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Amazon's Alexa-enabled microwave oven is a real thing, putting us even closer to realizing the promise of a voice-controlled future.

The AmazonBasics Microwave includes "includes dozens of quick-cook voice presets." That means you can cook food with the power of your voice, just like they do on Star Trek. Kind of.

"Customers only use a fraction of the features" of a microwave, Amazon said. It hopes voice commands and Ask Alexa integration will change that. The microwave also has integrated Dash Button functionality, so it can "automatically reorder popcorn."

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Chris Hemsworth gave a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming Men in Black spinoff, in which he stars alongside Tessa Thompson, his Thor: Ragnarok co-star.

Chris Hemsworth uploaded this photo to his Instagram with the caption, "#MIB #PIB #HIB #MWIB #legendsinblack #revengers4life @tessamaethompson."

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Update: Following reports of possible casting considerations for Birds of Prey last week, new reports indicate WB and DC have decided on who will portray Huntress and Black Canary.

Variety reports 10 Cloverfield Lane's Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been chosen to play Huntress, while True Blood and Friday Night Lights' Jurnee Smollett-Bell has been picked to play Black Canary.

Both were mentioned in the earlier reports about casting surrounding the film.

Margot Robbie is expected to return as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey, which recently got a 2020 theatrical release date.

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Life insurance company John Hancock will stop offering traditional policies, according to Venture Beat. Instead, the company, which is one of the oldest and largest life insurance underwriters in the US, will only sell policies that track fitness and...

SpaceX chief Elon Musk has tweeted two photos that give us a peek into the company's Martian dreams. One of the images shows the BFR, the massive rocket SpaceX is developing for deep space missions, while the other shows the BFR and what he called "M...

Following Apple paying 13.1 billion euro ($15.3 billion) in back taxes, the EU antitrust regulator plans to withdraw legal action against Ireland. In 2016 the European Commission ruled that Apple was unfairly given tax breaks in an illegal ‘sweatheart' tax deal with the Irish government. Citing that it gave Apple an ‘significant advantage' over its competition, ruling that Apple had to pay taxes it owed from between 2003 and 2014 - plus interest. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager took legal action against the Irish Government last year for failing to recover the...

Like every year, the new iPhones generate so much hype that there are thousands of fans queuing in front of the Apple stores worldwide. This time around Huawei seized the opportunity to do some old-fashioned trolling. In front of the Apple store on Orchard Road in Singapore, a few Huawei employees gave away about 200 power banks for the people waiting on the queue the whole night. The packaged power banks had a message: "Here's a power bank, You'll need it." It's been years now that the Android community, including the OEMs, is mocking Apple for the iPhone's unsatisfactory...

Renault, one of Europe's major automakers, is trying to help us imagine a world with fewer cars. Earlier this year, it unveiled the EZ-GO concept, a sort of anti-Uber autonomous ride-sharing vehicle for the masses. Now, it has taken the wraps off...

As a person who works on my phone during my commutes to write news and stories, I have always batted around the idea of picking up a BlackBerry with a keyboard. The BlackBerry name is synonymous with devices that offer a fully functional physical keyboard with the display, something that is very unique in this era of touchscreen-everything. But for multiple reasons, it has never worked out.

Slowly but surely, however, the company is finally starting to meet those requests. Does anyone else want a fully functional up-to-date Android device, with a keyboard, and a device that is nice to hold? If so, then the Key2 LE may catch your eye.

So to start, I did have some hands-on time with the KEYone last year. It was a sizeable device, but it didn’t fit quite right in my hands. BlackBerry then released its new flagship, the Key2, in June 2018, and in the process refined it from many angles, both with regard to design and internals. Most recently, BlackBerry this month announced the Key2 LE, a cheaper variant of its Key2 that is even thinner and lighter (see the details in the table below). Meanwhile its keyboard has a slight indented angle to the center, allowing users familiar with the layout to find their position easily.

The highlight of the Key2 LE is certainly its design, in particular the Atomic Red color version and its red frets across the keyboard. Rather than being a single piece of chassis, the frets look separate and really bring the look together. BlackBerry is known for its business-focused devices and security, so while most business users will be going after the ‘Slate’ color, most of the press at IFA this year were fixated on the Champagne and Atomic Red designs.

