Hulu is the new home of old TGIF sitcoms

Hulu’s collection of classic sitcoms already includes Seinfeld and The Golden Girls. Now, its library is getting even bigger with the addition of several shows from ABC’s TGIF comedy line-up. The likes of Perfect Strangers, Full House, and Family Matters were Friday night staples for viewers across America in the nineties — and soon, they’ll be available for you to (legally) binge online. Hulu’s latest deal with Warner Bros. Television also includes Step by Step and Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper. All five shows (totaling 800 episodes) will hit the streaming service on September 29th.

Hulu’s recent spurt of iconic comedy show grabs makes sense. Pretty much everyone is busy reviving eighties and nineties sitcoms right now. Roseanne, Will and Grace, and Living Single are just a few of the shows that are currently in the works. Clearly, nostalgia is still all the rage. But instead of reboots, Hulu is hoping viewers will seek out the originals. After all, where better to get an instant fix of a classic series than on a streaming service. That way, you don’t have to wait for a syndicated rerun of your fave show. Notably, Hulu seems to have got one back on Netflix by nabbing Full House, which was revived by its streaming rival as Fuller House last year.

Like Netflix, Hulu too hasn’t forgotten about its originals. On Thursday, it announced it’s renewing its drama Harlots for a second season, set to drop in 2018. It’s also working on an as-yet untitled documentary about popular toy doll, Barbie, which will also land the same year.

Source: Hulu

Virtual reality hangout AltspaceVR will close in August

AltspaceVR, the social app that’s sort of like Second Life for the Gear VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, “can’t afford to keep the virtual lights on” anymore. The company has announced that it’s closing down the application on August 3rd, 10 PM Eastern, due to unforeseen financial difficulties. While its investors last funded the project back in 2015, the shutdown still came as a surprise since it already had a deal in the works. Unfortunately, that deal suddenly fell through, and the team ran out of time to raise enough funds to keep the application running.

In the announcement post, the company revealed that the app only has around 35,000 monthly users. It says that’s “pretty good for the size of the VR market,” though, and if there’s anything that made its old investors pull back, it’s the general slowness of the market’s growth. While the app itself will definitely be shuttered, AltspaceVR’s head honchos are still thinking of what to do with the company itself.

The social application served as a hangout for VR headset users, who held concerts and various events with their avatars — Engadget editor Sean Buckley even once played Dungeons & Dragons within its virtual confines. Needless to say, people formed friendships in AltspaceVR’s virtual world, and the company wants to remind everyone to take the next few days to find new ways to connect. The team will hold a VR party on August 3rd to give everyone a chance to say goodbye and will take the virtual universe offline for good when the clock strikes 10.

Source: AltspaceVR

Pakistan’s Prime Minister resigns following Fontgate scandal

Fontgate strikes again. Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif has stepped down following a Supreme Court order disqualifying him from holding office. The ruling also called for anti-corruption cases against Sharif and his family. After proving pivotal to the probe that led to today’s decision, Microsoft’s Calibri font could also make an appearance in the next stage of proceedings.

The innocent typeset was dragged into the turmoil in Pakistan last month. Back then, Sharif’s daughter (and heir apparent) Maryam Nawaz was accused of submitting forged documents to the Supreme Court-instituted panel probing her family’s financial assets. In its report, the investigation team said the documents from 2006 were deemed fake because they were in the Calibri font — which wasn’t publicly available until 2007.

Moments after the panel’s findings were released, the internet (being the internet) blew up with jokes about #Fontgate. The Pakistani Twitterverse latched on to the term, using it to lampoon Sharif and his aides. The media also got in on the act, even going so far as to interview Calibri’s creator Lucas De Groot. And, arguably, the best result to come from it all: a reference to the investigation made it on to the font’s Wikipedia page.

Fast-forward to today’s historic decision. Alongside the PM’s dismissal, Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered the country’s anti-corruption body to file references against Sharif and others. The evidence collected by the original investigative panel (including that document) will be used in the subsequent cases in accountability courts.

As it currently stands, Pakistan is left without a PM, and is also set to lose its finance minister (who was also disqualified in today’s order). Sharif’s ruling party, which holds the majority in parliament, will now choose his successor. Whoever takes over won’t be in for an easy ride. Not a single PM in Pakistan’s history has served a full term in office.

Porsche takes its racing heritage to Formula E

Porsche is well aware of the performance potential of EVs, having committed in 2015 to the Mission E sports car and, more recently to a high-powered charging network. That now applies to the motorsports side, the company announced that it’s forsaking pistons to join the Formula E racing circuit starting in the 2019/20 seaso. “Entering Formula E and achieving success in this category are the logical outcomes of our Mission E road car program,” Porsche AG’s Michael Steiner said in a statement.

