Technology

Earlier seasons of The Simpsons are finally available to stream in its proper 4:3 aspect ratio, a task Disney Plus’ product team had to spend some time figuring out. Aspect ratios are a big deal in The Simpsons. Fox originally aired the show in 1989, and at the time used a 4:3 aspect ratio. The show, as any fan will explain, relies heavily on visual gags — an aspect of joke-telling that wouldn’t become an issue until near the end of 2009, about a third of the way through The Simpsons’ 20th season — when the show’s aspect ratio switched from 4:3 to 16:9. When Disney uploaded all 30 seasons of the show to Disney Plus in November 2019, every episode was only available in 16:9, meaning older episodes looked stretched out, and jokes that relied on visual framing were effectively cut out. The Di...

YouTube sparked widespread speculation about its moderation policies this week after it admitted to accidentally deleting comments that contained phrases critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Today, the company told The Verge that the issue was not the result of outside interference — an explanation for the error floated by many. The phrases that triggered automatic deletion included “communist bandit” and “50-cent party,” a slang term for internet users paid to defend the CCP. Some speculated that an outside group, perhaps connected to the CCP, manipulated YouTube’s automated filters by repeatedly reporting these phrases, causing the algorithm to tag them as offensive. Speaking to The Verge, YouTube spokesperson Alex Joseph denied that this happened and said that, contrary to pop...

Elon Musk often brags about how he’s built up Tesla with “zero advertising spend.” But advertising is just one form of marketing, and the billionaire CEO sure knows how to market his companies. The latest example comes from a new episode of Jay Leno’s show on CNBC, where the former talk show host and notorious car collector visits SpaceX headquarters to drive a prototype of Tesla’s Cybertruck through the mile-long “test tunnel” Musk dug under Los Angeles by another one of his efforts, The Boring Company. The appearance, which CNBC has spent the last two weeks promoting, is pretty straightforward. Leno drops into Tesla’s design studio (which is tucked into SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, California). Musk arrives in the Tesla Semi, the company’s (delayed) electric big rig. Then Musk plays car sales...

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is calling Donald Trump’s proposed executive order “plainly illegal” in a new statement on Thursday. The draft executive order would pare back platform liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a bill Wyden coauthored in 1996 with Sen. Chris Cox (R-CA). Under Section 230, internet companies have broad immunity from liability for the content created by their users. The draft order, announced on Wednesday, would open the door for the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission to reinterpret the law, and authorize the Federal Trade Commission to craft a tool for reporting bias online. The Communications Decency Act was approved in 1996 and authored by Sens. Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). In a statement Thursday,...

The box that syncs Philips Hue lights with whatever’s on your TV is getting a big update today: it now supports two major HDR standards: HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. At launch, the longly named Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box could analyze content playing at up to 4K at 60Hz, but it only supported regular HDR10. For people with newer TV sets or who are serious about home theater, that’d be a major miss, since the HDR10+ standard and Dolby Vision are now more common and offer better image quality. Until now, the box has just done nothing when those higher-quality signals were passed through. After today’s update, the box should work with a lot more systems and content. The device analyzes pretty much any video content that’s being passed to your TV, figures out the dominant colors, and then cons...

Social media sites can legally ban users for nearly any reason. They can ban users for off-color jokes. They can ban users for being white supremacists. They can ban users for totally arbitrary and inscrutable reasons. If you sue over a Twitter or Facebook ban, you will almost certainly lose. Despite this, people keep filing lawsuits claiming they’ve been censored on social media — and today, courts handed down another defeat. An appeals court in Washington, DC just rejected a complaint by Laura Loomer, the conservative activist who was banned from Twitter for anti-Muslim tweets and later chained herself to the company’s headquarters in protest. Loomer argued that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple had all colluded to suppress conservative content, violating Loomer’s First Amendment righ...

HBO is no longer available as an Apple TV Channel for people who want to subscribe to it though the Apple TV app (via 9to5Mac). The change follows today’s launch of the new streaming service HBO Max. Apple TV Channels first launched last year as a way to watch content from many different service providers all in one app, meaning you wouldn’t have to bounce around between different third-party apps to watch different content. Now, though, it seems HBO wants to push users to watch HBO Max content on the HBO Max app instead of through Apple’s. If you subscribed to HBO through Channels, you’ll have access to HBO Max If you already subscribe to HBO through Apple TV’s Channels, you can apparently still see it in the Apple TV app, but it won’t be updated to include content that’s exclusive to HBO...

Boeing said it would resume manufacturing the troubled 737 Max airplane after a nearly five-month hiatus. The aerospace company said it would restart production “at a low rate as it implements more than a dozen initiatives focused on enhancing workplace safety and product quality.” The Boeing 737 Max has been grounded since March 2018 following two fatal crashes that killed a total of 346 passengers and crew members. Boeing continued to manufacture the airplane, but in December 2019, the company announced plans to halt production at its Renton, Washington manufacturing plant. The FAA has yet to clear the airplane to return to passenger service. Investigators have discovered numerous software glitches, apart from the MCAS flight control system that has been identified as the cause of the fa...

Nvidia announced a new policy for its GeForce Now cloud gaming service on Wednesday that means publishers and developers will have to opt into the platform to have titles remotely playable via Nvidia servers. “Response has been strong with over 200 publishers committing to streaming on the service,” reads a blog post from Phil Eisler, Nvidia’s GeForce Now vice president. “Going forward, only the games that are opted in will be available on the service, providing confidence in the GeForce Now game library. Yet some publishers are still figuring out their cloud strategies. Those that haven’t opted in as of May 31 will be removed.” “Those that haven’t opted in as of May 31 will be removed.” The shift is meant to address disputes over licensing, as Nvidia was including games on the platform wi...

HBO Max has arrived, bringing with it a precious few new original shows and an absolutely stuffed back catalog of terrific TV and movies. In addition to HBO’s extremely good library, Max adds a mountain of content produced and / or licensed by parent company WarnerMedia, like Friends and the Harry Potter franchise. It’s enough to please someone of every taste, but the more you dig, the more you find strange holes in the library — and the more you realize it’s not really clear what HBO Max is supposed to offer. These problems are clearest in the big, non-HBO umbrellas you find titles gathered under on HBO Max. DC, for example, is the place you’d expect to find, well, the movies in the DC Extended Universe. They’re mostly there! Except Birds of Prey, presumably because it’s too recent to joi...

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has filed a lawsuit against Google over allegations the company illegally tracked Android users’ location without their consent and even when the location tracking features had been manually disabled, according to a report from The Washington Post. The suit argues Google kept location tracking running in the background for certain features, like weather and for web searches using its search engine and Chrome browser, even after the user disabled app-specific location tracking. Only when a user dug further into the Android system settings and turned off broader system-level tracking did Google stop surreptitiously siphoning location data, the complaint argues. Google has found itself in similar controversies in the past over location tracking of Androi...

Just 17 minutes before its planned launch, SpaceX postponed its first crewed flight to space on Wednesday afternoon due to bad weather over the launch site in Florida. The two passengers on board SpaceX’s capsule — NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — will try again on Saturday, May 30th. “Not quite going to make it for this,” one person said over the mission control audio leading up to the flight. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to launch today.” The biggest concern for SpaceX was electrified clouds in the area around Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the company’s Falcon 9 rocket is meant to take off. Electrified clouds are particularly dangerous for a launch. If a rocket flies close enough, lightning could strike the vehicle, causing damage that could harm the mission. Mission con...