Technology

Happy Succession day to all of us who are celebrating, the show returns tonight and I look forward to being welcomed back by the dissonant piano chords of its theme song and the utter lunacy of the Roy family. Yesterday at DC FanDome we got to see a slew of new trailers for games, TV shows, and movies; the biggest of course was the latest trailer for The Batman, with the Black Adam teaser a close second. Plenty of non-superhero trailers this week as well, including a new teaser for The Tragedy of Macbeth, a new season for Narcos: Mexico, another peek at Hawkeye, a time-traveling flick with a corny name, and a look at the “new” Beatles documentary. [embedded content] The Beatles: Get Back As the story goes, a film crew got access to document The Beatles at work in 1969, but the footage has ...

Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen wrote in blog post Sunday that the prevalence of hate speech on the platform had dropped by 50 percent over the past three years, and that “a narrative that the technology we use to fight hate speech is inadequate and that we deliberately misrepresent our progress” was false. “We don’t want to see hate on our platform, nor do our users or advertisers, and we are transparent about our work to remove it,” Rosen wrote. “What these documents demonstrate is that our integrity work is a multi-year journey. While we will never be perfect, our teams continually work to develop our systems, identify issues and build solutions.” The post appeared to be in response to a Sunday article in the Wall Street Journal, which said the Facebook employees tasked w...

A Russian actress and director-producer who spent 12 days aboard the International Space Station returned to Earth early Sunday along with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy who had been in space for 191 days. Actress Yulia Peresild and director-producer Klim Shipenko went up to the ISS on October 5th, to film scenes for the upcoming movie The Challenge, about a Russian doctor, played by Peresild, who travels to the space station to treat a sick cosmonaut. The three were aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, which landed at 12:35AM ET in rural Kazakhstan, and will return to Russia later Sunday. Novitskiy arrived at the ISS on April 9th for his third mission, and has now spent a total of 531 days in space. The Soyuz craft the three were on had a bit of trouble Saturday, when its thrusters stayed on long...

Apple has announced an event for October 18th, with a video containing the title “Unleashed.” If you’ve been watching the rumor mill, it won’t come as a surprise — the company still has a lot of products that are expected to come out this year but haven’t shown up in an Apple keynote. Chief among those are new, more powerful MacBook Pros, which will follow the incredible Apple Silicon-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro that launched last November. The company is also expected to release new AirPods, and it’s got an entire OS that was announced but hasn’t shipped. Read on for a deep dive into the rumors surrounding these products and more. Redesigned MacBook Pros Most of the rumors about the event concern redesigned MacBook Pros, which are expected to feature 14- and 16-inch screens, along with a ...

The union representing thousands of film and television production workers has reached a tentative agreement with studios, averting an strike that was set to begin Monday. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) had been negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents major production studios like Netflix, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, and Disney. IATSE sought improved working conditions, including weekend rest periods and higher pay scales on streaming shows for its members, who work in many behind-the-scenes roles in Hollywood, such as broadcast technicians, animators, and makeup artists. The new three-year deal, which still has to be ratified by members, includes retroactive wage increases of 3 percent annua...

Realme — led by the former vice president of Oppo — has just released a new Master Edition to its GT line of smartphones. Designed in collaboration with Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa, the phone comes in at just a little over $350 USD and is intended to be a phone for travel and photography. The phone features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G processor, a 64MP (f/1.8) camera with both a macro and ultra-wide lens, a 32MP selfie camera, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 1000-nit 6.43” Samsung Super AMOLED display. With on-the-go use in mind, its 4300mAh battery can be fully charged in 33 minutes using 65W SuperDart charging technology. Driving home the idea of travel and commuting is the suitcase-inspired case signed by Fukasawa himself. Head over to realme to learn more. In othe...

The Batman debuted a brand new trailer at DC FanDome on Saturday, showing off the best look yet at Robert Pattinson’s take on the Dark Knight and promising an even darker, grittier version of Gotham’s Caped Crusader than any that have hit film before. Set just a few years in Batman’s career as a superhero, The Batman promises to show not just a look at the early days of Batman but numerous other proto-villains and allies, including Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and Colin Farrell as The Penguin. The new trailer also gives the first real look at Paul Dano’s take on the iconic Batman villain the Riddler, who appears to be going for a far creepier, serial killer-esque style version of the character (as opposed to the campier, trickster that mos...

DC Comics and Warner Bros. held their second annual Fandome [embedded content] The Batman shows off Robert Pattinson’s gritty hero We got a second trailer for The Batman, at last (and FanDome saved the reveal for the very end of the day). We’re not even sure if he thinks he is a hero, but Pattison’s Batman is definitely Going Through Some Stuff. We didn’t learn a heck of a lot more about the characters in Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the Dark Knight’s saga. But the trailer showed off a Selina Kyle/Catwoman who seemed to be a master of disguises, and a Riddler with a much scarier vibe than we’ve seen in previous iterations. After several pandemic-related delays, The Batman comes to theaters on March 4th, 2022. [embedded content] An early look at Dwayne Johnson as Shazam antihero Black Ada...

This slim soundbar from Samsung is currently available for its lowest price ever at Newegg, down to just $298. This 38-inch soundbar comes packed with 9 forward-firing speakers and a wireless subwoofer for a soundbar that punches well above its weight. There are a couple of things to keep in mind, however. This soundbar only comes equipped with a single HDMI input and output port, so you’ll need to rely on a switcher, or utilize the built-in Bluetooth connectivity if you’re using this soundbar for multiple devices. Another small drawback is the lack of additional rear-channel speakers, which shouldn’t be an issue for smaller rooms, but if you have a particularly large living room, you may want to invest in a pair of tertiary speakers. Samsung HW-Q60T Soundbar $298 $450 34% off This 5.1 Sou...

Some Instacart shoppers are striking on Saturday, to protest the company’s pay structure and failure to communicate directly with workers. The Gig Workers Collective (GWC), which represent some of the company’s shoppers, want the Instacart to address five of its policies. The group is calling for Instacart to pay shoppers by order instead of by batch, reintroduce its item commissions, fix fraud issues with its rating system, provide occupational death benefits, and raise the default tip for shoppers on the platform from 5 percent to 10 percent. The group said the company ignored its demands, which led to the decision to walk off the job on Saturday. “Instacart has refused to finally address these fixes that workers have been begging the company for, in discussions both private and public,”...

NASA’s Lucy space probe launched successfully from Cape Canaveral in Florida early Saturday, the beginning of a 12-year mission to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. The uncrewed spacecraft lifted off at 5:34AM ET aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Lucy sent its first signal to Earth from its own antenna to NASA’s Deep Space Network at 6:40AM ET. Scientists believe the Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun along the same path as Jupiter, may hold clues about the formation of our solar system. It’s NASA’s first-ever single-spacecraft mission to explore so many different asteroids, the agency said. Lucy is named for the fossilized human skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, which provided key insights into human evolution. The fossil got her name from the Beatles song “Lucy in...