A Cylinder That Listens to My Kitchen
Amazon's new always-listening speaker Echo has me half-convinced and half-uneasy, plus some thoughts on the CurrentC mess and a comet landing happening today.
Tech News
Tech News
The Lumia 535 and the End of the Nokia Name
Microsoft's new Lumia 535 is the first Lumia phone with no Nokia branding on it at all, and that quietly bugged me more than I expected. Also: ESA tries to land on a comet tomorrow.
Interstellar's Black Hole Wasn't Faked, It Was Computed
Interstellar opens wide today, and the black hole effects are less "concept art" and more actual general-relativity simulation, thanks to physicist Kip Thorne and the team at Double Negative.
My Rite Aid Turned Off Apple Pay For an App That Doesn't Exist Yet
CVS and Rite Aid switched off their Apple Pay-capable terminals to force a not-yet-released app called CurrentC, and I found out the hard way buying pretzels.
Advanced Warfare Landed on PC Today, and So Did a 50GB Problem
Advanced Warfare hit PC today and ate 50GB of my SSD before I even finished the tutorial. Some notes on the exo suit, Kevin Spacey's motion capture, and Activision's extra launcher app.
The Nexus 9 is Out Today and I'm Still Stalling
The Nexus 9 goes on sale today, and between the $399 starting price and early reports of a creaky HTC-built chassis, I can't quite talk myself into buying one over my dying old Nexus 7.
CurrentC Picked a Bad Week to Get Hacked
CVS and Rite Aid blocked Apple Pay to push their own CurrentC app, and days later CurrentC announced a data breach. A rundown of a genuinely bad week for mobile payments.
The Antares Rocket and Those Old Soviet Engines
Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket exploded seconds after launch this week, and it turns out its engines were refurbished Soviet moon-rocket hardware from the 1970s.
CVS Just Turned My Apple Pay Off
CVS and Rite Aid quietly switched off their NFC terminals days after Apple Pay launched, and the reason traces back to a retailer-backed rival called CurrentC.
My Phone Works at Every Register Except the One I Actually Wanted
Apple Pay worked fine at Walgreens and Panera this week, then CVS flat out refused it. Turns out that's on purpose, and the reason is dumber than you'd guess.
I Finally Used Apple Pay, At Walgreens Of All Places
Apple Pay went live this week, so I actually tried it at Walgreens instead of just reading the keynote recap, and it was rougher around the edges than advertised.
That Dropbox "Hack" Was Just Your Old Passwords Coming Back
A "Dropbox hack" making the rounds this week wasn't actually a Dropbox hack at all, it was password reuse doing what password reuse always does. Some notes on fixing that, and why so few sites still bother with 2FA.