Tech Boys

Oh hey there! If you're here, it must be time for Wordle . As always, we're serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today's answer. If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for August 30's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you. SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable Where did Wordle come from? Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble , music identification game Heardle , and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once .  Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the N...

The year is 1983. Talk radio host Alan Berg (Marc Maron) is on the Colorado airwaves comically dressing down racist callers, while elsewhere across the Pacific Northwest, a series of armed robberies becomes a matter of concern — even more than usual — because of possible white supremacist ties. This is the backdrop of The Order , Justin Kurzel's highly engrossing (if politically slight) police story, in which fictitious FBI officer Terry Husk (Jude Law) begins pulling on real-world threads with disturbingly modern implications. Written by Zach Baylin, the film is based on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt's late-'80s nonfiction book The Silent Brotherhood , which tells of a real white supremacist splinter group known as "the Order" (or "the Silent Brotherhood"), whose concerns with preserving white supremacy led them to meticulous acts of terror. It is, first and foremost, an incredibly fun movie, even if "fun" may not seem like the right approac...

If this week’s rumor about a video game set in the universe of 2022’s The Batman got your hopes up, I have some bad news: no such thing is in development at the moment. Responding to a question on Threads about whether Warner Bros. has a game in the works based on the Robert Pattinson-led film, DC Studios’ co-head James Gunn said, “Sadly there is no truth to this whatsoever.” The rumor stems from a Puck report that was published on Friday. The Batman , directed by Matt Reeves, popped back up in theaters on Wednesday as part of AMC’s celebration of the 85th anniversary of Batman. Work on a sequel is currently underway , and an HBO limited series focusing on The Penguin is slated to come out this fall. We aren’t getting a video game spin-off any time soon, though. And, in case you were wondering, “There is also no truth to Tubthumping by Chumbawamba being played on the set of Superman (this is a real rumor on Reddit someone just sent me!),” Gunn posted. This article originally ap...

Following Spencer and Jackie — biopic melodramas about Princess Diana and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy — Chilean director Pablo Larraín rounds out his informal trilogy with Maria , another film about a world-famous woman in close proximity to death. His subject this time is the iconic Greek-American opera soprano Maria Callas, and though the film doesn't come together as neatly (or completely) as either of its predecessors, its most powerful moments stand head and shoulders above them, thanks to towering, transcendent work from Angelina Jolie in the leading role.  Maria is set during the final week of Callas' life, at a time when she lived in isolation, far from the spotlight. As Larraín and Spencer screenwriter Steven Knight imagine these pivotal days, the resulting film is, unfortunately, lesser than the sum of its parts. However, each of those elements is so individually exquisite as to yield material that not only proves incredibly moving, but also provides Jolie wit...

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the nation’s internet service providers to block the social media platform X. The New York Times reports that the order stems from owner Elon Musk’s refusal to appoint a legal representative for his case and comply with Moraes’ order to shut down X accounts he deemed as harmful to the democratic process. The order has been published online by Brazilian news site Poder 360 . The justice issued a deadline to telecom companies and tech giants to remove the X from its app stores and platforms. Apple and Google have five days to take down the social media app from its app stores. Brazil’s telecommunication’s agency Anatel has confirmed it has received the order , and ISPs in the country have just 24 hours to comply with the order. Justice Moraes’ order doesn’t just block the country’s access to X. It also makes it a crime to use the app through a virtual private network (VPN). Anyone caught accessing X with a VPN could fac...

Brazil just gave Elon Musk's X the boot. On Friday, Brazil's top court ordered that Musk's social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, be banned in the country. SEE ALSO: Elon Musk's X is the 'home of social media piracy,' sports leagues say The move comes after Musk has feuded with Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has previously ordered that X remove content that spread fake news and misinformation. Musk and company classified the judge's requests as " censorship orders ." Musk himself has recently attacked the judge on X, calling Moraes an " evil dictator ." Tweet may have been deleted Earlier this month, X closed its operations in Brazil, alleging that the judge threatened X representative Rachel Nova Conceicao with arrest if the company did not comply with the content removal orders. While X the company exited Brazil, the platform still remained available and accessible to users in the count...

