Technology

South Korea has passed a bill written to prevent major platform owners like Google and Apple from restricting app developers to built-in payment systems, The Wall Street Journal reports. The bill is now expected to be signed into law by President Moon Jae-in, whose party championed the legislation. The law comes as a blow to Google and Apple who both require in-app purchases to flow only through their systems, instead of outside payment processors, allowing the tech giants to collect a 30 percent cut. If tech companies fail to comply with the new law, they could face fines of up to 3 percent of their South Korea revenue. The law is an amendment to South Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act, and it could have a large impact on how Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store do business glo...

Google is adding a new “Time insights” panel to Calendar on the web, showing users how much of their working week is spent in meetings. According to Google’s blog post, the feature is rolling out gradually over the next month on select plans. It was first announced back in March as part of a raft of new features coming to Google Workspace. Time Insights arrives a couple of years after both Google and Apple added similar breakdowns into Android and iOS respectively to show the amount of time spent using different apps. But while these OS features included the ability to set per-app time limits, Google Calendar won’t let you set similar boundaries on meetings. Instead, it provides you with the information you need to hopefully curb any meeting-obsessed colleagues. “This information is visibl...

In an inspirational short video, NASA publicly announces its dedication to building a permanent community on the Moon through its Artemis missions, aiming to create a lunar economy and inspire a new generation of pioneers. In the short video above, Narrator Drew Barrymore and NASA trailblazers explain the reasons for this exciting initiative and the new opportunities it will bring. Space exploration has and continues to lead to technologies and capabilities that shape our way of life. In the video, NASA team members describe the moon as a “treasure trove of science that holds discoveries about our planet and the Sun. “The tens of thousands of jobs associated with propelling us to the Moon today is just the beginning of a lunar economy that will see hundreds of thousands of new jobs develop...

Oswalds Mill Audio‘s new K3 turntable may be one of the industry’s most engineered models. Taking the company a staggering seven years to research, develop and build, OMA says the K3 is truly constructed “from the ground up”  and is a “brand new design in every aspect.” The project was achieved in collaboration with experts from Bucknell University’s Engineering and Physics department, and features cutting-edge technology and materials that set apart the K3 from other turntables on the market. Featuring a cast-iron chassis, the internal space carries hollowed-out chambers filled with a “special liquid” which works in tandem with an oversized platter to significantly reduce vibrations. The rest of the turntable utilizes materials such as hypo eutectic or gray iron with high graphite co...

Google’s Chrome Beta 94 announcement mentions that Google is implementing some new web standards that could make browser-based gaming experiences even better. The soon-to-be-released WebCodecs could help make cloud gaming easier and faster, while the experimental WebGPU could make it easier for developers of games that run in the browser to tap into your computer’s power. WebCodecs is an API designed to give developers better access to the video encoding/decoding codecs that are already bundled with your browser, which figure out what to do with video streams. While there are already methods of getting video to play in Chrome, they’re not necessarily designed for things like cloud gaming, which is best when it’s as low-latency as possible. WebCodecs is built to avoid overhead, making it ea...

Apple plans to let you connect your iPhone to satellites so you can contact emergency services in areas that don’t have cellular coverage, according to a new Bloomberg report. Bloomberg’s article was published after Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Sunday that the iPhone 13 may be able to make satellite calls. Kuo often reveals details about Apple’s plans before the company officially announces them, but Bloomberg’s sources indicate that Apple’s approach for iPhone satellite connectivity may be more limited to start. One feature, called Emergency Message via Satellite, will let you text emergency services and emergency contacts when you don’t have a cell signal by harnessing a satellite network, according to Bloomberg. These messages will have a length limit and be represented as a grey bub...

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital collectibles that often come at a high cost — both to the investor and to the planet. As the popularity of NFTs has grown, so has the conversation about lessening the environmental impact of these types of blockchain assets. New blocks of information are added — or “mined” — to a decentralized blockchain network based on a process called proof-of-work, which requires expensive computer hardware that consumes a lot of power. Several companies, including sustainability platform Aerial and music-centered platform Oneof, have recently launched initiatives to help offset the carbon footprint of minting NFTs. Last week, Real Nifty announced the launch of “The Ultimate Green NFT” aimed at helping reforestation efforts in southeastern Brazil. Every us...

Apple’s upcoming show starring Jon Stewart, The Problem with Jon Stewart, will debut on Apple TV Plus on September 30th, the company announced Monday. Apple describes the show as a “multiple-season, single-issue series, taking a deep dive on the issues affecting us most.” It will also have a companion podcast, which will “extend the conversation from each episode.” New episodes of the TV show will premiere every other week, while new episodes of the podcast will be released weekly. Apple released a short teaser to promote the premiere date that features Stewart wondering, “what the hell happened to my face?” You can also listen to a teaser of the podcast right now, though it’s only 15 seconds long and doesn’t give us a great idea of what the podcast will actually be like. In July, Stewart ...

With less time to act as climate change churns up more rapidly intensifying storms like Hurricane Ida, coastal communities might have to rethink how they prepare for future storms. They could be forced to make tough decisions before a threat even fully materializes. Or they might take cues from how cities prepare for other types of disasters. Ida grew monstrous overnight. In less than a day, its wind speed jumped from 85 to 150 miles per hour, making it the fifth strongest storm to land in the mainland US. After Ida pummeled Louisiana for hours over the weekend, “virtually no one” had electricity in the state Monday morning, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a video posted to Twitter. Some places are under boil water advisories with water treatment systems out of commission. “We have tremendou...

General Motors is halting production of the Chevy Bolt EV after a number of battery fires prompted a massive recall that has already cost the company nearly $2 billion. The automaker won’t resume making the 2022 Bolt and Bolt EUV until at least mid-September. It had initially stopped production last week because of the global chip shortage. The recall repair process is also on hold, as GM is still waiting to get new battery modules from its supplier, South Korean conglomerate LG, that it is confident are free of defects. “We will not resume repairs or restart production until we are confident LG is producing defect free products for us,” GM spokesman Daniel Flores said in a statement to The Verge. It’s the latest blow to one of the most capable and competitively priced electric vehicles on...

Two of the biggest players in streaming, HBO Max and YouTube, have officially arrived on Spectrum TV. It’s the first time the apps have been supported on Spectrum TV, Charter’s digital cable provider and live TV app, and users will be able to access content from both apps through the platform’s guide on channels 2004 for HBO Max and 2003 for YouTube. Users will also be able to find them by searching the guide or from the guide’s apps menu. (A subscription to HBO Max, which costs $10 per month with ads or $15 to go ad-free and unlock same-day theatrical releases, will still be required to access the content.) The two apps are huge additions to Spectrum’s platform. HBO Max, which launched well over a year ago, offers more than 13,000 hours of premium content from brands that include HBO, DC,...

Apple Music is pushing more extensively into classical music. Today, Apple announced that it has acquired Primephonic, a service that specializes in streaming the classical genre, and will incorporate the app’s functionality and playlists into Apple Music. The result will be “a significantly improved classical music experience,” Apple said in a press release. There will also be a standalone Apple Music classical app coming sometime in 2022. Effective immediately, Primephonic is no longer accepting new customers, and the service as it exists today will shut down on September 7th. Apple says Primephonic’s playlists and “exclusive audio content” will be first to be integrated into Apple Music. Down the line, it’ll add “the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search cap...