Technology

When a tsunami slams into a coast, parks with rolling hills could provide about as much protection as towering seawalls, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These tsunami mitigation parks, as they’re called, are designed to combine the protective qualities of an engineered landscape with the benefits of a more natural setting. The hybrid approach is especially appealing to less-affluent countries that are looking for alternatives to building pricey seawalls that also preserve coastal economies and ways of life. “The wall doesn’t require any understanding.” “You can build a wall against anything. You can build a wall against a dog. You can build a wall against water,” says Jenny Suckale, a senior author of the stu...

Apple’s seventh-generation iPad with 32GB of storage is $80 off at a couple of retailers, including Best Buy and Amazon. This price drop puts it at $250 instead of $330. This model has seen a discount like this before, but it’s a rare enough discount that you might want to know about it. Cyber Monday 2019 had a slightly better deal for $230, but given that this is just a regular day in May, it’s a fantastic time to buy. This version of the iPad is similar in a lot of ways to Apple’s sixth-generation model, though you’re getting a lot more for your money with this tablet. Inside, it has the same A10 processor, but its screen size has increased from 9.7 inches to 10.2 inches. Additionally, it has an extra gigabyte of RAM (3GB compared to 2GB in the sixth-gen iPad) and a Smart Connector, whic...

Verizon has its own exclusive version of the OnePlus 8, the “OnePlus 8 5G UW,” designed specifically for its network with additional mmWave radio features to support Verizon’s 5G network (which only operates in the mmWave band). But as discovered by Reddit user /u/bud-dho, the changes to the phone to fit the additional radio technology mean that the Verizon version has its volume buttons moved lower than the unlocked and T-Mobile models, so standard OnePlus 8 cases won’t fit (via 9to5Google). An analysis from PhoneArena of the FCC documents for the two variants makes the issue clear: the Verizon model has several extra mmWave modules, one of which is directly located where the volume switches are. It likely won’t affect all cases — ones with cutouts for the volume buttons can probably just...

Samsung’s new Galaxy Book laptops are now available for purchase in the United States. All three laptops — the Galaxy Book Flex, Flex Alpha, and Ion — are equipped with the latest 10th Gen chips from Intel. The Flex and Ion are also certified as part of Intel’s Project Athena program. That means if you purchase one of these two models, you should get up to nine hours of battery life, which is ideal if you are a professional working from home or a college student (who will, eventually, be on the go). You can read first impressions of the laptops from The Verge’s Chaim Gartenberg when he checked them out last October. The trackpads on the Galaxy Book Flex and Ion double as wireless chargers The Galaxy Book Flex and Ion were announced back in October, but Samsung did not give a release date o...

Google has wasted no time integrating its Meet videoconferencing into Gmail, with some users already seeing a link to launch Meet in the left sidebar of the Gmail interface. Formerly available only to its enterprise and education customers via G Suite, the company said last week that it was making Meet free to anyone with a Google account and allow meetings of up to 100 people with no time limits. Putting Meet front and center is Google’s latest attempt to go head-to-head with Zoom, the ubiquitous videoconferencing app that has so far ruled the stay-at-home era. Meet will have some privacy controls that Zoom has lacked (resulting in instances of “Zoombombing”). You can’t just click a link to join a Meet; you’ll have to log in to your Google account. If the meeting host (Meet host?) has not...

Felix Kjellberg, the YouTuber better known as PewDiePie, has signed an exclusive live-streaming deal with YouTube. The move comes almost exactly one year after Kjellberg announced that he was streaming exclusively on DLive, a small blockchain-based live-streaming site. According to the press release, Kjellberg is excited to head back to his home pastures. “Live streaming is something I’m focusing a lot on in 2020 and beyond, so to be able to partner with YouTube and be at the forefront of new product features is special and exciting for the future,” he said. Kjellberg’s acquisition is the latest big name joining YouTube for live-streaming; recently, the platform has been throwing its weight (and money!) around to grab exclusive deals with streaming stars like CouRage, Typical Gamer, and Va...

