Tech Boys

House of the Dragon Season 2 is so far giving us a pretty thorough lesson in how wars start. Last week we dove into how men's egos were largely to blame for the escalation of Team Green versus Team Black . This week, episode 3 gave us an even clearer lesson using two specific conversations that felt like the key to the entire show. It started with a chat between Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) and Rhaenys (Eve Best), then finished with a more subtle — but equally important — bit of dialogue between Daemon (Matt Smith) and Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) in Harrenhal. SEE ALSO: 'House of the Dragon' Season 2's Targaryen family tree: How everyone connects What do Rhaenyra and Rhaenys talk about? If last week's episode was an illustration of how the male ego feeds into war, then Season 2, episode 3 was a lesson in escalation — and, ultimately, futility. "Soon, they will not even remember what it was that began the war in the first place," Rhaeny...

House of the Dragon switches things up in Season 2 , debuting a brand-new opening credits sequence right out of the gate. The new titles take the form of a tapestry spelling out the history of House Targaryen , from the Doom of Valyria all the way to events of House of the Dragon Season 1 . The first season's credits took a somewhat similar approach, using gears, blood, and a backdrop of Old Valyria to take us through the Targaryen family tree . While these credits tied into the show's focus on bloodlines and succession, they were also dimly lit, with barely legible symbols representing each member of House Targaryen. Because of this, the tapestry in Season 2 is already a step up — plus, it's just as thematic as its predecessor! SEE ALSO: 'House of the Dragon' Season 2 review: A tragedy written in fire and blood The tapestry imagery has its roots in episode 7 of the House of the Dragon Season 1 , when Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) utters the following...

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle , Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle. If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for July 1's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you. What is Connections ? The NYT 's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common. Tweet may have been ...

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle , Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle. If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for June 30's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you. What is Connections ? The NYT 's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common. Tweet may have been...

Extreme E, the premium off-road EV racing series, is pivoting to hydrogen. The series announced this week that it’s rebranding to Extreme H , and unveiled a hydrogen-powered race car it’s calling the Pioneer 25 to usher in the transition. The first season is slated to begin in April 2025 in Saudi Arabia, before heading to the UK, Germany, Italy and wrapping up in the US. Take a sneak peek at the Pioneer 25 in action 🎬 pic.twitter.com/40gTrtQMbR — Extreme E (@ExtremeELive) June 29, 2024 Extreme E had its first race in 2021 , putting electric off-road vehicles to the test of (as you might expect) extreme environments, like the desert. It got some major teams on board, including the likes of McLaren . This year marks Extreme E’s fourth season. In a blog post about the shift to hydrogen, founder and CEO Alejandro Agag said the move is “not just about e-mobility; it’s about creating green power solutions that can be applied anywhere, from remote locations to bustling cities.” “By ...

Twitch streamers, will you be receiving a Bleed Purple Statue? Among YouTube creators, one surefire way to show you've made it is if you've received a YouTube Creator Award. These are physical plaques that YouTube sends to channel owners who've hit certain subscriber milestones. At Twitchcon Europe 2024 in Rotterdam on Saturday, Twitch announced its own version of these physical awards: Twitch Streamer Achievement Awards. SEE ALSO: YouTube demonetized Dr Disrespect over allegations from earlier Twitch ban The awards will be given out under Twitch's Streamer Achievement Program. Unlike YouTube, which bases awards on subscriber milestones, Twitch is focusing on rewarding creators for viewership milestones.  Twitch streamer award eligibility Twitch streamers who hit certain viewership numbers based on hours watched will receive a Bleed Purple Statue .  Tweet may have been deleted Like YouTube's version of the program, there will be three different mileston...

