Geek News

There's a good chance you've seen a classic GIF and wondered just where it came from. But where do you start looking if the answer isn't obvious, and you don't want to comb through a dedicated website? If you use Twitter, you just have to ask. Filmmaker Matthew Cherry has launched an informal #GifHistory project where he'll track down the source video for a GIF, whether it's by himself or with the help of others. The source of that blinking reaction GIF (spoiler: it's former Giant Bomb staffer Drew Scanlon) may be a quick tweet away. We wouldn't treat #GifHistory like an AI assistant -- there's only so much a few humans can do. Even so, an effort like this might be more important than it seems at first glance. GIF creators seldom provide context in the first place, and when they do it's frequently buried deep in a web forum (assuming there's even an archive at all). Projects like this not only satisfy curiosity, they help explain and p...

A number of organizations and websites are planning an online day of action meant to garner more support for a Senate vote that would reverse the FCC's removal of net neutrality protections . The Senate is currently one vote away from overturning the FCC's decision and the day of action aims to convince one more Senator to vote in favor of protecting net neutrality. Taking place on February 27th, Operation: #OneMoreVote is already backed by companies like Tumblr, Etsy, Vimeo, Medium, Imgur, Sonos, Namecheap and DuckDuckGo. Groups behind BattleForTheNet.com, which include Fight for the Future, Demand Progress and the Free Press Action Fund, are calling for the demonstration. They've backed similar events before such as last year's net neutrality Day of Action and 2012's online protest against SOPA. Groups participating in Operation: #OneMoreVote will display alerts on their websites encouraging visitors to call, email and tweet their Senators and Representativ...

Google has reached a deal to end Getty Images' European complaint over photo copyrights, and it's quite likely that you'll notice the effects. A new agreement between the two will see Google obtain a "multi-year" license for Getty's photos in its products in exchange for reforming its approach to copyright in image search. Google will do more to highlight copyright attribution for the photos you find, so you'll know whether or not you'd need to pay for a picture. It will also pull "view image" links for pictures to reduce the number of direct downloads. In the European Commission complaint, Getty had accused Google of effectively being a one-stop piracy shop: you could easily download and view copyrighted photos without visiting the host site or understanding the legality of a download. Google has long had an option to filter photos by licensing rights , but that only helps if you already intend to honor image permissions. The changes li...

If you're any kind of media nerd you know about VLC, the software video player that can handle just about any format or codec you throw at it. It's also on a ton of platforms, like macOS, Windows , Linux and even Xbox One . Now the ubiquitous app has a brand new version that supports hardware decoding for 4K and 8K playback, more 360-degree video and 3D audio, HDR and HDR tone-mapping, streaming to Chromecast and more. Code-named after Terry Pratchett's fictional Lord Vetinari , VLC 3.0 will offer the new features across all major platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Apple TV and Chrome OS (along with Windows, Mac and Linux systems). Venturebeat reports that the new version fixes more than 1,500 bugs, shares the same code across platforms, and has been in the works for three years. The release also supports 10bit video, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs and will let you browse local network and network-attached storage (NAS) drives for media. Other h...

LG's V30 smartphone arrived last fall as a strong flagship with notable flaws, but we loved how much it suited the vlog life. Rumor has it that LG will announce a new model at the upcoming Mobile World Congress: The V30s, a largely similar phone equipped with a new AI-powered camera. Per the rumor mill ( ETNews via Phone Radar ), the V30s' AI camera would work with an "LG Lens" functionality similar to Google Lens on the Pixel 2 or Bixby Vision on Samsung's Galaxy S8. In other words, point the phone at an object and the camera will recognize it and provide on-screen context. It's unclear if that extends beyond AI recognition to the heights of assistanceship that Samsung's and Google's AI-plus-camera platforms aspire to be. Scuttlebutt also noted that the LG V30s should offer 256GB of internal storage, the same as the hideously expensive 2 million won ($1,800) V30 Signature Edition and double the 128GB cap of the stock LG V30. The new model w...

