who raises awareness of opiate addiction with his sculpture "Pill Man," is among protesters who rallied at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2021, calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring criminal charges against members of the Sackler family. (credit: Getty Images | Pacific Press ) A federal judge yesterday rejected the Purdue Pharma




Most early abortions are done by taking pills that cause a miscarriage. This method—medication abortion—is simple and safe, but until recently, federal rules made it illegal to get these pills in the mail like other prescriptions. The FDA has now permanently changed that rule. Read more...



Hyundai Ioniq 5 Delivers•
Automakers have been struggling to produce an EV that looks futuristic but not pretentious. Starting at $39,700, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 seems to toe that line with a mixture of retro and futuristic design elements combined with technology that actually works as advertised. The hatchback-esque SUV doesn’t just look cool, it’s a pleasure to drive and is the culmination of the technology Hyundai has be



The Facebook app for iPhone lets you clear your browser cache to free up some space and make the app leaner. It doesn’t impact or delete your posts, images, or friends. Here’s how to do it. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



To celebrate its Sunderland factory’s 35th anniversary, Nissan turned one of its most iconic vehicles into a one-off EV. Meet the Nissan Newbird, a modified 1980s Bluebird (called a Nissan Altima in North America) with a Leaf EV powertrain and a retro-inspired paint job. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



20Gizmodo / 1h
Did we mention she was an elf ? No? OK well, bonus wanting. Read more...



Gizmodo / 1h
We all remember the “What color is this dress?” phenomenon followed by “Yanny vs. Laurel.” Now the world has a new puzzle to obsess over, and it will pit Apple users against their longtime rivals. Read more...



US Schools TikTok Friday•
22TechCrunch / 1h
A proliferation of ominous, non-specific TikTok rumors suggested that schools across the U.S. faced threats of violence on Friday, December 17. While a number of schools responded to the trend by closing their doors, many local law enforcement agencies and at least one federal one have weighed in, disclosing that the threat doesn’t appear to be substantiated. The Department of Homeland Security n



2 GSC Game World NFT•
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Enlarge / A screenshot from Dmarket's now-defunct promotional page for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl developer GSC Game World is quickly backing off plans to integrate non-fungible tokens into the upcoming game, a decision that came just a day after announcing the idea and hours after the company publicly defended its position on Thursday. The short saga of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.



Tencent 4 Turtle Rock•
Tencent has added another notable game developer to its roster after buying Slamfire, the parent company of Turtle Rock Studios , for an undisclosed sum. The studio is behind Left 4 Dead, Evolve and, most recently, Back 4 Blood . Co-founders Phil Robb and Chris Ashton will continue to run the studio. "By joining the Tencent family, we will not only get access to their vast resources and expertise



1KFuturism / 1h
Cyborg Brains Scientists have successfully taught a collection of human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game “Pong” — kind of. Researchers at the biotechnology startup Cortical Labs have created “ mini-brains “ consisting of 800,000 to one million living human brain cells in a petri dish, New Scientist reports . The cells are placed on top of a microelectrode array that analyzes



Amazon Driver Tornado•
500+Futurism / 1h
Reports about Amazon’s sluggish response to the deadly tornado that collapsed one of its facilities in Illinois just keeps getting worse and worse. The latest comes in the form of a text message exchange between an Amazon driver and her manager. The messages, which were seen and verified by Bloomberg , showcase the confusion and chaos during the weekend’s disaster. “Tornado alarms are going off o



Giant Kites Ships Airseas•
Gizmodo / 1h
Starting in January, a huge boat will attach itself to an enormous kite in a first-of-its-kind test to try and alleviate harmful carbon emissions from toting stuff to and fro across the high seas. Read more...



Every year, Apple releases new features that both improve data privacy on the iPhone, and set a new benchmark for the industry as a whole. With iOS 15, it’s all about transparency. iOS 15.2 brings a new feature called App Privacy Report that provides a visual, easy-to-read report of all the ways an app is using or… Read more...



United Airlines is introducing free inflight messaging, which is great for customers… How United’s free messaging works As of today (Friday, December 17, 2021), United Airlines is rolling out free inflight messaging. Specifically, travelers can connect to United’s inflight Wi-Fi network on select aircraft, and then they should see the option to message for free using any of the following three me



Gizmodo / 2h
Worried about crossing the line while posting in China? Never fear, for Chinese industry group the Netcasting Services Association has posted a helpful list of 100 topics that should never be broached in short videos on apps like Douyin. Read more...



CNN Shows HBO Max March•
Gizmodo / 2h
Ahead of the planned launch of its own proprietary streaming service , CNN is shuffling some of its original programming off of HBO Max so that it can have more content in the can to populate CNN+ with when it launches in 2022. Read more...



Gizmodo / 2h
While us average folks enjoyed the incredible footage captured by a floating drone in the midst of a Category 4 hurricane, scientists were geeking out on the data. And now, they’re ready to share some of the results and insights into how the fiercest storms on Earth can gain strength. Read more...



Although my lifelong catalogue of injuries is longer than most—nearly two decades of competitive distance running tends to have that effect—I’m fortunate that nothing back-related is on the list. But that doesn’t mean I’m immune to the everyday aches and pains that stem from sitting in a chair for long stretches at a time, no matter how hard I try to undo the damage before and after the fact. Ide



Apple has built a reputation on privacy and the security of its iPhone, so it comes as no surprise that it gives users a lot of control over location tracking settings. Location tracking can be essential for apps such as Apple Maps, so you can be provided with the necessary guidance to get you from point A to point B. … Continue reading




iOS 15.3 Apple 15.2•
The last couple of iOS updates have been fairly substantial, with iOS 15.2 bringing App Privacy Reports, Legacy Contacts and more, while the headline features of iOS 15.1 were SharePlay and ProRes , but it’s looking like iOS 15.3 might lack notable upgrades. MacRumors reports that an initial beta for iOS 15.3 has leaked, and the only real changes are wording around the Child Safety features that



If you're looking to pick up a cheap TV deal before the holidays, Amazon has you covered with a slew of Fire TVs from brands like Insignia and Toshiba, starting at just $119 . While Amazon's TV deals won't ship in time for Christmas, today's offers are the lowest prices we've ever seen, and some discounts beat what we saw during Black Friday. All of Amazon's cheap TV deals include the Fire TV exp



Music is one of the best ways to feel good about the world. An essential part of life, your favourite songs and albums are a great way to look back at past fond memories as well as create some new ones too. Great music deserves to be heard loud and clear, which is why the JBL LIVE Pro+ are the perfect way to do that. With personalised sound and features that fit into your lifestyle, they're the a



Keeping control of your Microsoft Teams meetings could soon get a lot easier thanks to a new update aimed at limiting participant numbers. The video conferencing service has announced new meeting room capacity notifications for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android, hopefully helping prevent virtual overcrowding. The feature could also help in-office staff decide whether to move an in-person meeting o



Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card overview The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card represents the issuer’s first foray into the world of premium travel rewards cards and knocks it out of the park. With an annual fee that undercuts the competition and plentiful perks that are easy to understand, the card is nearly a no-brainer for travelers ranging from luxury seekers to the more bud



Some people are just too hard to buy for. You know the type. They’re really into something, and they’re really particular about it. Gamers and bookworms come to mind, but the same applies to people who are really into coffee. Read more...



Gizmodo / 2h
We’re two episodes into The Expanse ’s six-episode final season , which means things are already heating up—though there’s still time for some excellent character moments, including Bobbie calling Amos “Pee-Wee.” Also, Filip flails, Clarissa steps up, and somebody finally tells Marco Inaros to get his head out of his… Read more...



