Technology

The big streaming series from Marvel and Star Wars take all the headlines, but since its debut, Disney Plus has also slowly become a service stuffed with animated shorts. They… vary in quality. Some are shameless examples of brand synergy, like when Loki or Billie Eilish hang out with the Simpsons for a few painful minutes at a time. But if you dig a little deeper, there’s some great stuff, including some classic-style Mickey Mouse shorts, a refreshing take on Star Wars, and a surprisingly sweet series about Baymax from Big Hero 6. Now, you can add I Am Groot to that short list of shorts. The series seems inevitable in retrospect. Ever since Groot (voiced, as always, by Vin Diesel) was turned into a baby, he’s been the Minion-style comic relief of the Marvel universe. Groot’s presence now ...

After debuting its heavy-duty IE 600 earbuds and Momentum True Wireless 3 Earbuds, Sennheiser now introduces its all-new Momentum 4 true-wireless headphones. With its earlier iteration arriving on the scene in 2019, quite a few modifications were made to the over-ears including aesthetic changes, new features, and a welcome price decrease. Aside from its proven sound quality, some of the highlights of the new offering are 60 hours of battery life and a new retro look featuring a grainy leather headband and matte/pearlescent earcups. Wired listening doesn’t use up the battery and a 10-minute charge will provide the headphones with six additional hours of runtime. Similar to its closely-priced competitors including the Noise Cancelling 700 from Bose and WH-1000XM5 from Sony, the headphones a...

Shortly after debuting its new Arc series of graphics cards, Intel has now followed up with the Arc Pro series, a new collection of GPUs designed for productivity. Simply split into three different tiers, the Arc Pro consists of the A30M, the A40 and the A50. The first of the three is your regular laptop GPU while the A40 model is its desktop equivalent, carrying similar specs in a single-slot form factor. The A50 is the top range model, with a dual-slot configuration for those who need more image processing power for their workstations. In terms of specs, both the A30M and A40 has 3.50 teraflops of power, but the latter shares the same 6GB of VRAM as the A50 while the former only comes with 4GB. Naturally, the A50 dials its power up a notch to 4.80 teraflops, with all three models coming ...

After disappearing from the platform for five years, Apple is finally bringing back the battery percentage indicator on your iPhone‘s home screen. The feature existed on plenty of iOS versions until it was removed during the launch of the iPhone X because the top-notch on the device meant there simply wasn’t enough space for it. Since then, if you wanted to check precisely how much battery you had left, you’d have to go into your Control Center, taking extra steps for something you could previously have seen simply by activating your lock screen. Luckily, with the fifth beta version of iOS 16, the numbers are finally coming back, albeit with a slightly different look: instead of sitting next to the battery icon on the top of your screen, it’s now shown inside it. Oddly enough, because of t...

With so much of the world’s richest man’s wealth tied up in shares of his electric car company, Tesla is a part of the deal Elon doesn’t want to do anymore for more reasons than just a few subpoenas. Six SEC filings (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) revealed Elon Musk sold more Tesla shares over the last few days, which is surprising given Musk’s tweet saying, “No further TSLA sales planned after today,” after he sold off $8.4 billion worth in April. Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt tweeted a count of Musk’s activity between August 5th and August 9th, showing he sold 7,924,107 shares worth about $6.9 billion. Just before 11PM ET, Elon responded on Twitter, citing the looming trial against Twitter as an explanation for the new plan. No further TSLA sales planned after today — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, ...

After introducing innovative products such as motorcycle and instrument-inspired computer mice and experimental “Sound Machines” with ÉCAL Design, Yamaha brings its new flagship true-wireless earphones, the TW-E7B, to the U.S. Boasting “astonishing sonic realism,” the rounded earbuds feature the company’s own proprietary noise-canceling technology, maintaining the same level of sound clarity when ANC is activated. Highlights include the inclusion of Yamaha True Sound, a Listening Optimizer that corrects sound in real-time, and adaptive sound that changes depending on the shape of each ear. Other important features include ambient mode, Google Fast Pair, and low-latency mode for gamers. The official stats indicate IPX5 water resistance and 22 hours of total battery life with 6 hours of runt...

Former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty of spying for the government of Saudi Arabia, according to a report from Bloomberg. The jury handed down its judgment in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, where Abouammo was also convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and falsifying records. Abouammo previously worked at Twitter as a media partnerships manager and helped prominent figures in the Middle East and North Africa promote their accounts. However, he leveraged his position to access the email addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates of users who were critical of the Saudi government. Abouammo then transmitted that information to Saudi officials between November 2014 and May 2015 and received gifts in return. In 2019, the Department of Justice...

Amazon’s palm-scanning technology is expanding to 65 Whole Foods locations across California. The checkout devices were introduced in 2020 as part of the Amazon One payment service, allowing customers to pay with a scan of their palm. This is the biggest rollout by the company yet, with the first new Whole Foods locations adding support today in Malibu, Montana Avenue, and Santa Monica. Customers can set up Amazon One by registering their palm print using a kiosk or at a point-of-sale station at participating stores. To register, you need to provide a payment card and phone number, agree to Amazon’s terms of service, and share an image of your palms. Once completed, you can take items to checkout and not have to take out your wallet — or even your phone. A hover of your hand over the devic...

Microsoft’s marking OneDrive’s 15th anniversary with a new landing page, called OneDrive Home, and it should make it easier to keep tabs on your work. Instead of arriving on the My files tab when you first open OneDrive, you’ll find yourself on the new Home page that resembles that dashboard in the online version of Office. Like the Office web app, OneDrive Home contains a list of your files, organized by how recently you accessed them. Above the list are filters that let you sort your documents by Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF file types. It’s easier to understand the new changes once you see them.Image: Microsoft There’s also a new “Activity” column to the right of the “Owner” file field that tells you when someone leaves a comment, @mentions another user, or assigns you a task within...

There’s no doubt that Severance is a hit — the show’s first season made our best entertainment of 2022 list even as it “paints the darkest possible portrait of how megacorporations think about and treat their employees.” For a real-life example of that treatment, all you have to ask is what happens when the people who make Severance ask Apple how big of a hit it really is. In a bit of frustration that will feel familiar to anyone who has tried to figure out what Apple means when touting the performance of its custom ARM processors, it turns out that even Ben Stiller, the executive producer and director of Severance, couldn’t get hold of detailed data on how many people are watching. Here’s what he said in an interview with Decider: “They don’t tell you the numbers. It’s really weird. So, y...

Spotify has been working on a new design for its home tab that will create separate feeds for your music and your podcasts. The company says it’s part of an effort to give you more and better recommendations, but it also addresses a common criticism of the Spotify experience: with every kind of audio smushed together in the app, it can sometimes be hard to figure out. The new home feed, which is rolling out now for Android users and is coming to iOS “in the near future,” actually doesn’t look that different at first glance. But up at the top of the screen are two new buttons: one for Music and one for Podcasts & Shows. Tapping one of those will take you into separate feeds. Music will show you suggestions based on what you’ve been listening to, while Podcasts & Shows will surface t...