Technology

A cool thing about Google’s Pixel 6 series phones is their unique camera bar design. If the finish of that strip were a different color than black — specifically blue, orange, purple, or red — it would totally look kind of like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And now that you can’t unsee the resemblance, device outfitter Dbrand would like to help make your Pixel 6 device look like one of your favorite childhood heroes. With Google’s latest phone the Pixel 6a releasing next week, Dbrand decided it’s a good time to revisit the sewers and launch its Teenage Mutant Ninja Pixels decals for all three phones. They match the green heroes-in-a-half-shell plus their masks, and include four camera decal strips that reflect the colors of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. Personal...

Sony released a ten-minute-long trailer for The Last of Us Part 1 on Thursday, where the game’s directors talk through some of the improvements coming in the PlayStation 5 remake of Naughty Dog’s iconic game. The trailer takes plenty of opportunities to show off the improved graphics (which look as nice as they have in the leaked screenshots, but it’s not like the game was ugly on the PS3 or PS4), but the most interesting involve changes to the gameplay — Naughty Dog says that the AI for enemies and companions will be improved, that there will be some extra gameplay modes, and that the game’s cutscenes will have audio descriptions for accessibility. When it was originally released in 2013, The Last of Us’ AI was nothing special. The remake, however, apparently builds off of The Last of Us ...

The resurgence of D&D in pop culture continues with an upcoming live-action film set in the fantasy universe. A new trailer for the movie — which has the slightly unwieldy name of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — kicked off San Diego Comic-Con, showing off a film that seems to jump between serious fantasy epic and lighthearted action comedy. Here’s the setup: “A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.” In addition to the trailer, we also got a glimpse at a poster for the film, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes all-in on the “dragons” part of Dungeons & Dragons. If nothing else, the movie boasts an impressive cast, including the likes of ...

YouTube says it will begin removing “instructions for unsafe abortion methods” or content that “promotes false claims about abortion safety.” The company made the announcement on Twitter, saying it falls under its medical misinformation policy. It’s also adding an information panel to related videos that will offer health information about abortion from the National Library of Medicine, similar to what it’s done for vaccines and some other topics. “Starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies,” tweeted the official YouTube account. “Like all of our policies on health/medical topics, we rely on published guidance fro...

TikTok is known for making small businesses go viral overnight, product recommendations that cause a specific shade of blush to sell out everywhere, and convincing thousands of people to make salmon rice bowls for lunch every day. But buzz on the platform has apparently gotten the better of some users, causing them to forget a tried-and-true rule: maybe don’t eat unidentified goo made by a stranger and shipped in plastic flat mailers during a record-breaking heatwave? Since mid-June, a TikToker going by Chef.Pii has been posting about Pink Sauce, a homemade concoction that she’s used as a dipping sauce for chicken and cucumbers and poured on tacos, gyros, and Big Macs. People seemed intrigued — why is it pink? What does it taste like? And the bravest of them wanted to know, is it for sale?...

Google says it’s rolling back its decision to remove a section from the Play Store that listed which permissions an app uses. The company had more or less replaced that info with its Data Safety section, which is supposed to give you an idea of what data apps are collecting and how that data is used. The problem, as several commentators pointed out, is that the information in the Data Safety section came from developers, whereas the app permissions section was generated by Google. By removing it, Google made it impossible for users to do a quick fact-check by comparing the two sections or to use the info from both to get a more complete picture of what an app is up to and what it has access to. In a Twitter thread on Thursday spotted by Android Police, Google says the app permissions secti...

Instagram will soon let anyone on the platform remix your new photos, as long as your account is public. There’ll be a way to turn remixing off, but you’ll have to actively opt out once the option is live — it’ll be enabled by default. In “the coming weeks,” Instagram says it’ll add the ability to “remix” public photos for use inside of Reels, its TikTok-like video service. The change is meant to provide more content for Reels creators to work with as the company goes all in on short-form video in the hopes of keeping up with its explosively popular competitor. Remixing will be enabled by default, but Instagram will provide ways to turn it off, according to Devi Narasimhan, a Meta spokesperson. Users will be able to turn off remixing on individual photos or at an account level through the ...

Recently, Twitter users noticed that the app has started making a new sound — when you pull down to refresh your timeline, notifications, DMs, or pretty much anything else in the official app, there’s a robotic chirp sound that sounds like a futuristic bird or frog. The sound has been polarizing — some people have been mesmerized by it, while others hate it. Thankfully, there are a few ways to make sure you don’t hear it, which I’ll cover in this article. Set your phone to silent The first is astoundingly simple: according to my tests, turning your phone to silent mode makes it so that the sound doesn’t play. On iPhones, that means flipping the ringer switch on the left side of the phone above the volume buttons so the switch is closer to the back of the phone. The pull-to-refresh sound do...

As extreme heat stifles communities around the world this week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that it has “no immediate plans” to give heatwaves names. The July 19th announcement seems to pump the brakes on growing calls to come up with a strategy for ranking and naming heatwaves around the world. In the US, heat kills more people than any other weather-related disaster. Globally, it kills 5 million people a year. But heat spells haven’t always spurred the same careful preparations people might take to, say, shelter from a major storm. The goal of naming heatwaves would be to make it easier to communicate the risks they pose to the public so that people can take measures to stay safe. In the US, heat kills more people than any other weather-related disaster For decades, ...

Google’s latest and most advanced wireless earbuds yet, the Pixel Buds Pro, won’t be on store shelves for another week. But the company has announced that its Android software is already prepared for one of the earbuds’ most convenient new features: the Pixel Buds Pro will be able to switch between devices automatically — no settings menus necessary. Much like the AirPods can hop between other Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Mac) depending on which one you’re actively using, Google’s flagship earbuds will be able to do the same across Android hardware. “Our audio switching technology builds on top of Fast Pair to use contextual information on what you’re listening to in order to switch the audio based on your actions,” Google’s Angela Hsiao wrote in a blog post. “We have more categories that...