Technology

If you’ve already streamed your favorite series for the third time, and you’ve hit a wall with your latest game, what should you do while you’re sheltering at home? Well, maybe pick up a new skill or hobby by taking a class. There is a huge number of courses available online, from coding to history to languages, and a lot of different resources to choose from. Below, we’ve listed some of the major sites where you can find online classes, some you can attend in real time and others you can pop into at your leisure. While many of these websites charge fees for memberships or specific classes, we’ve indicated which ones also offer free courses. Code Academy offers courses on computer science, data science, and web development. You can sign up for the free plan, which gives you access to 25 co...

<div data-filter_4=" Kaweco Classic Sport Fountain Pen Nothing makes writing feel better than using a fancy pen, and Kaweco’s fountain pen is the perfect way to add some old-school charm to your note-taking, lease signing, or doodling without breaking the bank. Price: ~$19 Amazon Hario V60 Gooseneck Kettle There are many cheaper vessels for hot water, but Hario’s V60 Gooseneck kettle heats quickly, and rarely needs to be cleaned. What’s best, though, is that it delivers a perfect, measured pour so you don’t get carried away with a delicate drink.Price: ~$45 Amazon Dagne Dover Dakota Backpack If you’re going to carry your backpack all day, from home to the gym to work to dinner and home again, you’re going to want something that’s well-desig...

Crucible, a new free-to-play PC game from Amazon’s original game development arm, is launching later this month, the e-commerce giant announced on Tuesday. It’s Amazon Game Studios’ first big-budget original game, as the studio has focused mostly on tablet games released through its Android app store since the division’s launch back in 2012. The game is a sci-fi third-person shooter that mixes together a bunch of popular game designs including components of team shooters like Blizzard’s Overwatch, battle arena games like Valve’s Dota 2, and battle royale hits like Epic’s Fortnite and Respawn’s Apex Legends. The result sounds like it a combination of the game industry’s most dominant competitive titles of the last five years, which could position Crucible at the forefront of the Twitch and ...

William Wang, the CEO of Vizio, doesn’t give a lot of interviews. Earlier this month, he gave one to me. But he didn’t want to discuss the affordable, high-value smart TVs for which his company is best known. He wanted to discuss soundbars. That’s because Vizio is trying, harder than ever, to convince its customers to care about audio. Vizio is no stranger to audio. It was an early champion of providing 5.1 surround sound at an accessible price, making a splash in 2013 with its $330 Home Theater Sound Bar. And for several years, reviewers have recommended the company’s affordable Dolby Atmos products as the best budget soundbars you can buy. For those unfamiliar, Dolby Atmos is essentially the 4K of speakers — it’s really nice, but not all products support it (and neither does all content)...

Facebook is reportedly developing a second-generation version of its standalone Oculus Quest headset, with the successor potentially set to be smaller, lighter, and with a faster refresh rate than the original, per a report from Bloomberg. While there are apparently multiple versions of the Quest follow-up in the mix, it might be some time before the headset launches due to delays in both development and manufacturing caused by the pandemic. The $399 Quest was Oculus’ most console-like headset, promising a full-fledged, self-contained VR setup for a single price, without requiring customers to have a gaming PC setup or additional hardware to enjoy VR content. But the standalone design made it less powerful than traditional headsets, and it was uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time...

Billy Mitchell, who rose to fame hunting high-scores in classic video games, is suing internet game scoreboard Twin Galaxies over its decision to strip him of his records and ban him from its leaderboards, according to court documents seen by Ars Technica. Mitchell is arguing that Twin Galaxies’ statement was libelous, and implied that he was a cheater. A court hearing is currently scheduled for July 6th. Twin Galaxies announced its decision to strip Mitchell of his records back in April 2018 after its investigation revealed that he had not achieved his Donkey Kong high scores on original arcade hardware. While some in the community have accused Mitchell of using the arcade emulation software MAME, Twin Galaxies said it didn’t have enough evidence to support this claim. Guinness World Reco...

