Geek News

Porsche knows you're probably going to compare the Mission E to Tesla's cars, and it's determined to prove that it its electric performance car is the one to beat. Company EV head Stefan Weckbach has promised that the Mission E has "reproducible" performance Tesla (and particularly the Model S ) can't match. The Model S can only hit its claimed 0-60MPH time "twice" in short succession, Weckbach claimed, and can't run at at full speed for significant stretches either. The Mission E can maintain its full speed for "long periods," Weckbach said. The manager reiterated some of the Mission E's known abilities, including its rapid charging (20 minutes for 250 miles of driving). He added that the car should be relatively practical, too. On top of decent rear seating, helped by sculpted batteries that allow more foot room, there's even some decent cargo space. While the front has a motor, cooling and other vital components, it shoul...

YouTube's crackdown on conspiracy theories in the wake of the Parkland mass shooting has had some unintended casualties. The streaming video firm has confirmed to Bloomberg that its human moderators inadvertently removed videos and took down channels from right-wing and pro-gun outlets. Newcomers to YouTube's moderation team can "misapply" its policies, a spokesperson said, which led to "mistaken removals" of content. The site vowed to reinstate material it had incorrectly pulled. The company wasn't specific about which channels fell afoul of the unintentional move, although the Outline (which broke the story) detailed a wide range of affected accounts. Some of them, such as Anti-School and Destroy the Illusion, explicitly peddle in conspiracy theories. Others, however, don't appear to have obvious violations -- the Military Arms Channel saw three gun videos taken down. Some of MAC's videos had been restored as of the afternoon on Februa...

YouTube TV has landed another Major League Soccer deal , and this time you might be more likely to notice. As part of a multi-year agreement, the internet TV service is now the official streaming option for all Seattle Sounders FC games. Similar to the LAFC deal, you can watch the 14 nationally televised games on conventional TV networks like ESPN and Fox (including through their online apps), but a dedicated YouTube TV channel will stream the teams' 20 regionally-broadcast games online. This isn't necessarily a tremendous coup for YouTube given MLS' relatively modest viewership compared to other American sports leagues. The Sounders are generally considered one of the best-known team in the league, though, so it's bound to command some attention. And like before, this illustrates how YouTube TV's growth is influencing its ability to make deals. It's large enough that major sports teams are willing to make exclusive arrangements instead of turning to convent...

The early development of our universe is still quite a mystery, but in a new study published today in Nature , researchers describe what may be evidence of when the first stars began to form. After the Big Bang, which took place some 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was dark, hot and full of high-energy particles. Photons couldn't survive, but after around 380,000 years, the universe cooled enough to allow light to actually stick around. That's when the cosmic microwave background (CMB) came to be. It's our universe's first surviving radiation and researchers have looked to it in order to learn more about the earliest years of our universe. Researchers have theorized that we might be able to see when stars began to form by looking for a dip in the intensity of the CMB. The reasoning is that once stars started forming, they would have heated up the hydrogen gas permeating the universe. When that gas heated up, it would have absorbed radiation from the CMB, cau...

Many horror games are solitary affairs -- a little odd when horror movies are frequently shared experiences. Why not make games which play off the social side of fear? Question is trying just that. The group of BioShock and Dishonored alumni has unveiled The Blackout Club , a co-op horror title where survival depends on working as a team. You play as a group of teens who've uncovered a terrifying conspiracy in a small town, and they can only see the villains' central "boogeyman" by closing their eyes (part of the reason for the "blackout" in the name). If your group is going to live, everyone will need to keep watch -- you may save a friend who doesn't realize they're in danger. The game has a decidedly Stranger Things vibe, as PC Gamer noted , and it's not just the basic setting. A large part of the game involves proving that the threat is real (many of the adults are unwitting pawns), and that means putting yourself in harm's way s...

You have a few options when it comes to streaming music and whether you're subscribed to Spotify , Apple Music , Tidal or something else, there's a lot of music right at your fingertips. But live recordings offer their own sort of listening pleasure, and while you may find some on those streaming services, Paste Music thinks you should have access to a ton of them all in one spot. Together with its sister site Daytrotter, Paste Music has just launched an app that brings together hundreds of thousands of live recordings for you to enjoy including concerts, comedy performances and interviews. And similar to what NPR did with its One app , Paste Music and Daytrotter's lets you take their sites' offerings with you on the go and personalize your listening experience. In the Paste Music & Daytrotter mobile app, you can find performances like Run-DMC on their first tour, Jimi Hendrix playing the Winterland Ballroom in 1968, the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals and the e...

The gaming chat service Discord has reportedly banned several alt-right groups. The move comes six months after the platform shut down racist accounts in the wake of the Charlottesville protests in order to 'take action against white supremacy, nazi ideology and all forms of hate.' But Discord backed away from calling out particular groups that it kicked off its service; Instead, it has removed a number of unnamed groups due to violations of the platform's terms and services, a spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "Discord has a Terms of Service (ToS) and Community Guidelines that we ask all of our communities and users to adhere to. These specifically prohibit harassment, threatening messages, or calls to violence. Though we do not read people's private messages, we do investigate and take immediate appropriate action against any reported ToS violation by a server or user. There were a handful of servers that violated these ToS recently and were swiftl...

