Technology

Sony has cut its expectations for PlayStation 5 production by four million units and now expects to manufacture about 11 million units by the end of March, according to a new Bloomberg report. Bloomberg had previously reported that Sony planned to boost production to around 10 million units by the end of December, but now says that the company has run into manufacturing problems. The PS5’s system-on-a-chip, its core processing component designed by AMD, is said to be a particular issue with yields as low as 50 percent at one point, meaning that half the parts produced weren’t fit to ship. While that figure has been improving, according to Bloomberg, the yields are “yet to reach a stable level.” The revised figure is still well above what Sony was said to have been originally planning for t...

A fired Facebook data scientist has written a 6,600-word memo condemning the company for ignoring evidence the platform was wielded to sway public opinion and manipulate elections around the world, according to a report from BuzzFeed News, which obtained a copy of the memo. The data scientist, Sophie Zhang, was fired earlier this month and posted the memo on her final day, the report reads. Zhang implies she was fired after bringing her concerns to upper management and being told to stop focusing on issues beyond the scope of her role, which involved analyzing the platform to identity “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” Facebook’s phrase for bot networks and other malicious activity with ulterior motives like influencing election outcomes and promoting or undermining various political cand...

Actor and comedian Paul Rudd is a certified young person. He wants to give you some extremely relevant, very timely, and completely appropriate words of advice. Just… just watch it. Trust me: Here are some additional links, also provided without context: You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.

Deep within the acidic clouds of Venus, astronomers have detected a tantalizing gas never found on the planet before — a gas that, remarkably, could be a sign of life on the hellish world. The gas’s presence isn’t enough to say for sure that Venus hosts life forms, but the fact that it exists in the planet’s clouds indicates that something is going on there that we don’t fully understand. The gas in question is a nasty one called phosphine, a toxic and explosive molecule with a lingering odor of garlic and dead fish. Astronomers discovered the putrid gas lurking within a layer of clouds on Venus, where temperatures are pretty close to those on our planet. They didn’t find much — just small traces in the swirling mix of sulfuric acid clouds that surround the planet. “It’s equivalent to a fe...

Sony has announced the A7C, a new camera that is by far the smallest model yet in its Alpha range of full-frame mirrorless cameras. The A7C looks more like one of Sony’s APS-C models like the A6400 than an A7, adopting a more compact body with the electronic viewfinder on the top left corner of the camera’s back panel, rangefinder-style. The A7C measures 124.0mm x 71.1mm x 59.7mm and weighs 509g. It has a 24.2-megapixel full-frame sensor with in-body image stabilization and a standard ISO range of up to 51,200. It can shoot up to 10fps with autoexposure, and it’s capable of 4K/30fps or 1080p/120fps video, both at up to 100Mbps. The body has USB-C, Wi-Fi, and a vari-angle 3-inch 921,000-dot LCD. Sony has developed a new kit lens designed to pair with the A7C; when used together, the company...

AMD’s last batch of new graphics cards, the midrange Radeon RX 5700 series, didn’t wow with their designs or high-end performance — but the new Radeon RX 6000 looks like it could actually be the long-awaited answer to Nvidia’s flagship graphics cards. When I say “looks like,” I mean it quite literally, though: AMD revealed the design of its new card on Twitter today, and its triple-fan, giant shroud, and twin 8-pin power connectors show it’s visually ready to play the part. Take a first look at the design of the new Radeon RX 6000 series. Our upcoming @AMD #RDNA2 graphics cards will feature a brand new cooler design, and you can study every angle yourself on our Fortnite Creative Island. 8651-9841-1639. pic.twitter.com/KGQAOXDivZ — Radeon RX (@Radeon) September 14, 2020 It’s a more refined...

Sen. Josh Hawley is publicly calling on the Treasury Department to reject Oracle’s proposed partnership with TikTok, saying the arrangement is unacceptable on national security grounds. The deal is currently awaiting a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but it has received praise from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who chairs the committee. In an open letter to Mnuchin, Hawley calls on the secretary to take a more skeptical look at the proposal. “CFIUS should promptly reject any Oracle-ByteDance collaboration, and send the ball back to ByteDance’s court so that the company can come up with a more acceptable solution,” Hawley writes. “ByteDance can still pursue a full sale of TikTok, its code, and its algorithm to a U.S. company, so that...

LG’s official reveal of its twisting Wing smartphone had a Marvel-esque post-credit scene: a teaser of the next phone in its new “Explorer Project” range, which appears to have an expandable, slide-out display. The clip, as spotted by CNET, doesn’t offer a lot of information, just a brief shot of the side of the phone expanding out and sliding back before it lights up and a “hold your breath” catchphrase appears followed by the LG Explorer Project logo. But the message is clear: LG is at least thinking about a sliding display for a future device. LG’s Explorer Project — which it introduced with the similar wild-looking Wing — is designed to offer a place for the company to explore ways to “breathe new life into what makes a smartphone.” A sliding phone would certainly seem to fit that bill...

Amazon debuted FreeTime back in 2012 as a way for kids to enjoy and experience tech and for parents to easily monitor their kids’ usage. Yet, the name (at least to me) sounds more like a service to help people spend less time on their electronic devices. To fix this, Amazon is renaming FreeTime to “Amazon Kids” and FreeTime Unlimited to “Amazon Kids Plus.” Alongside the updated naming scheme, Amazon is also giving the service a new look. In the next few weeks, Amazon will roll out a new Amazon Kids home screen, recommended for kids ages eight and up, to experience what a “grown-up tablet” feels like by changing the layout to look more like a traditional tablet. The service previously had a simplified interface where kids could swipe between one app at a time. Parents can use the Amazon Par...

General Motors will reveal the all-electric Hummer truck on October 20th, and to help whet your appetite until then, the automaker is confirming a rumored standout feature. GM confirms that the Hummer will come with Crab Mode, allowing it to move across the terrain diagonally like a sand-dwelling crustacean. Crab Mode is enabled by the electric pickup truck’s four-wheel steering capability and is a functionality that is “tailor-made for off-roading customers,” the company says. Crab Mode was teased last week when GMC, the GM brand under which the EV will be sold, tweeted a Hummer badge with a crab graphic. GM scratched the original May 20th reveal of the Hummer EV due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meantime, the automaker has been teasing images and releasing other details in a drip-drip...

Today, Facebook Gaming is set to allow its partnered streamers to play copyrighted, popular music in the background of their live streams — which means they’ve seemingly solved the copyright problem that’s plagued live-streaming (and basically the entire internet) since the beginning. In a press release, a spokesperson for Facebook Gaming put it like this: So, how’s it work? Music played during a gaming broadcast must be a background element, not be the primary focus of the stream. For example, a streamer’s voice and/or gameplay audio should be in the foreground. This also applies to clips made from a livestream, and the VOD version of livestreams, but does not extend to separately edited and uploaded VOD content. To be clear, the licenses Facebook has apparently negotiated do not include ...

Razer accidentally exposed over 100,000 gamers’ personal information for close to a month, according to a new report. Security researcher Volodymyr Diachenko discovered that customer data on Razer’s website was made publicly available on August 18th because of a server misconfiguration. A redacted sample pictured below shows records of orders made on the company’s digital store, exposing personal information including email and mailing addresses, the type of product ordered, and phone numbers. Credit card information was not included. No credit card information, but customers’ email and mailing addresses were compromised.Image: Volodymyr Diachenko After discovering the misconfiguration online, Diachenko says he reached out to Razer several times over the span of three weeks before receivin...