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Microsoft is quietly refreshing its Surface Book 2 base model today. The software giant is introducing Intel’s latest 8th Gen quad-core i5 processor for the 13-inch Surface Book 2 model , and keeping the existing dual-core 7th Gen model at a discounted price of $1,299. The refreshed quad-core model will be priced at $1,499, and includes an i5-8350U which bumps the processor’s maximum boost clock speed up to 3.6GHz. The new mid-range Surface Book 2 will also include 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. The processor is the only significant change, but it should make a big difference for performance. We saw impressive jumps in performance from quad-core Surface Pro 6 models compared to the dual-core chips used in previous models. Microsoft has quietly launched this new model today, following rumors the company was planning to refresh the Surface Book 2. Microsoft is also holding a Surface event on April 17th in New York City . The company is expected to detail pricing and availability fo

The parent company of restaurants such as Planet Hollywood, Buca di Beppo, and Mixology has confirmed that it experienced a security breach after security researchers found more than 2 million stolen credit card numbers being sold online. KrebsOnSecurity says that it contacted the company in February after it discovered “strong evidence” that customer credit card and debit card numbers were being sold online. Hackers used “malware installed on its point-of-sale systems” to steal 2.15 million credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, and some cardholder names from restaurant locations in 40 states. Earl Enterprises says that the breach took place between May 23rd, 2018 and March 18th, 2019, and that “the incident has now been contained.” The breach impacted individual restaurant locations of Buca di Beppo, Earl of Sandwich, Planet Hollywood, Chicken Guy!, Mixology, and Tequila Taqueria outlets. The company has since launched a website for customers to check if a location the

New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the legislative leaders have announced that they have reached an agreement on the state’s 2020 budget, a provision of which includes a ban on single-use plastic bags, making it the third state to adopt such legislation. Lawmakers will vote on the budget deal later today. The provision will effectively ban the single-use plastic bags that are found in grocery stores, which often make their way into waterways and oceans. The New York Times says that the ban goes into effect in March 2020, and will prohibit stores from providing the bags to customers, although there are some exceptions, like bags for newspapers, wrapping produce or meat, and take-out. The provision also allows cities and counties to opt-in to a 5-cent fee for paper bags, with revenue from that fund subsidizing reusable bags for low-income customers and to the State’s Environmental Protection Fund. California became the first state to ban the bags in 2014 , with the goal of reducing

Vonnegut’s classic is the weirdest book to become required high school reading. https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/31/18287062/slaughterhouse-five-50th-anniversary-kurt-vonnegut

Self-driving cars are trained to be overly cautious, but there may be situations where they need to make high-speed maneuvers to avoid a collision. Can these vehicles, festooned with tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-tech sensors and programmed to drive at grandma-speeds, handle these split-second decisions like a human? Engineers at Stanford University may have the answer . They created a neural network that can enable driverless cars to perform high-speed, low-friction maneuvers just as well as race car drivers. When they eventually arrive, driverless cars will need capabilities beyond those of humans, as 94 percent of crashes are attributable to human error. Researchers say this is an important step in improving autonomous vehicles’ ability to avoid accidents. “We want our algorithms to be as good as the best skilled drivers — and, hopefully, better,” said Nathan Spielberg, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Stanford and lead author of a paper published e

AMC has released the first trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Joe Hill’s horror novel, NOS4A2 . The network also announced that the series will premiere alongside the next season of Fear the Walking Dead on June 2nd, 2019. First published in 2013, NOS4A2 follows the story of Victoria “Vic” McQueen (played by Ashleigh Cummings in the series), who discovers that she has a supernatural ability to find lost things by riding her bike across a strange bridge. She crosses paths with a man named Charlie Manx (played by Zachary Quinto), who kidnaps children to take them to supernatural place called Christmasland, where he feeds off of their souls and corrupts them. Vic was the only child to have ever encounter Manx and escape and those experiences have haunted her later in life. Year later, Manx has found a new child to spirit away to Christmasland: her son. AMC debuted the trailer earlier today, and screened the first episode of the series for audiences at Wondercon in Anaheim, Califo

