Technology

Disaster response plans often fail to include people with disabilities, and the deadly deep freeze that swept across Texas and much of the mainland US last week was no exception. “A lot of people in our community, they’re like, ‘I’m so damn tired that I have to be resilient. This isn’t our fault,’” says Tomás Aguilar, disaster recovery coordinator for the Living Hope Wheelchair Association in Houston, a group that provides services to immigrants with disabilities. “No, we don’t need a cheerleader. We need water.” “We don’t need a cheerleader. We need water.” The winter storms that froze up power and water systems last week left a humanitarian disaster in its wake. First, people were left in the brutal cold without power or heat. Then came the shortage of food supplies and clean drinking wa...

Two new reports from Bloomberg and Wired have shed light on some of Google’s failures in building its Stadia cloud gaming service. The reports come just a few weeks after Google announced it would be shutting down its in-house Stadia game development studios. One key issue, according to Wired, is that Google may not have put as much investment in its internal studios as its much-hyped plans for Stadia may have suggested. Stadia chief Phil Harrison announced Google’s Stadia Games and Entertainment studios at the Game Developers Conference in 2019, when Google made its first big splash with Stadia. However, according to Wired, “it would be months until Google would actually hire the bulk of” the studio’s developers. Google’s goal was to hire 2,000 people over the course of five years to make...

Section 230, which turned 25 years old this month, has played a central role in shaping the internet. Over the past year, Congress has introduced several proposals to change the law — some of them drastic — but the bills have often focused on a handful of very large tech companies like Facebook and Google. In reality, Section 230 has created a lot of the web as we know it. On Monday, March 1st, we’re holding an event on Section 230 and the future of tech regulation. After a keynote from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), I’ll be sitting down with Wikimedia Foundation general counsel Amanda Keton, Vimeo general counsel Michael Cheah, and writer and strategist Sydette Harry to discuss how changing Section 230 could change the web. For a broader sense of its impact, however, I also spoke to a range o...

During today’s Pokémon Presents presentation, the company unveiled new gameplay footage for New Pokémon Snap, the long-awaited sequel to the N64 classic. The new footage showed off the lush and colorful settings that you will explore across the Lental region. New Pokémon Snap will have players assuming the role of a pokémon photographer who will collaborate with the region’s pokémon expert, Professor Mirror, and his assistant Rita to observe pokémon in their natural habitats. Gameplay remains similar to its predecessor but introduces some new mechanics, such as a photo-sharing feature that will allow you to share your photos online, plus a ranking system so you can compete with other players across the globe. The new footage is just one of many announcements presented. The Pokémon Company ...

Netflix is constantly looking for its next big franchise hit — a new Stranger Things or The Witcher. And the trailer for Shadow and Bone teases that the upcoming fantasy series could be next. The first trailer for Netflix’s adaptation of the series showcases the series’ main protagonist, Alina, a map maker who discovers that she harbors a special power that can prevent the world from being swallowed up in darkness threatened by a terrifying sea-of-sorts called the Fold. Shadow and Bone is Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy series that has swept readers by storm. The book, which introduces readers to the Grisha universe — a world inhabited by special people who practice a form of spell work known as small sciences — has become immensely popular on sites like Tumblr and TikTok. Fantasy, especially seri...

Best Buy has restocked both of Microsoft’s next-gen consoles the Xbox Series X and Series S. Like some other gaming gadgets released late last year, these consoles are extremely difficult to buy, but if you move quickly, you have another chance to buy one right now. Xbox Series X / S Prices taken at time of publishing. The Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s flagship console, serving as its most powerful (and biggest) option that costs $499.99. While the $299.99 Series S is aimed at smooth 1440p performance, the Series X is focused on fast 4K gameplay. Whether you buy the digital-only Series S or the more powerful Xbox Series X which includes a disc drive, you may want to consider picking up a few accessories that will help you get the most out of your new gadget, such as an extra controller if y...