Amazon Studios has a head executive once again. Back in October, the film and TV production division's previous chief Roy Price had resigned days after he was publicly accused of sexual harassment. Today, NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke was named as his replacement, and is expected to remain at the network until she transitions into her new position heading Amazon Studios. Amazon chose Salke from a pool of female executives; The company had deliberately focused on considering accomplished women for the top position in the wake of Price's departure. The decision will close a difficult chapter for the studio: News surfaced last August that Amazon was investigating Price after TV producer Isa Hackett reported that he'd made explicit and inappropriate remarks while both were promoting Amazon's show The Man In The High Castle at San Diego Comic-Con 2015. But it wasn't until Hackett gave details of the encounter in an interview last October that Amazo...

Facebook will soon be home to a half-hour dramedy series starring Elizabeth Olsen, Deadline reports. The show is currently untitled, but was formerly known as Widow , and is thought to be about a young widow who's reconnecting with people from her past while she deals with the loss of her husband. It was created by Kit Steinkellner ( Z: The Beginning of Everything ) and Switched at Birth creator Lizzy Weiss will serve as showrunner. Facebook Watch has quite a bit of sports content , both games and reality shows with pro athletes , but Facebook said last year that it was willing to spend $1 billion on original programming in 2018. So far, the company has announced a Kerry Washington-produced drama called Five Points and a show called Sacred Lies produced by two of the people behind True Blood . Olsen is another substantial get for Facebook, which is looking to compete with other platforms like Netflix and Hulu. "I couldn't be prouder of the group we have brought t...

We've got great news this week for nation-state employees tasked with using social media to spark a class war in previously stable democracies! Facebook is patenting technology to decide if its users are upper, middle or working class -- without even using the usual marker for social class: an individual's income (the patent considers this a benefit). Facebook's patent plan for " Socioeconomic Group Classification Based on User Features " uses different data sources and qualifiers to determine whether a user is "working class," "middle class," or "upper class." It uses things like a user's home ownership status, education, number of gadgets owned, and how much they use the internet, among other factors. If you have one gadget and don't use the internet much, in Facebook's eyes you're probably a poor person. Facebook's application says the algorithm is intended for use by "third parties to increase awaren...

Logan Paul, the YouTube star who came under fire recently after posting a video of a corpse , is at the center of yet another controversy. This time around, Paul is facing backlash for uploading a video in which he's seen shooting two lifeless rats with a Taser gun. As if that wasn't enough, in a now-deleted tweet he joined the Tide Pods internet challenge, suggesting he'd eat one for every retweet he got. Perhaps that's just his sense of humor, but Paul should have known that everything he does from now on will be heavily scrutinized. Yet, somehow he thought it would be a good idea to show his viewers a display of animal cruelty and to promote edible chemicals. This comes only about a week after Paul's first public interview since the issue with his "Suicide Forest" video in January , which he subsequently took down and apologized for in a second video. Paul went on ABC's Good Morning America and told host Michael Strahan he was just "a good ...

Last March, Razer put forth a way to earn points that could be redeemed for the company's peripherals like keyboards and mice. All you needed to do was to launch games via Razer's Cortex desktop software and play up to five hours of eligible games each day. Unfortunately, this "Paid to Play" initiative is now at an end, at least temporarily. Razer will suspend the program beginning on March 1, based on what the company calls negative feedback from the community. It's unclear what specific complaints Razer is responding to, though one forum member hints that people were re-selling gear earned with the virtual zSilver currency on Ebay. The virtual currency itself isn't going away, though. You can still earn zSilver if you grab Razer gear using zGold (another virtual currency that you buy with real money), actively contribute on Razer Insider, log in daily on Razer Cortex, sync your Steam account with Cortex: Deals and subscribe to the deals newsletters. ...

At its Communities Summit in Europe today, Facebook launched its Communities Leadership Program , an initiative meant to "invest in people building communities." The social network has pledged "tens of millions of dollars," including up to $10 million in grants that will fund initiatives proposed by individual awardees. Up to five people will be selected for residencies, while up to 100 will be chosen for a fellowship program. Residents will get up to $1 million for their proposals, while fellows will receive up to $50,000 for specific community initiatives. The company will also expand its Community Leadership Circles program, which is like a Meetup for local members of the neighborhood, as well as add more people to its Groups for Power Admins. It's not clear whether you have to have started a group on Facebook to be eligible for the grants, but the company's statement does say it wants to "empower leaders from around the world who are building co...