Freshman Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a public letter to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai last week asking for him to explain the company’s work in China to the public. The letter followed Pichai’s week full of meetings in DC addressing comments made by US defense leaders in March. During a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting in March, General Joseph Dunford argued that Google’s current work in China “is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military.” The comments alarmed lawmakers and on Wednesday, Pichai met with President Donald Trump and Dunford in what appeared to be an attempt to deescalate tension. Hawley asked the initial question that spurred the debate, and after taking note of Google’s meeting, he is now calling for the company to publicly address its approach in China. “According to reports,” Hawley writes, “the work Google is doing with China not only includes development of artificial intelligence technology that may possibly be used by Chinese military and intelligence

Earlier today, the New Zealand Herald published a letter from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, addressing how the company is addressing the deadly terror attack in Christchurch two weeks ago. In the letter, she lays out three steps that the company is taking, including that it’s “exploring restrictions” for live video. She described the attack as “an act of pure evil,” and that the company is “committed to reviewing what happened,” and that it’s working with the country’s authorities. In the aftermath of the attack, Facebook says that it removed 1.5 million videos of the attack around the world , with 1.2 blocked “at upload.” In her letter, Sandberg says that while Facebook moved quickly to remove the video and the perpetrator’s account, the company could do more, and laid out three steps that it will take. We’ve reached out to Facebook to clarify on the letter, and will update this post if we hear back. The first step is that Facebook is “exploring restrictions on who can go Live de

Apple kicked off this week with its big services event , which included the announcement of Apple TV Plus , its streaming movie and TV service. It’s going to be a huge deal, eventually, once it actually launches. But for now, I’m more interested in another thing Apple announced: an update to the Apple TV “TV” app . With this app, Apple’s goal is to put all your streaming subscriptions in one place — one app to browse and stream everything available to you. That’s the dream, at least, making it so that people don’t have to hop between apps. But for now, not every video provider is on board. And for those that are on board, you’ll have to subscribe to them directly through Apple in order to get all the benefits; otherwise, you’ll still have to jump to the provider’s official app to start watching. The Apple TV app update is several steps in the right direction. But for now, I find there’s still no great way to look up what’s available to me when I want to find something to watch. My g

At Sega Fes 2019, Sega announced that it will finally release a retro version of its Sega Genesis console later this year: the Sega Genesis Mini (in the US) and the Mega Drive Mini (in Japan). The device will come with 40 built-in games, and will hit stores on September 19th, 2019. According to Kotaku , the Genesis Mini / Mega Drive will have slightly different game lineups when released. The Japanese version will include Castlevania Bloodlines, Comix Zone, Gunstar Heroes, Madou Monogatari Ichi, Powerball, Puyo Puyo 2, Rent-a-Hero, Shining Force, Sonic 2, and Space Harrier II, while the US version will include Altered Beast, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Comix Zone, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Ecco the Dolphin, Gunstar Heroes, Shining Force, Sonic The Hedgehog, Space Harrier II, and ToeJam & Earl . Additional games will be announced. #セガフェス2019 では #メガドラミニ の試遊台を10台ご用意！ 今からご案内がはじまりました！ １F配信ブースでは『メガドライブ ミニ（仮称）こぼれ話』をお届けしております。 ⇒ https://t.co/oVCoc1xis7 pic.twitter.c

A video surfaced in recent days of a particularly scary concept — a drone with a shotgun mounted in its airframe. But it doesn’t look like it’s designed to hunt people: the video is a demonstration of a Russian device that’s designed to take on smaller aircraft, namely other drones. The drone seems to have begun development back in 2016 (via Foxtrot Alpha ) from a group of students at the Moscow Aviation Institute. While there have been instances of people mounting firearms (and chainsaws ) to drones, there are some drawbacks — the recoil from a gunshot makes it impractical for actually being an effective weapons platform. According to Defence.ru , the students appear to have solved that problem by developing a stabilizing mechanism to improve its accuracy. Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey has since been issued a patent for the design , and presumably created the prototype. The drone itself is armed with a Russian-made Vepr-12 shotgun, and an operator using a visor can cont