Apple has added iPhone and MacBook repairability scores to its online store in France to comply with a new French law that came into effect this year. MacGeneration reports that the rating takes into account features like how easily a device can be disassembled and the availability of repair manuals and spare parts. Links to each product’s final score, with details for how they were calculated, are available on this support page. The ratings for Apple’s products vary between products and generations. Its iPhone 12 lineup all have scores of six out of 10 for example, while the previous year’s iPhone 11s are rated lower at between 4.5 and 4.6. The improvement, according to the detailed scoring assessment, is due to the newer iPhones being easier to dismantle than the previous year’s models, ...

Nvidia has started to roll out support for Resizable BAR, a feature of PCI Express that can boost frame rates in certain games by up to 10 percent. The new RTX 3060 graphics card is the first to include Resizable BAR, which allows certain CPUs to access the full graphics frame buffer, instead of being limited to reading just 256MB blocks. Support for other 30-series GPUs will be available in late March. You’ll need the right CPU, motherboard, and graphics card to utilize this new feature, and Nvidia is working with both AMD and Intel to provide chipset support. AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs are supported, alongside Intel’s 10th Gen processors and the company’s upcoming 11th Gen S chips. Nvidia’s Resizable BAR support gives CPUs access to the full graphics frame buffer.Image: Nvidia Much like AMD’s Smar...

A security researcher is recommending against LastPass password manager after detailing seven trackers found in the Android app, The Register reports. Although there is no suggestion that the trackers, which were analyzed by researcher Mike Kuketz, are transferring a user’s actual passwords or usernames, Kuketz says their presence is bad practice for a security-critical app handling such sensitive information. Responding to the report, a spokesperson from LastPass says the company gathers limited data “about how LastPass is used” to help it “improve and optimize the product.” Importantly, LastPass tells The Register that “no sensitive personally identifiable user data or vault activity could be passed through these trackers,” and users can opt out of the analytics in the Privacy section of...

We got our first look at Halo Infinite, the next game in Microsoft’s huge franchise, back in July, and the results were… underwhelming. The graphics and visuals weren’t quite as impressive as you might expect from a next-generation game (the demo was running on a PC “that is representative of the experience that players will have on Xbox Series X”), and one vacant-looking enemy even became the infamous Craig meme. The game was delayed to 2021 a few weeks after the demo aired “to ensure the team has adequate time to deliver a Halo game experience that meets our vision.” On Thursday, though, developer 343 Industries shared new screenshots of Halo Infinite in 4K from an in-development PC version of the game, and the graphics look much better. We’ve included a few of the images below, an...

Sony will allow the PlayStation 5 to make use of expanded SSD storage from this summer, according to a report in Bloomberg. The functionality is said to be coming in a firmware update that will activate the PS5’s M.2 expansion slot, which is currently disabled. Sony told The Verge ahead of the PS5 launch that the feature was “reserved for a future update.” Bloomberg’s sources say that the firmware update will allow for an increase in the speed of the PS5’s cooling fans. The PS5 has an extremely fast built-in SSD, and any compatible third-party drive will need to be equally fast in order to store and run PS5 games; that’s going to generate some extra heat. The PS5 comes with an 825GB SSD right now, leaving users with only 667GB of usable space when formatted. With game sizes ever increasing...

Telegram is updating its messaging app with options for auto-deleting messages, expiring invite links, and new unlimited groups, the company shared in a blog post. Much like Signal, Telegram received a burst of new users in the confusion over WhatsApp’s privacy policy and now the company is adopting features that were already part of its competitors’ apps, features which offer more security and privacy. Auto-deleting messages were already possible in Telegram’s encrypted Secret Chats, but this new update for iOS and Android adds the option to make messages disappear in any kind of chat. Auto-delete can be enabled inside of chats, and set to delete either 24 hours or seven days after messages are sent. Auto-delete won’t remove every message though; if a message was sent before the feature w...