You don’t have to be limited to using the display physically connected to your Windows 11 PC. Thanks to Google’s casting feature, you can mirror your desktop easily through the Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser. It’s similar to Apple’s AirPlay. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



The 21st century gave rise to the bedroom producer . And in 2020 the music industry finally acknowledged that songs recorded in someone’s bedroom were just as viable as those captured in a studio filled with millions of dollars worth of equipment. This has, of course, led many of those high-end studio equipment makers to try and get in on the home studio game. The latest to make the leap is Unive



There’s a great business class deal for under $1600 roundtrip Los Angeles – Tel Aviv on oneworld airlines, great for American AAdvantage and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members. Current Israel travel restrictions are tight but it’s worth considering for travel far into the future. Continue reading ...



Amazon Xbox Series•
Image credit: Sony We’re running out of chances to find a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X before the holidays, but GameStop is offering hope today for both consoles. The PlayStation 5 will be first up at GameStop, as a number of stores will have consoles in stock starting immediately. The Xbox Series X will follow next week, but there are several things … Continue reading



Via Lexus A new fully electric vehicle called the RZ450e EV was just revealed by Lexus with nothing but a handful of images and no specific hardware details whatsoever. Despite the lack of details given by the company, we can glean some information from this first batch of photos. The RZ450e EV is clearly based on its siblings from Subaru and Toyota, … Continue reading



Comcast has decided to delay the implementation of data caps in the northeast part of the US. However, regions that already have data caps will keep them, leaving the rest of the country to worry about how much internet they’re using. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



It’s time to start clearing some room on your massive LEGO shelf. LEGO will launch four new Technic heavy machinery sets in March of 2022, including an official John Deere 9620R 4WD Tractor with a functional trailer and some all-new, very green bricks. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



Arrival Uber Ride Hailing•
Earlier this year, a new electric vehicle startup named Arrival announced it had partnered with Uber to design the ultimate ride-hailing vehicle. Now, nearly eight months later, we’re finally getting our first look at the teeny-tiny EV. This week, Arrival and Uber revealed its first prototype designed with Uber drivers in mind. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



Before my entire FYP caught COVID, there were some pretty gorgeous trends going viral on TikTok this week. If that makes no sense to you, then you're in the right place. Before things get so bad that I want to give them a zero, let's get into this week’s biggest TikTok trends. It is so bad It’s only fitting that in this Omicron-filled week the audio "it is so bad I want to give you a zero, but th



With Christmas right around the corner, now's the time to make sure you have all your gifts in check and grab any last-minute holiday gifts you may need. Thankfully, there remain a good number of tech deals available, and a good portion of them are still slated to arrive before the holiday if you're quick to order. Apple's second-generation AirPods are still on sale for $90, while a couple of col



DroneDeploy Sunrun•
Drones are an essential piece of technology for aerial videography and photography, but you don’t have to be a professional photographer to geek out on the latest and greatest drones. These airborne technology toys allow you to experience the exhilaration of flight and capture images from hundreds of feet in the air while keeping your feet firmly planted on the ground. There is a wide range of dr



2KFuturism / 2h
Not a Shiba Because nothing matters any more, a dog appears to have taken control of a Tesla vehicle, according to a groundbreaking investigate report by Inside Edition . “This is crazy!” sputtered Blake Missick, from Austin, Texas, incredulously in the video , which shows a shaggy dog going for a spin in a Tesla. “There’s nobody in there! Is this legal?” While it’s not the most egregious use of



FedEx GM BrightDrop•
Enlarge / BrightDrop delivers five of 500 electric light commercial vehicles to FedEx, the first customer to receive the EV600s. (credit: FedEx) At the beginning of the year, General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced that the company was starting a new business . It's called BrightDrop, and it's focused on providing electrified products for delivery and logistics businesses. At the time, we also le




Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like Call the Midwife and drag queens sewing. That's what we've all got to look forward to as we vegetate in front of the TV over the course of the Christmas period, nursing our Turkey-filled stomachs while one member of the family inevitably dozes in the corner. And whatever your Christmas plans look like, we're here to ensure you don't miss a moment of the UK's Ch



While Secret Santa forces you to know something about the gift recipient, the beauty of the White Elephant gift is the promise of possibility. And for those of us who like to toe the line of what makes an “appropriate” gift, White Elephant is our time to shine. Read more...



Land Range Rover SV•
Land Rover has unveiled its range-topping 2022 Range Rover SV, the most luxurious Range Rover ever. It goes so far as to sit above the SE, HSE, and Autobiography variants. As expected from a premium flagship, the newest Range Rover SV will arrive with an array of bespoke interior and exterior options courtesy of Land Rover’s SVO (Special Vehicle Operations) … Continue reading



Chase Aeroplan Canada•
Earlier this week, Lufthansa announced it would start nonstop service from St. Louis (STL) to Frankfurt (FRA) with its A330 aircraft. Service will start June 1, 2021, and operate 3x weekly on Sunday, Wednesday. and Friday. This will be the first time the St. Louis area has seen mainline nonstop service to Europe in over 20 years, making flights to Germany and beyond far easier for those in the St



Image credit: LG While many companies are waiting until CES to announce their new products, LG is getting out ahead of the crowd today by announcing its UltraFine OLED Por monitors for 2022. There are only two monitors in this lineup, and they’re both very similar. In fact, aside from display sizes, they’re more or less the same monitor, making picking between them … Continue reading



For some, the most important holiday in December falls on the 23rd. That’s the day to celebrate Festivus, the made-up holiday from an episode of Seinfeld, which has since taken on a life of its own. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



Alaska Airlines Starbucks•
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information. In case you missed the memo, It’s National Ugly Sweater Day and Alaska is in the mood to celebrate. Flying with us this Friday? Cozy up, up, and away! To celebrate #NationalUglySweaterDay on 12/17, all guests wearing ANY holiday sweater get priority boarding! Plus, all month long, get a day pass to any Alaska Lounge for just $25 when



China US DJI Chinese•
The Treasury Department puts the Chinese drone giant DJI on an investment blacklist.



Welcome to AirFryDay, where — you guessed it — every Friday Mashable covers the latest trends, dispenses advice, and reviews recipes for your air fryer. I have a bad habit while cooking. I am a good cook and I enjoy it — it's my favorite hobby — so that often means I make things too complicated. But, in truth, simple recipes can be great. What I'm saying is, sometimes all you need is a tiny hot d



77Gizmodo / 3h
Author Chuck Wendig is a favorite here at io9; we’ve featured excerpts from his books before, including his 2019 sci-fi smash hit Wanderers . Today we are thrilled to be debuting the cover and first excerpt from its follow-up, Wayward , which will be out next summer. Read more...



FDA Abortion Pill Mail•
26Gizmodo / 3h
The Food and Drug Administration has now permanently lifted a restriction on abortion medication. On Thursday, the agency made official that it would no longer require the drug mifepristone—one half of a combination abortion regimen—to be dispensed in-person, following years of pressure from public health and… Read more...



The Samsung Galaxy S21 FE is a phone that we likely know almost everything about at this point, as most of the specs have leaked and now they’ve leaked again for good measure, but this time with pricing. According to Roland Quandt (a reputable leaker) writing for WinFuture , the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE has a 6.4-inch 1080 x 2340 AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a Snapdragon 888 chipset, and



TikTok March US Hundreds•
If you've ever seen a viral TikTok of a recipe that looks surprisingly delicious, you might soon be able to try the dish without having to make it yourself. Starting in March, the platform is opening hundreds of delivery-only TikTok Kitchen locations across the US. TikTok teamed up with Virtual Dining Concepts to create the ghost restaurants, Bloomberg reports. They'll start with around 300 locat



You’ve checked everything off your pre-ski checklist. Your equipment is ready. The hotel and car are booked. You’ve even been watching the daily snow report. But this year there is something new to plan for: You may now have to reserve – and possibly pay extra – for parking. Yes, you read that correctly. While many ski resorts continue to offer some form of free parking, paid parking lots and pre



Dogs are our companions, our friends, and our helpers. They deserve the best in life that we have to offer—and that means accepting their deep desire to spend time with us in the kitchen, making their food and water easily accessible (even in small spaces), and keeping them safe and comfortable. Here are a few DIY… Read more...



