For the last three years, YouTube TV has been the affordable alternative to pricier live TV streaming services, such as Hulu and AT&T TV. But that price gap just vanished. YouTube TV is jumping from $50 a month to $65 due to the “rising cost of content,” the company announced in a blog post.
Source: Gizmodo – YouTube TV Jacks Up Its Prices and the Promise of Cheap TV Feels Further Away Than Ever
You could soon be able to enjoy 3D-printed, plant-based flank steak at home. Israeli startup Redefine Meat says that’s what it hopes to accomplish for customers when it launches 3D-printed steak alternatives in 2021. The product will enter a market w…
Source: Engadget – 3D-printed plant-based steaks could arrive in 2021
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)
Comcast is scheduled to reinstate its home-Internet data cap tomorrow, July 1, after more than three months in which customers were provided unlimited data to help them through the coronavirus pandemic. AT&T, by contrast, announced today that it is “continuing to waive home-Internet data overage charges for AT&T Internet customers through September 30.”
Comcast and AT&T suspended their data caps and overage fees in mid-March, initially promising two months of unlimited data. The companies later extended that pledge to June 30, but Comcast hasn’t granted any further extensions. We contacted Comcast yesterday but didn’t receive answers to questions about its data cap, and Comcast’s website still says the data-cap waiver only goes through June 30. While Comcast didn’t answer the data-cap questions, a spokesperson pointed out that the cable company extended other pandemic offers for college students and people with low incomes beyond June 30, and it is keeping its Wi-Fi hotspots open to the public for free for the rest of 2020.
Many US states are taking steps toward reopening their economies, which might reduce usage of home-broadband networks. But the pandemic is far from over, as the CDC reported over 40,000 new daily cases in the United States each day from June 25 to June 28, including the highest-ever daily count of 44,703 on June 27.
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Source: Ars Technica – Comcast’s data cap and overage fees return tomorrow after 3-month break
Masks protect us. That shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but since there’s been so much confusion about what masks do, and there are a lot of myths floating around about them, it’s time for a little refresher.
Source: LifeHacker – How Masks Protect Us From the Coronavirus
Months of free time and loads of untapped ingenuity has resulted in competitively-challenged hackers coming up with clever ways to use technology to dominate various sports. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if Cornhole officially falls into that category, but either way, Michael Rechtin’s managed to upgrade the game…
Source: Gizmodo – Robotic Cornhole Guarantees Victory, Assuming Everyone Else Is Too Drunk To Realize You’re Cheating
Sony hasn’t released a new A7S camera for nearly five years, leaving some video shooters and low-light photographers in the lurch. Don’t worry, though — a successor is nearly here. Company VP Kenji Tanaka told DPReview in an interview that a third-ge…
Source: Engadget – Sony will release an ‘all-new’ A7S camera this summer
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory put together this time-lapse of the Sun using 425 million high-resolution images (over 20 million gigabytes of data) which it gathered from over a decade of observation from its orbit in space.
With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions. The custom music, titled “Solar Observer,” was composed by musician Lars Leonhard (https://www.lars-leonhard.de/).
Kudos to anybody who watches the entire video, because it’s over an hour long and it’s just the sun spinning and glowing and spinning and glowing. There are a few notable moments like large flares or sunspots, but the most interesting is probably at 12:24 when you see Venus transit across the Sun. It’s not exactly John Wick, but it’s still pretty neat.
Keep going for the full video.
Source: Geekologie – 10-year time lapse of the Sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
As long as fans have breath in their lungs, they’ll be arguing about the ending of Lost. Did it satisfy? Did it not? Last month marked 10 years since the series finale, and bringing it up at a party (remember those?) is still sure to spark debate. In a new interview, Lost co-creator and executive producer Damon…
Source: io9 – Damon Lindelof Details the Behind-the-Scenes Struggle to End Lost
Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)
Today’s Dealmaster is headlined by an Amazon Gold Box sale on storage products from SanDisk and WD. The discounts cover a number of microSD cards, SD cards, flash drives, and portable hard drives, among other devices.
The highlights include the 128GB version of SanDisk’s microSDXC Card for Nintendo Switch, a speedy and reliable microSD card we recommended in our guide to the best Nintendo Switch accessories, down to $22.35. This isn’t the lowest price we’ve ever seen, but it’s a nice drop from its usual $28 and the cheapest this model has been since it went for $20 on Black Friday. If you’re more concerned with storage space than performance, the 400GB SanDisk Ultra is a slower card but offers a much lower cost-per-GB ratio for devices like the Switch. It’s currently down to $48 from its usual $60.
