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After Math: The calm before the storms
The next couple of weeks are going to be nuts, what with Apple hosting WWDC 2019 in San Jose, CA on Monday and E3 going down in LA starting June 7th. So let's take this opportunity to relax and catch up on some low key entertainment news -- wait, Netflix is going to charge its Canadian customers how much?
After Math: What's the holdup?
This week's theme is waiting. Sonic the Hedgehog fans will have to do three months of it after complaining about Sonic's oddly human teeth, while Julian Assange won't have to do any more to know what charges the Feds are leveling at him. Let's get started already.
Hitting the Books: An army of temps put a man on the moon
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought-provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
After Math: Goodbye, Grumpy Cat, whoa oh oh
Terrible news, everyone! The internet's favorite maladjusted kitteh has gone to the Great Cat Tree in the sky after succumbing to a urinary tract infection earlier this week. She -- yes, Grumpy Cat was a girl -- will be missed. Likewise, Cray Supercomputers' independence, Japan's phone number system and China's access to Wikipedia have come to similar ends over the past seven days.
After Math: Break them up
It's been another week of gaffes from the tech industry's marquee companies -- but then again, when aren't firms living the "move fast, break stuff" credo not shooting themselves in the foot? Google is in antitrust trouble with Indian authorities, Amazon is in hot water with the FTC over child privacy, and even Facebook's co-founder thinks Zuckerberg has strayed too far into Elliot Carver territory.
Hitting the Books: Autonomous cars will do more than drive you around
Welcome, dear readers, to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
After Math: Liar, liar, pants on fire
Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you this week a broken man. My childhood dream of seeing a speedy video game rodent hero break the fourth wall and go on a road trip with a middling white male actor I only sort of recognize has been shattered. Not because he doesn't do exactly that, but because of those teeth. Those human, human teeth.
Hitting the Books: Ever wonder how audio sampling works?
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
Hey Alexa: How can we escape surveillance capitalism?
Where do you go when you want to escape surveillance? When you want to stop feeling like you might be being listened to by microphones, or watched through surveillance cameras, or tracked by invisible tech gremlins burrowed within devices. Certainly nowhere in public. Perhaps it's your car. Maybe it's your home. Or even your bedroom? For some readers, that perimeter of personal freedom likely shrunk in February when news broke that Google "forgot" to tell consumers its Nest Secure came with a built-in microphone.
After Math: No Spoilers!
As the moviegoing public anxiously awaited this weekend's release of Avengers: Endgame, the rest of the tech world moved ahead as if nobody had been snapped. Here are some of the week's top headlines you may have missed while scouring Fandango for open Endgame seats.
Hitting the Books: When better living through technology isn't enough
Welcome to Engadget's newest series, Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
After Math: Move fast and break laws
While the world held its collective breath this week ahead of Special Counsel Mueller's damning report on the current administration's conduct, the tech industry went ahead and let out all the bad news it had been holding onto for just such a moment. Facebook had another data breach -- shocking, I know -- Car2Go got hit with a massive fraud scheme, the Galaxy Fold is just as janky as you thought it'd be and of course everybody was GoT pirating.
Hitting the Books: How calculus is helping unravel DNA's secrets
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
After Math: Eat your heart out, Soundgarden
From the first direct images of a black hole and a nearly-successful private moon landing to self-healing exosuits and self-retrieving rockets, read on for the top stories from what's been a stellar week for space science!
Hitting the Books: A candid look at Tim Cook’s time at Apple
Welcome to Engadget's excerpt series, Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
After Math: It's big ball chunky time
Baseball season is the best season, regardless of what summer tells you. So take a cue from the MLB's Korea marketing team, grab your glove and get ready for 162 games, that's 486 hours, of Great American Pastime. Of course, not everybody is into sportsball -- and that's fine -- we've got plenty of news of companies playing games of their own too.
This week in tech history: Three years of Oculus figuring out VR
At Engadget, we spend every day looking at how technology will shape the future. But it's also important to look back at how far we've come. That's what This Week in Tech History does. Join us every weekend for a recap of historical tech news, anniversaries and advances from the recent and not-so-recent past. This week, we're looking back at a number of key events in the history of Oculus VR. Late March has historically been a huge time for Oculus VR, a company that you can credit for ushering in the modern virtual reality era. Just last week at GDC, Oculus unveiled its second-generation VR headset, the Rift S. But that new product is mostly just an iteration on the original Oculus Rift, which was released just over three years ago, on March 25th, 2016.
After Math: It's the circle of tech
While most of us now need Buzzfeed quizzes about "things only '90s kids would recognize" to remember what a Blockbuster is, the franchise's inevitable demise is still something to be commemorated -- if only by finally returning that VHS copy of Batman Forever you've been holding onto. But even as some companies fade into oblivion, others flourish in the market spaces left over. Here are a few from this week.
After Math: Now let's just wait a Momo
The only thing more popular on the internet than racism is a good hoax. The more batshit, the better. Every wacky conspiracy imaginable, from vaccines causing autism to the world being flat, can be found on the interwebs. But even more popular are the near-mythical hoaxes which have convinced folks that the Slender Man is real and Momo (pictured below) is anything other than a well-photoshopped screencap. And while the following news is in no way fake, it will give you pause -- if even for a Momo.
Russia is going to test an internet ‘kill switch,’ and its citizens will suffer
Russia is planning to disconnect itself from the global internet in a test sometime between now and April. The country says it is implementing an internal internet (intranet) and an internet "kill switch" to protect itself against cyberwar. The question is, would this actually work? "This, as a single tactic, would not be sufficient," explained Bill Woodcock, executive director of Packet Clearing House, via email. "But it hugely reduces their attack surface. So in combination with many other tactics, it's a component of a reasonable strategy."