A Texas judge denied Media Matters for America’s request for a dismissal on Thursday allowing X’s lawsuit over alleged anti-semitic and racist content. The Verge reported that Northern District of Texas Judge Reed O’Connor dismissed the request for a dismissal paving the way for X’s lawsuit against Media Matters to continue. Media Matters submitted its dismissal request in early March on the grounds that X’s case lacked “personal jurisdiction,” an “improper venue” and the “failure to state a claim.” O’Connor dismissed all of those claims, according to court records . The lawsuit filed last year in federal court seeks damages from the media watchdog group over “maliciously manufactured” images reporting that X’s platform placed Neo-Nazi and white-nationlist content next to advertisers’ images causing advertisers to flee the site. The images Media Matters used weren’t manufactured but X’s claim is that its dogged pursuit of ads’ placement with racist content by using certain account...

Apple dropped the iOS 18.1 beta 3 for developers — and it added a new Apple Intelligence feature to the mix: the AI-powered Clean Up tool. We've all been there. You take a photo, you're excited to share it with friends or post it on social media, but there's just one little obstruction that diminishes the photo's visual appeal. Maybe it's an awkward photobomber — or perhaps there's an unsightly thingamajig that's stealing the spotlight. In these situations, Apple Intelligence is here to swoop in and save the day. iOS 18 Clean Up: 3 things it can do The iOS 18 Clean Up tool, similar to Google's Magic Eraser featur e, is designed to help get rid of unwanted objects in your photo to enhance the overall quality of the image. Credit: Den Photos / Shutterstock.com Here are three things it can do: It uses smart detection, relying on multiple machine-learning models, to identify and isolate objects in your photo. In other words, the technology th...

Tesla has promised its wide-ranging Supercharger network will open to other U.S. electric vehicles for more than a year . Yet, here we are in August 2024 and most non-Tesla EVs cannot charge with a Supercharger. Why? The New York Times has a detailed report on the subject. The primary culprits are delays in software and hardware. A non-Tesla EV would need both updated software and a physical adapter to use a Supercharger. The rollouts for both those components have proven painfully slow. SEE ALSO: Tesla considers adding a new ‘stuck detection' feature to Cybertruck. Here’s why. Apparently some in the industry have wondered if the crawling process was purposeful. Wrote Jack Ewing of the Times : "The delays have fueled speculation that Mr. Musk was having second thoughts about opening up Tesla’s network, possibly because he was worried that access would help other automakers sell battery-powered models and lure customers from Tesla, which has suffered from declining...

Garmin's got a new flagship in its rugged smartwatch category, the Garmin Fenix 8 . The company's Fenix line of smartwatches has long been the golden standard for durable smartwatches for athletes, but Apple put up a pretty good fight with its Apple Watch Ultra (now on its second iteration) rugged smartwatch. Garmin Fenix 8 Garmin Fenix 8 Garmin Fenix 8 999.99 Get Deal The list of specs on both these watches is incredibly long and includes support for a multitude of sports and outdoor activities, but we're going to focus on the most important bits here. You see, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has always won on Apple's massive ecosystem of apps and the ability to make standalone calls, and integration with Apple's smart assistant, Siri. On the other hand, Garmin's Fenix watches were always far ahead when it comes to battery life, but the ability to make phone calls from the watch was absent. So how does the new Fenix 8 fit into this picture? What...

