Technology

The pricing for Kia’s EV6, the company’s first all-electric model, has finally been revealed, and it ranges from $42,115 to $57,115 (including the mandatory destination fee), depending on the trim level, the company said in a statement. The EV6 lineup will include rear-wheel drive (RWD) and all-wheel drive (AWD) options. Compared to Kia’s Niro EV, the EV6 is important for Kia because it’s the first EV built with the all-electric design in mind, using parent company Hyundai’s E-GMP platform. Its release also marks Kia having something to show for its space in the EV market — something that’s been plagued with delayed shipping. Before adding the $1,215 destination fee, the EV6 Light model is available with RWD for $40,900. The EV6 Wind model with RWD is $47,000, and its dual-motor model with...

If your Google Assistant-powered smart home display or speaker is rambling on and on after you asked it for the weather, you can now tell it to “stop” without having to say “Hey Google” first. It’s a small, but welcome, change and one that makes interacting with a digital assistant just a little more natural. Google’s smart home devices have had a version of this feature for years, where you could silence an alarm without saying “Hey Google.” It’s nice to see it expanding to silence the Assistant, too — saying “stop” when you want something to… well, stop happening is just so instinctive, like batting at an insect buzzing around your ear. Helpful new Google Assistant feature alert! Want your smart display or speaker to stop talking? Just say “stop” — no #HeyGoogle needed. — Google (@...

The man beneath her boot whimpered happily. Working as a dominatrix at a BDSM dungeon in the San Fernando Valley was better than streetwalking, and the money was stupendous. At the Leather Castle, she called herself Jeanine; newly sober and happy to be alive, she held the business end of the whip. She charged men hundreds of dollars for a half-hour session just to lick her feet, more than enough money to buy all the computer gear she wanted.  Her tiny apartment in Van Nuys was fully kitted out — she called it the hacker den. She set up her own four-way phone conference line, Instant Relay, and spent her free time posting to bulletin board systems about telephone loopholes and vulnerabilities. In her first posting to the phreaker forum 8BBS, she announced herself with gusto. “I am...

Substack, the platform where creators can share free or paid newsletters, has announced a new video feature that’s currently in a private beta (via TechCrunch). The feature will let users upload or record videos directly in Substack and then publish them within their posts. The videos will be directly playable when viewed from a browser Substack explains the videos will be directly playable when viewed from a browser. When included in an email, however, users won’t be able to click and play it from within the email itself — videos will instead show up as “clickable images” that redirect users to a web version in their browser. The platform’s support page says users can record and upload videos from their smartphone or desktop computer. Users can also choose thumbnail images, as well as pro...

The White House released a new cybersecurity strategy Wednesday aimed at reducing the risk of cyberattacks against government infrastructure. The strategy outlines the administration’s vision for moving government agencies towards a “zero trust” architecture — a cybersecurity model where users and devices are only given permissions to access network resources necessary for the task at hand, and are authenticated on a case-by-case basis. The key document was published as a memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the administration’s policy arm, and addressed to the heads of all executive departments and agencies. According to the memorandum, shifting towards a zero trust architecture will require the implementation of stronger enterprise identity and access controls inclu...

Isabelle Fuhrman’s performance as Esther in Paramount Pictures’ first Orphan film stunned audiences in no small part because of what the movie’s disturbing twist revealed about its titular child murderer. 12 years later, Fuhrman is set to reprise her role in Paramount’s upcoming prequel Orphan: First Kill from director William Brent Bell, and the 24-year-old actress is certain that she’s about to shock everyone once again. In the original Orphan’s final acts, it’s revealed that 9-year-old “Esther” is actually a 33-year-old Estonian serial killer with proportional dwarfism caused by hypopituitarism, which she’s used to pretend to be a child for years as she bounces from one adoptive family to the next. Fuhrman, who was 12 when Orphan premiered, was lauded for her ability to vacillate betwee...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster is on course to collide with the Moon after being in orbit for almost seven years, according to experts. The booster originally launched into space from Florida in February 2015 as part of the company’s mission to send a weather satellite toward a “Sun-Earth LaGrange” point located more than one million miles from Earth. After facilitating transport for the NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, the rocket did not have enough fuel to return to Earth and also “lacked the energy to escape the gravity of the Earth-Moon system,” wrote meteorologist Eric Berger on Ars Technica. “So it has been following a somewhat chaotic orbit since February 2015,” Berger added. Space experts now believe that the booster will hit the Moon at a velocity of roughly 2.58km/s in just over...

Huawei, the embattled Chinese tech giant that continues to be the target of strict US sanctions, has announced that its flagship P50 Pro and foldable P50 Pocket will be sold outside of China. The P50 Pro will cost €1,199 (around $1,353), while the P50 Pocket will start at €1,299 (around $1,466). Huawei’s press release says the two phones will be available in “key markets across Asia Pacific, The Middle East & Africa, Europe and Latin America,” but declined to say exactly when and where. Nevertheless, at those prices, and without access to key Google apps and services like the Google Play Store, both devices will represent interesting curios rather than anything you should seriously consider buying. Sanctions have also impacted Huawei’s ability to include 5G support on its products, so ...

So long, Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets; hello, Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association! The AV industry’s top lobbying group in Washington, DC is rebranding, dropping the reference to “self-driving” in exchange for a more straightforward moniker. The group, which was founded in 2016 by Waymo, Ford, Lyft, Uber, and Volvo, lobbies lawmakers to pass legislation favorable to its members. It has since grown to include the top AV operators in the country, including Cruise, Aurora, Argo AI, Motional, Nuro, and Zoox. It’s the latest move by the AV industry to distance itself from the term “self-driving” Tesla sells a feature called “Full Self-Driving,” which is a beta version of an advanced driver-assist system that controls some of the car’s functions on local roads but still requires ...

Crytek has teased a new entry in its long-running Crysis series in a short trailer posted from its Twitter account. “Join the journey. Become the hero,” the trailer reads as it displays a large “4.” The announcement comes almost nine years after the release of the last numbered entry in the Crysis series, Crysis 3, which was released on February 19th, 2013. The official Crysis 4 teaser comes just hours after Crytek China appeared to confirm news of the game early in a post on Chinese social media site BiliBili. Its post, which now appears to have been deleted, said “The ‘Crysis 4’ project is confirmed, opening a new nano battlefield!” when translated into English, according to Eurogamer. Although the Crysis trilogy was critically well-received, it’s fair to say that much of its legacy has ...

Xiaomi has announced the Redmi Note 11 series, continuing its popular line of budget-friendly handsets that sell in huge numbers in India and various other markets. There are four phones in total, but they only differentiate themselves in a few specific areas. All of them have what Xiaomi describes as a “trendy flat-edge body” — in other words, yes, it looks like an iPhone — and most of the specs are shared across at least two models. Here’s how it all breaks down: The Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G is the highest-end model and has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 processor with 5G support. The screen is a 6.67-inch 120Hz 1080p OLED panel, there’s a 5,000mAh battery with 67W fast charging, and a 108-megapixel main camera backed by an 8-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel macro camera. It’s also the only ...