In the latest instance of unrest at the company, several thousand Amazon workers walked off the job Friday. The occasion was International Workers’ Day, also known as May Day, and the Amazonians joined workers at Instacart, FedEx, Target, and Walmart demanding better conditions for work that the government has deemed essential, and their own employers have frequently called heroic. The protests to date have drawn attention to widespread outbreaks of COVID-19 in Amazon warehouses, the lack of protective equipment for warehouse personnel, and the low pay and draconian sick-leave policies that workers in fulfillment centers have endured for years. And they’ve been effective in at least two ways. One, Amazon increased pay and expanded sick leave as the pandemic spread. And two, as I noted here...

Nest will start enabling two-factor authentication by default for its accounts in May, the company has announced. When a user tries to log in using their username and password, they’ll now also have to enter a six-digit code sent to them over email as an extra security measure. In a help page spotted by Engadget, Nest says that the change will apply to any users who haven’t already set up two-factor authentication via a phone number, or who haven’t migrated to a Google account. The changes were announced earlier this year in response to reports that Nest’s security cameras were being “hacked” across the US. Google was quick to respond to confirm it hadn’t suffered a security breach, and that what had actually happened was that users were re-using passwords across services, and that the hac...

Tumblr on Monday announced an update to its hate speech policy, announcing on its blog that it would start cutting down on the reach of posts considered hate speech by removing all reblogs of terminated content. Tumblr says it’s specifically targeting speech from Nazis and other white supremacist groups, which it says still be amplified on its platform through reblogs even after the original post was removed for violating its hate speech policies. “Many of you have called on us to further reevaluate how we deal with hate speech, particularly hate speech from Nazis or other white supremacist groups. Today we’re letting you know that we heard you, and we are taking further action,” Tumblr, which is now owned by WordPress creator Automattic, writes. “In our own research, and from your helpful...

When a tsunami slams into a coast, parks with rolling hills could provide about as much protection as towering seawalls, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These tsunami mitigation parks, as they’re called, are designed to combine the protective qualities of an engineered landscape with the benefits of a more natural setting. The hybrid approach is especially appealing to less-affluent countries that are looking for alternatives to building pricey seawalls that also preserve coastal economies and ways of life. “The wall doesn’t require any understanding.” “You can build a wall against anything. You can build a wall against a dog. You can build a wall against water,” says Jenny Suckale, a senior author of the stu...

Apple’s seventh-generation iPad with 32GB of storage is $80 off at a couple of retailers, including Best Buy and Amazon. This price drop puts it at $250 instead of $330. This model has seen a discount like this before, but it’s a rare enough discount that you might want to know about it. Cyber Monday 2019 had a slightly better deal for $230, but given that this is just a regular day in May, it’s a fantastic time to buy. This version of the iPad is similar in a lot of ways to Apple’s sixth-generation model, though you’re getting a lot more for your money with this tablet. Inside, it has the same A10 processor, but its screen size has increased from 9.7 inches to 10.2 inches. Additionally, it has an extra gigabyte of RAM (3GB compared to 2GB in the sixth-gen iPad) and a Smart Connector, whic...

Verizon has its own exclusive version of the OnePlus 8, the “OnePlus 8 5G UW,” designed specifically for its network with additional mmWave radio features to support Verizon’s 5G network (which only operates in the mmWave band). But as discovered by Reddit user /u/bud-dho, the changes to the phone to fit the additional radio technology mean that the Verizon version has its volume buttons moved lower than the unlocked and T-Mobile models, so standard OnePlus 8 cases won’t fit (via 9to5Google). An analysis from PhoneArena of the FCC documents for the two variants makes the issue clear: the Verizon model has several extra mmWave modules, one of which is directly located where the volume switches are. It likely won’t affect all cases — ones with cutouts for the volume buttons can probably just...