As we start April so does a new season of anime begin, with this one slated to have over 40 shows airing in Japan. So to help cut through the information overload, we’ve culled the new season down to seven series that should appeal both to anime fans and to newcomers. Most of these shows are available for viewing internationally a day after they air in Japan, thanks to streaming services like Crunchyroll, Funimation, Netflix, and Amazon. If you like superhero action and satire One-Punch Man (Season 2) Saitama is the most powerful superhero in the world, able to defeat anything or anyone with a single punch, but nobody knows who he is. When he’s not being a superhero for fun, he spends most days alone in his apartment, planning for the next sale at the market. Eventually, he’s coaxed into joining the Superhero Association, and given the lowest ranking, despite some of the most powerful S-ranked heroes recognizing his strength. The first season of One-Punch Man aired in 2015,

Facebook has for years explored ways to help improve mobile connectivity and bring more of the population in developed countries get online, ostensibly a humanitarian effort but more of a thinly veiled ploy to bring more people into its app ecosystem. That effort’s most visible projects have been Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, with its Free Basics and Express Wi-Fi offerings for fast-growing smartphone markets, and the discontinued Aquila project , which sought to fly large, solar-powered drones that could beam down internet much like Alphabet’s high-flying Loon helium balloons. But Facebook was working on another method in secret that involved much smaller, bird-sized fixed-wing aircraft that could be used to boost smartphone data speeds, according to a report today from Business Insider . The project, codenamed “Catalina” after an island off the Southern California coast notable for once using a carrier pigeon network, was discontinued about a year ago, a Facebook spokesperso

On Wednesday, a Georgia man pleaded guilty to hacking into the Apple accounts of several famous musicians and athletes and spending thousands of dollars from the victims’ accounts. According to the Justice Department, Kwamaine Jerell Ford, 27, obtained the login credentials belonging to dozens of professional athletes, including NBA and NFL players, as well as famous rappers, through a phishing scheme. Ford sent emails from addresses pretending to be an Apple support representative. The Justice Department did not disclose who exactly was hacked. Apple received what the Justice Department cited as “hundreds” of unauthorized logins from the victims’ accounts. After receiving the login credentials, Ford would attempt to take control of the accounts by changing the email addresses and passwords, which meant that victims were unable to access them without the help of an Apple employee. Ford spent thousands of dollars on everything from furniture and money transfers to travel expenses.

Amazon is apparently looking to follow Roku in building a free app that includes video news updates from TV networks. The Information reports that Amazon has already approached several news organizations and Verizon (owner of Yahoo News and Finance) in hopes of distributing their content through the upcoming app for its Fire TV streaming devices. As part of its free, ad-supported Roku Channel , Roku currently offers news programming from ABC News, Cheddar, Yahoo News and Finance, and other partners. Amazon might try to get a step ahead of Roku by including local news affiliates alongside those nationwide news sources, according to The Information ’s report. That could appeal to cord cutters — assuming they’re not already getting their news fix via an antenna. The company aims to launch this news-focused video app sometime in the next few months. Apart from giving its customers another free-to-watch option for content, the app could also enable Amazon to bring in more ad dollars by

Google has removed a gay conversion therapy app from a religious group called Living Hope Ministries from the Play Store after vocal protests from a wide range of groups, including thousands of internet users , New York State Senator Brad Hoylman , and most recently, the Human Rights Campaign , as reported by Axios . The removal of the app comes just a day after Google was suspended from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (which rates workplaces on overall LGBTQ equality) due to Google’s then-refusal to remove the app. Google is the last major tech company to remove the app : back in December, both Apple and Amazon removed the apps from their respective app stores, but the app remained live on Google’s store until this week. In that time, the call for Google to remove the app had gotten dramatically louder. A Change.org petition requesting that the app be removed reached over 142,000 signatures — for comparison, the Apple-focused petition against the app reache

Instagram is testing out adding a seek bar to videos posted on people’s feeds, finally giving you access to the most basic amount of control over video playback. The feature, which was discovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong , could let you skip forward to a point in a video you want to watch, and rewind footage without having to restart a video entirely — you know, like every other video player has allowed you to do since the dawn of time. Instagram already includes this feature for videos posted to IGTV, but amazingly this is the first time we’ve seen it enabled for people’s regular Instagram feeds. Before you get too excited, the service does not appear to be testing the feature for videos posted as part of an Instagram story. Instagram is testing video seekbar pic.twitter.com/gyIZZhrh2y — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 27, 2019 The ability to scrub through videos is for Instagram what editing tweets is to Twitter, a feature that people have been asking for for