Porsche is just the latest German automaker to be joining Formula E. Mercedes announced last week that it would sign on, and Audi surprisingly dropped its Le Mans participation last year to race EVs. Other current teams include Renault, Panasonic Jaguar and Faraday Future Dragon Racing. With the addition of Porsche and Mercedes, the number of teams will jump from ten to 12.

While German automakers were slow to embrace EVs, most are now all in. At the Paris Auto Show last year, Volkswagen and Mercedes both unveiled all new, comprehensive ID and EQ electric lineups, respectively, promising sales by 2020. Audi also hopes to have an E-Tron Sportback ready by 2019.

For racing, EVs aren’t exactly the oversized golf carts that some folks imagine. Tesla’s Model S P100D is (or was) the fastest accelerating production car in the world, while a Lucid Air EV prototype recently hit 235 mph on a track, faster than just about every current production car.

For manufacturers, the other big plus to EV racing is that it’s less expensive and more useful for real-world vehicle development, something Porsche’s Steiner alluded to. “The growing freedom for in-house technology developments makes Formula E attractive to us,” he said. “[It] is the ultimate competitive environment for driving forward the development of high-performance vehicles in areas such as environmental friendliness, efficiency and sustainability.”

If you’re thinking about tuning in, Formula E also teased some fan-friendly developments. Drivers won’t need two cars to keep racing when the battery runs out, for instance, and the vehicles are getting a face-lift. “New-look futuristic cars will … debut in season five and will incorporate new electric technology to allow for a single car to complete a full race distance,” according to the news release.

YouTube’s fake news course has reached just 500 kids

You’ve got to hand it to YouTube: despite overwhelming odds, Google’s video wing keeps pushing through with its Internet Citizens program. By its count, the video service has educated some 500 people about the dangers of misleading or outright fake news. YouTube wants to boost that number by quite a bit. The hope is to reach 20,000 more people via workshops, youth workers and schools in the UK, it writes. Considering how young the platform skews, perhaps its new tactics will be fruitful.

YouTube will open up its training framework and put it on the Internet Citizens website next month. Whether this actually makes a difference is a little hard to quantify — especially when you consider the relatively paltry numbers here.

Sure, 20,500 people is impressive in its own right. But when compare it to some of the more salacious videos racking up millions of views it loses some of its impact. Maybe the youth workshops can help spread the message far and wide, though.

Source: Google

The best wireless earbuds under $50

By Lauren Dragan

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After extensive research and over two dozen hours of testing by our expert panelists, we think the Anker Soundbuds Sport IE20 are the best Bluetooth in-ear headphones available under $50. Though they aren’t perfect, if you’re looking for something ultra-affordable that gets the job done, the IE20 are the best of the options available. They sound decent for the price, fit most people, handle phone calls remarkably well, and are inexpensive enough that it’s possible to ignore their flaws. Additionally, with Anker’s 30-day return-for-any-reason policy and 18-month warranty, if you find they aren’t for you, you won’t be stuck with buyer’s remorse.

Who should get this

I occasionally get emails from people who tell me that they aren’t too picky about sound quality; they just want headphones that work well enough, don’t cost much, and can take a phone call without sounding terrible. These are the headphones for those folks.

Keep in mind that at this price range, the vast majority of the money you spend goes into making them wireless (e.g., Bluetooth tech, batteries). This means the costs are cut in other areas: the drivers (i.e., the sound), the build, and the extra features. In all of these aspects, you definitely get what you pay for. None of the headphones we tested were a slam dunk in all facets of our testing.

How we picked

The vast majority of the under-$50 options haven’t been professionally reviewed. For some reason, most pro reviewers consider “budget” $70 to $100. Much as we did in preparing our cheap-earbud guide, we were pretty much left to rely on Amazon reviews and our own testing. Of course, we always look at Amazon reviews with a skeptical eye, to suss out what’s genuine and which smack of paid reviewing. In this category that skepticism proved to be especially important. We also shied away from brands that had no consumer support and sell directly through Amazon, because if anything goes wrong, you have nobody to contact for warranty assistance. That left us with 11 headphones we thought looked promising.

After the delightful process of charging and pairing all of the contenders, our expert panel listened to each and evaluated them on fit, sound quality, ease of use, comfort, and overall appearance. Based on their experiences, each panelist chose their top three. We then took price into consideration, and from there selected an overall pick.