Coatue Cove Tool Building•
75TechCrunch / 3h
While there is plenty of technology out there to help make a building more sustainable, the ability to incorporate features into its design can be easier said than done. Enter cove.tool , a startup that wants to make sure buildings are sustainable by design from the moment of inception. The Atlanta-based startup, which has raised $30 million in a Series B round of funding led by Coatue, claims th



There are plenty of ways to customize a chart you create in Excel. If you want to make sure your chart is clear to those viewing it, you can add vertical or horizontal axis titles and customize those too. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



French A350-1000 Airbus•
French Bee has just taken delivery of its first Airbus A350-1000, which features 480 seats. This makes it the world’s most efficient long haul aircraft. I’m undecided as to whether this is an incredible feat, or just sounds plain awful. What is French Bee? For context, French Bee is an ultra low cost carrier that launched operations in 2016. The airline operates a fleet consisting exclusively of



Today is an incredibly exciting day – we're officially launching TechRadar Gaming or, as it'll more colloquially be known, TRG. In the years I've been in charge of TechRadar I've watched our gaming coverage grow from tiny stories ( like talking about Xbox Live games on Windows Phone in 2010 ) to this year, where we found ourselves getting articles in from swathes of talented journalists talking a



LG UltraFine OLED Pro•
If you rely on having a top-quality monitor for work then you might be familiar with LG's UltraFine lineup already - and the company is now set to launch two new 4K displays. Available in 27-inch (27BP95E) and 32-inch (32BP95E) sizes, both models feature 3,840 x 2,160 pixel display, a stunning 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and 99% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour space, making them ideal for anyone wh




More than 400 people can now demand the illegally obtained films be removed from websites.



27Gizmodo / 3h
While the covid-19 pandemic has dominated headlines this past year, other maladies continued to trouble humanity—and some of them were extremely bizarre. In a few cases, a person’s own unfortunate decisions landed them in the pages of a medical journal; in others, it was sheer bad luck. Warning: some of the stories… Read more...



Gen Z isn’t satisfied with the social media they grew up with, so they’re building the apps that they want to use . A “social branding” app for creative teens and twenty-somethings, Tagg is announcing a $2 million seed round today from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Facebook’s former VP of International Growth Ed Baker, TripAdvisor founder Stephen Kaufer, Pillar VC and more. Founded by recent alum



Amazon just dropped an incredible deal that allows you to get the best-selling Echo Dot for an unbelievable price of $0.99 when you sign up for one month of Amazon Music Unlimited for $7.99 . The 3rd generation smart speaker normally retails for $47.98, so with this deal, you're saving $39 and getting the Echo Dot for the cheapest price ever. The 3rd generation Echo Dot is a smart speaker that wo



Amazon Xbox Series•
Halo Infinite 's esports management has confirmed that open bracket players in the upcoming Halo Championship Series tournament will be playing on Xbox Series X development consoles. That's because the ongoing global supply chain issues are affecting not just consumers, but also Microsoft and developer 343 Industries. The news was confirmed by Tashi, Halo esports and viewership lead at Microsoft



Social media is fueling our “parasocial relationships” with TV characters.



Stalker 2 NFT GGW NPC•
The gaming community has spoken, and it doesn’t want NFTs in games. Thankfully, the STALKER 2 devs listened and decided to drop all non-fungible tokens from its upcoming video game. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



Music streaming got a big boost in quality this year, but Pixel 6 owners can’t enjoy it. A bug that’s affected the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro since launch prevents the devices from using external DACs, which are required for high-res streaming on Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music. And Google hasn’t addressed the problem. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



7 Apple Watch 6 VF•
Apple’s latest smartwatch, the Apple Watch 7 , is in stores now. Our reviewer summed it up as “the Apple Watch 6 with a slightly larger screen,” but is the update really as simple as that? While we’re firing out questions, are there any other points of difference that might make the newer device a better device? Or is last year’s model the smarter pick? Ultimately, with Apple ruling the wearable



It’s almost Christmas, but that doesn’t mean streamers are snowed under with festive movies and TV shows exclusively. In fact, this weekend, there’s a noticeable absence of sleigh bells and holly in place of several original features and returning shows. The biggest arrival is The Witcher season 2 , which throws Henry Cavill’s monster-hunting Geralt back into the fray – although, given the amount



Image Credit: WinFuture It’s just two weeks before this year ends, a few weeks more before the Galaxy S21 FE’s tumultuous journey finally comes to an end as well. Unless something goes horribly wrong, the 2021 Fan Edition phone is set to launch against all odds, but its fate remains uncertain at this point. While its predecessor sold well, there are a few … Continue reading



100+Gizmodo / 3h
The fourth installment in The Matrix franchise won’t arrive until next week, but critics have gotten to see Resurrections and started sharing their early reactions. If you’re a fan, there’s some extremely good news—they (mostly) loved the film, and how it cleverly both recontextualizes and builds upon the original… Read more...



500+Futurism / 3h
With a scary-sounding new variant making the rounds, it’s easy to panic. But the reality, as usual, is complex. In fact, some initial research suggests that the Omicron variant, while much more transmissible, appears to be significantly milder even than Delta . Although the data is still incomplete, and more deaths will almost certainly emerge, as recently as December 4, the World Health Organiza



Thus far, I’ve detailed three of the five trusted traveler programs designed to assist travelers in passing through security lines at U.S. airports and crossing domestic borders. This week, I take a look at Sentri, the Mexican counterpart to Nexus , which, unlike other TTPs, is accessible to foreign travelers outside of the U.S. For more TPG news delivered each morning to your inbox, sign up for



It’s that time of year again—when your search results are crowded with variations of “X Best Gift Ideas for Y”-style articles. And this seems like one of them, but it isn’t. Well, it is. But it isn’t. Because when you’re looking for quick assistance from the algorithm regarding what to buy your vaguely intimidating… Read more...



Nintendo Sega Genesis•
The Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack lineup of Sega Genesis games has just grown by five more titles. Nintendo has added Altered Beast , ToeJam & Earl, Dynamite Headdy, Sword of Vermilion and Thunder Force II to the library. Nintendo rolled out the higher tier of its Switch Online service in October, which added Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games (and Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC) to



Hello and welcome back to Equity , a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. To close out the year, Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex headed to the mic with Grace and Chris behind the scenes. We got to our favorite topics, and honestly, got a chance to just laugh our way through the final innings of the year. Here’s what we got to: Factor ra



We may not know what 2022 has in store for us just yet, but we do know that Prime Video will continue updating its library with new movies and TV shows. New original movies include The Tender Bar and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. On the TV side of things, catch new dramedy As We See It and new episodes of kids' show Do, Re & Mi . Prime Video and IMDb TV are also adding plenty of non-original



This year, YouTube is trying something new: a 24-hour, gamified three-part interactive livestream called "Escape2021." Like YouTube Rewind, the ill-fated annual video event that preceded it, Escape2021 celebrated the year’s top content trends and featured some of the platform’s most popular creators, as well as major artists like BTS, Blackpink, Doja Cat, and Olivia Rodrigo. YouTube clarified tha



Via Hyundai Someone at Hyundai has been watching The Mandalorian. The automaker has revealed its new Mobile Eccentric Droid or MobED. It looks like a wheeled version of the crib Baby Yoda* uses in the incredibly popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian. However, there are some key differences. Most notably, the baby hauling carriage has a frame and wheels rather than floating around … Continue read




