Technology

Samsung finally announced the follow-up to the beleaguered first generation Galaxy Fold, the Galaxy Z Fold 2, earlier this month, but the phone still isn’t out yet — Samsung promised to reveal more on September 1st. Ahead of then, though, it seems at least one Z Fold 2 has made it into the wild, as a Chinese YouTube channel has already posted a review of the upcoming foldable (via SamMobile). I don’t speak Chinese, so I can’t tell you what the reviewer is saying. But if you want to see what an actual powered-on Z Fold 2 looks like doing a bunch of different things, I recommend watching the whole video. And there’s a few interesting tidbits worth calling out. Perhaps most noticeably, the outer screen seems like a major improvement, as it now takes up almost the entire front of the phone: Im...

Unity, maker of the popular Unity Game Engine, has filed to go public at an incredible moment in time. Its chief rival, Epic Games, is currently busy arguing that Apple is holding the Unreal Engine hostage, and Epic will appear in court this very afternoon to demand a restraining order so Apple can’t cut off access to developers. What’s more incredible, though: the numbers revealed in Unity’s new S-1 filing show the company is far more of a formidable rival to Epic than we thought. We knew the early surge of interest in Unity may have forced Epic’s hand, first when Epic drastically dropped the price of Unreal Engine in 2014, and in 2015 when it started letting developers build with Unreal for free. But despite those moves, Unity says that in 2019, over half of the top games on mobile, PC, ...

In this week’s episode of “should the social network leave it up or take it down?” we have Facebook wading into another thorny moderation situation, this time in Thailand. According to a report from The Guardian, the company has removed a Facebook group with more than 1 million members after it was threatened by the Thai government for violating local laws around defaming the ruling monarch. The group, called “Royalist Marketplace,” was created in April by academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a critic of the Thai government and its king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, who now lives in Japan. However, on Monday, the group was restricted based on a legal request from Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society. The group was dedicated to discussing Vajiralongkorn and it had amassed more than 1 mill...

So it looks like Disney Plus has revived a Mouseketeers special from the 1970s (via Gizmodo) because Gen X deserves to wallow in nostalgia once in a while. But! Not only is the 60-minute promotional show The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World available to stream, but all the commercials that aired during the original 1977 broadcast are in there as well. Credit to artist / director Rob Sheridan for the discovery, which he posted on Twitter. Shake ‘n Bake, man. We didn’t know how good we had it. “I wish all archival TV streaming content up through the 90s was presented with the original commercials and badly dubbed from VHS, it’s such a more authentic cultural preservation,” Sheridan tweeted. Amen to that. If you have Disney+, search for “The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World” TV special from...

On Monday, Epic Games and Apple faced off in the first hearing of their ongoing legal fight, held in a public Zoom call because of the ongoing quarantine restrictions. The hearing sought to determine whether Epic’s developer privileges should be legally protected — initially by a temporary restraining order, setting the stage for a more powerful preliminary injunction that would remain in force for the duration of the trial. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers did not issue an immediate ruling on the issue, but said she would be issuing a written order after the fact “and I will issue it quickly.” However, Judge Rogers opened the hearing by indicating she was likely to take action to protect the Unreal Engine, but let the Fortnite ban stand. “I am not inclined to grant relief with respect to the ...

Amazon may be looking to bring the cashierless tech found at its Go convenience stores to Whole Foods supermarkets as early as next year, the New York Post reports. Amazon may start implementing the tech in Whole Foods sometime during the second quarter of 2021, according to the New York Post’s source. This technology, which is currently available in more than 20 Amazon Go convenience store locations, uses cameras, sensors, and computer vision to let customers walk out the store with groceries in hand and avoid cashier checkout lines. Amazon Go stores initially launched in 2016 for Amazon employees before opening to the public in 2018 The New York Post’s source claims the rollout of the new technology into Whole Foods is one of two final projects that Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon’s worldwide ...

The Republican National Convention officially kicked off Monday at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s the third location of the event after it was moved twice due to restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The convention is set to feature a mix of online and in-person events. WHEN IS IT? The convention is scheduled to last two hours each night, Monday through Thursday, starting at 8:30PM ET. HOW DO I WATCH IT? The event is available to stream on the RNC’s official Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, and on Amazon Prime Video by searching for the “Republican National Convention. If you’d rather listen to the convention, you can ask your Alexa device to play it as well. Spotify is also rounding up all of the RNC speeches into a playl...

YouTube has banned the controversial creator Calvin Lee Vail, better known as LeafyIsHere, for repeatedly violating the company’s harassment policies. The ban follows big changes to YouTube’s harassment policy meant to deter behavior that in part helped creators in the commentary community like Leafy develop a following. Although Vail has a history of making videos that include offensive comments about other creators on the site, including a now-deleted video from 2016 that mocked the appearance of another creator, the termination only came after his channel amassed at least three violations of YouTube’s harassment policy over the last 90 days. That includes videos featuring cyberbullying (including malicious insults and name-calling based on someone’s appearance, gender, or orientation) a...

Samsung’s Find My Mobile feature is a handy tool to help you find a lost phone. With the latest app update, Find My Mobile will now work for Galaxy devices that aren’t connected to Wi-Fi or cellular. Max Weinbach of XDA Developers spotted the feature on Saturday. The “Offline finding” function will leverage a network of nearby Galaxy devices — it looks similar to the “Community Find” feature that Tile trackers use when they’re out of Bluetooth range. If your phone can’t be found by Wi-Fi or cellular connection, nearby Galaxy devices might be able to locate it. If you have offline finding enabled, your phone will also be able to scan for other devices, meaning you’ll be able to help others find their lost phones if you’re in range of the item or find watches and earbuds that you’ve used rec...

Update August 24th, 2020: Today marks Windows 95’s 25th anniversary. Check out our retrospective originally from its 20th anniversary below and updated slightly to reflect the new anniversary date. Twenty-five years ago today, people were lining up at CompUSA or Best Buy at midnight. It wasn’t a new Call of Duty game, Apple’s latest iPod, or any type of hardware at all that shoppers were waiting for. It was software, and not just any software: Windows 95. Microsoft’s Windows 95 release on August 24th, 1995 was a highly anticipated launch. Jay Leno helped launch the software alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with a lot of jokes and the appearance of the entire Windows 95 development team on stage. It was a huge day for Microsoft with TV commercials blasting the Rolling Stones’ “Sta...

If you’ve been tested for COVID-19 then you’ve probably experienced the unpleasantness of a nasal swab. Someone takes a long-handled cotton swab and sticks it up your nose — way up your nose — until it reaches the back of the mucus-cave that is your nasal cavity. Upon arrival they give the swab a good twirl to collect your secretions and beat a merciful retreat. I can say from personal experience that it’s a uniquely unpleasant sensation. It’s something that just feels wrong, like the opposite of scratching an itch. That’s perhaps why I was so unsettled by the sight of this autonomous nasal swab robot developed by Taiwanese medtech startup Brain Navi. Of all the entities I don’t want sticking cotton swabs up my nose, an industrial robot arm is pretty high on the list, right between an exci...