Spotify quietly signaled its intention to become a publicly traded company in December of last year, even though several lawsuits over licensing were looming. Now the streaming service has filed for a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange, an alternative to the more typical initial public offering (IPO) that offers the company a savings on underwriting fees and a dilution of existing shares. The prospectus document provides quite a bit of information on the company's financials, which helps investors make a more informed decision when purchasing stock. The data speaks to how hard it is to make money as a streaming services provider. For example, the company's losses are increasing rapidly. In 2015, 2016, and 2017, the company incurred net losses of €230 million, €539 million, and €1,235 million, respectively. That's despite revenues of €1,940 million, €2,952 million, and €4,090 million in the same years. Plus, their closest competitor, Apple Music, claims a 4...

The I.D. Buzz might not be the first electric Volkswagen bus you see roaming the streets. VW's Scania brand has announced that its first electric bus, the Citywide Low Floor, is going into full-fledged service in the Swedish town of Österlund in mid-March. And it's not a tiny experimental run, either. The initial three buses will run a 9.3-mile route with about 40 stops, and they'll make a total of 100 trips each day. The vehicles' 10-minute charging intervals (helped by massive charging stations) keep them from being sidelined for hours like typical electric cars. This certainly isn't the first electric bus . Scania is a powerhouse in the mass transit world, however, and this deployment could lead to many more public transit systems adopting electric transport. And it's not necessarily just for the sake of environmental concerns. Electric buses are potentially cheaper to run (both due to fuel savings and lower maintenance), and they're much quieter --...

Scientists have been puzzling over the moon's formation for a long time, and now there's a new theory that might explain some of the baffling mysteries surrounding our satellite. A new study published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets posits that the moon may have actually formed inside the Earth, before our planet had fully taken shape. This new theory is based on a new planetary object called a synestia. These are produced when two planet-sized bodies crash into one another, resulting in a quickly spinning formation of rock. The release describes it as, "a giant donut of vaporized rock." Synestias only last a century or two before they condense into a planet. "Our model starts with a collision that forms a synestia," Simon Lock, a graduate student at Harvard and coauthor of the article, said in a release . Once this occurred, the moon could have formed in a number of ways. The synestia may have ejected molten rock into its orbit, w...

YouTube has banned the Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, but only after a Daily Beast report shamed the platform for its inaction. Since the Logan Paul fiasco, YouTube introduced a stricter content policy and (somewhat) more serious consequences for content that harms the community, but it took reports from ProPublica , Vice and The Daily Beast in the last week before Atomwaffen was banned. For starters, the group has been implicated in five murders from May 2017 to January 2018, ProPublica pointed out -- and their videos regularly pushed for a "race war." Despite a litany of user complaints, the most YouTube had done was precede Atomwaffen's recruitment videos with a disclaimer marking that it had been flagged as offensive 'to some audiences.' When The Daily Beast asked a spokesperson for the platform why the Neo-Nazi group's content was still up on Monday, they said that putting videos that are borderline hate speech or violent extremism behind 'a w...

Changes are afoot for PlayStation Plus subscribers. Starting next March, the smattering of monthly free (with subscription) Instant Game Collection offerings won't include titles for the PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Vita . It won't affect any games you downloaded previously, however, according to a post on the PS Blog . "Your game saves and other benefits of PS Plus will also remain the same -- the only change is that no new PS4 and PS Vita games will be added to the PS Plus monthly games lineup beyond March 8th, 2019." Speaking of games, this month PS+ subscribers get Fromsoftware's brutally difficult PS4 exclusive Bloodborne . Not in the mood to have your teeth kicked in? Then maybe Insomniac's incredibly pretty Ratchet & Clank reboot will do the trick for you. There's also Legend of Kay on PS3, and a trio of Cross Buy games including Mighty No. 9 , Claire: Extended Cut and Bombing Busters . The latter pair are Vita games that you can also p...

There was a time when the Overwatch team spent months dripping out information about a new hero for fans to obsess over. But now it's content to simply drop a new one out of nowhere like a dropped mic and revel in the game's overjoyed community. Today is one of those days: Brigitte, a new melee support hero, has joined the fray -- and you can play her right now on the game's PTR servers. Introducing Brigitte—an engineer turned valiant squire ready to protect her allies on the front line. Learn more @ https://t.co/JCSkZJGOzc pic.twitter.com/me59upxJYU — Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) February 28, 2018 Brigitte has been in the background of the game for years, first shown repairing Reinhardt's armor in the 'Dragon Slayer' comic , though the Overwatch Twitter account has been teasing her reveal. In the lore, she's the daughter of everyone's favorite dwarf Swede, Torbjörn, and goddaughter of the heroic hammerer Reinhardt. In the game, she's ...