Yesterday, Viacom CFO Wade Davis said during an earnings call that the company is planning to launch its own streaming service this year, TechCrunch reports. Davis said that while withholding much of its content from other streaming services has reduced the revenue it could have collected, it also allowed the company to go forward with its own service. "In terms of the amount of content that it's going to have, it's going to have tens of thousands of hours of content that cut across the library we have on a global basis," said Davis. "And it's important to note one of the reasons that we are able to do this is that we've chosen to curtail the amount of content that we license into third-party [business to consumer] experiences." There's no word yet on exactly what will make up that tens of thousands of hours of content, but Davis said, "You should assume that we are really putting all of Viacom's assets against this." Viacom...

A man in Florida claims that one of his Apple AirPods began smoking and later exploded. Florida's WFLA TV reports that the man, Jason Colon, was working out at a gym when he noticed smoke coming from the AirPod in his right ear. He immediately took both AirPods out and placed them on a piece of gym equipment while he sought help, but when he returned, the AirPod in question was charred and broken apart. "I didn't see it happen, but I mean, it was already fried. You can see flame damage," he told WFLA. We've seen reports like this before. Last year, a woman reported that her headphones exploded while she was wearing them on a plane and of course there was the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle in 2016. Lithium-ion batteries are known to overheat and explode, but while AirPods do contain batteries, it's not at all clear that they were the cause of whatever happened to Colon's. We reached out to Apple but it declined to comment on the situation. A company...

With the opening ceremonies completed and the torch lit, the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea are officially underway and will run through February 25th. Viewers have plenty of options to stream events this time around -- and while you can watch almost everything on NBC with your cable subscription, there are several internet TV providers that include some or all of the network's coverage through their own service subscriptions. NBC is livestreaming almost every event through its site and iOS and Android apps. You'll need to log in with your cable subscription info to watch its coverage, but as the network announced last March, they're finally ditching tape delays and airing everything live. Starting tomorrow, you'll be able to watch clips and original programs on Snapchat until the games end. Comcast Xfinity TV subscribers get access to NBC's coverage alongside 50 Olympics virtual channels -- sort of playlists full of short clips -- with ...

The Winter Olympics' opening ceremony took place today in Pyeongchang and it featured a light show from a record-breaking 1,218 drones, Wired reports. The display was created with Intel's Shooting Star drones , the same ones used in Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime show last year and Intel's CES keynote in January , and featured drone murmurations that depicted images like a snowboarder and the interlocking Olympic rings. The Shooting Star light show was pre-recorded, just like Lady Gaga's American flag, but that's because Pyeongchang can get very cold and very windy. Neither of those conditions are great for drone performance and the city's weather caused Intel to cancel the planned live version of the display. However, the company is planning on doing smaller-scale, 300-drone shows during the medal ceremonies and it has tweaked the Shooting Star's design a little in order to accommodate South Korea's weather conditions. The rotor cages were cha...

YouTube says that it hasn't found any evidence of Russian interference during the UK's Brexit vote in 2016. Members of parliament aren't satisfied, however, and are asking for the video network to examine clips of Russian origin, not just ads, according to The Guardian . For its part, YouTube says it will do a more comprehensive review. "There is no constraint on the resources we will put into getting this right," YouTube's global head of public policy Juniper Downs said. Google's video wing has 10,000 people examining and filtering offensive videos and is spending a boatload of cash ("tens of millions") on the effort -- which one member of parliament estimated to be around 0.1 percent of YouTube's $10 billion in ad revenue. The sticking point for Parliament was YouTube's auto-play feature that queues successive videos on the platform. A recent investigation by The Guardian found that the algorithm used favored "extreme and se...

Researchers in the UK and the US have taken human eggs in their most early stage and developed them to maturity in a lab for the first time. It's a big achievement that could open up new avenues for infertility treatment and give scientists a better understanding of how the egg development process works and how it can go wrong. While this has been done before in mice, experiments of which have resulted in live offspring, this is the first time it has been done with human eggs. The research team had previously developed a protocol wherein they could take eggs in later stages of development and bring them to maturity, and they expanded that protocol in an attempt to develop eggs from start to finish in the lab. They took samples of ovarian tissue from 10 women while they were undergoing caesarean section surgery and cultured sections of that tissue that have the ability to release an egg, structures known as follicles. The follicles were cultured in a multi-step procedure that all...