Technology

When it debuted in 2020, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Locke and Key got off to a pretty good start. Based on the brilliant comic series from Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez, the show tells the story of the Locke family and their sprawling ancestral home in Massachusetts that also happens to be home to some very cool magical keys. The first season of the show mixed the comic’s dark family drama and fantastical premise with some high-school hijinks ripped right out of Riverdale. But with season two, a lack of a great villain and a sped-up pace took away from what made the show so interesting — namely the magic and the mystery. Now, the series is back with a third and final season that attempts to wrap things up once and for all. But despite some good ideas, it’s not the course correcti...

New rumors are now suggesting that Apple has more smart home devices in the works. The report comes once again from Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman, who claims that the tech giant is currently developing four new smart home devices aimed at making your daily lives more convenient. The first two both revolve around the company’s HomePod range, with one simply being an updated version of the current HomePod Mini while the other will be a revival of the original HomePod, a rumor that Gurman had previously written about already. The spotlight falls on the other two devices, which will be completely new additions to Apple’s lineup of tech gadgets. One of them is claimed to be a new smart display for your kitchen, combining a screen resembling an iPad with smart speakers, while the other will...

The past few months have been turbulent for Instagram, which rolled out new features but subsequently had to backpedal on some of them due to widespread backlash from the Internet, with many commentators criticizing the service for becoming too much like its competitor TikTok. In hopes of getting back on the good side of its users, the social media platform’s boss Adam Mosseri is now redirecting efforts toward still images, announcing a new testing phase for 9:16 portrait images. Mosseri revealed the new test during an AMA session, where he said the service currently supports “tall videos, but you cannot have tall photos on Instagram. So we thought maybe we should make sure that we treat both equally.” As he points out, the app has so far limited portrait images to a maximum ratio of 8:10,...

LG is today announcing two new sets of wireless earbuds. First up are the Tone Free T90 buds, which now become the company’s flagship pair. They still have the signature bacteria-killing UVnano charging case. And like the previous Tone Free FP9, the case can also double as a Bluetooth transmitter, letting you run an aux cable to devices that might lack wireless connectivity — like a treadmill — and still use the earbuds like normal. According to LG’s press release, the noise-canceling T90s have “a new internal structure with larger drivers that helps generate deeper, more satisfying bass.” But what’s more interesting is that they support Dolby Head Tracking “across your favorite content and devices.” Here’s how LG describes that experience: Dolby Head Tracking recalibrates the sound as use...

A security vulnerability on Twitter allowed a bad actor to find out the account names associated with certain email addresses and phone numbers (and yes, that could include your secret celebrity stan accounts), Twitter confirmed on Friday. Twitter initially patched the issue in January after receiving a report through its bug bounty program, but a hacker managed to exploit the flaw before Twitter even knew about it. The vulnerability, which stemmed from an update the platform made to its code in June 2021, went unnoticed until earlier this year. This gave hackers several months to exploit the flaw, although Twitter said it “had no evidence to suggest someone had taken advantage of the vulnerability” at the time of its discovery. Last month’s report from Bleeping Computer suggested otherwis...

The beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is set to arrive next month, with PlayStation players getting access first, followed by those on Xbox and PC. Infinity Ward shared the news at its CDL Champs (Call of Duty League Championship) tournament. As with its previous betas, the dates are separated by console and whether you preordered the game or not. The first early access beta kicks off on September 16th to 17th for PlayStation 4 and 5 players who preordered the game. This is followed by the open beta for all PlayStation players, which begins on September 18th and ends on the 20th. The crossplay beta for players who preordered the game on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC will last from September 22nd to 23rd, while the open crossplay beta for all platforms starts on September 24th and ends o...

Around the same time Meta hiked up the price on its Quest 2 headsets, it also announced that it’s ending Quest 1 support for Population One, a popular battle-royale shooter set in virtual reality. BigBox VR, the Meta-owned developer behind the game, shared the update in a post on its blog, noting that Quest 1 owners will no longer be able to launch or play the game starting October 31st, 2022. BigBox VR says the shutdown is necessary so it can focus on developing new experiences “that will push the boundaries of multiplayer VR.” Quest 1 players can still technically play the game if they have a VR-ready PC, however. The game supports cross-buy, which makes the PC version available via Air Link and Oculus Link. This should let users play Population: One by connecting their Quest 1 headset t...

A smart home without sensors and automations is basically a remote-controlled home. Using your voice or an app to turn lights on isn’t much easier (and in some cases is harder) than flicking on a light switch. Smart is when lights just turn on as you walk into a room. But when you walk in and they don’t turn on, that’s worse. This common smart home frustration is something the Eve Motion Sensor ($39.99), with its shiny new Thread protocol on board, promises to fix. Thread is a mesh networking protocol designed for the smart home. It claims to be faster, more reliable, and more energy-efficient than the current smart home protocols most sensors run on — Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, and Z-Wave. (Don’t buy Wi-Fi motion sensors. They are not good.) While all of these protocols have mesh components, T...

Samsung has officially started to roll out its One UI 5 open beta to Galaxy S22 owners in the US, Germany, and South Korea. The update comes only a few weeks ahead of Android 13’s expected release, and just a few days before Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event. Like the operating system it’s powered by, the One UI 5 beta looks like a relatively small update that adds some customization options, tweaks to notifications, as well as new accessibility and security settings. One UI 5 builds off of Android 13’s theming options by offering up to 16 preset color themes based on your wallpaper and 12 additional color options for your home screen, icons, and quick panels. It also introduces a way to stack similarly-sized widgets on top of one another that’s supposed to help create a less cluttered look....

Your leaf blower battery should be able to charge a laptop. Your drill battery should charge your phone. And while we’re at it, why shouldn’t our ever-more powerful USB-C power adapters be able to charge those power tool batteries as well? Fundamentally, there’s not much difference between a battery bank you buy from Anker and a power tool battery from DeWalt — both generally contain the same 18650 lithium-ion cells. But to do all that, your power tool batteries would need a powerful USB-C port. And that hasn’t really been a thing… till now. The $100 DeWalt DCB094 USB Charging Kit lets you add that port to any DeWalt 20V power tool battery in a literal snap. Slide this quarter-pound adapter onto your battery pack, and you get a bi-directional 100W USB-C PD port. That means not only can you...

If you’re the owner of a Fitbit Versa, Versa 2, or Ionic, you’ll soon no longer be able to transfer music from your computer to your Fitbit device. In a support page spotted by 9to5Google, Fitbit says it’s discontinuing its Fitbit Connect app, leaving you with only two ways to download music to your device: a paid subscription to either Pandora or Deezer. Fitbit Connect is a companion app for Mac and Windows computers that lets you sync fitness data between devices and transfer music to legacy Fitbit devices. Fitbit has slowly been phasing out the software in favor of its mobile app, as it no longer recommends that users download it on its setup page. But without access to Connect, there’s no way to download music to your Fitbit without a paid subscription to either Pandora or Deezer. On i...