Technology

KTNN radio station’s headquarters in St. Michaels, Arizona is less than ten minutes away from the Navajo Nation capital of Window Rock, but its reach encompasses all 27,000 square miles of the Nation across four different states. The station has been broadcasting bilingual content in both the Navajo language, Diné Bizaad, and English for over 35 years. But the station is quiet nowadays — many staff members are working from home if they can. That includes Dee Dixon who, after 15 years at KTNN, had to install internet access to her home an hour and a half away in Dilkon, Arizona so she could broadcast her 6AM show. Her regular listeners are scattered. During the day, KTNN covers the majority of the Navajo Nation across New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. One can also tune into KTNN’s pr...

Renders of an unannounced smartwatch from Samsung called the Galaxy Watch Active 4 have leaked online, giving us our best look yet at Samsung’s first post-Tizen wearable. The renders, which come from leaker OnLeaks and GizNext, show a smartwatch with an edge-to-edge display and two buttons on the right-hand side but no rotating crown or bezel. Samsung is expected to announce the watch on June 28th during an event at which it says it’s “reimagining smartwatches.” Samsung’s next smartwatch is an important moment for the company. After months of rumors, the company announced in May that it would be merging the Tizen operating system it’s used previously with Google’s Wear OS to create a new OS tentatively called “Wear.” It’s claimed the new joint effort will mean better battery life and load ...

New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to block the issuance of new for-hire vehicle licenses for electric vehicles. The move was widely perceived as a snub toward Revel, the company best known for its electric moped-sharing service, which was planning to launch a ride-hailing service using a fleet of Tesla vehicles. Revel announced last April that it planned to launch a ride-hail service in Manhattan with a fleet of 50 Tesla Model Ys. The company had been hoping to exploit a loophole in the city’s current rules, which caps the number of new FHV licenses but exempts wheelchair-accessible and electric vehicles. The cap was originally enacted as a way to stem the tide of new Uber and Lyft vehicles that were flooding the streets. On Tuesday, the TLC voted 5-to-1 remove the ...

Twitter’s iOS app has been updated to let anyone quickly and easily share tweets to their Instagram Story, Twitter has announced. The feature works using the iOS share sheet: just tap the share icon underneath any tweet, and select “Instagram Stories” from the list of apps. Once in Instagram, the tweet can be resized, re-positioned, and adorned with the image service’s standard selection of text, stickers, music, and annotations. Of course, you’ve always had the option of screenshotting tweets and manually uploading them into an Instagram Story. But the new interface makes the process a lot easier, and the results are slicker. However, it seems to work better with text- and image-based tweets for now — I tried the feature out on a tweet with an embedded video, and found Instagram imported ...

Starcourt Mall, the central location from season three of Stranger Things, is now a playable location in Roblox, the company announced today. The level includes four mini-games based around the Netflix show, as well as quests that reward players with Stranger Things-themed cosmetic items like a Scoops Ahoy costume, Dustin’s Hat, or Eleven’s Headgear. The experience is available in Roblox now. “Stranger Things is one of Netflix’s most iconic shows, and now it has a persistent space in the Roblox Metaverse where fans can experience and interact with the franchise in exciting new ways,” said vice president of brand partnerships at Roblox, Christina Wootton. “Roblox is the new social hangout, much like the local mall back in the 80s where teens came together. The virtual Starcourt Mall is a si...

This week, Bitcoin dipped below $30,000 for the first time since January. That’s half what it was worth just three months ago, and it’s coming amid fears that China, the world’s biggest Bitcoin mining country, is trying to ban cryptocurrencies outright. Is it? Here’s what we know as of today. While we haven’t seen any reports of China flat-out outlawing cryptocurrencies, the government started issuing warnings about trading and mining cryptocurrencies in May, and told the country’s financial giants they would have to stop dealing in crypto. Since then, we’ve seen the top three mining regions in the country start making moves against miners, and the government reportedly met with major banks again just this week to reiterate that banks can’t be involved with cryptocurrency transactions. Chi...