Analogue Pocket Game Boy•
Earlier this week we gave a preview of the Analogue Pocket handheld retro gaming system. The modern take on ‘90s portable gaming ($220) offers so much more than just the ability to play most vintage portable games. It has built-in music making software, TV/video out via an accessory and, well many other things we wanted to do a proper dive on. We’ve had so much fun with this thing it’s very easy



Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information. Citi is a TPG advertising partner. Citi Premier® Card overview The Citi Premier® Card is an under-the-radar gem with a phenomenal range of bonus categories. While the card isn’t as strong on the redemption side as similar offerings from Chase or Amex, the ability to earn 3x on air travel, hotels, gas stations, supermarkets and restau



Meta Facebook 50000•
Meta has taken action against seven companies that it claims were using Facebook to distribute malware and spy on activists, journalists, and minorities. In an extensive report, written by members of the Facebook security and espionage investigation teams, the company says the move came as a result of multiple “months-long” investigations. "We took action against seven different surveillance-for-



New iPhone 13 owners should think about the accessories they want for their new handset not long after unboxing it. Like with last year’s iPhone 12s, this year’s models don’t come with a charging adapter, so that’s one thing you’ll probably need to have on hand. If you plan on going all-in on wireless charging could you skip that, though, and thankfully there are many more MagSafe accessories to



Nubank’s IPO Fees MS•
20TechCrunch / 4h
Fees on the Nubank IPO were among the lowest of the year, Bloomberg revealed this week. Of the $2.6 billion the Brazilian fintech’s parent company, Nu Holdings, raised in the operation, only 1.6% are going to its underwriters, which included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and others. “Among 490 IPOs in the U.S. so far this year, only three paid a smaller percentage,” Bloomberg noted. Th



At Congressional hearings this week, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said that masks provide little incremental benefit in air travel given the safety of the aircraft environment. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker chimed in, "I concur." And has since been walking that back, though over the summer when virus prevalence was low he and the CEOs of United and Southwest were talking about ending the



Want to protect your iPhone 13 without slapping adding any additional bulk? A screen protector is a perfect option, as it protects the screen from cracks and scratches. Not sure where to start? Here are the best iPhone 13 screen protectors. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



All-inclusive vacations can be a great deal, at least on paper: Just hand over a fixed amount of money to a resort or cruise company, and they’ll take care of your lodging, meals, entertainment, and maybe even airfare. But “all-inclusive” means different things in different situations—and you might be surprised at… Read more...



Apple released a beta of macOS Monterey 12.2 recently. It looks like the company is completely rebuilding the Apple Music app as a native program based on AppKit, which means it’ll run faster and with fewer issues. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



Prometheus is an open-source monitoring solution for collecting and aggregating metrics as time series data. Put more simply, each item in a Prometheus store is a metric event accompanied by the timestamp it occurred. Read This Article on CloudSavvy IT ›



There are few things I like better than a good pair of earbuds with nice sound quality and a comfortable fit. Skullcandy’s new Push Active buds are just that, plus they’re designed to stay in place all day, making them an actually useful earbud option for athletes. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



LJ Rich looks at the best of the week's technology news stories.



Many airline and hotel frequent flyer programs offer lifetime status, whereby you can earn status for a “lifetime” (whether that’s your lifetime or the lifetime of the program is a different question). 😉 World of Hyatt Globalist is my favorite hotel status, and in this post I wanted to take a closer look at how you can earn lifetime Globalist status in the World of Hyatt program. Earning World o



79Futurism / 4h
Pork Persuasion The prophecy made in a 2019 meme has come true. A neighborhood has, indeed, been invaded by dozens of feral hogs, as one Twitter user claimed in response to alt-country singer Jason Isbell’s tweet all those months ago. But don’t panic. It wasn’t 30-50 feral hogs, and because the porcine invasion happened around midnight in Sienna, Texas, no children were harmed — just landscaping



Image Credit: OPPO/YouTube OPPO made a big splash this week with the debut of its first foldable phone, the OPPO Find N. Initial feedback seems to be quite positive, but it was the same for the first Samsung Galaxy Fold until a week or month after those hands-on articles were published. The Find N, however, isn’t the only innovation that the company had … Continue reading



Omicron Travel Christmas•
The new omicron variant could potentially throw a wrench in even the most carefully planned holiday travel. There’s still much we’re learning about omicron, and it is admittedly still a very developing situation. But we do know that the variant may be more contagious than others and contains several spike protein mutations that may make it less responsive to COVID-19 vaccines . However, on the mo



Other than providing most of the world’s oxygen, 80 percent of its biodiversity, and the livelihoods of billions of people, the rainforests have never done anything good for anyone. The 12 horrors listed here prove we should provide massive financial incentives for corporations to destroy the rainforests at a rate of… Read more...



Google US Institute Cancer•
Google Cloud has partnered with the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) to help support breast cancer research through access to large cloud-based datasets and powerful resources to analyse them. The partnership expands on existing work by the NCI using Google Cloud's BigQuery to securely host and analyse terabytes of genomic and proteomic data, which has helped scientists around the globe to no e



The GoPro Hero 10 Black offers significant updates from the Hero 9 like improved image quality, a faster UI and more slow-motion options — but it also costs significantly more. Now, you can pick up the camera alone for $399 at Amazon , $100 off the regular price and less than launch price of the Hero 9. By GoPro Hero 10 Black at Amazon - $399 With a faster GP2 processor, the Hero 10 black offers



Russia 2021 US Space•
100+Ars Technica / 5h
Enlarge / Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin visits the construction site for the launch pad for the rocket boosters of the Angara family, at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. (credit: Yegor AleyevTASS via Getty Images) A long and strikingly critical article that reviews the state of the Russian space program was published in the state-aligned newspaper MK this week. None of the findings in the 2,800-word art




Directed by James Herron, edited by Sean Dacanay. Click here for transcript . (video link) Coming in under the wire here is our last video for 2021—and we tried to make it a fun one. If you play games, chances are you've played something that Warren Spector was involved in creating—with stints at Origin, Ion Storm, and Disney, he helped design and/or produce a whole giant pile of famous titles, i



Christmas is almost here, and it’s the perfect time to hunker down for some serious gaming sessions. To ensure you’re getting the best gaming experience this holiday season, Nvidia has worked to bring its cutting-edge Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) rendering technology to even more of your favourite AAA titles, from Battlefield 2042 to Cyberpunk 2077 , which means your games will look and pe



Parker Chisora 2 DAZN•
The battle lines are drawn once more in Manchester this weekend for this massive heavyweight rematch between Joseph Parker and Derek Chisora after a fiery first encounter. You're in the right place to find out all the details on how to watch a Parker vs Chisora 2 live stream and catch all this weekend's boxing action from almost anywhere in the world on DAZN . Parker vs Chisora 2 live stream Date



FedEx GM BrightDrop•
52TechCrunch / 5h
Steve Dent Contributor Steve Dent is an associate editor at Engadget . More posts by this contributor US puts drone maker DJI and seven other Chinese companies on investment blocklist William Shatner’s space voyage is becoming an Amazon documentary FedEx has received its first five GM-built electric delivery vans out of an order of 500, the company announced. The move represents an important land



You may have forgotten about it (perhaps on purpose) but Facebook, the company, has recently rebranded itself to Meta . All of the company's apps have retained their old names, but the rebrand is bringing about some changes. As noticed by Android Police , all of Facebook's — pardon, Meta's — apps in Google Play app store now have Meta Platforms, Inc, listed as developer. SEE ALSO: Facebook is 'Me



Mariella Satow is the founder of the volunteer-run SignUp – a free Google Chrome extension offering ASL captions over classic animated films available on Disney+. SignUp only works in the US and is solely compatible with Disney+ at the moment, but Satow is looking to expand into other languages and streaming services.



