Technology

Android phones can now notify you when they detect certain sounds, which could notify people who are deaf or hard of hearing about important sounds nearby. If you turn on the feature, called Sound Notifications, you can have your Android phone inform you about some sounds via a push notification, a flash from your camera light, or by making your phone vibrate. Other devices support Sound Notifications as well, including Wear OS devices, which can send Sound Notifications via text notifications with vibrations. And they work entirely offline, according to Google. [embedded content] Google says Sound Notifications can listen for ten different noises: Smoke and fire alarms Sirens Shouting Baby sounds Doorbell ringing Knocking Dog barking Appliance beeping Water running Landline phone ringing ...

If you prefer buying older PlayStation games over the web or on mobile, you may not be able to do that for much longer. Sony has informed developers that it plans to revamp its digital storefront for those versions later this month, removing users’ options to purchase games and DLC released initially on the PS3, PSP, and Vita from a mobile device or PC, Planète Vita reports. Effective October 19th, the PlayStation web store will remove that option, according to Planète Vita and the mobile app’s update will be available on October 28th. Users will still be allowed to make new purchases for PlayStation legacy titles, but they will have to purchase them directly from PS3, PSP, Vita, or PS4 gaming consoles. However, it is important to note that this only applies to new purchases, and any previ...

Tourists to Niagara Falls can now ride all-electric ferries past the iconic waterfalls. The two ferries made their debut in New York on October 6th, fueled by locally generated hydropower. Their batteries can recharge in just seven minutes as passengers climb on and off the vessels. The first vessels of their kind The new boats, operated by Maid of the Mist, are among the first vessels of their kind to navigate US waterways. The first all-electric passenger and car ferry in the US pushed off from the banks of the Alabama River in 2019. These new, non-polluting voyages are part of a global trend toward electrifying passenger vessels. “The electrification of these two brand-new tour boats sets the example that we can electrify our economy which is good for our communities, our health, and ou...

Disney will premiere its next Pixar film, Soul, on Disney Plus this Christmas instead of releasing it theatrically in countries where Disney Plus is available. The film was originally scheduled to be released in theaters in November, but the coronavirus has disrupted theaters — making Disney Plus a safer bet. Over the last six months, Disney has tried to find ways to bring its movies to audiences while bypassing traditional theatrical releases. Disney Plus has become a key distribution method for the the company as theaters remain closed. Soul is the latest film that Disney has moved from its theatrical slate to Disney Plus, following Artemis Fowl, Hamilton, and Mulan, which debuted as a Premier Access title for an additional $30. Soul will not be a Premier title, meaning that it will be f...

Facebook has removed a group of fake accounts tied to Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization caught coordinating a “troll farm”-style social media campaign last month. The company’s latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior says it banned 200 Facebook accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts linked to Turning Point and a marketing firm called Rally Forge, which is now banned from Facebook. Facebook says it began its investigation after The Washington Post reported on “some elements” of the campaign in September. The operation apparently started in 2018 around the US midterm elections, then reappeared in June 2020 as the presidential election heated up. As the Post described, it focused on leaving coordinated Facebook comments — including ones supporting Preside...

AMD just announced its new Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, but CEO Lisa Su didn’t stop there, ending her presentation with a preview of AMD’s other big PC announcement: the company’s upcoming RX 6000 “Big Navi” GPUs, which it’s set to announce on October 28th. While full details on the upcoming lineup of graphics cards won’t come until later in October, Su is setting expectations high, promising that the RX 6000 lineup offers “by far the most powerful gaming GPU we have ever built.” Su also offered a brief preview of what to expect from the company’s top-of-the-line Ryzen 5000 CPUs working together with the new RX 6000 series GPUs, showing a short clip of Borderlands 3 running at 4K resolution at over 60fps at “Badass Quality,” along with benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (...

Western Digital has announced its first PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs, the WD Black SN850s, and they’ll offer fast read / write speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and 5,300MB/s that should help reduce load times on your PC and in games. Those speeds are a notable increase from the SN750’s 3,100MB/s and 1,600MB/s read / write speeds, and on par (with a slightly faster write speed) with Samsung’s recently announced PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs. [embedded content] Because they’re standard M.2 NVMe SSDs, the SN850s should work in most gaming PCs, as long as you have a compatible motherboard. Theoretically, they could also work as storage expansions for the PlayStation 5 — but Sony hasn’t actually said what drives will be certified as compatible with its next-generation console just yet. (The Xbox Series X / S, on the o...

On Tuesday, Congress revealed whether it thinks Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are sitting on monopolies. In some cases, the answer was yes. But also, one app developer revealed to Congress that it — just like WordPress — had been forced to monetize a largely free app. That developer testified that Apple had demanded in-app purchases (IAP), even though Apple had approved its app without them two years earlier — and that when the dev dared send an email to customers notifying them of the change, Apple threatened to remove the app and blocked all updates. That developer was ProtonMail, makers of an encrypted email app, and CEO Andy Yen had some fiery words for Apple in an interview with The Verge this week. We’ve known for months that WordPress and Hey weren’t alone in being strong-arme...

The next time you open Lime’s smartphone app, you may see a new type of vehicle that isn’t an electric scooter. The San Francisco-based company announced today that it is integrating Wheels, a shared electric bike startup, into its app so customers can rent an e-bike from Wheels as easily as they would a scooter from Lime. Lime plans to add more shared mobility services to its app in the coming months as it seeks to become both a provider and platform for all two-wheeled electric transport. The “ultimate goal,” a spokesperson said, is to own “all light electric vehicle trips under 5 miles.” It’s an ambitious one, especially considering that shared electric bike and scooter companies are still struggling to turn a profit as COVID-19 upends supply chains and the transportation section global...

I Am Dead is a game about objects. It’s obsessed with them, really. The way they look, the way they feel, how they can change depending on your perspective — and, most importantly, what they mean to people. It’s a game where you play as a ghost, but it uses that conceit as an excuse to let you freely explore a quaint island full of charming residents, searching through memories that are anchored by specific objects. It’s heartfelt and charming — and not at all as dark as the name I Am Dead implies. The premise is, admittedly, quite strange. You play as Morris, the recently deceased curator of a museum on a small island who has two particular ghostly powers: he can venture into the memories of the living and peer inside of objects with a strange sort of X-ray vision. The island, meanwhile, ...

Virgin Hyperloop One announced its plan to build a $500 million certification center to advance its vision of the future of high-speed transportation in West Virginia. The state will serve as a locus for testing, developing, and validating the technology that underpins the still-theoretical hyperloop system. There is no fully functional hyperloop in the world, and it has never been tested with human passengers. But the federal government has recently laid out the framework for regulating the hyperloop, giving hope to companies like Virgin Hyperloop One that it may eventually break ground on a full-sized operational hyperloop system. To do so, it will still need to raise millions of dollars in funding, acquire the enormous tracks of land, and certify that the hyperloop can be operated safel...

Ricky Desktop is one of the biggest hitmakers of 2020 — though there’s a good chance you’ve never heard his name. Ricky has made more than 20 beats destined for TikTok this year, and more than a half dozen of them have gone on to be huge viral hits. If you’ve spent any time using the app, you’ll probably recognize some of his sounds: “The Chicken Wing Beat,” “The Dice Beat,” “The Boat Beat,” and most recently “The Banjo Beat.” The latest beats were made from the garage of his parents’ house, where Ricky — not his real name — moved after graduating college last year. Ricky, now 22, is a multi-instrumentalist who’s been playing music since he was 14. Before he shifted to TikTok, he was creating short raps about modern tech, like Venmo, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn. “I had zero traction,” he told ...