Two of the top shared electric scooter companies in the US, Bird and Spin, are releasing new vehicles today. Spin is revealing a new, more rugged electric scooter, which it is building in-house for the first time. Meanwhile, Bird is showing off a new electric bicycle with a baby blue paint scheme. Both companies are under increasing pressure to catch up to Lime, which is the number one micromobility provider in the world with over 200 million riders last year globally. There has always been an arms race among shared scooter and bike companies to produce the best, longest-lasting, and most technically advanced electric vehicles. But with increasing pressure to become profitable and some micromobility companies choosing to go public via reverse mergers with special acquisition companies, the...

Following Amazon’s recent acquisition of MGM, the deal will reportedly be reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission — meaning Lina Khan, a long-outspoken critic of Amazon who recently became FTC chair, will have oversight over the deal. The proceedings could signal how she’ll handle antitrust cases against Amazon in the future. Citing people familiar with the situation, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the FTC requested oversight of the deal during negotiations between agencies specifically because it is currently overseeing the ongoing antitrust probe. According to the WSJ, the Justice Department and FTC have divvied up antitrust investigations of the tech giants — Apple, Google, and Facebook are also the subject of the probes — but the FTC pushed for jurisdiction over Amazon-...

Fuse Media has announced the beta launch of Fuse Plus, a new streaming service that will roll out widely later this year. It’ll be available on Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV devices to start. The company said Tuesday in a press release that the subscription service will give viewers access to the entire catalog of Fuse — the lifestyle and entertainment channel that formerly focused primarily on music — as well as new originals that will premiere exclusively on the service. In a statement, Fuse Media CEO Miguel Roggero said the service will be “curated by, and for, a young, diverse viewer that craves representation in what they stream.” Fuse Plus will launch on Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV devices before a wider rollout later this year While it’s got a considerably smaller catalog than its str...

Microsoft promised on June 10th that it was in the “final stages” of upgrading its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) datacenters with Xbox Series X hardware — and nearly two weeks later, it seems as if you can finally play games on that new hardware. Some xCloud games are now showing upgraded graphics options in their settings menus that would otherwise only be available on the Xbox Series X, or are loading much faster on xCloud than they used to. You can see upgraded graphics settings in Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Rainbow Six Siege in this tweet from my colleague Tom Warren: it looks like xCloud just got the Xbox Series X hardware upgrade for certain games. Yakuza, Rainbow Six Siege, and others are showing 120fps or gfx options, and are loading faster pic.twitter.com/BUU866V0BF — Tom Warren (@tom...

Tech giants have repeatedly said they would welcome government regulation — if it’s the right regulation, of course. But faced with five antitrust bills that could unwind what the House Judiciary Committee described as Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook’s “monopoly power,” Big Tech is bringing out the big lobbying guns. Apple CEO Tim Cook himself called Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “deliver a warning” that that the “rushed” antitrust bills could disrupt the iPhone, according to The New York Times, and that’s not all: “Executives, lobbyists, and more than a dozen think tanks and advocacy groups paid by tech companies have swarmed Capitol offices, called and emailed lawmakers and their staff members, and written letters arguing there will be dire consequences for the industry and the country if t...

Peloton, connected exercise equipment company and all-around fitness media powerhouse, appears to be working on a new wearable, Bloomberg reports. The device is described as a heart rate monitoring armband and according to Bloomberg, is referenced deep within the code of the company’s iPad and iPhone apps. The new wearable will reportedly connect to Peloton devices like the company’s bikes and treadmills, and Peloton’s apps, which are available on iOS, iPadOS, smart TV platforms, and Android. The armband is said to feature a small screen for displaying battery and whether the device is currently paired, and it will also come in small and large sizes. We’ve reached out to Peloton for comment on the details in the report. Based on what Bloomberg was able to dig up, it doesn’t seem like...