Future Stories

Events ticketing company Ticketfly has been compromised by a digital attack, according to an announcement today on Twitter. “Following recent site issues,” the statement reads, “we determined that Ticketfly has been the target of a cyber incident. To protect our clients and fans, and to secure the website and related data, we have temporarily taken all Ticketfly systems offline.” Billboard says users began noticing site defacement yesterday around 9PM PST. The hacker, who called themselves IsHaKdZ, replaced Ticketfly’s website with a picture of Guy Fawkes and a warning that read “Your Security Down im Not Sorry.” The hacker also left a yandex.com email account and cautioned that they had access to a database titled “backstage,” which... Continue reading…

If you ever find yourself in the cast of a Dragon Ball fight scene, Christopher Sabat has some advice. “You can either scream once, and make it really epic, and it really hurts, but you only have to do it one time,” explains the man who voices Vegeta, and several other cosmic soldiers in the Dragon Ball universe. “Or… Read more...

Almost three months after launching into space , the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) latest weather satellite, called GOES-17, sent us its first official images of our planet. The incredible views, which were captured on May 20th and made public today , were taken even as the satellite is having some issues with one of its instruments. GOES-17 went up to work with GOES-16 , another NOAA weather satellite that was launched in 2016 . The two probes, which are part of the so-called GOES-R series , are able to scan most of the Western Hemisphere from the coast of Africa all the way to New Zealand. Their observations from 22,300 miles (almost 36,000 kilometers) above Earth are key to monitor hurricanes, droughts,... Continue reading…

Block.one is an open source software publisher specializing in high performance blockchain technologies. Its first project, EOSIO, a blockchain protocol designed to enable secure data transfer and high performance decentralized applications, has received global recognition as the first performant blockchain platform for developers, following its introduction in May 2017. The Wall Street Journal reported Block One is on track to raise more than $4 billion through a yearlong sale of digital tokens—the largest fundraising of its kind. This is bigger than the $1.7 billion Telegram is raising. EOS tokens are up to $12.41. EOS tokens have an $11 billion market

Ever get the feeling something is cursed? Because the absurd story about the rise and fall ( and rise, and fall, and so on ) of the attempted remake of The Crow is starting to feel like there’s some serious hexing going on. The movie’s best chance of happening in years just vanished. Read more...

At the end of 2017, and the height of the cryptocurrency craze, Noah Katz decided to start a mining rig company called Artesian Future Technology. His plan was simple: he would make custom computers for people who didn’t have the time or know-how to do so on their own, but wanted to enter the wildly volatile field of cryptocurrency mining. However Katz’s offering quickly reached stratospheric prices: the basic computer he sold cost $1,899, but customers could fill it with GPUs sometimes costing upward of $47,990. These machines were listed on Katz’s website and eBay, where they were explicitly labeled as mining rigs. Those machines would then mine alternative cryptocurrencies, and in theory at least, eventually pay for themselves. Katz’s... Continue reading…

Kayak has introduced a new tool intended to take away some of the frustration of planning group travel. Called Kayak Trip Huddle , the feature allows people to collaboratively decide on major decisions of a group trip, such as where to stay and what destinations to hit up. A group leader will have to start the process in order to start planning via Trip Huddle, which simply involves logging in and giving the trip a name. Once created, they can invite other members via a shareable link or email, and then start creating parameters for everyone to vote on. Think of it like a Doodle scheduling service, but for the full trip-planning process. The leader can add destinations, dates of travel, and ideas for accommodations, which can all then be... Continue reading…

For the last few years, Lex Luthor has been parading around in power armor with Superman’s S-shield on it, acting as an imperious good guy. But this summer, he’s going back to being a big bad in a big way by creating an all-new team made up of the DC’s elite archvillains—meaning the Legion of Doom is finally coming… Read more...

