Technology

TikTok’s fan-made crowdsourced Ratatouille musical is making the jump from social media to the stage. Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical is going to debut as an actual show for a one-night-only concert on January 1st, which will benefit The Actors Fund. The streamed show will be produced by Seaview Productions (best known for producing Slave Play, the most Tony Award-nominated show in Broadway history) and is being presented “in association with TikTok.” The so-called Ratatouille musical — based on the 2007 Disney / Pixar film — has been percolating over the past several months on TikTok. What started as a one-off bit has slowly snowballed into a massive undertaking, with bored Broadway fans, composers, set designers, costume makers, choreographers, and more working together to build bits and...

Finding a long-hidden treasure in the woods of Wyoming seems like a tall tale that would be told around a campfire, but it happens to be reality for Jack Stuef. As with many treasure hunting stories, though, the intrigue isn’t over just because the prize has been found. Stuef had been trying to stay anonymous and had done so until this week, but now he says he’s been forced to reveal his identity after a lawsuit was filed alleging that he obtained the treasure through hacking and stalking. The chest in question, filled with 22 pounds of treasure-y things like gold coins and jewelry, was hidden by Forrest Fenn, a Santa Fe art dealer, and has been the object of a widely publicized hunt that’s been going on since 2010. Stuef’s desire for his identity to remain hidden is understandable, as som...

On Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of 48 state attorneys general filed broad antitrust charges against Facebook, seeking a reversal of its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. Now, Facebook has responded to those charges in an extensive post titled “Lawsuits Filed by the FTC and the State Attorneys General Are Revisionist History,” written by general counsel Jennifer Newstead. Newstead’s primary defense is that both acquisitions resulted in better products for consumers — an implicit reference to the “consumer harm” standard that has also been central to the Department of Justice’s case against Google. “Regulators correctly allowed these deals to move forward” “These transactions were intended to provide better products for the people who use them, and ...

On Tuesday, Florida state police entered the home of Rebekah Jones with guns drawn, seizing her computer and phone, in an attempt to prove that she’d sent an unauthorized “group text” through “a Department of Health messaging system” that is “to be used for emergencies only,” according to authorities. There are now two reasons why that’s significant. First, as we reported at the time, Jones isn’t just any former Florida Department of Health employee: she’s the whistleblower who built Florida’s once-celebrated COVID-19 tracking dashboard, then accused her bosses of ordering her to manipulate Florida’s data to justify reopening the state. Second, it’s now come to our attention that the supposedly private messaging system that Jones might have accessed might have effectively just been an emai...

The software that runs on Amazon’s Fire TV streaming devices is set to undergo a significant overhaul in the coming weeks, and the rollout of the “new Fire TV experience” begins today on some devices. After the update is installed, you’ll have access to new features like multiuser support (with personalized recommendations and watch lists for each profile) and a streamlined interface that makes it faster to reach your favorite entertainment apps. When you’re in the mood to watch something but you’re not sure what, there’s also a new “Find” tab that brings together movies, TV shows, free ad-supported content, and sports from various services. You can now have individual user profiles on the Fire TV — including kids accounts.Image: Amazon Amazon has also improved Alexa integration with the n...

Cruise, the self-driving car company affiliated with General Motors and Honda, is testing fully driverless cars, without a human safety driver behind the steering wheel, in San Francisco. The company is among the first to test its driverless vehicles in a dense, complex urban environment. “Getting to driverless in SF took more than five years of rigorous testing, over 2 million miles of driving in one of the craziest driving environments, together with hard work from a huge team of dedicated engineers and others across Cruise, as well as at GM,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said in a call with reporters. “And not to mention several billion dollars of investment along the way.” To be sure, the vehicles are not completely alone in the wilderness. In a video released by the company, a Cruise employe...

On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a massive antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social media giant has harmed competition by buying up smaller companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to squash the threat they posed to its business. Forty-seven other state and regional attorneys general are joining the suit. The lawsuit centers on Facebook’s history of acquisitions starting, particularly its $1 billion purchase of Instagram in 2011. In addition to its acquisition strategy, the attorneys general allege that Facebook used the power and reach of its platform to stifle user growth for competing services. The Federal Trade Commission is expected to bring a lawsuit against Facebook on similar grounds later today. The FTC case goes even farther than the sta...

Detailed specs and images of the 2021 Moto G Stylus have leaked by way of an early Amazon listing, as spotted by Phone Arena. This iteration on the stylus-having, budget-friendly device looks to borrow features from this year’s Moto G9 Plus, including a 6.8-inch FHD+ display that’s slightly larger than its predecessor’s 6.4-inch screen. Amazon’s (now removed) page lists a price of $341, which is unlikely to be the final MSRP, but it’s a bit higher than the original G Stylus’ $299 introductory price. One of the things we liked best about the prior G Stylus was the image quality from its camera, and Motorola appears to have tweaked the hardware setup in the 2021 version. Aside from a 48-megapixel main rear camera, it adopts the quad-camera array from the Moto G9 Plus, including an 8-megapixe...

PixelJunk Eden was ahead of its time. The idea of a download-only indie game with arty, abstract 2D graphics and a pulsing techno soundtrack doesn’t sound remotely unusual in 2020, but there really wasn’t much like Eden when it dropped on the PS3 in 2008. Developed by Kyoto’s Q-Games, with music and visuals from local-artist-turned-creative-director Baiyon, Eden was a hypnotic triumph, if a little more challenging than its chill vibe might have led you to expect. Now we have a sequel, PixelJunk Eden 2, which is coming out today as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. Much of the content and music is repurposed from a 2018 mobile game, Eden Obscura. If it’s new to you, though, Eden 2 will feel like a true sequel — and one that can be friendlier to play than the original. The basic premise is identi...

Microsoft has confirmed its timeline for bringing its xCloud cloud gaming service to Apple’s iOS platform and to Windows PCs, with the company saying it will support iPhone, iPad, and PC starting in spring 2021. The Verge reported in October that Microsoft was looking to bring xCloud to iOS via a mobile web app some time in “early 2021,” but Microsoft has clarified the timing in a blog post published on Wednesday. The PC version of xCloud will be delivered through the Xbox app for Windows 10, the company says. “In Spring 2021, we will take the next step in our journey to reach more players around the world by making cloud gaming as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate available on Windows PCs through the Xbox app and browser, and iOS devices through mobile web browser,” writes Jerret West, Micr...

On Wednesday, YouTube announced that it will begin removing any content alleging widespread voter fraud influenced the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. In the immediate aftermath of the November 3rd election, YouTube came under fire for allowing channels to publish videos making false claims about election results. In one instance, One America News Network, a verified YouTube channel, published a video declaring that “Trump won” the election. At the time, YouTube defended its decision to let the video stand, saying in a statement, “Like other companies, we’re allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YouTube.” The company went on to say that content from “authoritative news organizations” were “the most popul...

If you’re struggling to think of a gift for someone in your life, it’s hard to fail with a good set of headphones. Thankfully, many of the best models currently available have seen sharp discounts in the lead-up to the holidays. Today’s standout deals are on the Apple AirPods Pro at Woot for $190 (around $220 everywhere else). Now that the $550 AirPods Max are a thing, the Pro is no longer the most expensive model. Also worth sharing today is a deal on Microsoft’s Surface Headphones, a noise-canceling over-ear model for $150 instead of its usual $200 asking price. We’ve also found some noteworthy deals on PS4 games that might be on a wish list you’re in charge of tackling. Headphones and earbuds Woot is offering the AirPods Pro for $190. They cost $250 from Apple directly, though most reta...