Taika Waititi will direct and co-write a new Star Wars movie for theatrical release, Disney announced today. It won’t be Waititi’s first brush with the Star Wars universe; he directed the season finale of The Mandalorian. He also earned an Academy Award for his screenplay for Jojo Rabbit and directed Thor: Ragnarok. Rumors of a Waititi-helmed Star Wars movie first surfaced in January, though it’s unclear if this movie is the one that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is reportedly developing. Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who co-wrote the screenplay for 1917, which won the British Academy Film Award for Outstanding British Film earlier this year, will join Waititi in co-writing the new Star Wars film. She will be the second woman to co-write a Star Wars movie; Leigh Brackett was the first, co-w...

People are doing a lot more video conferencing now that they’re stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These sessions can be a great way to stay in touch with friends and family, conduct business with colleagues, and keep up with schoolwork. Sometimes, though, you may want to save a recording of the meeting so you can revisit it later. That could let you listen to a teacher’s lecture again, use the audio for a podcast, or even relive the announcement of a family pregnancy (which is something that actually happened to me on a recent family video call). Many services offer ways to record video meetings, even on their free versions. We’ve outlined here how to set up recordings for three well-known services: Zoom, Google Meet, and Skype. Zoom Zoom lets you record calls whether you’re a fr...

Intel moved deeper into the world of smart mobility and autonomous driving by announcing Monday its plan to acquire Israel-based urban transit data startup Moovit for $900 million. Moovit’s principle product is an urban mobility app with a particular focus on public transportation, which is used by hundreds of millions of customers. It uses public transit data to provide route planning in the vein of Google’s and Apple’s mapping apps, as well as scooter- and bike-sharing services and ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. But because it relies partly on crowdsourced data, Moovit can also provide routing for areas where no publicly released data is available. The app is used by 800 million customers and services 3,100 cities across 102 countries, Intel said. “a complete mobility provide...

Vader Immortal — the formerly Oculus-exclusive VR Star Wars experience from ILMxLAB — is coming to PlayStation VR this summer. The three episodes of the series are set to be bundled together into a single collected purchase for the port. Designed as an episodic narrative virtual reality experience, Vader Immortal puts players into the digital shoes of a smuggler who gets drawn into a larger scheme from the infamous villain. The story sees players work with — and, eventually, face off against — the Dark Lord of the Sith himself. The story, which was written by screenwriter David S. Goyer, is considered to be part of the sprawling Star Wars canon, and it plays out like a personal Star Wars theme park, according to a review from The Verge’s Adi Robertson. Until now, though, the only way to ex...

With today’s announcement of a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple has finally stopped trying to fix one of the most controversial and problematic hardware designs in its history: the butterfly switch mechanism on its laptop keyboards. After five years of applying bandages to the butterfly keyboard, Apple has switched over its entire laptop line to the scissor-switch-based Magic Keyboard in the span of six months. Switching the entire product lineup over to a new keyboard in the span of six months is impressive, but the decision to finally do so came far too late. Apple obstinately stuck with this keyboard design for much too long, hurting its image and causing wholly unnecessary hassle and cost for its customers. I would say good riddance, but I am typing this on a MacBook Pro with a butterfly...

In a move that seems utterly obvious as soon as it was announced, Nicholas Cage will be playing the eccentric zookeeper Joe Exotic in a new TV series, via Variety. Look, this was bound to happen. As soon as Netflix’s Tiger King true-crime documentary series exploded into popularity, Hollywood began turning the almost impossibly outlandish story of the bombastic Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, and their tiger-fueled feuding into a scripted series. And now Cage himself — Hollywood’s most over-the-top actor whose work has endlessly spanned the gray area between good, bad, and just plain weird — is set to take on the role of the eccentric Tiger King himself. The currently unnamed show will also mark Cage’s first TV role. If you think about it, there really wasn’t any other choice Like the Netflix s...