Every time a rocket launches, it produces a plume of exhaust in its wake that leaves a mark on the environment. These plumes are filled with materials that can collect in the air over time, potentially altering the atmosphere in dangerous ways. It’s a phenomenon that’s not well-understood, and some scientists say we need to start studying these emissions now before the number of rocket launches increases significantly. It’s not the gas in these plumes that’s most concerning. Some rockets do produce heat-trapping greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, but those emissions are negligible, according to experts. “The rocket business could grow by a factor of 1,000 and the carbon dioxide and water vapor emissions would still be small compared... Continue reading…

Here are links to Nextbigfuture newsletters. In the Newsletters, I provide more analysis of a particular topic and a collection of related articles. Subscribe to future newsletters on the right or at the end of this article. Thanks. 05/18/2018 – Softbanks trillion dollar vision fund bets there will be many more Alibaba’s 05/01/2018 – Disrupting the $10 trillion global construction industry 04/08/2018 – Blockchain will accelerate the internet of things 04/06/2018 – Transformational Space Technologies 03/23/2018 – Extreme Technology Highlights 02/25/2018 – Will BIG Quantum investments be next? 02/09/2018 – Technology Breakthroughs so far in 2018 01/21/2018 – Private moon

Microsoft r etired its Groove Music streaming service last year, but promised to keep investing in the app for Windows 10 users. That investment won’t continue for iOS and Android users, though. “Tomorrow we’re notifying customers that on December 1, 2018, the Groove Music iOS and Android apps will also be retired and, effective June 1, are no longer available for download,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge . The app removal means you’ll no longer be able to use Groove Music as a locker service to access MP3s or other audio files from Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud service. However, Microsoft says music files will “continue to be available and playable on OneDrive” and other apps can access them. That’s not the same... Continue reading…

James Marsden will star in the film adaptation of Sonic The Hedgehog , Variety reports. It’s unclear what role the Westworld actor will play, and whether he’ll voice the iconic character or act as one of those ill-advised humans from later Sonic games. A hybrid live-action / animated Sonic film has been on the books since 2014 with little forward progress. It’s the first time Sonic will get his own film, though he’s made appearances on-screen in movies like Wreck-It Ralph . The character has struggled in recent years to resuscitate his cool image , while the long-running game franchise continues to whiff on successful releases. Online, Sonic memes can take a bizarre or even toxic turn . Jeff Fowler is directing the film, which is expected... Continue reading…

Google is taking another shot at social apps with the beta release of Neighbourly , a new, hyperlocal-focused app designed to answer your questions, via The Next Web . The company envisions Neighbourly as a sort of crowdsourced city guide. The residents who know your city best can use the app to share tips, tricks, shortcuts, and recommendations with less in-the-know residents. Users will be able to ask questions, submit answers, and follow other people’s questions if they’re interested to see the results through a simple stack of cards. According to The Next Web , Neighbourly is starting off with a limited beta. It’s only available on Android and only open to residents of Mumbai, with support for English and eight Indian languages. In... Continue reading…

At Montpellier Medical University in France, researchers are using 3D scanners to create “virtual cadavers” in hopes of solving the worldwide shortage of dead bodies . Cadavers have long been in high demand, but in recent years, the shortage has worsened. The number of medical programs is growing, so demand is going up, according to The Economist . At the same time, supply is going down because better communication means fewer unclaimed bodies. Donating is still taboo in some parts of the world, and the ideal cadaver — young, generally healthy, and intact — can be hard to find. Researchers hope that a virtual cadaver can teach students the basics of dissection, says Guillaume Captier , a surgeon and professor at Montepellier. Once they’ve... Continue reading…

SoftBank Vision Fund will invest $2.25 billion in General Motors Co’s (GM.N) autonomous vehicle unit, Cruise, the companies said on Thursday, announcing a deal that validates the venerable Detroit automaker’s leadership in self-driving cars and sent GM shares up 10 percent. The partnership with SoftBank’s $100-billion Vision Fund – one of the largest investments to date in self-driving technology – will help GM fund wide-scale deployment of self-driving cars, GM told analysts on Thursday. The partnership values Cruise, bought by GM two years ago for an estimated $1 billion, at $11.5 billion. GM is competing with technology companies and other

Some of the most interesting bits of world-building introduced in the most recent Star Wars spinoffs have come from the films’ droid characters. Sure, droids have always been a part of Star Wars ’ mythos, but what’s been so surprising about Rogue One and Solo is how they gave us a glimpse at the inner lives of… Read more...