59Gizmodo / 5h
The long delayed next Minions movie now has another release date. Good Omens season 2 re-recruits a familiar heavenly host. Superman & Lois teases the return of Lucy Lane. Plus, get a glimpse at the King of New York’s criminal underworld in footage from the Hawkeye finale. To me, my spoilers! Read more...



Steam Deck February•
When Valve announced a two-month delay with the Steam Deck shipping date back in November, some folks feared a further hold-up in the pipeline – but the good news is that the handheld gaming PC is still on track. If you recall, the original launch date for the Steam Deck was December 2021. That was pushed back to February 2022 thanks to supply-chain issues and difficulty sourcing critical parts f



“Leslie Thornton: Begin Again, Again ,” at the MIT List Center through February 13, is the artist’s first US solo museum exhibition. It includes a new installation of Peggy and Fred in Hell (1983–2015).



Raj Tahil credits MIT with sparking his entrepreneurial instincts. “I learned to see problems as interesting opportunities,” says the president of Torpac Capsules, which specializes in custom capsules and pharmaceutical equipment. In the spirit of creating opportunities, Tahil and his spouse, Mary Jo Wrenn, have created an MIT donor-advised fund (DAF)—an increasingly popular way to simplify chari



Bill Greenbar Food Tank•
Cassandria Campbell, MCP ’11, traces her interest in food to her first summer job working with the Food Project on farms in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Roxbury, the Boston neighborhood where she grew up. “I really enjoyed that experience of seeing things grow,” she recalls, “and I appreciated how much change it was creating in Roxbury by bringing people together and turning vacant lots into produ



Geothermal power is a promising energy source limited by factors including the need to locate plants in areas where reservoirs of hot water deep below the earth’s surface are easily accessible. Carlos Araque is looking to change that through his company, Quaise, using a groundbreaking technology developed at MIT. “We need to go deeper and hotter to truly make geothermal a global source, so it’s n



When Jesse Solomon ’91 first started teaching at a middle school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1990s, he was overwhelmed. “I had 25 students working at eight different grade levels—some that were learning English, some that were on individual education plans,” he says. “I wasn’t prepared for that level of complexity.” Luckily, a veteran teacher was in the next room. “Every day before school



In 1982, when Lynn Best ’69 joined the public utility Seattle City Light, her team faced an immediate challenge: evaluating the environmental, cultural, and financial impacts of its three dams generating electricity on the Skagit River in northwest Washington State. As acting director, she was able to persuade City Light to allow the environmental team to lead negotiations. “Of course,” Best says



Julian Adams remembers clearly the first time he saw a bonsai. He was wandering a botanical garden as a young man when, among the orchids, cacti, and acres of vegetables, he stumbled on a room full of the diminutive and ancient trees. Adams had always felt a respect for older things, he says. Something about the bonsai struck a profound chord for him. “They changed my way of perceiving things,” h



“At MIT, we believe that public service can be—and should be—as intense, meaningful, and intellectually rigorous as academic work. MIT alumni help convey this philosophy … that serving others is not an activity separate from academic and professional pursuits; it is a vital element of a wise, creative life.” Institute president L. Rafael Reif shared those thoughts with alumni volunteers during a



Editor’s Note: In 2020, an MIT Task Force produced a comprehensive report on the Work of the Future. Since then, the global pandemic has had a significant effect on work and businesses, providing the impetus for The Work of the Future , by the same authors. The book, from which the following excerpt is adapted, will be published by MIT Press on January 25, 2022. A decade ago, powerful mobile phon



When Mike Koval, the police chief of Madison, Wisconsin, abruptly resigned on a Sunday in September 2019, the community’s relationship with its men and women in blue was already strained. Use-of-force issues hung over the department after the killing of a Black teenager in 2015. Then, months before Koval left, another Black teenager, in the middle of a mental health crisis, was beaten on the head



FedEx GM BrightDrop•
FedEx has received it's first five GM-built electric delivery vans out of an order of 500, the company announced. The move represents an important landmark for FedEx in its stated goal to be have an all-electric delivery fleet and be carbon neutral around the world by 2040. "The delivery of the first BrightDrop EV600s is a historic moment, born out of a spirit of collaboration between two leading



Verizon Google Cloud Edge•
Verizon is collaborating with Google Cloud to deliver 5G mobile edge computing (MEC) capabilities to enterprise customers, allowing them to take advantage of some of the most revolutionary use cases promised by next generation networks that rely on guaranteed performance. 5G networks promise faster speeds and greater capacity that will allow for more reliable connectivity. However, it is the prom




Wired / 5h
Plus: Digital forgetting, concerns over TikTok and China, and the prescience of king tides.



21Wired / 5h
It’s time to stop fighting over Die Hard vs. Home Alone vs. Love Actually. This year, just pick what you like—even if it’s Carol, which totally counts.



42Wired / 5h
It’s hard enough to predict the outcome of ball collisions in a game of billiards. Do you also have to factor in a player’s effect on the cue ball?



I’ll say it: Goodreads is one of the worst-designed websites on the planet. Sure, it’s a nice website to help you track your reading list and bond with a reading community, but the design is so clunky that it can feel like a chore to navigate. Most of us would probably be better off using a simple spreadsheet to track… Read more...



Framesira/Shutterstock It seems Samsung will focus heavily on its Ultra models next year, at least if leaks for both the Galaxy S22 Ultra (aka, the Galaxy S22 Note) and the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra are accurate. Some might find the latter device a bit more interesting, again based on those same leaks, because of the big changes it’ll allegedly pack. The … Continue reading



As companies get employees back into offices, startups like New York-based foodtech company Fraîche aims to be the brand feature that welcomes them back. Today, the company, founded in 2019, announced $2 million in seed funding by backers that included La Boulange’s Pascal Rigo, Petrus Winery’s Jean Moueix, Bakerly’s Bruno and Julien Caron and the Newlab. Fraîche (pronounced like crème fraîche),



21TechCrunch / 5h
Food waste is a $2.6 trillion problem globally as some 40% of food is wasted annually . Full Harvest believes this is a distribution problem that can be solved by digitizing the produce supply chain. The San Francisco-based company’s produce business-to-business marketplace provides a way for produce buyers and sellers to quickly close deals on surplus or imperfect crops in just a few clicks. It



Enlarge / The polygons of Sputnik Planitium. (credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI ) Expectations for active geology on Pluto were pretty low prior to the arrival of the New Horizons probe. But the photos that came back from the dwarf planet revealed a world of mountains, ridges, and... strange lumpy things that don't have an obvious Earthly analog. One of the more prominent oddities was the plain of Sputnik



Two years ago, “Zoom fatigue” wasn’t even a thing, but today it’s a reality accepted by everyone. However, could having your business webcam on during meetings and calls be beneficial? According to Zoom , (perhaps unsurprisingly) it very much can. In fact, a recent survey of US workers by the video conferencing giant found that keeping the camera on during these calls positively impacts not only



For my family, pandemic travel has been all about rediscovering our backyard. I just never thought that would include exploring my dad’s hometown. Yet, on a recent fall weekend, my wife and I escaped for a luxury getaway in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Yes, that Asbury Park — the onetime gritty shore town that could be called lots of things, but hardly luxurious. Until now. For more TPG news, deals a



Elizabeth Holmes Trial•
On Thursday, prosecutors summarized more than three months of testimony in their closing arguments while rebutting some points made by Ms. Holmes’s lawyers.



