Technology

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...

Streamer Ben “DrLupo” Lupo has signed a deal to stream exclusively on YouTube Gaming, following in the footsteps of other well-known streamers like Jack “CouRage” Dunlop and Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter in moving from Twitch to YouTube. Lupo’s first YouTube Gaming stream will take place on August 31st. Lupo already has a sizable presence on YouTube, with more than 1.7 million followers. But in switching to the Google-owned platform, he’s moving on from his large audience on Twitch, where he has 4.5 million followers. A Loaded PR representative declined to comment on the terms of Lupo’s YouTube Gaming deal. In December 2019, Lupo signed a deal with Twitch that was reported to be worth millions of dollars per year. The Amazon-owned streaming service acknowledged Lupo’s departure with a twee...

The next platform to host a rush on stocks like GameStop and AMC could be PayPal, as CNBC reports the company hired a brokerage industry vet to lead the effort. CNBC points out that Rich Hagen served as Ally Invest president after that company acquired a startup he co-founded called TradeKing, and now his LinkedIn page lists him as the CEO of Invest at PayPal. The meme stock trading action of the last year may have convinced PayPal it can’t let Robinhood or Square take over the market of retail investors who want to easily trade individual stocks. Regulatory slaps on the wrist and financial nihilism haven’t stalled activity on those apps. However, it may be a while before PayPal is a tool in the arsenal of r/WallStreetBets. PayPal’s CEO told CNBC the company has plans for additional financ...

If you haven’t given Instagram your birthday, it’s about to start asking for it a whole lot more — and it’ll eventually be required for you to use the app. Instagram started requiring that new users add their birthdates in 2019, but if you had an older account, it was possible to skate by without providing that info. Now it seems that’ll become increasingly more difficult. According to the press release, Instagram will ask you for your birthday when you open the app, if you haven’t already added it to your profile. You’ll be able to ignore it, but only up to a certain point — eventually, Instagram says, you’ll have to add your birthday if you want to keep using the app. Instagram also says that if it doesn’t have your birthday, it’ll ask for it before showing you posts that are marke...

Apple‘s forthcoming iPhone is set to receive a new hardware update that will allow for satellite connectivity, reports well-known Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The new feature will enable users to send messages and make phone calls without cellular reception. Specifically, the connection will be with low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. This new feature is particularly attractive for those who live in rural areas where a consistently strong cellular connection may be an issue. iPhone 13‘s hardware is composed of a customized Qualcomm X60 baseband chip, which enables satellite communications. Kuo made note that Globalstar is “most likely to cooperate with Apple in terms of technology and service coverage” in regards to what service provider will bring this new feature to life, according to MacRu...

Fossil has announced its fall 2021 smartwatch lineup running Wear OS, which it is calling the Gen 6 Touchscreen. As with the Gen 5 Fossil watches, the Gen 6 will come in a few different styles and sizes and there will also be versions sold under the Michael Kors brand. Prices will start at $299 and they’ll be available for preorder immediately. It does not appear that Fossil will offer LTE options. Unfortunately, these watches will be shipping with the current Wear OS 2 software and not the new Wear OS 3 that runs on the latest Samsung Galaxy Watches. Fossil says that it’s going to offer upgrades to Wear OS 3 for Gen 6 watches in 2022, though exactly when in 2022 is a trickier question. Google has said that Wear OS 2 watches wouldn’t have updates available until “late 2022” and that even t...

On August 23rd, 2020, police shot Jacob Blake four times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and within hours, the streets were full of protestors. The National Guard was activated the following morning, and the next week would see as many as 40 buildings destroyed, as well as two people shot dead by a counter-protestor before order was restored. But while the events of that week have been closely watched, many of the law enforcement tactics used to respond to those protests are only now coming to light. A series of six newly unsealed warrants (1 2 3 4 5 6), some previously reported by Forbes, show a persistent effort to use Google’s location services to identify Android users in the vicinity of arson incidents. Issued in quick succession on September 3rd, the warrants came from a team of ...

It’s almost unspoken wisdom at this point that you should think twice about buying some costly Apple products in the late summer months, as the company usually announces new stuff during its annual September event. But if you really need or want an iPad with a few pro-level features (but without the high cost of the iPad Pro), this $100 off deal at Amazon and Best Buy on the iPad Air released in 2020 might be what you’re after. Normally $599 for the 64GB version, you can get it now for $499, matching the lowest price we’ve seen yet. This model has a 10.9-inch display, and like the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, it charges via USB-C and supports the latest Apple Pencil. Uniquely, it sports a Touch ID sensor within the power button along its side that can unlock the tablet with your fingerp...

In the annals of gaming history, there’s no controller better known than the three-pronged piece of plastic that shipped with the Nintendo 64. That’s likely for a few reasons. There’s the unique design, which renders it instantly and unmistakably recognizable as the N64’s gamepad. There’s the popularity of the console, which helped cement Nintendo as one of the definitive names in gaming. But the most important part of the N64 controller isn’t the design or the box it attached to: it was the joystick, which introduced millions to a new way of controlling games and paved the way for modern 3D gaming that’s virtually standard today. Nintendo didn’t invent the joystick, but it did popularize it Nintendo didn’t invent the joystick or the idea of using it for games, but it did popularize the jo...