General Motors has announced that its self-driving unit is getting a $2.25 billion investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund, a major venture investment effort that was started by the Japanese tech giant in 2016. Cruise Automation, which GM bought in 2016 for $1 billion to jump-start its self-driving efforts, will get $900 million when the transaction closes and $1.35 billion when GM is ready to deploy its autonomous cars for commercial use (which is currently slated for 2019). GM also announced that it will pump a fresh $1.1 billion round of investment into Cruise when the transaction closes, bringing the total to $3.35 billion. When all its investments have been made, SoftBank Vision Fund will own a 19.6 percent stake in Cruise. While... Continue reading…

The size of Waymo’s fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans just got radically bigger. The Alphabet unit announced today that it struck a deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, for an additional 62,000 minivans to be deployed as robot taxis. Moreover, the two companies have also begun discussions about how to eventually sell self-driving cars to customers as personally owned vehicles. Selling cars with Waymo’s self-driving technology at Fiat Chrysler dealerships would be a dramatic escalation in Waymo’s plan to bring driverless cars to the masses. To date, the company has spoken only vaguely about licensing its self-driving hardware and software to automakers. Today’s confirmation of... Continue reading…

Earlier this month, Google announced that Android P is being developed with a focus on “digital wellbeing.” It will include a new user-facing Dashboard meant to give people an easy way to see how much time they’re spending on a device and inside individual apps. It’ll even show how many times they’ve unlocked their smartphone throughout the day. It turns out that Apple is working on something very, very similar. According to Bloomberg , as part of Apple’s iOS 12 reveal on Monday, the company will introduce a “Digital Health” area of the settings menu. Much like Google’s coming effort, it will include “a series of tools” that will outline how we’re spending our time on iPhones and iPads. There are already ways to do some of this today:... Continue reading…

A PC parts and accessory sale , Stanley vacuum mugs , a Logitech mouse that works anywhere , and more are all part of today’s best deals from around the web. Read more...

Avengers: Infinity War’ s ending wasn’t just surprising, it changed the universe as we know it. So, of course, fans are trying to figure out where to throw the blame around. One cocky space dude has gotten a lot of flack for how things went down, but the actor playing him is having none of it. Read more...

The USB Implementers Forum — a group that includes major tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google — has announced a new USB HID (Human Interface Device) standard for Braille displays. That may not sound like much, but it’s a big move forward to make computers more accessible to people who are blind or have impaired vision by making it much easier to use Braille displays across different operating systems and devices without having to worry about unique software or drivers for each device. Ultimately, it means that soon, users will be able to simply use Braille readers as plug-and-play devices across a wide hardware ecosystem, much in the same way that users are able to simply plug in a USB mouse or keyboard. The standard seeks... Continue reading…

Neil Gaiman’s short story How to Talk to Girls at Parties captures a feeling a lot of teenage boys may have at some point: the fear that girls their age are utterly alien, operating on a completely different wavelength. Gaiman just makes that insecurity literal, with a teenage boy awkwardly trying to interact with girls who are actually aliens. John Cameron Mitchell’s film adaptation makes the metaphorical literal in a different way. While his version draws heavily on Gaiman’s 1970s suburban London setting (and on Gaiman’s own history), it also finds an eerie horror-movie symbolism in the generation gap, through a race of aliens that send their children out to have experiences, then devour them afterward. Mitchell, the... Continue reading…

MoviePass is putting two fingers in the air and screaming “YOLO” as it doubles down on its huge bets. Even though its parent company was running low on cash and its stock price has hit new lows, the film subscription company has announced plans to buy a prolific production company and launch its own movie studio. Read more...

