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Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images Disney  World is the most magical place on Earth, no matter what the time of year. Every season comes with its own special events and celebrations, from Fourth of July to Halloween and Christmas . And while summer may traditionally be peak season, you'd be surprised to see that at Disney, there really is no such thing as an off season. Keep scrolling to see what Disney World looks like in the summer versus the winter. Though Disney World can get crowded year-round, it's the most chaotic in the summer months, when children are on summer vacation. Flickr/marc smith Summer at Disney can get incredibly packed, because everyone's off from school and has the time to travel. But so long as you know how to manage the lines , it can still be a fun experience. In the winter, the park generally sees lighter crowds.... but not much lighter. Jared/Flickr So long as you avoid Martin Luther King Day and Labor Day at Disney , coming during the off...

Reuters Rescue crews are amassing piles of shoes during their search for victims and possible survivors of Monday's Lion Air plane crash. Chilling photographs of the recovery site at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia show the extent of the tragedy, with baby shoes among the many others. Lion Air flight JT 610 had 189 people onboard when it crashed in the Java Sea, and had been faulty on the last flight it took . Heartbreaking photos show lines of shoes belonging to Lion Air crash victims piled up at the recovery site in Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia. Images captured by Reuters photographers show the full extent of Monday's disaster that killed 189 people , including pictures of several pairs of baby shoes. See the rest of the story at Business Insider NOW WATCH: 'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams has left Arya Stark behind to help fight nepotism in the arts industries See Also: Most of the people who died in the Lion Air crash are prob...

BeeMe/MIT Media Lab For  Halloween , the  MIT Media Lab is hosting a mass online social experiment at 11 p.m. EDT tonight. Called "BeeMe," the goal of the "dystopian game" is to let participants control an actor and defeat an evil artificial intelligence program. Internet users will program the actor by crowdsourcing commands and then voting on them. BeeMe's creators say they want the project to stoke conversations about privacy , ethics, entertainment, and social interactions. This Halloween, the creepiest event to attend might be a mass online social experiment hosted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is famous for churning out some of the world's top engineers, programmers, and scientists. But the university's Media Laboratory is increasingly known for launching experimental projects in October that are designed to make us squirm. See the rest of the story at Business Insider NOW WATCH: Four MIT graduates c...

Chinese phone maker ZTE is launching the Blade Max 2S and the Blade Max View , two smartphones with lower-end specs for $180 and $200, respectively. Both phones have 2160 x 1080 LCD screens with 18:9 aspect ratios, 1.4GHz processors, 4,000mAh batteries, and 32GB of storage. The Blade Max 2S has 2GB of RAM, and the Blade Max View has 3GB. For $20 more, the Max View offers dual 16-megapixel and 2-megapixel rear cameras and Android Nougat, while the Max 2s has a single 13-megapixel rear camera and runs Android Oreo out of the box. On the ZTE website, the Blade Max View is listed as having a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor, but no brand is listed for the Max 2S processor with the same cores and clock speeds. For years, ZTE and Huawei have... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2ql4Tat via IFTTT

With Apple’s AirPower still missing in action , the Apple accessory ecosystem has been attempting to fill the need with similar products. Some of these third party products are better than others, and the new Base Station from Nomad looks to be the best of them all. The Base Station does two things. One, it wireless charges up to three mobile devices. Two, it charges an Apple Watch through an integrated Apple MFi-certified Magnetic Apple Watch charger. More so, it looks great. A padded leather surface covers three charging coils allowing the unit to recharge up to three devices — or one device laying horizontally across the pad. Each of the coils are Qi-certified and output at 7.5W. As for the Apple Watch, it can only be recharged using the included magnetic charger unless Apple activates Qi-compatibility through a software update. The Nomad Base Station is available now for $120. Don’t have an Apple Watch? The same charging base is available for $20 less and still supports up to...

