Technology

A Facebook fan page for Elon Musk with 153,000 followers has been verified as the official page representing the Tesla Technoking — in violation of Facebook’s own rules. To be clear, the page isn’t pretending it’s Musk; it openly states that it’s a fan page in its About section (emphasis ours): Musk owns a Tesla Roadster car 0001 (the first one off the production line) from Tesla Motors, a company in which he is an early investor. The Roadster is a battery electric sportscar with a 220 mile range. This is a fanpage, uploading tweets etc from him Here is the page’s description, which states it’s a fan page. There are only 10 posts on the page, with the earliest dating from October 21st. One is a photo of Musk, one is a notification that the page updated its profile picture to be one featuri...

Twitch is giving streamers who focus on furry friends a place to group their streams with its new Animals, Aquariums, and Zoos category, which may just end up being the greatest page on the internet. The company says that the category, launched as part of its Animal Week, is meant to bring together a bunch of streams from zoos, conservation projects, and animal owners that had been spread out over the site, making it easier for people to find them. If you’re looking for something relaxing, the category makes it pretty easy to find. As I write this, the category’s page features a New York wolf conservancy’s den livestream, video from an otter enclosure, and a stream from the Monterey Bay Aquarium that features a beautiful oceanside view (though at the moment it’s more ASMR than animal). The...

NASA‘s Juno probe has captured a deeper view of Jupiter‘s atmosphere. Scientists have developed the first three-dimensional look at Jupiter’s atmospheric layers, showcasing the mechanics of the planet’s turbulence in greater detail. The results examine the inner workings of the belts and zones of clouds that circle the planet, along with its polar cyclones and its Great Red Spot. “These new observations from Juno open up a treasure chest of new information about Jupiter’s enigmatic observable features,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “Each paper sheds light on different aspects of the planet’s atmospheric processes – a wonderful example of how our internationally-diverse science teams strengthen und...

You can now buy Apple’s HomePod Mini in new colors yellow, orange, and blue (in addition to the standard white and space gray), and the $99.99 devices are available for in-store pickup today. Apple announced the new colors at its October Unleashed event, where it unveiled its new MacBook Pro models. It’s also where Apple announced its new Apple Music Voice subscription, a cheaper tier of its music streaming service that you access only via the Siri voice assistant, although there will be a limited app option; it arrives later this year for $4.99 per month and will work with the Mini. The new speakers will have the HomePod mini’s tinted touch surface, fabric mesh, volume icons, and power cable, along with color-matched details. Apple’s competitors already have more colorful options for thei...

The Book of Boba Fett just got its first trailer ahead of its debut on Disney Plus on December 29th, giving an initial look at the upcoming spinoff for the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter. The spinoff has been a long time coming: Boba Fett has long been one of Star Wars’ most popular characters since his introduction (in the otherwise reviled Star Wars Holiday Special). He’s captured the imagination of fans with his action-figure-worthy costume and ice-cold demeanor in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, despite scant minutes of screentime and just four lines of dialogue across the two films. Fett’s character was later expounded upon in subsequent Star Wars novels, an introductory backstory in the prequels, and eventually, the entire genesis of the fan-favorite Mandalorian...

Tesla launched a pilot project in the Netherlands this week in which non-Tesla electric vehicles will be allowed to use its Supercharger network, representing the first time that the automaker is opening up its proprietary charging stations to EVs from other companies. Tesla’s Supercharger network is often held up as the best possible example of an EV charging network: fast, reliable, and plentiful. But Tesla’s network is also exclusive to Tesla owners, meaning someone driving a Volkswagen or Ford EV wouldn’t be able to use it. But that’s now starting to change. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has, for years, talked about opening up his company’s vast Supercharger network to other electric vehicles. And over this past summer, he started revealing key details about how it would actually work. Now the c...