Our pick

The little wings on the IE20 pair look odd, but offer most people a comfortable, secure fit. They’re also removable if you don’t like them. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

If you want Bluetooth on a budget, the Anker Soundbuds Sport IE20 are the best option under $50. The IE20 come with three sets of different-size silicone stabilizing wings and five sets of tips, sound decent for the price, and work very well for phone calls. They also have a battery life of about eight hours, which we confirmed in our tests, and a range of roughly 33 feet (assuming you’re inside with nothing in the way).

As for the sound, it’s not too bad. It’s coarse, but the frequency response is relatively even, which means you can hear vocals, basslines, and guitars equally well in the mix. This is a dramatic contrast to some of the wildly peaked highs and lows of the competition in this price range. But as we’ve already stated, your money goes toward making the headphones wireless, not the drivers, so the sound quality is decidedly cheap. If you don’t truly need Bluetooth, the wired AKG Y20U (from our cheap-earbuds guide) cost the same as the Anker but have much clearer highs and smoother lows.

The IE20 have a unique on-off method: magnets on the back of the earbuds. There is no other way to power them up or down. Separate the magnets, and the headphones link to the last paired device. Connect the magnets, and they shut off. Though this is a handy way to help save battery life, if the magnets separate in your bag, the earbuds automatically connect to your mobile device. Fans of the IE20 say that once you get the hang of putting them away in their included pouch a certain way, the magnets don’t come apart too frequently.

Aside from not being able to power them down separate from the magnets, the IE20 have another odd quirk. The in-line remote handles all the usual functions: volume, voice commands, answer/end calls, skipping ahead a track … but not skipping back a track. We have no idea why. But at a current price of under $30, it’s definitely not the worst flaw we found among the headphones we tested for this guide.

Overall, for the price of a couple of burritos, the Anker IE20 are solid headphones. Are they perfect? Goodness no. But based on everything else we tested for the price, you could do a lot, lot worse.

Runner-up (with a collar)

The necklace on the Ink’d is light and flexible. The earbuds are comfortable—as long as your ear canals aren’t on the larger side. If they are, these might not fit. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

If our pick is sold out, or you prefer a collar-style headset, the Skullcandy Ink’d Bluetooth are a decent alternative, with one major caveat: If you have larger ear canals, you probably won’t get a seal with the included tips. For some reason, Skullcandy includes only medium and small. Why Skullcandy refuses to include large tips with all its headphones is beyond us—third-party tips (which can also be difficult to track down in larger sizes) will add additional cost.

That aside, the overall fit on the Ink’d Bluetooth is comfortable, and the collar is lightweight enough that you can forget it’s on your neck. Unlike some of the other headphones we tested, the cords running from the earbuds to the collar don’t poke your face or interfere with turning your head. The controls on the collar itself are easy to access and use for calls, volume controls, voice commands, and—unlike the Anker—can toggle tracks both forward and back.

So why didn’t the Skullcandy end up as our top pick? First, the sound quality of the Ink’d Bluetooth is less balanced than the Anker IE20. The bass intensity can overpower and muddy the lower-mid guitar range, and the moderately coarse-sounding high-frequency range can leave strings feeling a little tinny. Additionally, phone calls are a bit muffled-sounding to the person you are calling, especially if anything on your shirt gets in the way of the mic on the collar.

This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from The Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

Apple Reportedly Investing Billions in LG to Make OLED Displays for Future iPhones

Apple is widely expected to introduce its first iPhone with an OLED display later this year, after a decade of using solely LCD technology.

Earlier reports peg Samsung as the exclusive supplier of OLED displays for the high-end smartphone, as the only company that can reliably produce both the quantity and quality of panels that Apple demands.

That could change within a few years, however, as Apple has decided to invest 3 trillion won/$2.67 billion in LG’s OLED production for smartphones, according to The Investor, citing a Korea Economic Daily newspaper report.

Apple will reportedly make the investment as advance payment for the planned OLED display supplies from the Korean display maker. The iPhone maker is said to secure 45,000 panels per month for future iPhones from 2019.

Apple always aims to diversify its supply chain in order to secure lower prices and reduce the risk of relying on one supplier, so it’s easy to see why the iPhone maker appears to be willing to help LG ramp up OLED display production.

Reports about Apple’s potential investment first surfaced earlier this month, after the companies allegedly tentatively agreed upon the investment plans, and it now appears that a deal has been or is nearly finalized.

LG is likely to build a production line dedicated to iPhone orders only, as part of its agreement with Apple, according to The Investor.

It is frequently rumored that Apple will introduce a trio of new iPhone models later this year, including iterative iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus models with LCDs and the so-called “iPhone 8” or “iPhone X” with an OLED display.

Rumors suggest Apple could switch to OLED displays for its entire iPhone lineup by 2019, potentially lining up nicely with LG’s production readiness.

