Technology

The latest update to Overcast, a popular iOS podcast app, is bringing new transparency to podcast ads. Listeners who are in the beta can now view the services their favorite podcasts use to serve ads and track listeners. This means listeners will be able to tell when a podcast is using dynamic advertising, which allows networks to swap and target ads based on the specific person listening. For most people, this likely won’t change the shows they enjoy, but for the audience that cares or wants more information about how a podcast serves them ads, it’s a notable transparency feature that isn’t yet available in any of the other major podcasting apps. This distinguishes Overcast particularly from Spotify, which gathers more information than any other platform with little transparency. Because ...

Brands and influencers have locked in a Twitter bidding war for the chance to get a branded costume added to Fall Guys since August 17th, and that bidding war came to an end today. G2 Esports, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Aim Lab, and Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, have emerged victorious as a team effort, pledging to donate $1 million to charity. Mediatonic confirmed the news today, calling it “probably the spiciest team up since The Avengers,” with a tweet from Aim Lab. “Crowns should be held in the palms of those who continue to do good,” Aim Lab said on Twitter. It’s unclear what the costume will actually look like or when it will be added to the game. The first official bid was €212 from PC hardware manufacturer Cooler Master, and the pledges quickly escalated into the hundreds of thousands of ...

GoPro may be adding one of its most useful new features to its main camera line with the upcoming Hero 9: a front-facing color screen. The feature, revealed in leaked renders obtained by WinFuture, wouldn’t be a first for GoPro; the company added such a screen to last year’s GoPro Max camera. But that device is a 360 camera costing $500, so adding one to the presumably cheaper Hero 9 — so filmmakers (and especially vloggers) can see in full color what the shot looks like as they record — is a nice touch. The leaks indicate the new front-facing screen would remain the same size as the current monochrome status display, which sits on the front next to the lens. That screen typically displays information like frame rate, resolution, and other recording info, but in this context could showcase...

Asus has taken the wraps off its new ZenBook S, a slim ultrabook that can be equipped with up to Intel’s Core i7-1065G7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of fast PCIe-based storage. Asus gave its flagship laptop a glow-up in the screen department, going from a 16:9 aspect ratio in last year’s model to a taller 3:2 aspect ratio for this year’s 3300 x 2200 touchscreen. What’s more, the bezels surrounding it are thin, and the display is Pantone-validated with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The ZenBook S has plenty of other traits that might make it a worthy contender for your next laptop. It features two Thunderbolt 3 ports that can be used for fast data transfer, connecting to an external monitor, or charging its battery. Speaking of which, Asus claims the 67Wh battery within ...

If you’re serious about fighting games, 8BitDo has announced a mod-friendly, wireless arcade stick that may interest you. It’s designed to work with PC and Nintendo Switch, and you can easily toggle between two sets of controls depending on the platform you’re using. It costs $89.99 and ships October 20th, but preorders are open now from the company’s site and Amazon. Grid View The wireless arcade stick supports Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless via a receiver hidden in its underside, though you can wire it directly with a USB-C cable (which you’ll need to do on occasion to recharge its 1,000mAh built-in battery). 8BitDo claims that it can last 40 hours per charge while using the 2.4GHz wireless receiver or up to 30 hours via Bluetooth. Wireless range is over 30 feet. With PC software, you can...

On Thursday night in the Students For Markey’s Zoom phone bank, a group of prolific pro-Markey posters called @edsreplyguys rallied the troops. “Everyone here is absurdly attractive without exception cause they support Markey,” one person wrote in the Zoom chat under the handle “Shrek for Markey.” “PERIOODDDDD SHREK,” another replied under the name “harry styles stans for ed.” By the end of the night, around 70 members of the Markeyverse were able to make 96,000 calls over the course of three hours, all while hyping each other up in the Zoom chat and requesting that the Students For Markey group play their favorite songs as they hit the virtual dialers together. Team Markey hosts inspiring, energizing, nightly GOTV checkout calls and tonight @EdMarkey himself joined our dance party! He is ...