The Detroit Police Department has to adopt new rules curbing its reliance on facial recognition technology after the city reached a settlement this week with Robert Williams, a Black man who was wrongfully arrested in 2020 due to a false face match. It’s not an all-out ban on the technology, though, and the court’s jurisdiction to enforce the agreement only extends four years. Under the new restrictions, which the ACLU is calling the strongest such policies for law enforcement in the country, police cannot make arrests based solely on facial recognition results or conduct a lineup based only on facial recognition leads. Williams was arrested after facial recognition technology flagged his expired driver’s license photo as a possible match for the identity of an alleged shoplifter, which police then used to construct a photo lineup. He was arrested at his home, in front of his family, which he says “completely upended my life.” Detroit PD is known to have made at least two other wron...

My Lady Jane raises a big, unapologetic middle finger to history. Based on the novel by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows, this swashbuckling tale — which was inspired very loosely by the story of Lady Jane Grey, the infamous "Nine Days' Queen"— establishes itself as a radical, female-led reimagining of its real-life inspiration. It's hardly the first project to offer up a revisionist history with contemporary flair; a few recent examples include Six the Musical , Mary & George , and The Serpent Queen , to name just a few. However, with its brash, playful script and its surprisingly nuanced take on the damsel-in-distress trope, My Lady Jane is one of the most successful so far. In an energetic opening montage, a lively, posh male narrator recounts the known history as old time-y sketches covered in crayon scribblings flash quickly before our eyes: Lady Jane Grey was unexpectedly crowned Queen of England after the death of her cousin Edward VI. Then...

Don't like your phone carrier because of shoddy reception or literally any other reason – but your device is carrier-locked to that service provider? The FCC is looking to make it easier for consumers to switch to a different service provider. According to a new proposed rule by the FCC, phone carriers could be forced to unlock users' phones and allow consumers to move the device to a provider of their choosing. "When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement along with the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). "Real competition benefits from transparency and consistency," she continued. "That is why we are proposing clear, nationwide mobile phone unlocking rules." SEE ALSO: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile declare legal war on FCC Fo...

Ahead of Sunday's Season 2 finale, AMC renewed its TV adaptation of Interview with the Vampire for a third season. Cue cheers and fainting (not from blood loss)! Tweet may have been deleted Seasons 1 and 2 of Interview , unsurprisingly, focused on the first novel in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series, Interview with the Vampire . What will Season 3 be about? SEE ALSO: 'The Bear' falls victim to its own success: Full Season 3 review Interview with the Vampire Season 3 The next season will adapt the second book in Rice's vampire series, The Vampire Lestat . As you would expect, this novel focuses on the character Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). We saw a hint of The Vampire Lestat in Season 2 during a flashback to Lestat's first meeting with the vampire Armand (Assad Zaman), and when Lestat mentions his former lover, Nicki . Season 3, however, will take an even bigger bite from Lestat's story. (The AMC show has also planted Easter eggs for o...

There’s a war brewing in Hollywood and we’re not talking about how AI will inevitably kill us all by plagiarizing The Joker’s chaos plans from The Dark Knight . We’re talking about the popcorn bucket war. The latest shot came from Dune director Denis Villeneuve in a red carpet interview in which he called the Wolverine & Deadpool popcorn bucket “horrific” and called the Dune buckets “unmatchable.” Villeneuve did an impromptu interview with eTalkCTV where a reporter asked him about the feud that’s been brewing between him and Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds over their respective popcorn receptacles. The reporter showed Villeneuve a picture of the Deadpool & Wolverine bucket featuring the yellow Wolverine’s head and his gaping maw full of some of Orville Redenbacher’s finest. Villeneuve said he doesn’t have anything against the bucket but he thinks they are just riding the coattails he unfurled when the Dune sandworm popcorn bucket blew up the Internet. View t...

Valve has added a new chart to its roster of publicly-available data: a list of the 100 top-played titles on the Steam Deck . The information can be sorted by the past week, month, or year, and will be updated daily. These charts can play a big part in game discovery on the platform, so it's worth noting that making the list isn't only about the sheer number of players. Lawrence Yang from Valve told The Verge more about the process. "The metric we’re using to determine top-played is a combination of unique users and interest," Yang said. " Hades 2 has only been out for a month, but so many Steam Deck players have it as one of their top played games for the entire year, that it was lifted in the rankings." At the chart's launch, Elden Ring unsurprisingly holds the top spot after the recent Shadow of the Erdtree release ( and subsequent patch ). Indie fave Stardew Valley is currently in second and hot deck-builder Balatro is in third. Both Hades 2...