Tags: OLED, LG Display
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Steve Jobs’s Widow Laurene Powell Jobs Gains Majority Stake in ‘The Atlantic’ Magazine

Atlantic Media chairman David G. Bradley today announced that Emerson Collective is obtaining a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine.

Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs
Emerson Collective is an educational and philanthropic organization co-founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple’s late Steve Jobs.

Bradley will retain a minority stake in The Atlantic and will continue as chairman and operating partner for at least three to five years, at which point Emerson Collective may assume full ownership of the magazine.

The Atlantic is a monthly magazine with coverage areas ranging from politics and art to business and technology. It was founded in 1857 as The Atlantic Monthly in Boston, Massachusetts. The Atlantic also publishes on the web.

Bradley reported to his staff that he and his advisers had compiled a list of 600 potential investors, but ended up approaching only Powell Jobs as a potential partner, due to her ambition and presumably her philanthropic efforts as well.

In a statement, Powell Jobs praised The Atlantic for the breadth and scope of its purpose: to “bring about equality for all people; to illuminate and defend the American idea; to celebrate American culture and literature; and to cover our marvelous, and sometimes messy, democratic experiment.”

Atlantic Media did not disclose how much Powell Jobs invested to gain a controlling stake in the magazine. At this time, the deal does not affect Atlantic Media’s other brands, including Quartz, Government Executive, and National Journal.

Tag: Laurene Powell Jobs
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Apple Begins Paying $2 Billion in Cash to Nokia as Part of Lawsuit Settlement

Nokia disclosed its financial results for the second quarter of 2017 this week, and within the results the company mentioned that it received an “up-front cash payment” of approximately €1.7 billion ($2 billion), part of which was said to be recognized during the Q2 2017 results. Nokiamob then reached out to Nokia, and the company confirmed that the cash payment came from Apple.

The payment is part of a settlement agreement reached between Apple and Nokia in May of this year, regarding a lawsuit began by Nokia in December 2016. In the original lawsuit, Nokia sued Apple in the United States and multiple other countries, with a complaint that stemmed from a disagreement between the two companies over licensing fees for Nokia technology.

The legal battle continued to escalate as Apple responded with its own antitrust lawsuit against Nokia. In Apple’s claims, the company said that Nokia was transferring patents to patent holding entities in a bid to gain additional royalties from Apple, violating FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) deals Apple had established with Nokia.

In the settlement news this past May, the companies agreed to a multi-year patent license deal, where Nokia would provide “certain network infrastructure products and services” to Apple, and Apple would then return all Nokia-owned health products to Apple retail and online stores.

In regards to the $2 billion payment from Apple, Nokia said it would disclose its plans for the money in its Q3 earnings later this year.

Second, we got a substantial upfront cash payment of €1.7 billion from Apple, strengthening further our cash position. As said earlier, our plans is to provide more details on the intended use of cash in conjunction with our Q3 earnings.

Nokia Technologies led the way, with sales up 90% versus the same period last year. That was largely, but not completely, driven by our recently-announced agreement with Apple; and you can also see the impact of that agreement in our cash position.

So far, Apple has only partially paid the $2 billion cash sum to Nokia, so besides finishing that payment, Apple will also continue to pay royalties to the company during the term of the agreement.

Tag: Nokia
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Microsoft is getting its own AI-powered photo search

Microsoft’s upcoming Photos app is getting AI image search so that it can spot and classify objects, much like Google Photos and Apple Photos can. Spotted by Windows Central, the latest Insider Preview version of the app now has a search bar that you can use to enter terms like “flower,” “wine bottle,” and “bar.” It will then use a cloud-based image recognition algorithm to pick and sort out those items in your photo collection, much as the rival apps do.

The first time you use it, the Microsoft Photos will index everything, a process that takes about a second per image, Windows Central notes. Afterwards, all the indexing is stored locally, so you can search and sort by objects, colors and other terms very rapidly. (If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of sorting people by facial recognition, you can opt out fairly easily.)

Similar again to how Google Photos works, Microsoft Photos will put together and let you confirm suggested albums to keep photos shot around the same place and time in a similar theme. The AI search will also suggest photo albums based on tags like “cats,” for instance.

The feature is starting to become indispensable for OneDrive or Office 365 users, who can store up to a terabyte of data as part of their subscriptions. That’s a lot of photos, so having an AI to manage them will make your collection less unwieldy.

The new Photos app is in it the very early beta stages, as the features are only on the Insider Preview and not the other beta sites (Fast Ring, Skip Ahead or Production). So Microsoft presumably wants to test this pretty thoroughly before releasing it, likely with the Fall Creators Update due sometime in, well, the fall.

Via: Windows Central