With its latest update, Gmail’s iOS app finally lets you customize what happens when you swipe your emails. Five different actions are supported, including archiving or deleting emails, marking them as read or unread, snoozing, archiving, or moving them to a different folder. You can also assign different actions to left or right swipes. The update brings the functionality of Gmail’s iOS app into line with its Android equivalent. Until recently, the iOS app only let you archive or delete emails by swiping, and swiping in either direction would do the same thing. The update comes as part of a broader redesign announced by Google back in January. The functionality is available in the latest version of the Gmail app, which began its rollout yesterday, but could take as many as 15 days to be available to everyone, according to Google. Once downloaded, you can change what swiping does by heading into the Settings menu and selecting Swipe actions.

In 2016, ProPublica found that Facebook was allowing advertisers to publish discriminatory housing ads , in apparent violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Civil rights groups, the state of Washington , and the federal government all mobilized in protest, leading to various legal skirmishes. And then, less than two weeks ago, it appeared the long-running issue had been resolved: Facebook announced a settlement with the groups suing it , and said it would eliminate additional targeting options that could let people post discriminatory advertisements. Just when it seemed the advertising discrimination issue was behind us, here comes — Secretary Ben Carson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development ? “Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement . “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.” [...] According t

Small satellite launcher Rocket Lab successfully pulled off its first flight of the year out of New Zealand this evening, sending an experimental communications satellite into orbit for DARPA. It marks the third commercial flight of Rocket Lab’s small Electron rocket, and the fifth flight overall for the fledgling company, which just began launching rockets in 2017. Dubbed the R3D2 mission, the flight sent up a small, 330-pound satellite into orbit, designed to test out a new kind of radio antenna. Made out of a type of material known as Kapton, the antenna is as thin as tissue paper, but able to grow in size while in space. The antenna launched on the rocket folded up inside a canister, and now that it’s in orbit, the antenna will unfurl and expand out into its full shape that’s more than seven feet wide. The design should provide more area to reflect radio waves. This technology, if successful, could become a useful option for small satellite operators that want to include larger,

Its latest flagship the Galaxy S10 might be getting the most attention these days, but Samsung is still trying to generate some sales of last year’s Galaxy Note 9 ahead of its own refresh this coming summer. This evening, the company is holding a brief 6-hour sale during which you can save $300 on the unlocked Note 9 — in either the 128GB storage / 6GB RAM or 512GB / 8GB configurations. This might be the Note 9’s lowest price ever; it ticked down to just over $700 a few weeks ago, but has since risen back up to $899 or its standard $999 at most retailers. To take advantage of the deal, enter code 300SAMSUNG at the company’s store anytime tonight (March 28th) between 6PM ET and 11:59PM ET and you should see the $300 taken off your total. The Galaxy S10 has this year’s more powerful Snapdragon 855 processor and an even nicer screen than the Note 9, but there’s no S Pen equivalent for Samsung’s more mainstream flagship. Last year’s Note is still plenty capable, offers a ton of unique

Canon announced a new pair of instant-print cameras that are set to challenge Fujifilm’s Instax mini-film cameras, part of a trend embraced by social media users and influencers alike. Enter the two Canon IVY CLIQ instant-print cameras Each of Canon’s new shooters can hold up to ten sheets of Zink film , can export its photos to the CLIQ+ Instant Camera Printer + App, and includes an optical viewfinder plus a USB cord for charging the battery. The IVY CLIQ+ (the higher end of the two cameras, called the Zoemini S in Europe ) sports an 8-megapixel sensor, 2 x 2 and 2 x 3 printing options, expansion via a microSD card slot, a reprint option to share recent shots with friends, and a selfie mirror surround by an LED light ring so you can get that perfect vanity shot. Canon and authorized retailers will start selling the IVY CLIQ+ in April, including ten sheets of 2 x 3 photo paper to start you off with, for $159.99. It’ll come in Pearl White, Sapphire Blue, or Ruby Red. Meanwhile,