In 1993, I got my first taste of Wikipedia-style learning — not from Encarta, the multimedia encyclopedia that defined a generation, but through the Ecorder, a fictional device in Lost Secret of the Rainforest. It was the sequel to EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus, a Sierra On-Line point-and-click adventure, and my first brush with the … Read more
Rollerdrome is essentially the video game version of Rollerball, the fabulous 1975 sci-fi film starring James Caan. In Rollerball, monolithic corporations control society and the least powerful citizens are compelled to compete in lethal roller-skating competitions, in the name of entertainment and classism. (Yes, dystopian fiction existed far before The Hunger Games.) The movie is … Read more
Instagram’s leader wants you to know that the company is going to keep leaning into video. In a short video this morning that seems like it’s aimed at No. 2 Instagram user Kylie Jenner, Instagram head Adam Mosseri lays out bluntly that the app is going to keep shifting away from its photo roots. “I … Read more
Horror fans who stayed in the theater for Ti West’s gory thrill-kill horror movie X back in March got a bright, bloody sample of a project following close on its heels: West’s prequel movie Pearl, a second horror movie laying out the backstory of X’s primary villain. The first full trailer for Pearl is an … Read more
Amazon’s smallest smart display is back on sale at one of the best prices we’ve seen. If you missed the chance to pick up the Echo Show 5 on Prime Day, you can get it now for only $40. That’s 53 percent off its normal price and only $5 more than it was during Amazon’s … Read more
Mark Zuckerberg stared into his webcam, trying to make yet another remote meeting seem urgent. Since Facebook started, he’d made a habit of frankly addressing employees directly at a weekly Q&A. Almost no topic was off-limits. But as the company grew, these sessions had become more scripted. He’d stopped showing up every week, instead letting … Read more
Coinbase is facing a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe into whether it allowed users to trade digital tokens that should have been registered as securities, Bloomberg has reported. Coinbase, involved indirectly in another probe by the SEC and state of New York, recently caught the regulator’s eye after expanding the number of tokens … Read more
Since 1972 there have been 27 leap seconds: additional seconds added to the world’s common clock — Coordinated Universal Time or UTC — to account for changes in the Earth’s rate of rotation. Historically, our concept of time is defined as a fraction of the length of the solar day, but as the Earth’s rate … Read more
Ahead of its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event in August, Samsung is unveiling a new color variant of the flagship S22 it launched earlier this year. Called “Bora Purple” after the Korean word for purple, the new hue will be available only for the smallest S22, not the Plus and Ultra versions, though Samsung said the … Read more
General Motors needs a lot of cathode active materials (CAM) if it’s to reach its goal of making enough electric vehicles to become a completely carbon neutral company by 2040. How much is enough? How about 950,000 tons of the stuff. GM now says it’s reached a deal with LG Chem, one of South Korea’s … Read more