Snapchat’s newly signed deal with NBCUniversal will bring audio from The Office, Bridesmaids, Parks and Recreation, Saturday Night Live, and more to the platform (via The Hollywood Reporter). Users can add the audio clips to their snaps — just like TikTok — and then send them to their friends. Anyone who receives a clip with audio from an NBC title can swipe up to view more information about the content. Tapping the Play This Sound button will show users which streaming services they can use to watch the show or movie. Ben Schwerin, Snapchat’s senior vice president of content and partnerships, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter: “NBCUniversal has an iconic catalog and we know Snapchatters will love adding quotes from their favorite movies and series to their Snaps to help perfec...

When Tim Cook took the stage at a September 2014 event to announce the hotly anticipated, long-rumored Apple Watch, he described it as a “comprehensive health and fitness device.” The announcement set the foundation for what the company thought smartwatches and wearable devices would be — not just for fun, not just for notifications, but for your health. It was a big promise for a new, unproven product, made at a time when no one was quite sure what smartwatches were for or what they might be able to do. In the years before the Apple Watch launched, similar devices were steadily flooding the market. “It looked like the world would soon be awash in smartwatches. Samsung, Sony, LG, Asus, Motorola, Pebble, Meta — companies big and small attempted to find out what people want their wrists to d...

The Vergecast has gone through many changes over the past 10 years — different studios, different platforms, different crews — but I am always surprised to see how many fans of the show have been around since the beginning. At every live event we’ve done — most recently at On The Verge in October — I’ve seen lines of people waiting to see the show in person, crowds around our hosts, and chuckles at inside jokes that haven’t been mentioned on the show in years. It’s still very wild to see, even after working on the show for almost six years. When I started at The Verge as a podcast producer, we were at the tail end of our run of the live video version of The Vergecast, which we produced every week on YouTube before tossing the audio from that into the podcast feed. It’s funny that we still ...

iPhone 5 I’ve owned a lot of iPhones in the last 10 years, but the iPhone 5 was the first. Not only was it my first iPhone, it was the first phone that I went out and voluntarily spent money on, period. Until then, I subsisted on carrier-subsidized Razr flip phones and inherited, indestructible Nokia candy bars.  The iPhone 5 isn’t even that notable in the history of the iPhone, offering a marginally taller display from the 3.5-inch panel previous iPhone models had offered. There wasn’t any big jump in processor, hardware design, or display density (as with the iPhone 4) or new software features like Siri (on the iPhone 4S). Touch ID wouldn’t arrive until the iPhone 5S a year later, and the truly big screen sizes of modern iPhones wouldn’t come until the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus two years ...

By Kwame Opam | March 14th, 2016 It was around the time of CES 2016 that I got tapped to write The Verge’s Michelle Obama feature. I forget when exactly the discussions with her team in Washington started, but I distinctly remember sitting in that trailer in Las Vegas, going over what we could do, what we should do, how fast we needed to get it done, and how big of a deal it was. If you can recall anything about 2016 other than that election, you’ll remember that Vine was in full flower at that point. The former First Lady had made a splash on it — something about turnips — and her team was trying to attract youthful eyes to her initiatives. It was certainly a bit fluffy, but it mattered. After all, here was someone in the public eye trying to meet young people where they were an...

JMGO has just revealed its newest home projector — the U2. This ultra-short throw projector is capable of a 100-inch picture from just 9.44 inches away. It packs a 4K UHD tri-color laser engine that covers 114% BT.2020 color gamut, a lamp life of 50,000 hours, a Ricoh prime lens, low noise operation, five cooling fans, wireless casting, and two Dolby Audio and DTS-HD full-range Dynaudio speakers. Its clean design is also made to blend in with modern interiors and has an optional 100-inch ambient light rejecting (ALR) screen to bring out the best picture in your living space. Priced at $2,099 USD, the JMGO U2 4K Tri-Color Laser Projector can be found now over at Indiegogo. In other tech news, Nikon unveils its 45.7-megapixel flagship Z 9 mirrorless. Read Full Article