It's becoming something of an MWC tradition that HMD Global, the company that builds phones under the Nokia brand, offers a gift to sentimental Europeans. In 2017, the manufacturer rebooted the 3310 while 2018 saw the arrival of a similarly refreshed version of the 8110 . When HMD/Nokia returns to Barcelona in 2019, I hope that the company chooses to unveil a new version of the 7110, because I'd be first in line to buy one. Most British teens who clattered into adolescence at the turn of the millennium have a passion for Nokia phones. Like the car for earlier generations, the Nokia 3310 represented freedom, independence and rebellion. The 3310 was tailor-made for kids, since it had a ring-tone composer that let you craft tunes that kinda/sorta sounded like the pop hits of the day. The Xpress-on covers let you alter the shell of the phone to suit your style, and at its peak, you could buy thousands of third-party cases. Ever the angry nonconformist, my desire for the 3310 r...

Electric cars are considerably quieter than their gasoline-powered counterparts, but that's not always a good thing. Pedestrians, especially those who have visually impairments, often rely on audible cues to signal an approaching vehicle. That's why a law was proposed in 2013 to add noise to electric vehicles and hybrids traveling under 18.6 miles per hour. It was supposed to go into effect in late 2015, but it was delayed. Now, it's been delayed again. According to the Federal Register , the law will now take effect on September 1st, 2020, pushed back from late 2019. All EVs and hybrids produced on after the effective date must have a minimum sound. Starting on September 1st, 2019, 50 percent of hybrid and electric vehicles produced by any manufacturer must meet the standard. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Department of Transportation implemented the delay (again) in response to carmakers such as Honda and General Motors. Apparently...

Twitter has replaced its "send via DM" icon with something that can do more than forward a tweet to somebody's inbox. The new share icon brings up a menu with three options to choose from: "Send via DM," "Add Tweet to Bookmarks" and "Share Tweet via..." Yes, the social network is making it much easier to save tweets so you can read them later and to share them off the platform. Twitter's engineers started developing the tools during the company's annual Hack Week activities in 2017 and even finished working prototypes after the event. Product manager Jesar Shah said they decided to work on the new features after getting a ton of requests from users. While you've always been able to save tweets for later by liking them or sending them to yourself, the Bookmark tool makes things much easier. When you Bookmark a tweet, it gets saved to a list that only you can see: you can access everything you've saved whenever you want by ...

Amazon really isn't shy about its ambitions for live sports streaming . The tech firm is now selling access to pay-per-view UFC matches, starting with the March 3rd bout between Cris Cyborg and Yana Kunitskaya. If you're willing to drop $65, you can watch fights on any device that can play Prime Video -- although you won't need a Prime subscription. You won't need a TV subscription or a UFC Fight Pass, either. The company certainly isn't a stranger to cord cutting between Prime Video and Channels , which can unify your streaming services. However, this kicks things up a notch: it's supplementing Prime's broadcast-style programming with the premium events that would lead you to either stick with traditional TV or visit a rival digital service. You certainly can't depend primarily on Amazon for sports coverage at this point, but don't be surprised if that changes over time. Via: Recode Source: Amazon via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/...

When we talk about the current era of private spaceflight, the phrase "space race" is thrown around quite often. It's meant as a good thing; a space race against the Russians is what put American astronauts on the moon. The idea of rocket billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos working day and night to outdo one another in some spectacle of bravado may sound appealing; it would certainly have entertainment value. But a space race isn't necessarily, in and of itself, a good thing. After all, it's why we've been stuck in low Earth orbit for going on five decades. It's difficult to overstate the achievements the US made in going to the moon. From rocket science to pushing the limits of computing tech, the advancements that emerged out of the endeavor are astounding. What's more, it was a stellar opportunity for science and exploration. The argument isn't that it was a bad idea to go to the moon; it was possibly the greatest achievement in the hi...

TwitchCon has been pinballing around California since it debuted in 2015 in San Francisco, shifting to San Diego and Long Beach in the following years. But in 2018, Twitch is bringing its convention back to the Bay Area, occupying the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, CA on October 26-28. "As with our previous three conventions, we are keeping things fresh with a new location. And since San Jose has a proven track record of successfully holding major events with plenty of great places to eat and stay, it's exciting to give our attendees a new city to explore for all of the expected community meetups," director of TwitchCon Krystal Herring said in a press release. Convention attendance continues to grow, from 20,000 in 2015 to nearly 50,000 last year. Twitch didn't announce when tickets for this year would go on sale, though early bird options started appearing in late May for last year's event. Eager fans can keep checking the TwitchCon site ...

Last week, Nintendo began allowing customers to leave reviews for Switch games on its site. Along with leaving comments, reviewers could list themselves as a Nintendo fan, core gamer, casual player or a parent and they could also tag their review with a number of descriptions such as kid appropriate, immersive or great characters. But, as Polygon reports, customer reviews have already been suspended and there's no word on when or if they might be back. On Nintendo's website , there's now a note under "Customer Review Status" that says, "Customer reviews have been taken offline as we evaluate this feature and its functionality. We currently have no estimated date on when an update will be provided. We appreciate the positive response and thank the reviewers who provided such thoughtful commentary on the games." That could mean that Nintendo is tweaking the feature's design or it could mean it's considering whether customer reviews should st...