Technology

There are tons of books and blogs telling you how to have a magical Disney World experience, but one Florida man discovered the ultimate travel hack: using an app that lets you skip lines running on a possibly stolen employee iPad (via Gizmodo). According to central Florida’s WESH2 news, 30 year-old Rennan Carletto allegedly did just that in June, by giving himself and a group traveling through the park with him an unauthorized jump to the front of the line. According to a WPTV report, Carletto was leading an unauthorized tour of Hollywood Studios (Disney World’s worst park, no offense) and using the iPad to skip lines for the park’s rides by making reservation overrides. One Disney World fan site theorizes that he may have been taking advantage of Disney’s system that lets people with dis...

A man who the Department of Justice says unlocked AT&T customers’ phones for a fee was sentenced to 12 years in prison, in what the judge called “a terrible cybercrime over an extended period,” which allegedly continued even after authorities were on to the scheme. According to a news release from the DOJ, in 2012, Muhammad Fahd, a citizen of Pakistan and Grenada, contacted an AT&T employee via Facebook and offered the employee “significant sums of money” to help him secretly unlock AT&T phones, freeing the customers from any installment agreement payments and from AT&T’s service. Fahd used the alias Frank Zhang, according to the DOJ, and persuaded the AT&T employee to recruit other employees at its call center in Bothell, Washington, to help with the elaborate scheme. ...

Riot Games is perhaps best known for developing League of Legends, but in recent years, it’s added games like auto battler Teamfight Tactics and the hit shooter Valorant to its roster of titles. To make it easier to open all of Riot’s games on your PC, the company is releasing the Riot Client, a unified launcher that starts rolling out later this month. “All desktop Riot games will be accessible from one client, with each game having its own dedicated product page with game-specific content including the latest news and events,” Riot’s Liz La Londe wrote in a blog post. “You’ll be able to clean up your desktop and only have one Riot Client launcher where all your favorite Riot games will live! However, if you prefer, you can maintain your existing game desktop shortcuts for a direct path t...

Android 11’s auto-resetting permissions, where the operating system will restrict an app’s permission to access sensitive phone features like its storage or cameras if it hasn’t been opened for several months, are coming to older devices, Google has announced. The feature originally launched with Android 11 last year, but soon it’ll be available on any phones running Android 6 and above with Google Play services, which Google says should cover “billions” of Android phones released since 2015. The feature is designed to help protect your privacy by preventing older apps from having unfettered access to your phone if you haven’t used them in months. You might be happy to give a novelty camera app access to your storage while it’s all the rage, but there’s a good chance you’ll forget it’s ins...

Doctors say they’re overwhelmed by the volume of digital messages they receive from patients during the pandemic, and new data backs up their experience. The number of messages increased by over 150 percent at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the levels stayed high over the course of 2020, according to an early look at data from the electronic health record company Epic. “They want to be responsive to the patient needs,” says A Jay Holmgren, an assistant professor in the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research at the University of California San Francisco, who collected the data and posted it on Twitter this week. But there aren’t good systems in place to help doctors to manage the influx. There are few reasons why messaging might have spiked, Holmgren says. At the ...

Ikea’s lineup of gaming-themed furniture and accessories now has official pricing and a global release date: October. The lineup first came to China earlier this year as a collaboration with Asus and its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand. Pricing for the lineup ranges from cheap desk accessories like a $10 cup holder or $12.99 mouse bungee, all the way up to gaming chairs costing between $69 and $349, and a $599 standing desk. Oh, and that wooden hand designed to gently cradle your headphones and other accessories? That’ll set you back $24.99. A mouse bungee to tidy away your mouse’s cabling.Image: Ikea A ring light to keep you lit, plus a phone holder to keep you in frame.Image: Ikea There are more than 30 Ikea gaming products in total, arranged across six product families. However, only one...

Microsoft has started testing a new photos app for Windows 11. Like many other parts of Windows, the photos app has been redesigned to match the new operating system, with subtle improvements that help when you’re flicking through a collection of photos or videos. The biggest addition is a new filmstip at the bottom of the photo viewer that shows small thumbnails of all the photos in a particular folder, collection, or album. It makes it easier to jump between them, or select multiple photos to enter the new “multi-view” UI. The new filmstrip UI in the Windows 11 photos app.Image: Microsoft Multi-view is the best addition for me personally, as you can compare a bunch of photos in a single window. This is great if you’ve been out shooting all day and want to quickly select photos to keep or...

OnePlus is finally putting its camera partnership with Hasselblad to good use — by bringing the look and feel of Hasselblad’s cinematic XPan camera to the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, via a software update. This is a happy surprise because the 9 Series’ cameras did not initially live up to the hype surrounding OnePlus’ multiyear collaboration with the historic camera brand. Although Hasselblad’s contribution to these phones was limited to helping OnePlus tune its camera colors and providing input on its interface earlier this year, as Allison Johnson noted in her OnePlus 9 review, “the Hasselblad color tuning is fine but nothing remarkable.” This update adds an XPan Mode for the OnePlus 9 Series camera, alongside some much needed practical patches. The XPan Mode replicates the focal lengths, color...

Half-Life: Alyx belongs in every VR headset owner’s library of games, especially when it costs 40 percent less than usual. This game was released right at the start of the pandemic in early 2020 for $60, and while it’s worth every bit of that price, I highly suggest taking advantage of this deal, which drops the game to just $36. Not only does the game satisfy with respect to its story, which serves as the prequel to Half-Life 2 (you really need to see the ending), it’s a fantastic experience full of imaginative VR gameplay that makes every environment feel like a sandbox. Read our review. You don’t need a high-end, wired VR headset to play this game. Grabbing an Oculus Quest or Quest 2 tether-free headset will do just fine (thanks to the free Air Link feature, you can wirelessly stream VR...

Oppo has announced ColorOS 12, the latest version of its Android-based operating system. The update will come to OnePlus phones as well as Oppo’s own phones in China, where OnePlus has used ColorOS since early this year. OnePlus recently announced that it would be combining the codebase of its OxygenOS with ColorOS due to the two companies merging several operations. ColorOS 12 doesn’t look hugely different to 11, but it makes more use of contrasting colors and white space, with lower information density across many screens. Icons have been subtly redesigned to make more use of depth and texture. Oppo says it’s improved more than 300 animations throughout the UI while also making use of an AI engine to reduce lag and stuttering. ColorOS 12 is based on Android 12 and adopts its upgraded pri...

T-Mobile announced that 500 of its retail stores would start offering repair services starting on November 1st. The company says technicians will provide same-day fixes using manufacturer-approved parts to customers who subscribe to its Protection<360> service, which also includes device replacement in case of loss or theft. T-Mobile is also improving that device protection plan by letting customers make five claims in a 12-month period, up from the previous limit of three. The claims are handled by Assurant and come with a deductible based on what kind of phone you have and what kind of claim you’re making. Still, it’s likely to be cheaper than buying five new phones if you wind up having an 18-karat run of bad luck. Assurant technicians will be handling the in-store repairs Interes...