Technology

You would think that something as critical as a town or county’s drinking water supply would be well-protected — you know, like how America’s nuclear armament was isolated from the internet and even relied on eight-inch floppy disks until just recently? And yet we’ve now had two instances where someone was able to remotely log into a municipal water supply in a way that could have harmed people. Remember the story of the Florida water treatment facility where someone was able to change the chemical levels? Something similar happened in March 2019 in Kansas’ Ellsworth County, too, where 22-year-old Wyatt Travnichek now stands accused of shutting down the region’s water cleaning system “with the intention of harming” it, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. Maybe remote a...

Social audio app Clubhouse will let all users pay other creators starting Monday. It’s the first monetization tool built right into the app. Clubhouse says it won’t take a cut of payments, meaning that creators get the entirety of what somebody sends them. Not everyone will be able to receive payments just yet, though; that will be rolling out in waves, “starting with a small test group,” Clubhouse says. To pay a Clubhouse creator who can receive payments, tap on their profile, then tap on the “Send Money” button, and then choose how much you send them. You’ll also have to pay a “small card processing fee” that goes to Stripe, which is Clubhouse’s payments processing partner. The first time to try to pay someone, Clubhouse will ask you to add a credit or debit card. The news of direct paym...

Epic is further stitching together its various platforms with a new Fortnite integration for its social video app Houseparty that lets you stream your gameplay to friends. The integration builds on an existing one that uses Houseparty’s video chatting capabilities to bring live video chat into Fortnite, and now this essentially does the reverse. That way, your friends can see you live both through your mobile phone camera and also the feed of your active Fortnite game. Think of it a bit like Twitch streaming without all the fuss and just for your friends instead of the broader public. Epic says the feature supports streaming from a PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, or PC right now. “We will let everyone know if we’re able to support more platforms in the future,” Epic says in its blog post. Ep...

Nintendo has been rumored to be working on a bigger Switch for a while now, which reportedly could show up later in 2021. But YouTuber Michael Pick isn’t waiting around for a new model from Nintendo — he’s gone and built his own bigger Switch. Much bigger, as it turns out: almost six feet wide, compared to the regular Switch’s 9.4-inch size. “I really like the Nintendo Switch. It’s small, it’s portable — but it’s really easy to lose. And for me, that was a problem. So, I decided to fix that by making something that was just a little bit larger,” Pick said. That reads as a bit of an understatement when comparing Pick’s supersized model (which he says is the world’s largest) to the original. The gigantic version of the Switch is less a portable console and more of a fancy wooden frame for a ...

Yahoo Answers, one of the longest-running and most storied web Q&A platforms in the history of the internet, is shutting down on May 4th. That’s the day the Yahoo Answers website will start redirecting to the Yahoo homepage, and all of the platform’s archives will apparently cease to exist. The platform has been operating since 2005. Yahoo, which is now part of Verizon Media Group following the company’s sale to the telecom for nearly $5 billion in 2017, announced the change at the top of the Yahoo Answers homepage. The message links to an FAQ, which details the timeline of the shutdown. Starting April 20th, the platform will no longer accept new submissions, the FAQ explains. Users will also have until June 30th to request their data or it’ll be inaccessible after that. That includes ...

Outriders, the online shooting, looting, and superpower-slinging game from People Can Fly, finally has a way to pause, but to do it you’ll need to be using an Nvidia graphics card (via Kotaku). Despite working as a single-player game, Outriders requires an internet connection to play, which means pausing in the middle of a battle was impossible until this workaround. Even with your menu open, enemies could still attack you. Using Ansel, which is a feature of Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards that enables a kind of photo mode even in games without one built in, you can “pause” Outriders by pressing “Alt F2” on the fly, and get up and take care of business. Because Ansel is specific to the Nvidia’s Geforce Experience software, pausing is limited to PC players, which means anyone playing on c...

In a ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court found that Google could legally use elements of Oracle’s Java application programming interface (API) code when building Android. “Google’s copying of the API to reimplement a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, constituted a fair use of that material,” the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-2 opinion, with one justice (Amy Coney Barrett) not taking part in the ruling. It overturned an earlier federal decision, which found that Google’s use of the API had constituted infringement. “Google’s copying of the API…constituted a fair use of that material” The court’s opinion concludes that APIs — which let programmers access other code — are significantly differ...

Marvel’s next spinoff series after WandaVision and the ongoing Falcon and the Winter Soldier will be Loki, a show dedicated to the trickster god of Asgard and the brother of Thor. And now we have another trailer, showing off longtime Marvel mainstay Tom Hiddleston in the title role and now a little more information on what exactly he’s been tasked with. The show will premiere on Disney Plus on June 11th. Loki is another dramatic tonal departure for Marvel, which has set up its spinoff series as experimental dives into various genres. This one feels more in line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s love of alternative universe capers, though it’s channeling some serious Umbrella Academy vibes as Loki is asked by Mobius (Owen Wilson) to help correct the timeline he disturbed when using the T...

Nintendo’s official Pro Controller for the Switch is generally a pretty useful accessory, but it has its problems: the D-pad is unreliable, and it doesn’t really offer any “pro-level” functionality. 8BitDo’s latest controller improves on both of those issues while coming in at a lower price. The 8BitDo Pro 2 is an upgraded version of the SN30Pro Plus, already a well-regarded Switch controller. It uses Bluetooth and also works with PCs and mobile devices; there’s a physical control for flipping between Switch, X-input, D-input, and Mac. You can use it as a wired controller with a USB-C cable, too. I did try using it with my PC, but I feel like it makes more sense on the Switch due to the Japanese-style button layout with B on the bottom and A on the right. Or maybe I’m just too used to usin...

If you’re reading this on a phone, chances are, LG didn’t make it. The Korean tech giant has been losing money and market share with its smartphone division for years, so it wasn’t a surprise when it finally announced plans to pull the plug today. You could be forgiven for shrugging. But LG deserves to be remembered as more than just an also-ran. Its phones were rarely big hits, much less often the kind of polished product we’d ever recommend to most over its competitors. Despite this, LG did introduce several features and innovations that the phone world would be worse off without. The company was the first to put ultrawide cameras on its phones, for example, and it pioneered the kind of all-screen, no-button smartphone designs that dominate the market today. And particularly in the US, w...

LG is exiting the smartphone business, the company confirmed today. The decision will “enable the company to focus resources in growth areas such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence and business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services,” LG said in a statement. Existing phones will remain on sale, and LG says it’ll continue to support its products “for a period of time which will vary by region.” The company hasn’t said anything about possible layoffs except that “details related to employment will be determined at the local level.” LG says it expects to have completed the business’ closure by the end of July this year. The move has been rumored for several months, following the division’s huge losses over the pa...

Hi, it’s Jay, and I’m holding down the fort for Kim today, which means I get to do a trailer roundup. I apparently picked a good week to take this responsibility, as there were a lot of good trailers to pick from — it seems like media companies are gearing up for a big year in movies and TV shows. Let’s get right into it. [embedded content] Black Widow My wife and I spent the first part of this year watching the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, and as we got further along, we couldn’t believe that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow didn’t have her own movie yet. So as you might expect, we’re very excited to see Black Widow, especially after the new trailer that came out on Saturday. Black Widow will debut on July 9th in theaters and on Disney Plus as a $30 Premiere Access title. [embedded c...