In terms of software, the device a full-fledged Android phone, with the Play Store and BlackBerry-specific applications such as BBM. Even though my thoughts go back to the BB executive whom once said ‘we have the Google’, for anyone that had qualms about using Android on BlackBerry, the integration appears to be solid. The Key2 LE will ship with Oreo 8.1 as its base, with Pie 9.0 coming at a later date.

What users from non-BB devices might not get used to is the screen size. Having a physical keyboard eats up some of that real-estate, and the BlackBerry KEY-series phones only have a 4.5-inch display as a result.  The with that said, the 1080x1620 resolution hides an extremely respectable pixel density of 432 pixels per inch, similar to most flagships, and that resolution is actually a 3:2 aspect ratio (or 2:3 because the vertical is longer). By equipping all three KEY phones - the KEYone, the Key2, and the Key2 LE - with essentilly the same LCD, BlackBerry ensures that they all provide a similar user experience and eliminates any need to customize its BBM software for particular KEY models.

The new Key2 and Key2 LE smartphones are based the Snapdragon 660 and 636 SoCs (respectively), featuring four high-performance Kryo Gold cores and four low-power Kryo Silver cores. This provides considerably higher performance than their predecessor, the KEYone, which was powered by the Snapdragon 625 SoC and its eight low-power Cortex-A53 cores. The more expensive Key2 comes with 6 GB of LPDDR4 and 64 or 128 GB of storage, whereas the Key2 LE is equipped with 4 GB of DRAM (already better than the default KEYone) as well as 32 or 64 GB of NAND. A microSD card slot is present, and dual SIM models will be available.

Key2 and Key2 LE

Other features on the Key2 LE device include a fingerprint sensor in the spacebar, 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, a 3000 mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a USB Type-C port. For cameras, the rear of the phone has a dual camera setup combining a 13MP f/2.2 wide-angle camera with a 5MP f/2.4 telephoto camera for zoomed shots, while the front-facing camera is an 8MP fixed focus unit. BlackBerry states that the rear cameras can record up to 4K30 with HDR. By contrast, the flagship Key2 has a larger battery and better cameras (see the table below for details).

One of the additional things I stated when handling the device was that it felt light when I first picked it up. It did feel really light, but I’m honestly not sure if that’s because I was expecting it to be heavy with a keyboard – compared to some of my other phones, it is basically the same – but it was lighter than I expected.

BlackBerry promotes the Key2 LE as its thinnest smartphone to date, and will be available from September. The 32GB version is set to retail for $400.

*Apologies for bad photos. Taken in a dimly lit demo area at an after-show gathering at a restaurant

** The official styling is KEY2 LE. Our style guide calls for Key2 LE. Personally I think it looks better.

BlackBerry KEYone, KEY2, & KEY2 LE
	KEY2	KEY2 LE	KEYone
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 4 × Kryo Gold at 2.2 GHz 4 × Kryo Silver at 1.8 GHz	Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 4 × Kryo Gold at 1.8 GHz 4 × Kryo Silver at 1.6 GHz	Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 8 × Cortex-A53 at 2 GHz
	Adreno 512	Adreno 509	Adreno 506
RAM	6 GB LPDDR4	4 GB LPDDR4	3 GB LPDDR3
Storage	64 - 128 GB microSD	32 - 64 GB microSD	32 GB (eMMC) microSD
Display	4.5-inch 1620x1080 (434 ppi) with Gorilla Glass 3		4.5-inch 1620x1080 (434 ppi) with Gorilla Glass 4
Network	2G: GSM/EDGE 3G: WCDMA (DB-DCHSDPA, DC-HSUPA), TD-SCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA1x 4G: depends on the version
LTE	Down: 600 Mb/s Up: 150 Mb/s		Down: 300 Mb/s Up: 150 Mb/s
Audio	Stereo speakers 3.5-mm TRRS audio jack
Rear Camera	Sensor 1: 12 MP, f/1.8, 1/2.3", 1.28µm dual pixel PDAF Sensor 2: 12 MP, f/2.6, 1.0µm, PDAF Dual LED flash	Sensor 1: 13 MP, f/2.2, 1/3.1", 1.12µm PDAF Sensor 2: 5 MP, f/2.4, 1.12µm, depth sensor Dual LED flash	12 MP, f/2.0, 1/2.3", 1.55µm Dual LED flash
Front Camera	8 MP, f/2.0, 1.12µm	8 MP	8 MP, f/2.2, 1.12µm
Battery	3500 mAh QC 3.0	3000 mAh QC 3.0	3505 mAh QC 3.0
OS	Android 8.0, upgradeable to 9.0		Android 7.1
Wireless I/O	802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC		802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC
Wired I/O	USB 3.0 Type-C	USB 2.0 Type-C	USB 3.0 Type-C
Sensors	Fingerprint, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, proximity, ambient light
Navigation	A-GPS, GPS, GLONASS, BDS2
SIM Size	NanoSIM, Dual SIM
Dimensions	Height: 151.4 mm | 5.96" Width: 71.8 mm | 2.83" Thickness: 8.5 mm | 0.33"	Height: 150.3 mm | 5.92" Width: 71.8 mm | 2.83" Thickness: 8.4 mm | 0.33"	Height: 149.1 mm | 5.87" Width: 72.4 mm | 2.85" Thickness: 9.4 mm | 0.37"
Weight	168 grams | 5.93 oz	156 grams | 5.5 oz	180 grams | 6.35 oz
Colors	Black Silver	Black Champagne Atomic Red	Black/Metallic Bronze Black Edition
Launch Price	from €649/$649	from €399/$400	from $549/€599/£499