Some of Netflix’s original TV shows and movies, including the Oscar-nominated Two Popes and horror thriller Bird Box, are now available to watch for free without a subscription, Gadgets360 reports. The free content, which also includes the first episode of Stranger Things, can be found here, and is available globally. Netflix confirmed the promotion in a statement given to Gadgets360. “We’re looking at different marketing promotions to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience,” a spokesperson said. The free content includes a selection of films that can be watched in their entirety, but for TV shows only the first episodes are available. Here’s a full list of the TV shows and films available to watch for free: Stranger Things Murder Mystery Elite The Boss Baby: Back in ...

This evening, SpaceX launched another rocket from Florida, but this vehicle took a very different kind of path than most flights from the East Coast. Rather than head eastward after launch as most Florida missions do, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket headed south after liftoff, skirting over Florida’s southeast coast and heading over Cuba. That’s because this mission was headed to what is known as a polar orbit — a path that runs mostly north-to-south over the Earth’s poles. It’s a type of mission you don’t normally see taking place from Florida. In fact, this will be the first time since 1969 that a rocket taking off from Florida heads southward. Up until now, most polar launches in the US have taken place from the southern coast of California. That way, the rockets fly over open ocean when they ...

After the sad news of Chadwick Boseman’s death, I planned a marathon of his movies this weekend. We’re still definitely planning to re-watch 42 and Get on Up, but so far we can’t stop watching Black Panther. Boseman is just so magnetic as T’Challa and everything about the movie is as stunning on the sixth or seventh watch as it was the first time— the acting, the cinematography, the music, the costumes, and of course the script— all amazing. If you have not seen it (honestly, why?) you should absolutely remedy that as soon as possible. In addition to four other trailers to check out this week, a bonus: [embedded content] Black Panther That’s the original Black Panther trailer from 2017. The movie went on to earn a Best Picture nomination and three Oscar wins, and grossed more than $1 billi...

ABC will show the 2018 movie Black Panther without commercials on Sunday night, followed by an ABC News special “Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King.” The Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, said in a statement that the special will “celebrate Boseman’s storied life, legacy and career,” and will “shine a light on the medical condition he privately battled.” Boseman died of colon cancer Friday at age 43, and according to a statement from his family, was first diagnosed with the disease in 2016. Tonight, ABC will celebrate the legacy of Chadwick Boseman with a special presentation of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther followed by the ABC News Special: Chadwick Boseman – A Tribute for a King. It all starts tonight at 8/7c on ABC. pic.twitter.com/LjtN9bTwzx — Disney (@Disney) August 30, 2020 ...

A Sunday tweet from Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) showing a video of activist Ady Barkan got a “manipulated media” label from Twitter. Barkan has ALS and speaks through voice assistance. In the video, a conversation between Barkan and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Barkan asks “But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?” The version Scalise tweeted edits in the words “for police,” to the end of the question, words which Barkan says in a different context earlier in the video. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed in an email to The Verge that the tweet was labeled “based on our Synthetic and Manipulated Media policy.” The video was first noticed by Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel. In the original video, Barkan asks Biden about what he thinks could be done about polic...

Cloudflare was suffering an outage Sunday morning that appeared to be affecting multiple websites. The outage began early Sunday, and according to Cloudflare’s status page, it was seeing “an increased level of HTTP 5xx class errors,” such as 522 and 503, which indicates an issue with the server. In a later update Cloudflare said it had “identified an issue with a transit provider” as the cause of the issue, and that it was working on a fix. The outage was affecting all data centers that use the transit provider. Cloudflare is aware of network related issues caused by a third-party transit provider incident. We are working to mitigate the problem. Please follow the status page here: https://t.co/9DSYq0HIa7 — Cloudflare Help (@CloudflareHelp) August 30, 2020 Cloudflare’s services are meant t...