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The Handmaid's Tale has been a huge success for Hulu, earning the streaming platform quite a few Emmys and two Golden Globes . The first season was based on Margaret Atwood's novel by the same name but many have wondered what's in store for the upcoming second season. "The biggest barrier of season two was season one," showrunner Bruce Miller told Entertainment Weekly . "You sort of intimidate yourself. But at a certain point, you can't spend all your time second-guessing things. Instead, you just have to remember to try and tell a good story." Miller says he and Margaret Atwood began talking about the direction of the second season before the first was completed. While keeping the season's plot largely under wraps, Miller did give EW some hints as to what's to come in season two and some stills from the show give us a look as well. Characters living outside of Gilead will definitely be a part of the season, and those include Samira W...

The team is laser-cutting, CNC-routing and designing another PCB this week. Tune in as Ben uses Autodesk Eagle to design an infrared ball detector for the mini pinball build instead of relying on mechanical detectors, which should help keep costs down. Not all the design work has gone well, though: Felix finds he has to address issues with the main control board. What PCBs have you designed? Any difficulties you've encountered? Let us know over on the element14 Community . via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2DrL5b7"

Over the next year, we’ll start spending less time on Facebook. Those of us who used it to catch up on the news will find less of it to read. We’ll watch fewer videos, and we’ll see fewer advertisements. In theory, Facebook will make less money off us — or, at least, the rate at which it makes more and more money off us will slow. Had you presented this scenario to Facebook executives a year ago, it would have been cause for alarm: evidence that something had gone deeply wrong on the platform, and a situation that called for an immediate solution. And yet as of today, it’s the company’s stated ambition: Facebook wants to shrink. Late on Thursday, Facebook announced a plan to emphasize more “meaningful” interactions on the platform .... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DgufP6"

Those of us with smaller wrists may have noticed that most of the connected smartwatches out there are, well, kind of huge. Tag Heuer's Connected Modular 45 , for example, was a lovely device with a 45mm case diameter, perfect for larger wrists but lousy for everyone else. The company has now decided to support the smaller among us with a new Connected Modular 41, with — you guessed it — a watch with a 41mm diameter for those with more diminutive extremities. It's not just size that matters, here, either. Tag Heuer worked with Intel and Google to create an improved smartwatch, with a brighter screen that displays in 390 X 390 resolution, giving you 326 pixels per inch. The memory capacity is up, too, with 8 GB of storage and 1 GB of RAM included. Similar to the Apple Watch, Tag Heuer's new 41mm model has nine different straps to connect the device to your arm; you can even connect the company's Calibre 5 mechanical watch to the bands if you like. The new smartwatch...

Though TiVo and Comcast just wrapped up a round of patent infringement litigation , TiVo's looking for another go. Yesterday, it filed lawsuits in California and Massachusetts alleging that Comcast's X1 set-top boxes are infringing on no less than eight of its patents. "Through decades-long investment in research and development, Rovi has created innovations that delight consumers in their day-to-day entertainment experience. Our commitment to our customers and stockholders compels us to protect these valuable inventions from unlicensed use," TiVo CEO Enrique Rodriguez said in a statement . TiVo was acquired by Rovi in 2016. The merged companies took the more recognizable name TiVo and at joining, they together held over 6,000 patents. In November, the International Trade Commission ruled that Comcast had violated two of TiVo's patents and ordered an import ban on X1 boxes that violated those patents. Comcast wound up disabling certain features that infringed...

If you blew through all of the latest season of Black Mirror when it came out just before the new year and need your science fiction anthology fix, your ship has come in. Amazon's new series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams is live now with ten episodes to feed your hunger for wild, imaginative stories that question reality and/or humanity. Of course, the BBC-produced series aired in the UK back in October, so it's about time it made the jump to the US. (It's also now live for viewers in Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Latin America, Spain and Turkey on Amazon, and will air on the Space channel in Canada and Stan channel in Australia). Electric Dreams has an incredible cast (Anna Paquin, Janelle Monáe, Bryan Cranston, Greg Kinnear, Vera Farmiga, Terrence Howard, Benedict Wong, Steve Buscemi and many others) and is executive produced by a similarly-impressive lineup including Ronald D. Moore ( Battlestar Galactica ) and Maril Davis ( Outlander ) along with Cranston ...