Uganda’s parliament has passed a law to tax those who use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Viber, and WhatsApp, as reported by BBC . The controversial tax was first introduced in April after the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, wrote a letter to the treasury stating that social media encouraged gossip that was costing Uganda time and income. The tax will come into effect on June 1st, imposing a 200 shilling ($0.05) levy per day on those who use social media platforms, but it’s unclear how it will be enforced. About 17 million people, or 41 percent of Uganda’s total population, use the internet, and there doesn’t seem to be a definitive plan on monitoring how and when social media sites are accessed. According to the... Continue reading…

Solo: A Star Wars Story debuted on May 24th, delivering an origin story for one of the franchise’s best-known heroes. The film has underperformed at the box office, setting off a wave of questions about the future of the film franchise. But fans might be interested in a different future entirely — the future of the now non-canon expanded universe, which lives on in a new form in Solo . Some spoilers for Solo: A Star Wars Story ahead. When Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, the company made a controversial decision: it officially ended the long-running expanded universe , a complicated series of novels, comics, and video games that kept interest in the franchise running long after the first film trilogy ended in 1983. While those books and... Continue reading…

The Rick and Morty fanbase is known for getting a little... exuberant about the show, whether it’s in sauce-based shenanigans or the panicking that ensued during the lengthy time it took for Adult Swim to renew the show for a fourth season. But the reason it took so long in the first place was actually to make sure… Read more...

Australian shoppers will find themselves limited to a much smaller Amazon item selection beginning on July 1st. Instead of being able to visit and make purchases from international versions of Amazon’s web store — as most of us can do — they’ll be redirected to the local Australian site. Geoblocking isn’t the only strategy Amazon is taking; Amazon.com and the company’s other sites will no longer ship to Australian addresses as of the same date. When I say “much smaller,” Amazon’s local Australia site still sells tens of millions of products, but it’s definitely a significantly lesser total than you’d find from Amazon’s US site. Reuters estimates that it offers one-tenth of Amazon.com’s selection. All the basics should be readily... Continue reading…

Holy caffeine overdose, did “It Reaches Out” give anyone else an anxiety attack? Holden questions reality, an act of brutal sabotage rocks the tenuously peaceful system, the protomolecule does even more weird stuff, and The Expanse ( now really, officially coming back next season on Amazon !) continues to kick so much… Read more...

Teenagers are more interested than ever in YouTube , home to the world’s growing influencer and vlogger base. According to a recent study conducted by Pew Research Center, 85 percent of teenagers (ages 13–17) say they use the platform. Closely behind are Instagram (72 percent) and Snapchat (69 percent). Pew’s findings indicate an ongoing trend of teenagers moving away from platforms like Facebook in recent years. (It’s worth noting that Pew’s report in 2015 did not include YouTube or Reddit.) A 2015 report pointed to 71 percent of teens who reported themselves as Facebook users; today, that number is around 51 percent. “For the most part, teens tend to use similar platforms regardless of their demographic characteristics,” Pew’s report... Continue reading…

The first people to cross into North America from Eurasia did so by traveling through the Bering Strait, or so the theory goes. A new theory has emerged proposing a coastal route into the continent, but evidence has been lacking. A recent analysis of boulders, bedrock, and fossils in Alaska is now providing a… Read more...

Canon has announced that it is officially discontinuing the EOS-1v , its last film camera, as reported by PetaPixel . Production of the EOS-1v — which was launched in 2000 — actually ceased back in 2010 , but Canon continued to sell the remaining stock. A professional 35mm SLR, the EOS-1v introduced Canon’s fifth generation of professional SLRs, and its body design became the basis for future cameras from the company, including the EOS-1D. The translated page from Canon’s website delivers the news casually: “Thank you very much for your continued patronage of Canon products. By the way, we are finally decided to end sales for the film single lens reflex camera ‘EOS - 1v.’” According to Canon’s statement, it will repair existing EOS-1v units... Continue reading…