Netflix has released the first look of Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia for its upcoming take on The Witcher . Lauren Schmidt Hissrich is adapting Andrzej Sapkowski’s beloved fantasy novels for the streaming service. Since their release, they’ve inspired graphic novels, board games, and, of course, the acclaimed video game series from CD Projekt Red . In The Witcher ’s world, monster hunters known as witchers fight supernatural beings with the help of special powers and body modifications. Cavill stars alongside Freya Allan as fellow iconic characters Ciri, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer, and Anna Shaffer as Triss . On Twitter, Netflix also teased Cavill as the magical monster hunter. He doesn’t speak because he knows just what we’re thinking. ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/31/18048028/henry-cavill-geralt-rivia-netflix-the-witcher via IFTTT

The OEMs trying to make Windows on ARM a reality are repeating some of Intel's biggest mistakes with its own x86 tablet platform. The post Windows-Based ARM Laptops Are Repeating Intel’s Clover Trail Mistake appeared first on ExtremeTech . from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/computing/279843-windows-based-arm-laptops-are-repeating-intels-clover-trail-mistake via IFTTT

Trump strategist Steve Bannon has resurfaced in an unlikely place: the tech conference circuit. He is currently scheduled as the keynote speaker at the 15th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (or ACE2018), to be hosted at the University of Montana in December. The conference is co-located with the Fourth International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots , although Bannon does not have any apparent connection to that gathering. The broader scientific community is already pushing back against the invitation. A number of associated academics have pulled out of the conference in the wake of the keynote, as reported by Motherboard . Springer, a leading scientific publisher, has declined to publish the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2CW3sqL via IFTTT

Fortnite is almost as popular as Mario and Zelda amongst Switch owners, according to Nintendo. During the company’s most recent financial briefing , Nintendo revealed that Epic’s battle royale game has been installed on “nearly half” of all Switch systems. The company also notes that the game is popular globally, “not just in the US and Europe but also in Japan.” While Nintendo didn’t reveal a specific number of downloads, the Switch has currently sold just over 22 million units to date. That means that around 10 million of those tablets have Fortnite installed, a significant jump from the 2 million downloads Epic saw during the game’s first 24 hours of availability after it debuted on the Switch in June. To put that number in... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2SAvM7s via IFTTT

Not long ago, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the legendary game designer behind musical classics Rez and Lumines , was on vacation with his family in Hawaii. When he looked out the window of his Airbnb, his view was dominated by a lush, green golf course. As he stared outside, he couldn’t help but see very specific shapes in the grass. “I found a tetromino in the golf course,” he says. What Mizuguchi experienced is something known as “ the Tetris effect ,” a condition where people spend so much time doing a particular activity that it begins to invade their thoughts. It’s named after the classic puzzle game, where falling blocks have been to known to enter players’ dreams if they play too much. Tetris Effect also happens to be the name of Mizuguchi’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2ADwv0l via IFTTT

Live streaming TV services, like Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, Hulu with Live TV, and others, are gaining steam in the U.S. as more consumers cut the cord with traditional pay TV. According to a new report from Conviva out this morning, these services (called virtual MVPDs) now account for over three-quarters of all plays and viewing hours in the U.S. That growth has come at the expense of dedicated apps from individual publishers, the report found. Over the past 12 months, streaming TV services – the virtual MVPDs like Hulu with live TV, Sling TV, or PlayStation Vue – have seen a 292 percent increase in plays and a 212 percent increase in viewing hours, while publisher apps have seen declines of 16 percent and 19 percent, respectively, across those fronts. The services have also been improving over time. Many suffered from glitches and outages at launch – and this continues today, on occasion . But overall, they’re more stable than in the past. The report found that across thes...

This is clever. Made by HyperDrive, the USB-C Hub slips onto an Apple USB-C power adapter and adds two USB 3.0 ports. That’s all. I love it and it addresses a major shortcoming of Apple’s current notebook lineup. Apple ditched full size USB ports in favor of the versatile USB-C. It makes sense on some levels. USB-C supports nearly every bus format available but there are still a bunch of devices that ship with the older USB plug. Like the iPhone. If a person walks into an Apple store and buys the latest iPhone and the latest MacBook Pro, the iPhone will need a dongle to recharge off the MacBook Pro. Why not make it this dongle? Similar devices have long been on the market but tend to use the power port to add a USB port. This one uses the power of USB-C, which results in an adapter that’s a touch smaller than the alternatives. The HyperDrive USB-C Hub comes in two flavors to match the two versions of Apple’s power adapters. The USB-C Hub for the 61W power adapter costs $39.99 while...