After a few years away (at least in the US) Ford's midsize truck, the Ranger, will return for the 2019 model year. Just unveiled ahead of the 2018 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, it's one of two new models that Ford is releasing that includes automatic emergency braking. Other driver assists like lane keeping and adaptive cruise control are also available, but the one we haven't seen before is a sort of "cruise control for off-road" called Trail Control. Between 1-20 MPH on rugged terrain, it takes over acceleration and braking individually on each wheel while the driver just steers. This edition of the "T6" Ranger has been on sale elsewhere in the world since 2011 , and arrives with the company's latest technology inside, like Sync 3 with links to Android Auto, Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa, plus the FordPass Connect WiFi hotspot. Source: Ford via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2AYIR09"

Many hybrid watches only resemble classic timepieces on a superficial level. If you want a watch with a true mechanical movement, you have to forego modern conveniences. Ressence wants to fix that with its newly unveiled Type 2 e-Crown Concept . The watch, designed with the help of Nest co-founder Tony Fadell , only requires conventional setup when you initially set the time. From then on, a paired iPhone app can automatically set the watch to one of two time zones using its namesake e-Crown. If the power reserve runs out or Daylight Savings Time kicks in, you don't have to use the old-fashioned setting mechanism unless you want to -- you just have to tap on the watch face. The design uses both kinetic and solar power to keep running, and it'll even automatically open shutters to reveal the solar cells when the battery runs below 50 percent. You can't buy this exact watch. As the "concept" name indicates, it's a technology demonstrator. Ressence does plan...

X-rays aren't just for investigating artworks or photographing black holes. NASA scientists just used them to demonstrate a new technique: Navigating the stars. In an experiment, equipment mounted on the International Space Station measured radiation beamed out from distant neutron stars in millisecond pulses -- and by timing their arrival, future spacecraft could find their location from deep space. Source: NASA via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2EEpPyh"

We hope you weren't depending on Project Fi to stay in touch while abroad this weekend. Subscribers to Google's wireless carrier have reported that international data hasn't been working in many places around the world, including Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India and Japan. Some users have reported temporary success by switching into and out of airplane mode or rebooting their phones, but it hasn't lasted for longer than 2 minutes. We've asked Google for comment, although its team is already aware of the problem. The outage has lasted for roughly a day as of this writing. This kind of downtime would be frustrating for anyone, but it's particularly irksome for Project Fi subscribers. One of the perks of the service is its straightforward, affordable approach to data: you pay the same $10 per 1GB as you do in the US, so you're not shelling out a small fortune just to share your winter vacation on Instagram. Outages on this scale appear to be few and far...

You won't have to wait nearly as long for the third season of Cosmos as you did for the second . Fox has announced that Cosmos: Possible Worlds will premiere worldwide in spring 2019, with Fox itself airing the show in the US and National Geographic broadcasting it elsewhere. And yes, the familiar gang from the 2014 series is back. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will host, with Ann Druyan taking charge. Seth MacFarlane, Brannon Braga and Jason Clark will return as executive producers. The team isn't saying much about the overall focus of Possible Worlds , but they're promising to cover "previously uncharted territories" and hint about a "virtually infinite" number of worlds and stories to explore. Don't expect a carbon copy of A SpaceTime Odyssey , then. With that said, we'd expect some familiar themes to return. Both previous seasons covered the universe at virtually every possible scale, drew attention to influential (if sometimes u...

The man who was arrested last month in conjunction with the Kansas swatting incident that resulted in a fatality has now been charged. Tyler Barriss was arraigned in a Kansas court today and hit with three charges -- giving a false alarm, interference with law enforcement and involuntary manslaughter -- the latter of which carries a maximum prison sentence of 36 months and a fine of up to $300,000. The swatting hoax that Barriss was allegedly behind occurred last month and is believed to have been instigated by an argument over a Call of Duty game. One player, who is believed to have been Barriss, threatened to swat another. That person then provided an address that wasn't his own. Barriss has been accused of making a call to police saying that someone had been shot at that address and a hostage situation was ongoing. When police arrived, Andrew Finch, who was not involved with the Call of Duty game, was shot by an officer. Barriss was arrested a couple of days later in Los ...

There's so much news at CES, it can be hard to filter out the noise and find what matters. Thankfully, Engadget is here to help. A collection of your favorite editors got together toward the end of the show to have a conversation about the big trends and the announcements that excited them most. And, of course, Richard Lawler talked about TVs. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018. via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2FBtSgi"

French company Enhancia has been working on the concept for its MIDI ring for over a year, and it’s finally coming to Kickstarter in March. The tiny accessory, worn on the index finger of your right hand, allows a user to trigger musical effects like pitch bends or vibrato by making specific movements while playing a keyboard. The ring, which is lightweight and made out of a soft plastic with a metal accent, communicates with a hub that is connected to your computer. The hub both charges the ring and also tells the ring which effects are mapped to which movements. There’s also a standalone piece of software and a plugin, which can be used with a Digital Audio Workstations, like Ableton or Logic. The ring’s sensors track three specific... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Dc6zvG"