Technology

There haven’t been many musicians like Selena Quintanilla: she was a Tejano superstar who managed to find major label mainstream success as one of the music industry’s first Latin artists to top the charts. Her dazzling career was cut tragically short when she was murdered by a fan in the spring of 1995, just before her 24th birthday. A 1997 film, Selena, which starred Jennifer Lopez in the titular role, solidified her legend — anointing her as a pop culture saint and a bridge between cultures. The real Selena Quintanilla, however, was a complex person with an interior life beyond her star persona and her tragic death. She’s a person whose life is worth diving deeper into, beyond the constraints of a two-hour Hollywood picture. In another world, Netflix’s Selena: The Series, now streaming ...

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is planning to move from California to Texas, a move that would potentially save him from a huge personal income tax bill, CNBC reported. Musk announced in July that Tesla was building its next US factory in Austin, where it will produce its Cybertruck, Model Y, Model 3, and Semi vehicles. The company received tens of millions of dollars in local property tax breaks to build the plant on 2,100 acres east of Austin’s airport, over the objections of some local residents. The factory is expected to begin delivering its first vehicles in 2021. Musk’s Boring Company already has operations in Austin, and SpaceX has a facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Earlier this year, Musk tweeted that he was “selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.” Musk battled ...

This weekend, you can enjoy the last of the leftovers — not Thanksgiving leftovers. (There’s still no end in sight for those at my house.) I’m talking about the deals left over from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s a relative drought compared to the number of sales we saw last weekend in the thick of it all, but you can still get some of this year’s best prices on headphones, video games, and smart speakers. Here are this week’s best deals. Headphones The headphones with arguably the most effective noise cancellation tech and best sound quality for the price are the Sony WH-1000XM4. They were down to $278 during Black Friday, but their current $298 price is still a good buy if you missed that. Sony WH-1000XM4 wireless noise-canceling headphones $298 $350 15% off Prices taken at time of ...

WarnerMedia is making a clear bet for 2021: its slate of movies won’t generate the revenue its studio division needs, but it can help boost HBO Max’s long-term success. The company announced yesterday that every one of its 2021 movies will debut on HBO Max in the United States at the same time they play in theaters. They’ll be available for one month, at no extra charge, and available to stream in 4K HDR. It feels like an inevitable shift; COVID-19 cases are surging around the world again, new content on streaming services is drying up, and WarnerMedia needs to figure out a way to keep revenue coming in. Looking at a year where cinemas might not open beyond 25 percent capacity in the United States and where people may not want to sit in a room full of strangers until a vaccine is released,...

It may be time to pour one out for the streaming service trial. CNET reports that HBO Max is no longer offering users a free week of watching its content, following both Disney Plus and Netflix’s examples earlier in the year. This change, probably not coincidentally, comes just weeks before December 25th, when Wonder Woman 1984 is set to launch on the service (as well as in theaters, but you should probably stay home). While it can’t compete with free, the $14.99 you’ll now have to pay to see the movie still compares favorably to the price of a theater ticket (and it’s a month of entertainment as opposed to two-ish hours). It’s not the first streaming service to nix a free trial before a big release: Disney Plus did it just a few weeks before it started streaming Hamilton. The logic is sou...

Google Fi will stop activating non-VoLTE phones in January, and encourage customers with older phones to upgrade with a $100 credit provided they purchase a new phone from the Fi store and activate it before December 31st, 9to5Google reports. Google’s hand is forced in the matter. Customers subscribe to Fi, but as an MVNO, Fi actually piggybacks on T-Mobile and US Cellular’s networks to provide coverage. Since T-Mobile has already announced its own plans to phase out support for non-VoLTE phones starting in January 2021, Fi has to as well. Requiring VoLTE all but assures 3G’s days are numbered VoLTE stands for “Voice over LTE”, which is the handling of phone calls over LTE data rather than older 3G tech. VoLTE calls are typically clearer, with fewer drops in connection, though they’re comp...