Science fiction tends to be an expensive genre. Bringing the elaborate worlds of Star Wars , the futuristic dystopia of Blade Runner 2049 , or the exotic planets and creatures of the Alien franchise to life costs significant money, which naturally encourages studios to greenlight movies that feel like familiar safe bets. And that leads to different versions of the same story being told time and again. That’s why independent and low-budget science fiction movies are such a vital creative playground, particularly for up-and-coming filmmakers. Projects like Shane Carruth’s Primer and Duncan Jones’ Moon are able to take creative risks that their bigger-budget brethren can’t, resulting in films that rethink what the genre can do, while still... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2RwIPp9 via IFTTT

More expensive than any Boosted but not better Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Jv87Rx via IFTTT

No SIM card required for the low-power Sigfox IoT network Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2OYuqoA via IFTTT

Staying positive isn’t easy Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Rld4Pq via IFTTT

Soon, the days of package theft will be behind us. For people living in the U.K. town of Milton Keynes, that day is today. That’s thanks to autonomous robot startup Starship Technologies . Starship’s on-demand package delivery requires you to first install the app to receive a delivery address to go in the place of your home address, or wherever else you usually get packages delivered. That Starship-provided delivery address is where the company’s local facility is located. Once your package arrives there, the app will notify you and enable you to request a Starship bot to deliver it to you, wherever you are. Through the app, you can also track where your package is at all times. Starship delivers to home within a two-mile radius but has plans to expand its service area to make farther deliveries. The company says the battery is not a limitation, but that it merely wants wait time to be as short as possible. By the end of the year, Starship aims for the service to be available to re...

Starship Technologies, the maker of autonomous six-wheeled robots that carry groceries or even a hot meal straight to your home, is expanding into the world of package delivery. The company announced on Wednesday that, starting now, residents of Milton Keynes in the UK can have their packages delivered by Starship’s little robots. The program will also roll out to the San Francisco Bay Area by the end of the year. To do this, customers will have to direct their packages to a Starship sorting facility. Once there, customers can summon their package or schedule a delivery with a few taps in the company’s app. After that, one of Starship’s robots will trundle down the sidewalk with the package tucked away inside its frame. The robots can... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2yIjjGq via IFTTT

One of my favorite parts of Halloween is having an excuse to scare the pants off people. It’s the time of year for ghosts, for creeping dread, and peering into the void. And what could possibly be better for horror than the future? Seven of our reporters imagined the spookiest possible outcomes on their beats — the horrors of the future. Turn the lights off, and dial up the brightness of your screen. Maybe you’ll see it, just out of the corner of your eye: the fear that’s always lurking. The possibility that the bright future we’re trying to create will go dreadfully, immensely wrong, with very human consequences. Read these stories alone in the dark... if you dare. —Elizabeth Lopatto Table of Contents ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2AD15Yd via IFTTT

Gig workers, freelancers, sharing economy workers — call them what you want to, but the millions who drive you around in Lyfts, drop off your Seamless delivery or work on piecemeal projects from home have become a staple of the American workforce — and their numbers are only set to grow. A report out today says 56.7 million Americans worked as freelancers in the last year. That is more than 1 out of 3 of the entire labor force. For full-time employees, a whole array of protections exists to make sure they get paid, are not discriminated against and retain some income if they lose their jobs. From federal employment laws to state laws and city ordinances, employees have recourse for wrongdoing by employers. But for the fast-growing segment of Americans working as freelancers, little to no legal protections exist. That’s beginning to change. From a modern take on labor unions in the shape of the Freelancers Union to legal tech startups trying to provide freelancers with simple and ...

Kepler's mission has ended due to a lack of fuel. The good work begun by the Kepler space telescope will be continued by its successor, TESS. The post So Long, and Thanks for All the Planets: NASA Retires the Kepler Telescope appeared first on ExtremeTech . from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/2P2taAM via IFTTT

YouTube weirdo and mysterious musician Poppy and the artist formerly known as Grimes have been teasing a collaboration for months now, and finally the end result is here: a bubblegum pop-metal mashup called “Play Destroy.” It makes sense when you listen to it. In addition to threatening to burn down the local Walmart (very Grimes), the pair also sings about slicing up your face and breaking your toys. I have no idea why it took this duo so long to hook up. Poppy’s newest album, Am I a Girl? launches today. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2OfYQ0v via IFTTT

