Technology

With just a few days to go before the November 3rd presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign has launched a new custom map in Fortnite. First reported by Mashable, the “Build Back Better with Biden” map is located in “Reboot City,” and is aimed at promoting the campaign’s message that the environment and economy are connected. The solo-player, adventure-type map takes about 20 to 30 minutes to play, and made its debut Friday night. “Our digital program is built around how people spend time, and the most effective ways reach them in those places,” Christian Tom, the Biden campaign’s director of digital partnerships said in a statement to The Verge. “We see interactive, digital-first experiences like gaming as an opportunity to bring our campaign to a new place and pl...

Sean Connery, the Scottish actor who brought James Bond to the silver screen as part of a four-decade career, has died at 90, the BBC reported. Connery played Ian Fleming’s 007 spy in seven films, starting with Dr. No in 1962, a role he got without taking a screen test, according to Variety. He reprised the role in From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, and Never Say Never Again. Connery died in his sleep in the Bahamas, according to the BBC, and had been in poor health for some time. Over the course of his prolific career, Connery won an Oscar— Best Supporting Actor for the 1987 film The Untouchables— and three Golden Globe awards. His filmography also includes star turns in The Man Who Would Be King, The Hunt for Red October, Indiana Jo...

Google is introducing custom backgrounds for its Meet videoconferencing platform, the company announced in a blog post. If you use Meet in Google’s Chrome browser you should be able to access the feature in Chrome OS as well as on Windows and Mac laptops and desktops. The feature is “coming soon” to mobile, Google says. There’s no browser extension needed to activate custom backgrounds; you should be able to add a background image from your own photo collection or from a library of images provided by Google that includes landscapes, abstract art and (for some reason) offices. Google Meet custom backgroundsGoogle It may take up to a week before all Google Meet users can access the new custom background option, the company says. Rival videoconferencing services Microsoft Teams and Zoom both ...

One of the countless impacts of the coronavirus pandemic is that it halted the NYC Department of Sanitation’s recycling program that picks up your e-waste by appointment. The program is still paused, and it isn’t set to resume its normal cadence of accepting e-waste at drop-off sites until at least June 2021. Thankfully, you have a few short-term options if you need to get rid of some tech in the coming weeks. Earlier in the pandemic, the Lower East Side (LES) Ecology Center drop-off site near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn permanently shut its doors. It was one of the few drop-off sites in New York City that accepted and recycled e-waste, diverting 1 million pounds of e-waste from landfills in 2018, according to Christine Datz-Romero, LES Ecology Center co-founder and executive director. H...

Lately, I’ve been thinking about pandemic safety and Swiss cheese. It’s an uninspiring cheese, but it’s a good visual metaphor for a layered approach to infection control. This ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ has been around since at least the 1990’s, when it was proposed as a way of thinking about how accidents happen. During the pandemic, it’s been pressed into a different kind of service, used to visualize disease prevention instead of accidents. In a pandemic as widespread as this one, no single action can keep a person from getting sick. There will always be flaws (holes) in any approach. Washing your hands won’t keep you from breathing in the virus — and wearing a cloth mask won’t completely protect you if you’re stuck in a stuffy room with an infected person. But stack them together with some ...

Everyone focuses on what’s blowing up on TikTok, but here’s something that’s been getting a bit of attention over on Byte: some playful little skeletons. Over the past month, designer Andre Zimmermann has been posting short looping clips of meddlesome skeletons getting into low-stakes hijinks, like running off with food from a table or knocking a plant off a ledge. “They sort of became these jerks,” Zimmermann said. “Like a cat.” They’re the furthest thing from spooky, but their mischievous antics feel a bit more comforting during what’s already a high-stress Halloween. Your browser does not support HTML5 video. My favorite of Zimmermann’s not-quite-spooky animations shows a humanoid collection of skulls dancing to a looping disco track. To make it, Zimmermann said he imported a motion-cap...

Almost a quarter of all transactions at Starbucks stores in the US are mobile orders through the company’s app, an earnings document revealed yesterday. Ordering ahead through the Starbucks app is the company’s suggested way to get in and out of its locations faster during the pandemic, hopefully making it easier to maintain social distancing in the process. Starbucks launched “Mobile Order & Pay” in 2015, combining the company’s existing payment system with new online ordering features that let you order ahead for pickup at stores. This week’s new stats show how popular that feature has become, slowly growing over time until it dramatically increased over the course of 2020 — from 17 percent at the end of last year all the way to 24 percent of US retail orders last quarter. Starbucks’...

Today, exactly one year after Apple first launched the AirPods Pro — and thus the same day the very first AirPods Pro owners will see their one-year warranties expire — Apple has launched a repair program that offers free repairs or replacements for another whole year if your AirPods Pro experience issues with noise cancellation or static. Specifically, Apple will fix: Crackling or static sounds that increase in loud environments, with exercise or while talking on the phone Active Noise Cancellation not working as expected, such as a loss of bass sound, or an increase in background sounds, such as street or airplane noise Apple says only a “small percentage of AirPods Pro” are affected by the issues, but it apparently wasn’t just an early batch — Apple says affected units were manufactured...

Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The New York Post is back on Twitter, after Twitter updated its policy on policy changes. This story is going to be confusing, but not as confusing as Twitter’s attempts at moderation. To recap: On October 14th, The New York Post published a (contested and possibly part of a disinformation campaign, though this is absolutely not the point I am here to tell you about) story about Hunter Biden, the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. Very little of the contents of the Post story are pertinent to the discussion we are about to have, except this: some of the materials in it, Twitter alleges, seem to be the result of hacking. Got all that so far? Great, there’s more Twitter suspended The New York Post’s account for six tweets that linked to the story and blocked li...

You’ll have to wait a bit longer for Panic’s odd little handheld: In an update published today, the company announced that Playdate will slip from its original 2020 window and now ship in early 2021. The device is the software developer’s first piece of physical hardware, a handheld with a unique crank alongside traditional buttons for controlling the device. Teenage Engineering co-designed the Playdate and it bears many of the company’s minimalistic touches in a bright, playful yellow. Playdate with final packaging.Image: Panic Panic announced in March that its staff was moving to work from home and that the Malaysian factory producing the Playdate had temporarily shut down. The company says adapting to these issues ultimately led to the decision to push back the launch to 2021. There’s g...

Ubisoft has announced its own backward compatibility list for playing older PS4 games on the PS5 today. Instead of sharing its list of older PS4 titles that will not be supported on Sony’s next-gen console, Ubisoft has flagged the titles on its own website. The French publisher says that the following nine games released for the PS4 will not work on the PS5: Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate Assassin’s Creed: Chronicles Trilogy Pack Assassin’s Creed: Chronicles India Assassin’s Creed: Chronicles China Assassin’s Creed: Chronicles Russia Risk Star Trek: Bridge Crew Werewolves Within Space Junkies Interestingly, these games do not appear on Sony’s PS5 backward compatibility list Interestingly, these games do not appear on Sony’s PS5 backward compatibility list, which currently has ten titles that ...

If you’re looking for some of the wider implications of The Mandalorian’s first season in the new premiere, now streaming on Disney Plus, you’ll probably be disappointed. You’re not going to learn anything about the “darksaber” wielded by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) or any more about Din Djarin, the eponymous Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) than you already do. His goal this season is straightforward: bring The Child (“Baby Yoda” to everyone online) to its people. And in order to find The Child’s home, Djarin needs to find other Mandalorians. Which is to say that The Mandalorian’s second season begins similarly to its first: a masked man comes to town, searching for someone. Instead of his quarry, he finds trouble, which is a huge headache for him but tremendous fun for us. It is, in other...