Spotify’s recent controversial decision to apply a conduct code to artists’ personal conduct was handled poorly, according to CEO Daniel Ek. Speaking to Recode ’s Peter Kafka and Kara Swisher at Code Conference, Ek says that the goal was never to act as “moral police” toward artists. “I think we rolled this out wrong, and we could have done a much better job,” he said. Earlier this month, Spotify announced a new policy on “hate content and hateful conduct” that would apply to artists’ personal lives. The policy was immediately controversial. Online, people questioned its interpretation and how to enforce it; it also reportedly caused dissent within the company . Two weeks later, the company had decided to “ walk back ” that decision. Ek says... Continue reading…

Xiaomi’s just-announced Mi8 flagship has a special “Explorer Edition” that, along with an in-display fingerprint sensor and iPhone X-esque 3D face recognition technology, features a cool transparent back panel to show off the inside of the phone. There’s just one slight problem with that see-through back: it’s not real. The false back was spotted by Chengming Alpert , who offers a few reasons why the Mi 8 Explorer Edition can’t be real. In a series of tweets, Alpert claims the “S845 can’t be in that position; all the components around is too far away from each other; no graphite or other pipe/wire/cable for thermal.” Good luck to people who believe #XiaomiMi8 Explore edition has a "transparent" back. Truth: it's a sticker. — Chengming... Continue reading…

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie has found its non-hedgehog star. Dave Bautista talks about his Marvel future. Drew Goddard discusses his plans for the X-Force movie. Plus, what’s to come on The Handmaid’s Tale , and an absolute ton of new set pictures from The Punisher season 2. Behold, spoilers! Read more...

I’ve been a big fan of Botnik Studios , the comedy group responsible for internet gems like the neural network-generated Coachella lineup poster containing bands like “Billions of Mario.” They’ve been putting out consistently great parodies of Scrubs scripts , ads for beef , and handsome names for boats , each of them made using a predictive text keyboard. I was curious about what exactly this meant and how I, too, could utilize AI to create viral hits, so I called up Botnik Studios CEO and former Clickhole writer Jamie Brew to explain in the video above. Botnik has a browser-based Predictive Writer that you can load up with “voices”, hence its name, Voicebox. It works in a similar way to your phone’s predictive text, by suggesting a group... Continue reading…

When Coca-Cola announced plans earlier this year to recycle the equivalent of 100 percent of its packaging by 2030, the company touted the effort as building on its success with sustainable water use. In a 2016 full-page ad published in The New York Times, the company proclaimed, “For every drop we use, we give one back,” boasting on its website that it was “the first Fortune 500 company to hit such an aggressive target.” But a year of reporting into Coca-Cola’s water program shows that the company is grossly exaggerating its water record, which suggests that its new “World Without Waste” recycling plan should also be viewed with skepticism. Coca-Cola came under fire for its water practices in the mid-2000s. (The company did not answer... Continue reading…

Alcatel’s first phone running Android Go, the 1X , will go on sale in the US next week for $100. Not only is this Alcatel’s first device running Google’s optimized OS for cheaper phones , it’s also the one and only phone running it that’s currently for sale in the United States. Technically, ZTE beat Alcatel with the launch of an Android Go phone in March, but ZTE has since been banned from buying US components and is basically sitting dormant until the ban is lifted. So thanks to an unlikely series of events involving US sanctions on Iran and North Korea, Alcatel gets this dubious honor. (And it won’t be alone for long: the Nokia 2.1 launches with Android Go in July .) The 1X isn’t a particularly exciting phone, but that’s usually the case... Continue reading…

Microsoft has long been rumored to be working on a foldable dual-screen device, much like the Courier concept. While we’ve only seen patents and third-party design concepts , there are now signs that Microsoft’s close OEM partners are working on similar devices. WinFuture reports that Dell is working on a similar dual-screen device that runs Windows 10 and an unreleased Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 ARM processor. Dell’s device is reportedly codenamed “Januss,” and has been under development since last summer, but it’s not clear whether the device will ever come to market. Dell was working on mobile Windows devices before, and those devices were canceled. Microsoft also canceled its own Surface Mini device , just weeks before it was due to be... Continue reading…

Amazon just kicked off another big tech sale , this time focusing on PC parts and accessories, including <gasp> a number of reasonably-priced graphics cards. Read more...