Elsewhere, the SanDisk Extreme is a durable portable SSD we’ve tested and recommended before—its 1TB model is down to $136 from a typical street price around $170. The company’s iXpand Flash Drive Go, meanwhile, is a useful flash drive with a Lightning connector that’s about $10 off its normal going rate. There are plenty more deals beyond that, but just note that, like all Gold Box sales, the deals are available for today only.
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Source: Ars Technica – A bunch of microSD cards and other storage devices are on sale today
To help customers save energy (and money) this summer, Nest is offering its Seasonal Savings feature for free to its connected thermostat users in the US and most of Canada. The feature makes small tweaks to Nest thermostat settings to help reduce en…
Source: Engadget – Nest makes its Seasonal Savings program free for all thermostat users
What is old is new (and popular) again, or so goes the recent theme tech, and particularly retro gaming. Fueled in part by Nintendo and its NES Classic and SNES Classic systems, retro consoles and computers are seeing a surge in rebirths. Here is one more for the pile—THEVIC20, a fully licensed re-imagining of the the original VIC-20 from
Source: Hot Hardware – Captain Kirk’s Favorite 80s Commodore Computer Returns For Retro Glory With THEVIC20
For months we’ve all been stuck at home taking pictures of our cats, dinners and other noteworthy objects, and we’ve apparently been using a lot of bandwidth when backing them all up to Google Photos. As a result, Google announced today that it is limiting what Google Photos will automatically back up on your Android…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Get Around Google’s New Photo Sync Limits on Android
If the reason that cord-cutters tried to flee “Big Cable” was to avoid outrageous monthly pricing structures and ever-increasing fees, we’ve got some bad news for you. Google is once again raising prices on YouTube TV customers, and this time it’s a significant increase. Starting with the July 30th billing cycle, a YouTube TV subscription
Source: Hot Hardware – YouTube TV Scorns Cord-Cutters Again By Hiking Monthly Subscription Pricing
Ford’s upcoming 2021 Mustang Mach-E is one step closer to making its way to consumers. On Tuesday, the automaker said anyone who has already reserved the EV in the US can convert their reservation into an order starting today.In the same post, Ford a…
Source: Engadget – Ford starts taking Mustang Mach-E orders in the US
On May 28, Daisy stood on a pink-and red-striped flag, a grey beret perched atop her magenta hair, waiting for her friends to fly into her island on Dodo Airlines. One by one, seven of them arrived and stood on the dock awaiting Daisy’s instructions. Meanwhile, at her parents’ home in the southern United States,…
Source: Kotaku – Animal Crossing: New Horizons Helps Queer Players Express Themselves
Enlarge / Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the progress on a COVID-19 vaccine during his visit to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing on March 2, 2020. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency)
China has approved an experimental COVID-19 vaccine for use in its military after early clinical trial data suggested it was safe and spurred immune responses—but before larger trials that will test whether the vaccine can protect against SARS-CoV-2 infections.
This marks the first time any country has approved a candidate vaccine for military use. China’s Central Military Commission made the approval June 25, which will last for a year, according to a filing reported by Reuters.
The vaccine, developed by biotech company CanSino Biologics and the Chinese military, is a type of viral vector-based vaccine. That means researchers started with a viral vector, in this case a common strain of adenovirus (type-5), which typically causes mild upper respiratory infections. The researchers crippled the virus so that it doesn’t replicate in human cells and cause disease. Then, they engineered the virus to carry a signature feature of SARS-CoV-2—the coronavirus’ infamous spike protein, which juts out from the viral particle and allows the virus to get a hold on human cells.
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Source: Ars Technica – China moves forward with COVID-19 vaccine, approving it for use in military
It worked for Spider-Man, and now maybe it’ll work for the heroes in a half-shell. Paramount and Nickelodeon are teaming up for yet another reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Source: io9 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Will Cowabunga Back to the Big Screen With an Animated Reboot
It seems like Facebook is really trying (for real this time, guys!) to get a handle on its fake news problem. Today the company announced a major change to the way it prioritizes news articles in your feed. Instead of prioritizing news content that has the most engagement, the social media giant will now show users…
Source: Gizmodo – Facebook Is Pivoting Away From ‘Engaging’ Content In the News Feed
Most parents are probably burnt out right now on reviewing math facts and vocabulary words. I, personally, have been mostly focused on making sure my nine-year-old continues to read consistently and gets outdoors enough; beyond that, fine, play Minecraft. But one way we could be taking advantage of this summer is by…
Source: LifeHacker – Learn How to Teach Your Kids Life Skills With This Free Webinar
The FCC wants to make it patently obvious that Huawei and ZTE are personas non grata in American telecom networks. The regulator has formally labeled Huawei and ZTE as “national security threats,” finally barring carriers from using their Universal S…
Source: Engadget – FCC says Huawei and ZTE are national security threats