The Trump administration won’t enforce its own deadline for ByteDance to sell or spin out video-sharing platform TikTok’s business in the US, according to Bloomberg. The latest deadline for that move, given by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) on November 28th, was today, December 4th. An extension isn’t expected, though the current deadline will “be overlooked while the discussions continue” between the Trump administration and TikTok, Bloomberg reports. CNN tech reporter Brian Fung is corroborating that the US won’t enforce its own deadline, with his sources amusingly suggesting that the lack of a deadline is proof that the US is “highly motivated” to complete talks about the sale. US officials are “highly motivated” to complete the talks, the person said, ...

President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn California’s ability to set fuel efficiency rules just lost another automaker. According to Reuters, Nissan said it was joining General Motors in abandoning the group of car companies that were previously supporting Trump’s fight with California. On November 23rd, GM announced it would leave the group of automakers that included Nissan, Fiat Chrysler, and several others, that were supporting Trump’s legal efforts to overturn pollution-fighting powers. Under the Clean Air Act, the state has historically been allowed to set its own emissions standards. And as the largest auto market in the US and one of the biggest in the world, California has a lot of influence over the auto industry. California has a lot of influence over the auto industry Nissan...

Maybe you’re feeling nostalgic for a classic James Bond film following Sean Connery’s death in late October. Or perhaps you’re simply feeling a gap given that the next film, No Time to Die, got pushed back to April 2021 or beyond. Either way, you can now binge a sizable selection of the James Bond collection completely for free (with ads) from YouTube, Peacock (with a free account), and PlutoTV. (Disclosure: Comcast, which owns Peacock parent NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.) Not every provider has every film, and a few aren’t on streaming services at all: you’ll need to rent Skyfall and Spectre if you care to watch those again. It’s also not clear how long these films will be free to stream. But every Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pi...

If you’ve ever wished you could share an in-app purchase with your family, you may be in luck. Today, Apple announced that subscriptions and one-time in-app purchases can now be shared among families. If you buy a consumable item, like coins in a game, you’ll still be the only one who can use them, but if you unlock an ad-free or pro version of an app it could be eligible for the new Family Sharing program. Apple announced this change back in June with Big Sur, but it’s finally letting developers flip the switch to allow subscriptions and purchases to be shared. App developer PSA: it is now possible to enable Family Sharing for IAPs and subscriptions, but you have to turn that on in App Store Connect. For subscriptions, it’s under the duration… pic.twitter.com/Hj3NBRN3L0 — Steve Harr...

If your iPhone 11 isn’t responding to touches, it might be eligible for a free fix from Apple. The company has launched a replacement program for iPhone 11 displays that stop responding to touches “due to an issue with the display module.” Apple says that “a small percentage of iPhone 11 displays” are affected. Devices affected by the issue were manufactured between November 2019 and May 2020, Apple said, meaning not every phone is affected. If you’re seeing the issue on your iPhone 11, you can check to see if your phone is eligible for the program by plugging its serial number into a box on Apple’s website for the replacement program. If your phone is eligible for replacement, you can find one of Apple’s authorized service providers to help, make an appointment at an Apple retail store, o...

Lots of objects look good stuffed into a pair of Crocs. Strange things you wouldn’t expect, like mini plastic bowls of ramen, beaded butterflies, or, like in Jillian Maddocks’ case, a pile of pistachio green foam with a cherry on top. Maddocks started selling her take on Jibbitz, a Crocs-specific word for charms that stick into the shoes’ holes for decoration, as part of her 323 apparel line. She repurposed materials she already had lying around — foam she uses to make headbands, fake cherries, and seashells — and ended up designing charms that make the Crocs look like a wearable sundae. “I’ve sold more [Jibbitz] than I sold everything else this year, which is really weird and funny and exciting,” Maddocks says. She guesses she sold around 100 total pairs in the three months they were live...