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Next year, Oklahoma City residents will be able to have their groceries delivered to them by an autonomous vehicle. Udelv announced this week that a new partnership will bring its self-driving delivery vehicles to the city's largest local chain of gr...

The world's first (and second) hydrogen-powered trains have entered service in northern Germany, marking the start of a new era for sustainable travel. Two Coradia iLint trains, made by Alstom, have begun working the line between Cuxhaven and Buxtehu...

iPhones have never been what you'd call affordable and this year is no different with the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max. In China in particular, the latest Apple smartphones start at CNY 6499 ($946), CNY 8699 ($1266), and CNY 9599 ($1397), respectively. But in China, there's also Xiaomi, and Xiaomi has its own XR, XS, and XS Max to offer. In a clear dig at Apple, the Chinese maker has put up electronics bundles named like the latest iPhones, and priced them the same as what Apple charges for them. Xiaomi XR bundle So for the price of the least expensive 2018 iPhone, Xiaomi's XR...

For more fall TV coverage, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands now, or buy it here. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

Arrow is shooting off into a new chapter in season 7, which begins with Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) behind bars after his unmasking as Star City’s resident vigilante. But there’s been an even bigger change behind the scenes as Beth Schwartz, who started on the series as a writer in its inaugural season, has taken over as show­runner. Here, she gets to the point about Arrow’s new season.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What are the challenges of taking over a show in its seventh season?
BETH SCHWARTZ: The challenges are sort of: How do we tell new stories? How do we shake things up? I always like to go into the writers’ room and say, “What have we never done before? How can we tell a story differently, from a fresh perspective?”

What is this season’s theme?
Redemption. It hits all of our characters, especially Oliver being in prison. the way things ended last season, he’s got to prove himself to part of the city he’s been lying to for six years. He was their mayor and the Green Arrow, and they had no idea. Everyone’s got mixed opinions about him as a person, and he’s going to have to redeem himself through the season.

How does the theme of redemption touch the other characters? 
As we showed in the trailer for the season, there haven’t been vigilantes in five months. It’s actually illegal. So they all have to kind of, the same way that Oliver has to rebuild himself, they have to figure out what it means to be a hero in the city without going out as a vigilante. They all turn to something different.

How is Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) handling Oliver being in jail? I remember we got a lot of questions about this during Comic-Con. 
We’re going to see a different side to Felicity than we’ve ever seen. She wasn’t in on the decision that Oliver made — the deal he made which led him to prison — so she’s going to take matters into her own hands a lot this season. She’s going to fight back, and we’re just going to see a different side to her that I think the fans are going to be really excited about. That’s all I can say.

At Comic-Con, you told me that this season would be dark and compared it to season 1. Why was it important to try to recapture the feeling of season 1?
For me personally, being on a show this long and having such a huge series moment of Oliver finally saying he’s the Green Arrow, it kind of brought us back to how did he start that journey and sort of answering season 1, in terms of basically now that everyone knows who he is, he has some explaining to do and he’s got to sort of answer to the city. There’s just a lot of callbacks to season 1 that we felt were fitting because of that reveal.