Some of us love our group chats. Others of us hate them and would love nothing more than to leave them all. But why do we want to leave? Maybe you’ve had someone leave a group without giving you a reason as to why, and maybe it hurt a little bit. Vox.com ’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and I are here to help you work through that pain with this episode of Why’d You Push That Butto n. First, I chat with my friend Liz who tells us about her current and past group chat drama. She’s actually very undramatic and seems to tell it like it is. I like this about her. Then Kaitlyn interviews Maggie Lange, who has written for GQ about never leaving group chats, ever. She’s pro-mute. Kaitlyn and I then take all our concerns to Asha Sharma, director of product... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2qkGZMt via IFTTT

It’s been a few years since the release of Undertale , an endearing role-playing game that made waves online for its charming writing, and the option to defeat enemies by talking to them. Today, creator Toby Fox has released a free follow-up on Undertale named Deltarune — a name that many are noting is an anagram of Undertale. The premise of Deltarune is shrouded in mystery, but that seems intentional. The landing page for the game warns users that they are about to embark on something ominous, and similarly, the actual game talks about pain a whole lot near the start. While actual characters from Undertale immediately make an appearance, it seems that the whole thing has intentionally been released to celebrate Halloween. After its... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2CUfC31 via IFTTT

Honor’s Magic 2 phone is finally official. The handset, which features a bezel-less screen that slides down to reveal a front-facing camera, was previously teased with a short trailer that showed it being used to drum out a beat on a table. (Honor has yet to confirm whether drumming damage will be covered under warranty.) The main event here is the sliding design, which can be used to automatically open the camera app when the 16MP selfie camera is revealed. The design means that the 6.39-inch AMOLED display achieves a screen-to-body ratio of close to 100 percent, which is further helped by its use of an in-display fingerprint sensor. The selfie camera is joined by a 24MP triple-lens rear camera array. Internally, the phone has the same... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2RpUTIv via IFTTT

The testy relationship between Falcon and Winter Soldier is one of the most underrated aspects of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, and Disney is reportedly looking to continue working on that relationship with a new limited series. Both Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) will star in a limited series for Disney’s new streaming service, according to Variety . The limited series is expected to receive six to eight episodes, according to the report, but it’s unclear if Mackie and Stan will return to reprise their roles. It’s assumed they will, following an earlier Variety report suggesting that Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen would reprise their respective roles as Loki and Scarlet Witch for two limited series on... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2PtXYdm via IFTTT

Amazon’s latest streaming player supports all the important formats and costs just $50 Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2CT9QyT via IFTTT

Lawmakers are getting ready to take on data privacy, but the details of the bill are still up for grabs Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2P4kFFL via IFTTT

Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. The two companies say the aim is to make smart homes “more thoughtful” by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes. iRobot’s latest Roomba, the i7+, creates maps using a combination of odometry data (measuring how far the robovac’s wheels move) and low-res camera imagery. The resulting maps can be used to create custom cleaning schedules or to let users ask their Roomba to vacuum specific rooms. An integration with Google Assistant lets customers give verbal commands like, “OK Google, tell Roomba to clean the kitchen.” Google and iRobot say this data will... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2CSMJVa via IFTTT

Security advocate Jerry Gamblin has posted a set of instructions – essentially basic lines of XML – that can easily pull important information off of the Google Home Hub and, in some cases, temporarily brick the device. The Home Hub, which is essentially an Android tablet attached to a speaker, is designed to act as an in-room Google Assistant. This means it connects to Wi-Fi (and allows you to see open Wi-Fi access points near the device), receives video and photos from other devices (and broadcasts its pin), and accepts commands remotely (including a quick reboot via the command line). The command – which consists of a simple URL call via the command line – is clearly part of the setup process. You can try this at home if you replace “hub” with the Home Hub’s local IP address. curl -Lv -H Content-Type:application/json --data-raw '{"params":"now"}' http://hub:8008/setup/reboot I am not an IOT security expert, but I am pretty sure an unauthenticated...

Two separate parliamentary committees, in the UK and Canada, have issued an unprecedented international joint summons for Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before them. The committees are investigating the impact of online disinformation on democratic processes and want Zuckerberg to answer questions related to the  Cambridge Analytica-Facebook user data misuse scandal , which both have been probing this year. More broadly, they are also seeking greater detail about Facebook’s digital policies and information governance practices — not least, in light of fresh data breaches — as they continue to investigate the democratic impacts and economic incentives related to the spread of online disinformation via social media platforms. In a letter sent to the Facebook founder today, the chairs of the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee and the Canadian Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (SCAIPE), Damian Collins and Bob Zimm...