In May, Reddit announced it would allow OpenAI to train its models on Reddit content for a price. Now, according to The Verge , Reddit will block most automated bots from accessing, learning from, and profiting from its data without a similar licensing agreement. Reddit plans to do this by updating its robots.txt file , the "basic social contract of the web" that determines how web crawlers can access the site. Most nascent AI companies (including, at one point, OpenAI) train their models on content they've scraped from across the web without considering copyright or the Terms of Service of individual sites. SEE ALSO: Reddit's traffic is way up – but why? It's Google. Per The Verge's Alex Heath, search engines like Google got away with this form of scraping thanks to the "give-and-take" of Google sending traffic back to individual sites in exchange for the ability to crawl them for information. Now, AI companies are tipping the balance by ta...

Sometimes as we navigate our way through the daily doom scroll that is our current news cycle, it’s nice to go back and remember how things used to be. Those times sucked too but a distraction is still a distraction. One of my favorite ways to look at the past was by going through old clips of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central’s website . Paramount went on a content teardown this week and pulled old clips and episodes of its signature satire shows from the Comedy Central website, as well as content from cable channels like TV Land, CMT and the Paramount Network, according to the Hollywood Reporter . Those sites now contain a notice that tells views the clips are unavailable there, but that they can "sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows." It’s a bizarre move because most of those old episodes aren’t available on its Paramount+ streaming service. Essentially, there's no longer a free, legal means to...

Crypto scam victims are being pegged as easy marks by fraudsters who are targeting these individuals – after they've already been scammed. According to a new warning by the FBI, there's a new, growing trend of scammers masquerading as law firms and targeting those who have already been victims of cryptocurrency scams. These nonexistent law firms offer services to the scam victims, claiming that they can recoup their stolen funds. In reality, these fake companies just scam these victims again. SEE ALSO: Fake Elon Musk livestreams promoting crypto scams keep popping up on YouTube The FBI first put out a warning about this scam last year. However, according to the FBI's update, targeting crypto scam victims has been quite lucrative for scammers. Between February 2023 and February 2024, the FBI reports that $9.9 million has been stolen from crypto scam victims by fake law firms via this scheme. Victims report being contacted by the scammers, who claim they can investi...

Apple is expanding access to its web-based diagnostic tool. The software (officially called “Apple Diagnostics for Self Service Repair”) is now available in 32 European countries, including the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. They join the US, where the tool arrived in December . As Apple describes it, the software “gives users the same ability as Apple Authorized Service Providers and Independent Repair Providers to test products for optimal parts functionality and performance.” It currently supports iPhone , Mac and Studio Display . The tool can scan the device for display, camera, Face ID, software integration and audio output issues and tell you which parts may need repair. This is part of Apple’s recent push to be friendlier to self-servicing, likely to try to head off regulations . The only catch is the diagnostics require a second Apple device. Both products need to be running iOS 17 or later or macOS Sonoma 14.1 or later. Beta software is a no-go. (Sorry, iOS 18 ...

Fashion label Collina Strada has made a name for itself by claiming to prioritize sustainable production and climate awareness, but a recent release has buyers doubting whether the brand is truly committed to the cause. A highly anticipated collaboration between Collina Strada and bag-maker Baggu, released yesterday, has been revealed to have been created using AI tools. As part of a larger discussion of the brand's use of AI, a Reddit user fed photos from the whimsical collection, which featured horse-shaped purses and trippy prints, into a program that purports to detect whether an image has been created using AI. The result? An 86.4 percent likelihood that one of the designs had been created using AI or deepfake tech. Reddit Buyers were confused. On its website and throughout its marketing, Collina Strada calls itself "a platform for climate awareness, social awareness, change and self expression [sic]." But AI is hugely taxing on the environment. One report su...