You’ve been on the show since the beginning. In your opinion, when is Arrow at its best?
I think Arrow is at its best when just threading through a lot of mystery. There’s going to be a lot of that this season, which is why I have been the spoiler police, as I’ve been called. If you think back to the pilot, it’s all about how did he become Arrow. We’re keeping that kind of tone, where it’s not just that it’s dark in tone, but there’s going to be a lot of mystery. Some of my favorite parts of the show are when we’ve been able to pull off those cool reveals.

According to Stephen, Oliver is pretty unheroic at the beginning of the season. Why did it make sense to take the character in that direction?
I think the cool part of him being in prison is that having a hero be in prison is very challenging, especially for Oliver. Just being able to survive prison, similar to when he was on Lian-Yu, he has to make some questionable choices to survive. We sort of wanted to write to the real of what that situation would look like if he was locked up with a bunch of previous villains that he’d previously put in there, and they’re now on the same playing field. There’s so much conflict there. He can’t do things the way he did them as the Green Arrow. The rules are different in prison.

The shower fight scene is the climax of that trailer. There’s an added level of brutality to it that feels new for Arrow. Is that indicative of the season as a whole?
Yeah, James Bamford, who directed the , just killed that fight sequence. It was very ambitious and worked really hard on, and it came out so well and we’re very excited for everyone to see the full thing. But, yeah, since returning to season 1, we wanted our fight sequences to be a little grittier, a little more personal, painful like you said, kind of in your face. We want to feel Oliver’s pain, and we definitely do in that fight sequence.

Colton Haynes returns to the show full time. How is Roy different from when we’ve seen him in the past, or from where we left him?
He’ll be the same Roy that we love. Last time we saw him, he went off with Thea, so a lot has happened since then, and he’ll be affected by what happened when he left when he returns.

We already know that we’ll see Bronze Tiger, Brick, and Derek Sampson in season 7. Can we expect any other familiar faces to pop up this season?
Yes, there will be another familiar face in prison, but I’m not going to say who.

Arrow returns Monday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m. on the CW.

Kenya Barris made a major career move recently when the Black-ish creator left his four-year contract with ABC to join the Netflix family in a multimillion-dollar deal. Behind the scenes, that decision apparently had a lot to do with the infamous “Please, Baby, Please” episode of his sitcom that the network pulled.

“There’s this P.C. culture that’s been created where people feel like not talking about things makes it better,” Barris, opening up on the episode in a new Hollywood Reporter profile, said, “but I think it makes it worse and that’s why I wanted to talk about the last year.”

The episode reportedly involved the subject of the NFL kneeling protests during the National Anthem, though ABC Entertainment Group president Channing Dungey later told press that “was not even really the issue.” According to THR, the treatment also would have included news footage of President Donald Trump and the Charlottesville attacks, framed around Anthony Anderson’s Dre telling his infant son Devante a bedtime story about recent events.

“When you’re putting a baby to sleep, you’re trying to soothe whatever anxieties they’re having,” Barris explained. “So, this was about me trying to pat the butt of the country and soothe people.”

The trade reports the network’s decision to ultimately pull the episode involved a fear that ABC would “be alienating” the red-state viewership, which they’ve been courting since Trump entered the White House, as well as a fear of provoking Trump himself during Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets.

A rep for ABC did not respond to EW’s request for comment, but Barris confirmed, “I know there was some concern about partisanship and the way the episode was angled and the balance in terms of some of the stories. On network TV, one of the things I’ve learned is that you have to talk about things from both sides.”

In the end, “Please, Baby, Please” went through so much editing that it was no longer “a true representation of what we intended to do,” Barris said. “Because if it was, we would’ve shown it.”

ABC previously released a statement to Variety, stating, “One of the things that has always made Black-ish so special is how it deftly examines delicate social issues in a way that simultaneously entertains and educates. However, on this episode, there were creative differences we were unable to resolve.”

Cast members Tracee Ellis Ross and Anderson have both spoken out about ABC’s decision to pull the episode with concern over its larger implications.

“To a certain extent, I have purposefully stayed out of those conversations because I have had no power to do something beyond that,” Ross told THR in June. “So, I have asked for the information and pushed for the information that I felt would be helpful to me and constructive in what I can do with it, because I find it frightening.”