LinkedIn has created and — with 562 million users — leads the market in social platforms for people who want to network with others in their professions, and look for jobs. Now a startup that hopes to take it on in a specific niche — university students and recent grads, with a focus on diversity and inclusion — has raised a substantial round to grow. Handshake , a platform for both students looking to take their early career steps and employers who want to reach them, has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding, after hitting 14 million users in the U.S. across 700 universities, and 300,000 employers targeting them. The company is now valued at $275 million post-money, according to figures from PitchBook , a big leap on its valuation at the Series B stage two years ago , when it was valued at $108 million. The funding is notable not just for that valuation hike — and the implication that many think it could give Microsoft-owned LinkedIn a run for its money among 20-somet...

PSA: If you’re an Apple Watch owner who is having trouble finding the shiny new WatchOS 4.1 update that Apple just shipped, it isn’t quite ready yet. Apple initially shipped the update on Tuesday alongside iOS 12.1 , but it quickly pulled it hours later following reports that it bricked some Series 4 watches. A number of customers affected took to Reddit and Twitter to warn of the issues, which were first reported by 9to5Mac  and caused some watches to be stuck on the loading screen. The update is no longer available, but Apple told those who did download it and now have bricked a watch that it is working on a fix that’ll ship as soon as possible. “Due to a small number of Apple Watch customers experiencing an issue while installing watchOS 5.1 today, we’ve pulled back the software update as a precaution,” it said in a statement. “Any customers impacted should contact AppleCare, but no action is required if the update installed successfully. We are working on a fix ...

At yesterday’s Apple event, I saw a company returning to its finest form. Apple paid overdue attention to its stalwart MacBook Air and Mac mini, introduced a much leaner and more powerful iPad Pro, and fixed the design disaster that was the Apple Pencil’s charging. You don’t have to be an expert analyst to forecast bumper holiday sales for the Cupertino team. In crafting its most compelling iPad and MacBook Air to date, Apple also created a major headache for people like me. I’m a member of that classic Intel ultrabook demographic whose computing needs are light, but constant. You won’t catch me doing 3D modeling or 4K video production on my laptop, but I do a litany of small tasks online, in a word processor, or in Adobe’s Lightroom.... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Q5gK7T via IFTTT

If you’re the account owner on a Spotify Premium Family plan in the US, you can get a free Google Home Mini from the streaming service through the end of the year, Spotify announced today. Spotify has partnered with Google to give out the voice assistant to account owners on its family plan who sign up through the link here . On the surface, it may seem like a nice holiday giveaway for Family plan users (and it is in some respects). But with the growth of Amazon Music largely on the back of the Echo and the rise of smart speakers, which may be in 50 percent of US homes before the end of the year , it’s also a strategic move for Spotify. YouTube Music and Google Play Music are still far from serious competition for Spotify, but Amazon’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2qkxmxj via IFTTT

As if October wasn’t already packed full of new product announcements, China’s Nubia is today hosting a launch event for its new flagship called the Nubia X . Leaked ahead of the big unveil, this device takes a pretty extreme approach to solving the notch problem: it puts a second display on the back, removing the entire need for a front-facing camera. We’re not talking e-paper displays like you had on the YotaPhone , this is a full-sized color screen, albeit with some fat bezels around it. So you can simply flip the phone around to its back to take your selfie with the main camera. The most impressive thing about the Nubia X’s second display is the way it totally disappears when switched off. You can see a good demonstration of how that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Dc1IKE via IFTTT

Nvidia and AMD are the big winners in a new supercomputer announcement that will put Epyc and Tesla silicon in Cray's latest Shasta system. The post Nvidia Tesla, AMD Epyc to Power New Berkeley Supercomputer appeared first on ExtremeTech . from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/2Q8E9Fo via IFTTT

With iOS 12.1 , Apple has brought its controversial “performance management feature” (aka, throttling) to the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X. This functionality dynamically throttles the phone’s processor as its battery degrades over time to stop the handset from randomly shutting down — it can be turned off if desired. Previously Apple has told US senators that “hardware updates” meant that the feature isn’t as necessary on its newest phones. The company has always maintained that all of its products include “fundamental performance management” functionality to protect its components. A support page explaining the feature said the following about the iPhone 8 and later devices: iPhone 8 and later use a more advanced hardware and... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2PzgMb0 via IFTTT