Russia ordered a ban of the Telegram secure messaging app back in April, and the knock-on effects continue to cause issues for users outside of Russia. Following the messy block of 15.8 million IPs on Amazon and Google’s cloud platforms, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says Apple has been blocking updates for the app globally. The lack of Telegram app updates mean some features, like stickers, aren’t working correctly in the recently released iOS 11.4 update . “Apple has been preventing Telegram from updating its iOS apps globally ever since the Russian authorities ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store,” explains Durov in a Telegram message . “While Russia makes up only 7 percent of Telegram’s userbase, Apple is restricting updates... Continue reading…

Today, Philips is making its Hue Sync app available to anyone looking to synchronize their Hue lights with whatever’s running on their Windows or Mac computer. Hue Sync detects whatever colors it sees on the screen and then projects a matching aura onto the walls around it. It works with anything, really, even music and web browsing, but the experience is especially immersive when gaming or watching video at full screen. It works surprisingly well, too. I know because I’ve been testing a pre-release version of the app on an iMac for the past few days. Let me guess: like me, you spend a lot of time behind your home computer. Maybe it’s also the biggest screen in your house, surrounded by a rumbling speaker configuration that’s perfectly... Continue reading…

Human corneas have been 3D printed for the first time by scientists at Newcastle University, UK.

Xiaomi has announced the Mi Band 3, the latest in the company's popular line of ultra-low-priced wearables. The Mi Band 3 has a bigger, higher resolution OLED screen than the previous model, the Mi Band 2 , and Xiaomi says it's more comfortable on the wrist. The company claims the same 20 days of battery life, but water resistance has been upgraded to 50 meters. As usual, the most important feature is the price: Xiaomi is going to sell the Mi Band 3 for 169 yuan, or about $26, which is slightly more than the Mi Band 2 but still less expensive than the last pizza I ate. It'll be available in China at first, and comes in red, black, and blue. Continue reading…

Xiaomi has announced its new flagship phone, the Mi 8 — and yes, it’s the company’s first phone with a notch. The Mi 8 has a 6.21-inch OLED screen from Samsung, wrapping around a fairly large notch that houses a 20-megapixel selfie camera. The phone has a four-way curved glass back panel and an aluminum frame. Inside there’s Qualcomm's high-end Snapdragon 845 processor, and the new 12-megapixel dual camera setup apparently scores 105 on DxOMark, for what that’s worth . Xiaomi also says that this is the first phone ever to use dual-frequency GPS, which is supposed to give more accurate location data. Xiaomi’s numbered Mi flagships tend to be extremely good phones for the price, if not especially cutting edge. For that, the company is... Continue reading…

Step aside Apple ( San Francisco ), Samsung ( SamsungOne ), Google ( Roboto and Product Sans ), Microsoft (sort of with Segoe ), Netflix ( Netflix Sans ), Airbnb ( Cereal ), Intel ( Intel Clear ), and every other big tech company with its own bespoke custom font: Arby’s is getting in on the custom font game with its new font, “Saucy_AF™,” as spotted by FastCo Design . Described as “the ink of the sandwich world,” Arby’s is positioning Saucy_AF™ as an alternative to those who lack the skills to write in sauce like the folks behind the very social media savvy Arby’s Twitter account. We're going to need a lot more sauce... #NaNoWriMo pic.twitter.com/9hm6Dh9an3 — Arby's (@Arbys) November 8, 2016 Ordinarily, this is the sort of thing that would... Continue reading…

Google just released Chrome 67 for desktop, as spotted by ZDNet . This version of Chrome will allow password-free sign-ins for most websites, meaning you can avoid hunting through a password manager for specific credentials. Password-free sign-ins come from the Web Authentication standard, which was launched in March by the FIDO Alliance and the W3C. It lets you sign in to any virtually any online service through unique credentials that you don’t have to memorize, such as fingerprint readers, USB keys like YubiKeys , etc. The standard is also meant to make it less likely a bad actor can obtain your most commonly used passwords by making it easier to give each service different login credentials. Mozilla’s Firefox was the first to get the... Continue reading…