“He’d given his blood, sweat and tears to , which they had signed off on every step of the way — from the outline, to the script, to the table read, to the point where they actually spent the money and made the episode,” Anderson commented for Barris’ profile. “And I don’t know what those conversations were, but we entered into this partnership with the understanding that we would be able to tell the stories that we wanted to tell.”

Black-ish returns to ABC for its season 5 premiere on Tues., Oct. 16 at 9 p.m. ET.

Read THR‘s full profile with Barris here.

Today alongside the new iPhone XS, XS Max and the XR, Apple first introduced the new Apple Watch Series 4. The fourth generation of the watch sees a major revamp in its specifications and the most visible external design change to date.

Inside the new Apple Watch 4, we see Apple transition to a new SiP (Silicon in Package) design with a new S4 SoC containing for the first time a custom Apple designed CPU and GPU. We don’t have much information on the specifications here other than the new dual-CPU is 64-bit capable and is promised to perform twice as fast as it’s predecessors – which used Arm’s Cortex A7.

It’s to be noted that the 64-bit part of the new CPU might not be as clear as one might think, as there’s been some evidence (Credit @KhaosT) that the Watch might be running in ARM64_32 mode, which would be a 32-bit submode of AArch64 that allows for 32-bit pointers while retaining the ISA advantages of AArch64. Such a mode would be most optimal for a low-memory device such as smartwatch.

Prior generations of the Apple watch used a variation of an Imagination SGX core. For the S4 again Apple claims it’s a new custom GPU – again we don’t have any details here other than what Apple talked about in the presentation.

Finally the new S4 SiP includes new accelerometer and gyroscope functionality that has 2x the dynamic range in terms of measurable values, as well as able to sample data at 8x the speed. What this allows Apple to do is to collect a lot more data at higher accuracy and try to determine the scenario that you’re in. For example Apple claims the new watch is able to discern between falling, tripping and slipping just based on the movements that the person makes – whose detection is now enables  by the new hardware sensor capabilities.

The new watch comes in 40 and 44mm sizes, and is fully compatible with prior generation Watch bands.

The core new characteristic of the new watch is the larger screen which now achieves a higher screen-to-body ratio on the watch. This is actually a pretty great improvement as the new screen feels a lot more pronounced.

To emphasize the new screen, Apple provides new watch faces with configurable information. Here the new watch allows for up to 8 complications which are at the disposal of the user. There’s also several new animated wallpapers available – these are pre-recorded videos that just play back on the watch face.

The new watch has also lost some of its thickness as it’s now 10.7mm versus the series 3’s 11.4mm. Here I’m still hoping one day we can see even thinner models, as it’s my personal least favourite aspect of smartwatches in general. Even though its thickness got reduced and it offers more performance and features, the new watch is said to maintain the same battery life longevity as its predecessors.

The sides of the watch have also changed quite a bit. On the left side we now have a larger speaker grill; Apple promises the new speaker to be a lot louder and surprisingly so for a watch. Unfortunately during the loud hands-on this was quite hard to evaluate.

On the right side we see the microphone being relocated between the button and the crown dial. The reasoning here is to reduce echo effects from the new more powerful speaker. The crown has been improved and now gives haptic feedback, trying to mimick the  “clicking wheel” feel such as in more mechanical dials, or more aptly, the clicking of a mouse wheel when you scroll with it. The haptics here are enabled not by the crown itself, but by a vibration motor inside the watch.

On the back of the watch we don’t see much visible changes, however we now find a new improved optical heartrate sensor which is able to detect the heart rhythm.

What’s actually the most interesting in terms of the health monitoring capabilities of the new watch is that it actually includes for the first time ever a ECG (electrocardiogram) functionality in an over the counter consumer device. Here all you have to do while wearing the watch is to touch the crown – which serves as an anode and closes the loop created across your arms and heart.

Apple was very proud to be the first consumer device to enable this and had even received approval by the US FDA. It’s to be noted that this will beg some questions on how the feature will be implemented in other regions, as using and advertising such medical monitoring features might be disallowed if you don’t have regulatory approval.

Apple definitely is leading the smartwatch sector by a significant margin, and the company was even keen to point out that the Apple Watch is the most popular watch overall as well (Though that’s just because there’s no one dominating classic watch in a similar position).

