Geek News

- A random hero challenge will be selected for you if one is not selected before the game. - Fixed a visual bug with Storm Spirit's Static Remnant. - Fixed a visual bug with Dark Willow's ambient particles. - Fixed the text alignment of chat between players with badges and players without. via Steam RSS News Feed "http://ift.tt/2tXeau9"

Science The sounds of science It’s an explosion that starts within the earth, a release of pressurized gases and bits of rock, either sharp shards or molten fragments or both. A volcanic eruption is… via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2GBrszc"

L’Oreal announced today that it has acquired Modiface , a company that’s had a hand in the creation of many custom augmented reality beauty apps, including those from Sephora and Estée Lauder. L’Oreal didn’t disclose the amount spent, but it did tell Reuters that it now owns Modiface’s numerous patents that help users visualize makeup and hairstyles on themselves. The partnership makes sense in that Modiface has already worked with L’Oreal multiple times, including on the launch of its Style My Hair mobile app, which lets users try on different hairstyles. For that app, Modiface manually annotated 22,000 facial images to create the experience. AR has become an important part of the beauty industry. Meitu, a China-based company with an AR... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FHF52z"

Technology This week, Google pushed out its multi-step smart home actions you can start with a simple voice command. Whether your smart home is based on the Google, Apple, or Amazon platform, you can cut down on the number of commands you have to shout. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2FHz8Cu"

If you blink during Apple’s latest iPhone ad, you might miss a weird little animation bug. It’s right at the end of a slickly produced commercial, where the text from an iMessage escapes the animated bubble it’s supposed to stay inside. It’s a minor issue and easy to brush off, but the fact it’s captured in such a high profile ad just further highlights Apple’s many bugs in iOS 11. 9to5Mac writer Benjamin Mayo spotted the bug in Apple’s latest ad, and he’s clearly surprised “that this was signed off for the commercial,” especially as he highlighted it months ago and has filed a bug report with Apple. It’s just one of many quirks in iOS 11, including strange UI problems in the Music app, regularly misaligned text in the App Store , v... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2pkhvOj"

The final Infinity War trailer presents a terrifying, monumental threat to earth. Armies clash. Dead bodies are strewn about the screen. Music blares. Impressive percussion stirs up emotions. Lightning cracks. And at the center of it all is… Thanos! The terrifying universe-destroyer! Who, unfortunately, looks like a bald purple plastic mannequin with weird grooves in his chin to make up for the fact that he can’t grow a beard. There’s no kind way to put it: Thanos isn’t impressive; he’s ridiculous. A villain named after death should look frightening, maybe with some sort of visual reference to death. Instead, Thanos comes across as an over-inflated cousin of Grimace from McDonald’s marketing. Except Grimace is actually kind of scary. W... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2G34F1k"

Hacker Adrian Lamo has died at age 37, according to ZDNet and a Facebook post from his father. The circumstances of Lamo’s death are unknown, but a coroner in Sedgwick County, Kansas, reportedly confirmed the news. Lamo was known in the early 2000s for hacking a number of company networks, including that of The New York Times Company. Sometimes dubbed the “homeless hacker” for his nomadic life, he pled guilty in 2004 to breaching the Times ’ internal network and running up tens of thousands of dollars in search fees on its Lexis-Nexis account. Before that, he warned several other companies of security flaws, including WorldCom and Microsoft. More recently, however, Lamo was known for alerting the Army after whistleblower Chelsea Manning... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2tWLvFz"

Arriving roughly one hour into a full-day blockchain-themed event called “Initial Taco Offering,” I’m greeted by a sight familiar to many attendees of Austin’s South By Southwest Interactive Festival. There is a throng of badge-wearing, mostly male conference goers — and there are free tacos. The event, a play on the initial coin offerings that have turned digital currencies into some of the buzziest and most fraught investment opportunities on the planet, is being held at a steakhouse on Lavaca Avenue in downtown Austin. The organizers, a group called the Founders Organization, lured attendees away from more traditional sessions in the city’s convention center and nearby hotels with the promise of complimentary food and spirited... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2HGjKmL"

Newer yacht models nowadays might include IoT devices with routers and switches, which also means they can be hackable, just like any other device with an internet connection. As Stephan Gerling of the Rosen Group demonstrated during a security summit last week, modern yachts still have a lot of openings for bad actors to potentially exploit, such as the onboard router having an unsecure FTP protocol. A yacht’s onboard network could have a vessel traffic service device, automatic identification system, autopilot, GPS receivers, radar, cameras, depth sounders, engine control and monitoring, and more. Since these features are connected to a network that can be controlled by an external device like a smartphone or tablet, a bad actor... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FGIT3Z"

Nexus Media News The battle over America’s space program shows how to turn science into a winning issue. President Trump's hostility toward research is, in many ways, a boon to pro-science lawmakers. History suggests an adversary in the White House is exactly what they… via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2tQxEjU"

Alcatel unveiled five new phones last month, and today, it’s announcing that two of them are headed to the United States: the Alcatel 1X and the Alcatel 3V. Of the two, the 1X is the more exciting — it’s one of the very first phones to run Android Go, Google’s new streamlined version of Android designed to perform better on low-end hardware. The 1X will sell for under $100 (I’m going to go ahead and guess that means $99.99, but Alcatel isn’t giving specifics), which puts it squarely in the budget phone arena. But for as cheap as the price is, the phone itself isn’t missing that many modern accommodations. It runs Oreo, it has a fingerprint sensor on the back, and it has a tall, 18:9 screen. It’s not a beautiful screen (it’s 5.3 inches,... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DzbLFg"

Microsoft is testing a new change to its future version of Windows 10 which will probably annoy anyone using the operating system. The software giant revealed today that “we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” The change means if you have Chrome or Firefox set as your default browser in Windows 10, Microsoft will simply ignore that and force you into Edge when you click a link within the Mail app. It’s a ridiculous change, that’s similar to Microsoft forcing Cortana users to use Bing search and open results in the Microsoft Edge browser instead of other browsers that are set as default. “As always, we look forward to feedback from our WIP community,” says... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FFwpcU"

Science Because it sure isn't here. Scientists at SETI send out signals in hopes of hailing alien life—and put out all sorts of telescopes and sensors in case one of them tries to flag us down. Here's… via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2pn675d"

Gadgets The end-of-week dispatch from PopSci's commerce editor. Vol. 42. Throughout the week I spend hours scouring the web for things that are ingenious or clever or ridiculously cheap. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2FEUws4"

Today's Deal: Save 70% on Poly Bridge !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Sunday at 10AM Pacific Time via Steam RSS News Feed "http://ift.tt/2G1R8XW"

A couple months after Strava unintentionally exposed military base locations, another app named Ritual is exposing government agencies’ locations and workers’ restaurant routines. Ritual promises to streamline takeout by letting co-workers piggyback off each others’ orders. Users get a notification when their colleagues are ordering from somewhere, and they can then tack their own order onto that one. The app doesn't use location tracking to determine where users work. Instead, users can type the name of a business and then choose an address from those listed or manually add an address. I typed in the US Department of Homeland Security, for example, and saw a list of the agency’s locations around the country. I picked one at random and... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2HDQ2P0"