Technology

LG Display has shared video of its new 48-inch OLED gaming TV that can bend from a flat display to a curved one with the push of a button, and seeing it in motion is fascinating. Check it out at the top of this post. The flexible display orientations could let you watch TV with the flat orientation and play games with the curved one, for example. The company’s video also shows off how the screen could be used for a racing game with a first-person perspective in the cockpit, which seems like another practical use of a flexible TV to me. If you prefer to play racing games with a flat screen, you can keep the TV that way or opt to curve it if you find that more immersive. The TV can bend up to a radius of 1,000mm, has up to a 120Hz refresh rate, and offers a variable refresh rate ranging from...

The CEO of the conservative-friendly social app Parler said that all of its vendors have abandoned the company following recent bans from Google, Apple, and Amazon. “Every vendor, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, all ditched us too, on the same day,” Parler CEO John Matze said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. Google banned Parler on Friday, Apple removed Parler on Saturday, and Amazon has informed Parler it will be kicked from the company’s web hosting services Sunday evening. Each company cited threats of violence posted on Parler in their reasons for removing the app. Screenshots from the app shared by activist group Sleeping Giants showed users calling for violence against Mike Pence and threatening further activity at the Capitol on January 19th. In...

HP is refreshing its business-focused Elite Dragonfly range this year with an updated G2 model and a new Dragonfly Max option. Both laptops will include Intel’s latest 11th Gen processors, and optional 5G connectivity. The Max model even improves the built-in webcam, and adds a second black color option for the range. Both the 13.3-inch Dragonfly G2 and Dragonfly Max will ship with 11th Gen Intel processors, with the i3 only available on the G2 and i5 and i7 processor options available on both. Both can also be configured up to 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of M.2 SSD storage space. Both models will also include a single USB 3.1 charging port, two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, a single HDMI 1.4b port, and Nano SIM support. The new black option for the HP Elite Dragonfly Max. The rear of the HP El...

So with all the chaos of the past week, you may have missed that Friday was the final episode of Jeopardy! with Alex Trebek as host. Trebek, who died in November at age 80 after a battle with cancer, hosted the answer-and-question game show for 37 years. The show posted a best-of highlight reel of Trebek’s performances over the years (remember the brouhaha when he shaved his mustache?!) and it may make you tear up a bit. My favorite appreciation of Trebek was from James Poniewozik in the New York Times, which concludes: “He was our trusted man with the answers, even in times when reality came to us in the form of a question.” [embedded content] Out new trailers this week range from dark and creepy to quirky to unsettling (which, to be totally honest, I prefer all of the above to syrupy hol...

Ford will idle its plant in Kentucky for a week as the automotive industry grapples with a shortage of semiconductors, ABC News reported The automaker’s assembly plant in Louisville produces the Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair SUVs, and employs about 3,900 hourly workers, according to CNBC. Ford said will take a planned one-week plant shutdown that had been scheduled for later in the year and move it to this week instead. Ford joins Nissan, which says it will reduce production at one of its plants in Japan, which makes the Note, a car not sold in the US. A Nissan spokesperson said the semiconductor shortage has not affected the company’s US production Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota also have reported problems with semiconductor supply chains, with Fiat Chrysler temporarily shutterin...

Clearview AI’s CEO says that use of his company’s facial recognition technology among law enforcement spiked 26 percent the day after a mob of pro-Trump rioters attacked the US Capitol. First reported by the New York Times, Hoan Ton-That confirmed to The Verge that Clearview saw a sharp increase in use on January 7th, compared to its usual weekday search volume. The January 6th attack was broadcast live on cable news, and captured in hundreds of images and live streams that showed the faces of rioters breaching the Capitol building. The FBI and other agencies have asked for the public’s help to identify participants. According to the Times, the Miami Police Department is using Clearview to identify some of the rioters, sending possible matches to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. And The...

The Ratatouille TikTok musical will return for an encore performance Sunday night on the platform where it all started. TikTok is hosting another showing of the streaming musical that debuted online New Year’s Day, which has already raised more than $1 million for The Actors Fund. The musical came together on TikTok over the past few months, with composers, fans, set designers, costumers, and choreographers creating musical numbers for the fictional “show” which is built around the 2007 Disney/Pixar animated film. Then in December Seaview Productions announced it was producing the show in association with TikTok. Disney/Pixar gave its blessing, and the show attracted big Broadway names to perform the crowdsourced songs. Wayne Brady plays Django, Andrew Barth Feldman plays Linguini, Ashley ...

Ah, what a year this week has been! Our entire perception of time has already been skewed by the pandemic, but even by that standard the last few days have felt like a bizarre time warp, starting with a Slack outage on Monday that seemed like it would be the story of the week. Oh how naive we were. Of course, Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol as Congress was certifying the Electoral College results dominated the rest of the news cycle, and social media and other online platforms decided that by inciting the rioters, the president had finally crossed a line. Here’s a review of the tumultuous first week of 2021. Wednesday January 6th After he spoke to a rally near the White House, a mob of Trump supporters marched on, and broke into the US Capitol building. Five people were killed, and score...

A group of Amazon employees is demanding the company sever its relationship with social networking site Parler and stop providing web hosting services to the platform. Amazon Employees for Climate Change and Justice tweeted Saturday that Amazon Web Services, the company’s internet infrastructure service that is the backbone of many websites and apps, should “deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration.” Parler has become popular among supporters of President Trump, as platforms like Twitter and Facebook tightened their moderation policies. The group of Amazon employees includes many higher-skilled workers at the company, including data scientists and software developers. It’s not the first time the group has questioned its compa...

Apple has removed Parler from the App Store, following accusations that the social media app was fostering calls to violence ahead of, and following, the raid on the US Capitol. “We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity. Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues,” reads a statement from the company on Saturday evening. Apple issued an ultimatum to Parler on Friday demanding that it remove content in violation with its policies and provide a plan on how it would moderate content moving forward, which was first reported by BuzzFeed...

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is asking mobile carriers and social media platforms to preserve “content and associated metadata” that may be connected to the attack on the US Capitol. Warner said in a statement Saturday that he contacted the CEOs of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Apple, Facebook, Gab, Google, Parler, Signal, Telegram, and Twitter. “The United States Capitol is now a crime scene,” Warner wrote in his letters. “The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are currently investigating the events of that day, and trying to piece together what happened and the perpetrators involved. The prospect of litigation on behalf of the victims of the mayhem also is highly likely. Messaging data to and from your subscribers that may have pa...

When Twitter banned President Trump from its platform permanently on Friday, the thousands of tweets he put forth from his realDonaldTrump account over the past decade were wiped out. Retweets of realDonaldTrump tweets from other accounts now show a “this tweet is unavailable” message instead. But embeds of Trump’s original tweets are now displaying in articles across the internet as shadows of their former selves, some with just the text of the former tweet included, others as empty gray boxes. This effect, known as link rot, happens when images or content are deleted or otherwise broken, so links don’t point back to the original target, whether that’s a tweet, a video, or a web page. In most instances, a dead link is a visually unappealing annoyance, but link rot can pose problems when i...