There’s a scene in the sixth episode of Marvel and Stitcher’s radio drama podcast Wolverine: The Long Night where special agent Tad Marshall is interviewing a boy whose home was attacked by… something. The agent is searching for Logan, aka the mutant hero Wolverine, who the agent thinks might be behind the attack. But the boy swears it wasn’t a man; it was a beast — and a huge one at that. This is the first time Marshall believes Logan might not be the cause of all the murders in the town of Burns, Alaska, though he’s still not wholly convinced. Meanwhile, the audience isn’t sure what to believe. This account notwithstanding, the evidence points uncomfortably to Logan. But he’s the good guy, right? And the special agents must be the bad... Continue reading…

I almost didn’t finish Cargo . I was sure it was going to give me nightmares. It’s about fathers and daughters doing terrible things to keep each other alive. But its terrible events lay on top of a premise too tantalizing to turn away from. Read more...

A beta version of iOS 11.3 hinted that Apple would have a special pride face for the Apple Watch, and the release of iOS 11.4 and watchOS 4.3.1 has confirmed it, as reported by 9to5Mac . According to code found in iOS by 9to5Mac , the watch face was inspired by the rainbow flag and will move if you tap the display. 9to5Mac also found video assets within watchOS which show the bands of color moving as the watch itself is moved, and the movements should be different every time. The new pride face will be available Monday, June 4th at 12PM PST, meaning it will likely be announced and made available during WWDC. You could technically test out the watch face before Monday by changing the time on your Apple Watch, but there is the risk of losing... Continue reading…

In the first few minutes of Reverie , a new episodic science fiction thriller premiering Wednesday, May 30th on NBC , the protagonist starts ranting about smartphones. Mara Kint ( Person of Interest’s Sarah Shahi) is a former hostage negotiator turned college professor, and she complains that her students are living with their nose to their screens. “They get the whole world in their pocket. Is that such a bad thing?” asks her former boss, who’s recruiting her for a mysterious job at a tech company. “It is if they’re not developing the most important tool of all: empathy,” Kint says sagely. “We learn empathy by observing, and we’ve stopped doing that.” The speech could be lifted from an episode of the tech-wary TV series Black Mirror , and... Continue reading…

The Skydio R1 is not a perfect drone . It shoots 4K footage, but the image quality pales in comparison to what you get from DJI’s drones. It is relatively big, it doesn’t fold up, and at $2,500, it’s far too expensive for... basically anyone. But today, the small California startup is adding an update to the R1’s flagship feature — autonomous flight capabilities — that will make that price tag hurt a tiny bit less. Most notably, Skydio’s first big software update adds the ability to follow vehicles. The company has trained the neural networks that run on the drone’s embedded computer to recognize everything from cars to golf carts to 4x4s. Skydio says it’s also improved the drone’s ( already impressive ) ability to avoid and navigate... Continue reading…

There’s finally a photo of a movie moment that is sure to be one of the best things we see on screen all year. Disney has released a great shot of the scene from Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 where Vanellope, herself a princess, meets all of the animated Disney princesses from the past, from Snow White… Read more...

Leave it to Richard Branson to find motivation to go to the gym in traveling to space. On Tuesday, a ship from Brason’s space flight company, Virgin Galactic, achieved supersonic speed in a test run for the second time. To Branson, that means the first passenger flight to the edge of the atmosphere is coming soon. He plans to be aboard, and has been cycling and playing tennis to prepare, as he told the Washington Post . Branson’s exercise regimen might seem a bit premature. But the truth is that f uture space tourists will need to be fit enough to handle space, too. Ripping through the atmosphere at twice the speed of sound, as Virgin Galactic plans to, puts a lot of pressure on the body. Zero gravity does the exact opposite. According to NASA , without gravity’s constant pressure, young, healthy astronauts lose bone density. And they lose it fast  —  12 times faster in space than elderly adults do on Earth  — making their bones very brittle, risking breaks when they’re back on th