Airport lounge access is one of the premium credit card perks that people value most. Back in the day there weren’t many credit cards offering lounge access, but times have changed. In this post I wanted to take a look at the best US-issued credit cards for accessing Priority Pass lounges. What is Priority Pass? Priority Pass is the world’s largest network of independent airport lounges, with ove



I suffer from Marty McFly syndrome. Someone says a thing can’t be done, and I’ve already checked out three books on how to do it by the time they’ve taken their next breath. So when a Lifehacker reader commented on a recent duck article and asked about leveling up to goose, it might as well have been a court order. I … Read more...



This week, Devindra chats with Engadget Editor-at-large James Trew about the Analogue Pocket, an innovative portable gaming device that accurately can play cartridges from older systems like the Game Boy, Game Gear and Atari Lynx. Also, Senior Editor Dan Cooper joins to dive into this week’s news and why you should be watching HBO’s Succession . Senior Editor Jessica Conditt also joins to dive in



Enlarge / Moiraine strides purposefully, as usual. Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they're bringing that knowledge to bear as they recap each episode of Amazon's new WoT TV series. These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and



Spider-Man Strange•
75Mashable / 6h
From spandex to web-shooters, Spider-Man: No Way Home is packed with over-the-top, reality-bending reveals. But it's the post-credits, which doubles as a trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , that give us the best look at what's coming next in the MCU. What happens in the No Way Home post-credits Following a mid-credits appearance by Venom and Eddie Brock , Doctor Strange (Ben



Foodtastic toes a fine line between charming and cheesy. The goofy, low-stakes food competition could have easily veered into a land of sharp cheddar with its quirky "tell a Disney-branded story, but with food" premise. But it works, thanks to a mix of a charming host, stunning "foodscapes," and plentiful nods to everything under the Disney-owned sun. Host and executive producer Keke Palmer is th



Spider-Man No Way Home•
30Mashable / 6h
Given what happened at the very end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock is a surprising no-show for most of Spider-Man: No Way Home . That is until the mid-credits scene. There, Eddie (Tom Hardy) sits at a beachside bar, hearing all about Thanos' quest for the Infinity Stones and subsequent "snappening" — aka The Blip — from a flustered bartender ( Ted Lasso 's Cristo Fernández ). The sce



It's hard to argue there was a more important — and surprising — musician in 2021 than Olivia Rodrigo. She went from relative unknown to complete superstar, and she did it using, in part, the revived sound of pop-punk. What a world. No, seriously, what a world. Because I'd argue the specific conditions of 2021 helped resuscitate pop-punk, a genre of music near and dear to my heart (and the hearts



Hilton Hotel London 2022•
Believe it or not, a new year is here. We’re one year further away from 2020, a time we can only describe as indescribable. But with a new year comes new hope, new trips to plan and a whole lot of new hotel openings around the world. While it’s still uncertain how we’ll continue to weather on through the pandemic , it seems like, at least for now, travel is continuing to go strong. Believe it or




Every year, travel brands look to the future. We attempt to forecast which cities will be at the top of everyone’s flight search history, where the most exciting hotel openings will happen and which countries will emerge from the periphery to be the hottest new destinations for intrepid travelers. But for the last two years, this has felt like an increasingly challenging task. Sure, we can see wh



The best way to track and manage frequent flyer accounts for many years has been Award Wallet. You add your account information and they let yo know when your balance changes. They let you know when your flight plans change - from flight numbers and times to seats. They track airline fee credits,, free hotel nights, and suite upgrades. And they let you know if miles in a program are close to expi



View of an advertising card for American Eagle Tobacco Co., depicting a woman wearing a hat. Printed on back: “Frog, long cut tobacco for smoking or chewing. The ‘Frog’ long cut is manufactured from fine sweet, burley tobacco, and for the double purpose of smoking or chewing has no equal. American Eagle Tobacco Co., Detroit, Mich.” Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Libr



FTC Meta VR Supernatural•
Meta, formerly Facebook, is firmly in the FTC's crosshairs over its various acquisitions that the agency believes may have been made to dominate the space and eliminate competition. According to The Information , one of the purchases the Federal Trade Commission is looking into is its $400 million deal to acquire Within , the developer of popular virtual reality workout app Supernatural for the O



33Wired / 6h
As the climate warms, this insect’s population is booming. That’s bad news for the ponderosa pines of the Sierra Nevada.



21Wired / 6h
A machine can't love our children, but our children might love them.



Your smartphone rings and you see “Spam Risk” on screen. Who is this mysterious Spam Risk, and why do they keep calling? We’ll explain—and tell you what you can do about it. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



Gizmodo / 6h
It seems like it would be considerably difficult to tarnish the cool-factor of Ray-Ban—one of the most canonically hip sunglasses brands of all time, best known for its signature Wayfarer frames—but, impressively, Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) has managed to do it just by association. Read more...



The recently-discovered NSO Group Pegasus iPhone hack is both “incredible” and “terrifying”, Google’s engineers have said. In a detailed two-part blog post, Google Project Zero engineers Ian Beer & Samuel Groß explained how the NSO Group (an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware) designed an attack mechanism “against which there is no defense," as no mobile antivirus



24Mashable / 6h
Priyanka Chopra Jonas recalls watching The Matrix when it first released all those years ago. Now, she's joined the cast of the iconic franchise, with fourth instalment The Matrix Resurrections out Dec. 22. On Late Night with Seth Meyers , Chopra-Jonas and the late night show host both shared their specific memories of watching the first Matrix movie, which released at the turn of the century in



54Mashable / 6h
You Got This is a series that spotlights the gear you need to improve one area of your life. When the weather outside is frightful, hanging inside is undeniably delightful. For those of us hunkering down for slush puddle-filled days ahead, ‘tis the season for staying in and getting comfy. You can go ahead and bundle up, but we’ll be at home happily streaming some sappy holiday movie, enjoying a h



Although we cover loyalty programs and credit cards in-depth on TPG every day, sometimes you want a snippet of helpful information that you can put into action on the fly. That’s why we launched the series Quick Points . Every week, we’ll highlight a new or easily forgotten tip that can help you travel more for less. Vacation rentals appeal to many travelers, ranging from families who want more s



It's hardly unusual to see a digital artist using the keyboard alongside their drawing tablet or mouse. But it's hardly ideal either. Keyboards were made for text entry, not other kinds of content creation. And that means you're constantly interrupting your workflow. I was aware that there are editing controllers such as TourBox, which are designed for digital content creators such as illustrator



Physicists from Argentina and Spain have studied the pedestrian dynamics at the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona. In his first and arguably most famous novel, The Sun Also Rises , Ernest Hemingway wrote tersely but lovingly about the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, during the seven-day Festival of San Fermín . "One man fell, rolled to the gutter and lay quiet," the protagon



Enlarge / Blue Origin's BE-4 engine hot-fire tests take place at the company's facility in West Texas. (credit: Blue Origin ) Welcome to Edition 4.26 of the Rocket Report! This will be the final edition of 2021 due to a forthcoming (and much-needed) holiday break. As I write this, NASA and the European Space Agency are debating whether to press ahead with a launch attempt of the James Webb Space



Square Enix is suspending the sales and delivery of Final Fantasy XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition because it's doing too well and the company's servers can't keep up. The decision applies to both physical and digital versions of the game and will happen in the coming weeks. FFXIV players have been struggling with lengthy queues ever since the Endwalker expansion came out in late November



CCI Amazon 2019 Future•
100+TechCrunch / 7h
Indian antitrust watchdog has revoked the approval it had granted for Amazon’s 2019 investment in a Future Group unit and imposed a fine of about $26.3 million to the American e-commerce giant for concealing facts. The Competition Commission of India said Amazon, which invested in Future Coupons in 2019, “suppress[ed] the actual scope and purpose of the combination” and failed to notify some of i



The Lost Daughter Netflix•
There's a strange tension at play in The Lost Daughter . If you haven't read Elena Ferrante's novel on which it's based, you might assume the movie's title speaks to a dreadful loss, like kidnapping or worse. However, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal turns writer/director with a story far more cerebral. The tension is born from the psychological strain of a stranger, who becomes inescapably entangled in



47Mashable / 7h
"I'm not very good at drinking." These are the words of Anderson Cooper as Stephen Colbert whips out a bottle of George Clooney's tequila mid-interview, pouring them both a shot to make up for the fact he won't be joining Cooper for the New Year's Eve special he hosts with Andy Cohen. Colbert's response? "You're a fast learner." Judging by Cooper's expression as he takes a big post-shot bite of l



I was recently thinking back on college and realized that one of the best parts was having a meal plan that let me into the cafeteria for a breakfast buffet every single morning of my freshman year. There, in Nashville , I’d load up daily on fluffy biscuits covered in rich cream gravy, piles of hot sausage links and scrambled eggs, warm coffee and the social high of starting a new day with friend




400+Gizmodo / 7h
Educators across the U.S. have been put on high alert after claims surfaced that a meme was circulating on TikTok encouraging young people to call in violent threats against their own schools on December 17. Some school districts have even canceled classes in response to the meme. Strangely, Gizmodo couldn’t find a… Read more...



