Technology

Cowboy has returned with its third-generation e-bike. It’s still the best-looking pedal-assisted electric bike with a removable battery that I’ve ever seen having carried forward the same physical design as the original Cowboy. While the Cowboy 2 from last year was sporty, the Cowboy 3 is mature, focusing on safety rather than fun. The Cowboy 3 is fitted with a variety of safety features including automatic crash detection, a slower top speed, and new puncture-resistant tires of Cowboy design. Version three, like the previous model, also has integrated lighting, with a rear light that flashes red when braking. And believe it or not, Cowboy’s finally making fenders. It’s as if this Belgian startup wants to become the Volvo of e-bikes. Not that that’s a bad thing. Verge Score 8.5 out of 10 G...

It’s been hard to be an Apple power user for the last half-decade. The glory days of the original Retina MacBook Pro have long since vanished into the sunset, and recent years have seen computers with too many compromises and too few ports. And while Apple’s first wave of M1-powered computers have been excellent, they’ve all been — relatively — low-powered. The MacBook Air, the M1 MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and iMac are the cheapest computers Apple makes, meant more for checking email, writing essays, and the occasional light photo editing than they are for cranking out 4K video or Photoshop projects hundreds of layers deep. That may be about to change with the presumed announcement of new, high-end MacBook Pro models, computers that are rumored to be Apple’s biggest laptop update in years. An...

Legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima has collaborated with French eyewear specialist Jean-François Rey to produce a limited-edition quartet of shades, specs, and a 3D-printed mask. The capsule collection is available to preorder now for unknown prices, with delivery slated for March 2022. The designs were apparently inspired by the look and feel of Kojima’s Death Stranding (not the first time that particular game has led to high-fashion collaborations), but I feel they would fit happily into a number of Kojima’s near-contemporary or futuristic game worlds. Perhaps they’d even adorn the face of one the many wonderfully-named Metal Gear Solid characters. May we suggest: Cool Glassesman. (It’s no worse than Hot Coldman.) The collection consists of four pieces. First is HKxJF01, below: a...

Facebook‘s virtual reality head and soon-to-be CTO Andrew Bosworth and Mark Zuckerberg took to their social media channels to tease the new VR technology. Zuckerberg and Bosworth posted photos of themselves playing with the new technology. Both Facebook executives were able to give fans an inside look at what goes on behind the scenes at the company’s virtual reality lab. In Bosworth’s Tweet, he said, “Excited to get an early look at some of the technologies that will underpin the metaverse.” He also ensured tech aficionados that the company is looking for different ways to improve the concept of their VR headsets and prototypes. The headset Zuckerberg is seen wearing appears to share aesthetic similarities to Facebook’s Oculus headsets. However, he does mention that the particular prototy...

Elon Musk is now worth more than both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined. As of Friday, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has reached a net worth of $230 billion USD, securing his place as the world’s richest man while Gates sits at fourth place with $130 billion USD and Buffet at 10th with $102 billion USD according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Both Gates and Buffet were also the world’s richest person at one point, but philanthropic donations have significantly lowered their wealth. As for Musk, the tech mogul added more than $60 billion USD to his name this year alone largely thanks to a surge in Tesla’s stock price as well as a recent share sale for SpaceX, which is now valued at $100 billion USD. Musk overtook Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos to take first place on the billionaires list back in ...

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...