The new Apple watch with GPS is available for $399 and the LTE variant comes in at $499 and are both available starting September 17^th, with preorders starting this Friday the 14^th.  Overall I found the new Apple Watch 4 a lot more attractive than its predecessors – though it’s still a quite steep price point.

Hearing aids were critical pieces of wearable tech before the wearable tech revolution became a thing. However, while they’ve long provided invaluable assistance to hearing-impaired people, they haven’t always kept pace with the smartphone-connected wearable solutions we’ve become accustomed to.

With its new Styletto hearable, Signia is hoping to change that. With the look of a stylish Bluetooth-headset and an Airpods-inspired charging case, Styletto users will be able to control volume and audio settings from a connected iOS or Android device.

The device charges like a pair of truly wireless earphones, with a charging dock/carrying case that’ll fit neatly into a shirt pocket. The case offers enough juice for four days of continuous on-the-go use.

Related: Best smartwatch 2018

The company wants this model to bridge the gap between the health and consumer wearable market with a device it says customers will be proud to wear. It’ll come with a choice of three brushed metal finishes (Dark Granite / Silver, Cosmic Blue / Rose Gold, and Snow White / Rose Gold) with a slim form factor and smooth lines.

Of course, the device will need to perform well beyond its style, connectivity and functionality in order to win over users. Signia says it has crisp and perfect audio, with NX Audiolog tech promising industry-leading sound and a top-quality natural voice processor.

Signia’s Maarten Marmentlo said: “Hearing aids have long been associated as being out of date and not at the cutting edge of today’s cool technology and we wanted to change that perception. Styletto has implemented the best possible technology to ensure that not only does the product deliver incredible sound, but is also a very user-friendly device.”

Have health tech companies done enough to keep pace with the consumer tech era? Are there any particular devices that stand out from the crowd? Drop us a line with your thoughts @TrustedReviews on Twitter.

The post Signia’s new Styletto hearable wouldn’t look out of place at the Apple launch appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

Nine plus Nine equals… 18 episodes.

In another promising sign of new life for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, NBC announced on Friday that it has ordered five additional episodes of the beloved cop comedy starring Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher. NBC had initially ordered 13 episodes for the upcoming sixth season.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine was rescued by the network in May almost immediately after Fox canceled the veteran comedy. The show — which also stars Melissa Fumero, Terry Crews, Joe Lo Truglio, Chelsea Peretti, Stephanie Beatriz, Joel McKinnon Miller and Dirk Blocker — will return to the air sometime during the 2018-19 TV season.

Series co-creator Dan Goor said earlier this summer that he was expecting “no substantive changes” to the series in its new home and that he planned to continue to pursue the socially conscious, issue-oriented episodes that the show has become known for, including one that would address sexual assault/harassment and the #MeToo movement. For more on season 6, head over here.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google were threatened by lawmakers from three distinct quarters on Wednesday. A leaked email from the largest US telecom lobbying group tells us where this is headed. One threat came during testimony from Facebook's Sheryl Sa...

Fitness apps aren't anything new, but none of them can really replicate how it is to be in a class, with the instructor encouraging you in real-time or helping you out if you can't quite do those push ups. Mirror, however, aims to do for fitness clas...

Google has analyzed Ethereum with its public dataset BigQuery. Data such as the number of transfers and transaction costs associated are available. An interesting tidbit gleaned from the article is that the most popular smart contract by transaction count is CrytoKitties game. Tokens can be tracked and smart contracts can be analyzed because most of them are open source. Like its predecessor, Bitcoin, you might think of the Ethereum blockchain as an immutable distributed ledger. However, creator Vitalik Buterin extended its set of capabilities by including a virtual machine that can execute arbitrary code stored on the blockchain as smart contracts. Discussion

Since 2002, iRobot's Roomba has been something of a status symbol: a robot vacuum that can clean your floors while you sit back and relax. It's steadily become better and more efficient at cleaning since it debuted -- the last flagship model, the Roo...

Netflix has signed a big name for its upcoming The Witcher series: Henry Cavill — coming off a scene-stealing performance in Mission: Impossible – Fallout — is taking on a lead role.

The Man of Steel actor will lead the cast of The Witcher playing the role of Geralt of Rivia. This will be Cavill’s first regular TV role since Showtime’s series The Tudors, which ended in 2010.