Months after making Garuda Linux my daily driver operating system on my desktop PC, I still don’t have any regrets. It’s continued to be everything I look for in a Linux distribution (distro). Here’s why. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



39Wired / 7h
From Black American barbecue to steaming bowls of Asian dumplings, these recipes are the best way to taste the world without leaving your kitchen.



52Wired / 7h
Outdated minimum speeds for home broadband were bad enough before the pandemic. It’s time to pick up the pace.



Wired / 7h
Traditional watch brands are embracing customer demand for a simple swap to suit their moods—and it might be all thanks to Apple.



26Wired / 7h
Climate change isn't the only major crisis facing the world. We're in the middle of a mass extinction, and missing all of our biodiversity targets.



Sony CMOS Image Sensor•
Smartphones have quickly evolved into the best point-and-shoot cameras ever made, but they might soon take another leap forward thanks to an innovative new Sony image sensor. Sony's semiconductor division has just announced that it's made the world's first stacked CMOS sensor with two-layer transistor pixels. Today's CMOS sensors have both their photodiodes and pixel transistors on the same subst



A patent filed by EA back in April 2020 (and subsequently approved in October 2021) reveals AI technology that could be used in The Sims 4 game to turn pictures of people into in-game characters with just two clicks. As reported by Sims Community , the patent itself discusses the AI technology, explaining that it will allow players to upload photographs of themselves or characters, which can then



Enlarge / Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 4. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) The term “desktop replacement” is a bit out of fashion as a descriptor for laptops these days, if only because fewer people have desktop computers they’re trying to replace. But I struggle to think of a better term for something like Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Extreme , currently in its 4th generation. Where other workstation-y l



TikTok Five Discord•
25Mashable / 7h
TikTok has launched a Discord server , where TikTok-enthusiasts can chat about all things...TikTok. Most widely used in the gaming world, Discord has been favoured by gamers since its launch in 2015, championing voice chat rooms, and text-based threads. Since then, Discord has evolved, bringing more like-minded communities together. During the pandemic, in particular, the platform became a more c



Sony CMOS Image Sensor•
Sony has unveiled a new type of stacked CMOS sensor that uses "two-layer transistor pixels" to double the light gathering capability. Typical image sensors have the light-sensitive photodiodes and pixel transistors that control and amplify the signal on the same layer. However, the new design puts the photodiodes on top and the pixel transistors below, "approximately doubling saturation signal le



WC 343 Halo Infinite•
Halo Infinite guides (Image credit: Microsoft) Halo Infinite Season 1 : everything you need to know Halo Infinite best controller settings : improve your game Halo Infinite Tenrai event : how to unlock the Yoroi Samurai armor Halo Infinite ranks : multiplayer ranking system explained Halo Infinite weapons : best weapons for multiplayer The next Halo Infinite multiplayer event is happening soon, a



For those looking to earn travel rewards for credit card spending, I always recommend doing what you can to earn transferable points currencies . Among those currencies, I’d say Chase Ultimate Rewards more or less sets the standard in terms of its card portfolio. The Ultimate Rewards program is so incredibly well rounded, thanks to many Chase cards offering big welcome bonuses, valuable bonus cat



Black Friday may now seem like a distant, hazy memory, but there are some remnants of it still shining for bargain hunters. One such example regards one of the overall best offers we saw around that time - Three's rather special big data SIM only deal . The offer is on Three's mighty 100GB data plan, where you get the massive stack of data and unlimited calls and texts for a staggeringly low stag



The Epic Games Store Holiday sale is officially live, with Epic Games calling this its "biggest sale yet". And we're inclined to believe it. The sale, which kicked off on December 16, includes discounts ranging from 10% to 95% on more than 1,300 games, editions, and add-ons. But that's not all, all Epic Games Store users also automatically get a £10/$10 Epic Coupon added to their account, which i



Abacus AI 2022 2021•
The artificial intelligence was given access to the whole of Wikipedia and news articles in preparation.



Meta Facebook 50000•
Facebook's owner is to alert about 50,000 people in more than 100 countries about "malicious" actions.



The elimination of headphone jacks in new iPhones all the way back in 2016 left music and podcast lovers with a conundrum: using a dongle for wired earbuds sucks, and wireless earbuds introduce a whole host of problems of their own. Between high prices and limited feature sets on wireless 'buds, abandoning wires has been a gamble for far too long. But in 2021, that changed. Here’s how 2021 was th



Who doesn't love an underdog story? As a director, George Clooney has reveled in scrappy tales about striving for triumph in the face of outrageous opposition, be it his plucky sports movie Leatherheads, the apocalyptic heroism of Midnight Sky , or the outlandish biopic of a game show host/self-proclaimed hitman, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind . His latest, The Tender Bar , is far more grounded,



65Mashable / 8h
If for some terrible reason you were in any doubt as to what a lovely person Drew Barrymore clearly is, just watch the above video of her FaceTime a fan live on The Drew Barrymore show. It really is delightfully wholesome. Ending her show with her familiar "Drewth or Dare" segment, Barrymore calls up a fan whose friend couldn't be there because she's busy studying for finals. "You're literally li




Nvidia 3050 GPU Two•
Nvidia is expected to unleash the RTX 3050 budget GPU next month – the desktop version that is, as opposed to the laptop GPU which is already out – and it could come in two variants sporting 4GB and 8GB of VRAM. This is the latest from Twitter-based rumor peddler kopite7kimi (spotted by VideoCardz ), who claims there will be two different flavors: the GA106-150 which will have 2,560 CUDA cores an



We've got out first glimpse of how Google is planning to integrate Fitbit tech into the forthcoming Pixel Watch . Watch faces featuring the Fitbit logo and health stats have been discovered in the official Wear OS 3 emulator (a tool used by developers to ensure their apps will run correctly on real devices). The new faces, spotted by 9to5Google , include several simple designs that simply show th



EU IAB Europe TCF Study•
New research examining what happens after Internet users in Europe land on an ad-supported website and express their “privacy choices” — using a flagship ad industry consent management platform which is supposed to allow them to control the types of ads they receive (i.e. non-tracking vs “personalized”) — has raised fresh questions over the IAB Europe’s self-styled Transparency and Consent Framew



500+Gizmodo / 8h
Guitarist Eric Clapton has successfully sued a woman in Germany who listed a bootleg CD on eBay for roughly $11. The woman didn’t even sell the CD, but the listing will set her back at least $2,000 in court costs for copyright infringement, according to the German news outlet DW . Read more...