Based on the best-selling fantasy series, The Witcher is described as “an epic tale of fate and family. Geralt of Rivia, a solitary monster hunter, struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts. But when destiny hurtles him toward a powerful sorceress, and a young princess with a dangerous secret, the three must learn to navigate the increasingly volatile Continent together.” 

The season consists of eight episodes with Lauren Schmidt Hissrich (Marvel’s Daredevil) as showrunner and Alik Sakharov (Game of Thrones) directing four episodes (Alex Garcia Lopez and Charlotte Brändström are also directing two episodes each). 

Activists crashed Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearing on Tuesday morning by protesting the event wearing costumes inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale.

The group, dressed in the red cloaks and white bonnets women are are forced to wear in the dystopian drama, silently opposed the Washington, D.C. event, which marked the start of a four-day hearing for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

The Hulu series, which is set in a world in which women live as enslaved concubines under a theocratic dictatorship, was used to highlight Kavanaugh’s potential threat to women’s rights.

“Brett Kavanaugh is an extremist ideologue who, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, will take away women’s basic rights,” read a statement issued to The Hill by the activists, who were present on behalf of the group Demand Justice.

They also blasted what they believe to be “anti-abortion, anti-healthcare and anti-women” rhetoric demonstrated by Kavanaugh.

Women dressed in Handmaid’s Tale costumes outside day 1 of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing —> pic.twitter.com/jwaLXmcU3S

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) September 4, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

“Right now in America, far too many women of color cannot access safe, affordable healthcare and the ability to decide whether, when and how to raise thriving families is out of reach,” the statement continues. “Brett Kavanaugh will take this already harsh reality and make it worse.”

Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book, The Handmaid’s Tale has been invoked for political activism before.

Protestors donned handmaids’ costumes during the arrival of Vice President Mike Pence and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a New York City summit last month.

Alyssa Milano recently sported the show’s garb at a “Rise Up For Roe” rally in Phoenix, thrown in support of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. The actress held up a sign that read, “Never Kavanaugh, Never Gilead,” referencing the fictitious country from the Emmy-winning hit.

Ane Crabtree, the costumer designer for the acclaimed hit, has previously shared her support for those using her designs to provoke social change. In the wake of Tuesday’s protest, she retweeted an image from the event.

@AneCrabtree #HandmadeHour #PlannedParenthood Supporters of Planned Parenthood outside the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/wg1tTEYJM1

— Barrett Hong (@BarrettHong) September 3, 2018

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“Every time it happens I actually, physically fall to the floor crying, because it’s more than emotional. It goes through my soul, when I read this,” she told Think Progress in May of seeing the pieces worn by activists. “I never thought that a girl from my upbringing, from Kentucky, from a very conservative place, from my background, I never thought that I would have anything to say, even indirectly, via costumes.”

“That gives me hope,” she added. “There is something we all can do, and it may not feel big at the time, but it resonates. And thank God for social media, so more people can see it.”

A few weeks ago, John McAfee launched the Bitfi cryptocurrency wallet, along with a $250,000 bounty open to anyone who can extract coins off the $120 device. Since then, multiple security holes have been found, and a 15 year old even managed to play Doom on one. Today, security researchers claim they've found a way to extract the private keys generated by the device, allowing the wallet's contents to be stolen. The researchers say they don't intend to release the exploit code, as it would put thousands of BitFi users at risk. After being blasted for the "unhackable" claim on social media, Bitfi announced that they are withdrawing the bounty program. "Effective immediately, we are closing the current bounty programs which have caused understandable anger and frustration among researchers." Discussion

LEGO has built its first life-size, drivable car - and decided to make it a Bugatti, no less.

Fully detailed on LEGO’s website, the LEGO Technic is as close to a 1:1  copy of the Bugatti Chiron as possible, built from LEGO Technic elements and powered by the same motor technology used in standard LEGO Technic models. Check out a video of it in action: just don’t expect it to go too fast.

A true Bugatti Chiron next to the LEGO Technic Bugatti Chiron. Photo credit: LEGO.

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Who needs a desk when you can just sit back in a recliner and surround yourself with monitors? That's the basic idea behind Acer's Predator Thronos gaming chair. It looks less like a piece of furniture and more like something you'd find in an arcade....

Last month, Google introduced its Titan Key -- a physical security key used for two-factor authentication -- and now it's widely available in the US. For $50, you'll get a USB security key and a Bluetooth security key as well as a USB-C to USB-A adap...