Julius Mutero has harvested virtually nothing in the past six years. For his entire adult life, he has farmed a three-hectare plot in Mabiya, a farming community in eastern Zimbabwe. There he grows maize and groundnuts to feed himself, his wife, and their three children. He sells whatever’s left for cash. But over a decade ago, his area started getting less rain and the rivers dried up. What was



Oracle Talks Cerner•
Oracle is currently negotiating to buy healthcare tech firm Cerner in a deal that could be worth approximately $30bn, reports have claimed. Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal said the potential deal will be Oracle’s biggest acquisition to date, almost three times bigger than the $10 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft that took place back in 2005. Cerner, which speciali



US Schools TikTok Friday•
A number of school districts in the US has canceled classes for today, December 17th, due to shooting and bomb threats supposedly circulating on TikTok and other social media channels. According to Bloomberg and The Verge , they include districts in Michigan, Washington, California, Texas, Minnesota and Missouri. The threats reportedly don't mention specific schools, but school authorities across



Amazon has slashed 25% off the price of the De’Longhi Dedica Style EC685 espresso machine , reducing it from £189.99 to just £141.99 . That’s the same record-low price that the coffee maker , which can brew espresso from coffee grounds or compatible pods, hit on Black Friday and Cyber Monday , making it great value. (Not in the UK? Scroll down for the best espresso machine deals in your region.)



Halo Infinite is one of the first Xbox Series X games with native Dolby Vision gaming support , but it turns out it isn’t working correctly on either the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S . Vincent Teoh from HDTV Test has discovered that Halo Infinite’s Dolby Vision support results in a flatter, dimmer, and more washed out image than when using HDR10 . The black levels are slightly elevated too. Tha



Log4j Open Source Software•
Right now, Volkan Yazici is working 22 hour days for free. Yazici is a member of the Log4J project, an open-source tool used widely to record activity inside various types of software. It helps run huge swaths of the internet, including applications ranging from iCloud to Twitter, and he and his colleagues are now desperately trying to deal with a massive vulnerability that has put billions of ma



Netflix has dropped the first official trailer for upcoming anthology series The House – and it may be the streamer's creepiest TV production in a long time. The adult stop-motion miniseries, which will be released on January 14, 2022, is billed as an "eccentric dark comedy" by Netflix. And, judging by its first creepy, unnerving and downright bizarre teaser, that's putting things mildly. There a



TL;DR: Get the 2022 Premium Learn Game Development Bundle , valued at $970, for just $40 as of Dec. 17 — that's a discount of 96%. You’ve heard about how beneficial it is to learn to code , but if you’re like most people, you haven’t found a reason to learn. What if we told you that with just 130 hours of coding education, completed from your couch, you could launch your very own video game? How’



TL;DR: As of Dec. 17, take 22% off the Moovy 3-in-1 Wireless Fast Charging Pad ; it's on sale for $99.95 instead of its regular $129. Cutting down on clutter can do wonders for your mental health . If you've been sitting down at your desk lately, unable to focus or get any work done, it might be because the space around you is a total mess. If this mess for you comes in the form of loose wires, c



TL;DR: The Alpha Bravo GX-1 Gaming Headset is just $119.99 at the Mashable Shop as of Dec. 17. Don’t just play your favorite games — get immersed in them. The closest thing to virtual reality without having to wear goggles, the right gaming headset — like the Alpha Bravo GX-1 — can make you feel like you’re actually a part of the games you play every day. The Alpha Bravo GX-1 Gaming Headset is co



TL;DR: As of Dec. 17, get the Wacky Robots 5-Pack Bundle of Soldering Practice Kits and put together your very own robots for $49.99. There aren’t very many things that people of all ages can enjoy — learning a language , old Disney films, and sports are a few. But because it’s 2021, there’s a more futuristic hobby for people ages 9 to 109: robotics. And no matter where you fall on the number lin



By midnight on December 1, 2015, when Eric Wastl first launched his annual Santa-themed puzzle-a-day programming challenge Advent of Code , 81 people had signed up. That pretty much matched his capacity planning for 70 participants. Wastl figured this amusement might be of interest to a few friends, friends of friends, and maybe some of their friends as well. But Wastl, a software engineer who wo



Nintendo Sega Genesis•
It's been a bit of a bumpy ride for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack subscription service thus far, but the higher tier service has finally received a handful of new Sega Genesis / Mega Drive games. It's a decent selection, too, featuring a mixture of Sega stalwarts and a couple of unexpected classics. Announced by Nintendo via its social media channels, Expansion Pack subscribers can pl



Samsung Galaxy Ultra•
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra has been leaking a lot lately, and the latest leak seemingly reveals almost everything there is to know about the slate. According to SamMobile , it will have a 14.6-inch screen with 6.3mm thick bezels, a top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset , a 13MP main camera, a 6MP ultra-wide one, and a pair of 12MP cameras on the front (one being ultra-wide). It’s also said to h



Elizabeth Holmes Trial•
As the fraud trial of the Theranos founder draws to a close, could her new courtroom image affect the decision?



LG UltraFine OLED Pro•
LG has unveiled its latest high-end UltraFine OLED 4K monitors aimed at pros and this time it has a smaller version that should be more affordable. On top of that, the new models come with more accessories to make calibration and working in bright rooms easier. The 32-inch model appears to be much the same as before, with features like a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, true 10-bit color, 60Hz refresh




Xiaomi 12 Renders Ultra•
Recently, Xiaomi 12 series leaks have been plentiful, doing a thorough job of revealing what the lineup could entail. We recently caught concept renders of the Ultra model and now, factory-based renders of the vanilla Xiaomi 12 have surfaced. These come from a website called Zoutons which we haven't heard of but the renders were made by well-known leaker @OnLeaks , so we're inclined to take them



Lexus RZ Electric Toyota•
Mashable / 10h
Toyota's luxury vehicle division Lexus finally has an electric SUV of its own. Following Toyota's massive unveiling of electric car concepts of all kinds, Lexus has now given a closer look at one of them, the upcoming Lexus RZ 450e. We get to see the new Lexus from all sides. Credit: Toyota It's just photos for now, though; Lexus hasn't released any further details or specifications about the car



Ofcom Fibre UK 2021•
More than eight million households in the UK now have access to full fibre broadband, while half of all properties can now receive a 5G service from at least one mobile operator, according to Ofcom. The regulator’s annual ‘Connected Nations’ report showed that three million homes were connected over the past 12 months, with 750,000 taking advantage. This means the number of properties actively ta



A digital mobile overdraft facility christened Fuliza by Kenya’s biggest telco Safaricom Plc is giving the country’s popular loan apps a run for their money barely three years after its launch. Fuliza allows Safaricom customers to access unsecured credit by overdrawing on M-Pesa — the telecommunication company mobile money wallet that allows its users to pay bills and send, receive and withdraw m



The post appeared first on Popular Mechanics .



Fuzey London Management•
200+TechCrunch / 11h
Fuzey , a London-based company providing what it calls a “digital one-stop shop” for small businesses and independent contractors, raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by byFounders with participation from Flash Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Ascension and a group of angel investors, including Index Ventures’ venture partner Stephane Kurgan and Amplo VC founder and CEO Sheel
YESTERDAY



LG Soundbar CES 2022•
Engadget / 11h
LG has given us a glimpse of the audio products it's showcasing at next year's CES, specifically the lineup's crown jewel: A premium soundbar, which the company claims has the "world's first center up-firing speaker." The LG S95QR soundbar has an 810W output and 9.1.5 channels of surround sound. That's five up-firing channels, three of which are on the soundbar itself and two in the separate rear



Crosswalk Concert Corden•
Mashable / 11h
K-pop boy group BTS have taken their turn obstructing traffic with James Corden , performing to their English-language hits "Butter," "Permission to Dance," and "Dynamite" in the middle of a busy L.A. street. Corden's crosswalk concerts generally don't seem like

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