Reddit is back up after an outage took the site out for half an hour this afternoon. The site appears to have been down across the board, apart from a blank homepage that didn’t contain or point to any content. “We encountered an error,” the website reads. Attempting to navigate to any specific subreddit brought up the error you see above: “We were unable to load the content for this page.” However, as of 4:45PM ET, we began to see seeing subreddits and comments loading again as usual. The Reddit status update page lists the problem as “Degraded Performance for reddit.com,” and was initially flagged as “Investigating.” At 4:32PM ET, the status was updated as “Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” At 4:45PM ET, it was updated again as “Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.” However, the site's performance still labeled as “Degraded.” Of course, the jokes on social media didn’t take long to start rolling ...

Electrek reports that a solar energy company is renting 8.5 million square feet of roof space from the National Storage Affiliates Trust’s (NSA) buildings for its newest solar panel project. The commercial and community solar developer Solar Landscape’s new rooftop solar panel grid on the NSA’s 1,052 self-storage facilities and properties across 42 states and Puerto Rico are expected to produce at least 100 megawatts of solar capacity. The NSA, headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado, is one of the nation’s largest self-storage operators with brands like iStorage, Move It, Northwest and SecurCare. These solar energy panels won’t just generate power for the NSA’s facilities. The panels will also provide clean power to nearby businesses and homes for a discounted price. One of the challenges of implementing solar energy is finding enough space for the solar panels. These panels can take up a lot of space, like the Noor Abu Dhabi solar plant that set a world record in 2019 wit...

Google Meet is getting a new AI tool called take notes for me , which will generate summaries of key points during a video call. Rather than offering a word-by-word transcription, this feature uses Gemini AI to record key discussion points in a Google Doc that will appear in the meeting owner's Google Drive. The document can be automatically sent to the attendees or added to the calendar event after the call. It will also include links to the meeting recording and transcript if those features have been enabled. Google Workspace customers with the Gemini Enterprise, Gemini Education Premium, and AI Meetings & Messaging add-ons will be the first to have access to this note-taking feature. Its use is currently limited to English language and to meetings on computers or laptops. The tech company announced plans to include generative AI in more services last year, and has been aggressive in putting AI features into its hardware and software since then. Its Gemini AI assistant is...

Google is full speed ahead on AI-powered features for Android devices, and a new summarization tool for Files might be added to the list. Sleuths at Android Authority and 9to5Google looked into the code of an upcoming beta release and discovered a feature that will provide AI summaries for documents saved in Google's Files app. At this point, it's possible the feature will be scrapped or saved for a later release, but the two outlets have found that AI summaries in Files are in active development. SEE ALSO: 5 new AI features announced for Pixel 9 series, Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and Pixel Watch 3 Google has employed generative AI's powerful ability to crawl and summarize massive amounts of text with AI summaries in Search. Dubbed AI overviews, this feature was plagued early on with inaccuracies and hallucinations , some of which was due to the quality of information it scraped from the web. But running the summarization task on presumably reliable files created by the u...

Lyft is rolling out a new feature designed to make rides more inclusive for pet owners across the U.S. Just in time for National Dog Day, the company announced the launch of "Pet Rides," a service allowing riders to bring their pets along for the trip. Riders will pay an additional $4 fee, which goes directly to the driver. This new option aims to ease the stress of traveling with pets, ensuring that riders are matched with drivers who are comfortable with having animals in their cars. Whether it's a quick trip to the vet or a day at the park, pet owners can now bring their furry friends without hassle. How to use Lyft Pet Rides To book a Lyft Pet Ride, users can select the option in the Lyft app. The service is currently limited to one cat or dog per ride, with pets required to be in a carrier, on a blanket, or at the owner's feet. While drivers can opt out of participating, they are still required to accommodate service animals. With Pet Rides, Lyft catches up...

UPDATE: Aug. 26, 2024, 4:37 p.m. EDT Microsoft has amended its statement in the support document to say the following: "Many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience." This is a departure from its previous statement, which said "The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app." We reached out to Microsoft to get its official stance on Control Panel. We will update this page when we get a response. Original article: April 28, 2024 4:55 p.m. ET In case you missed it, in a support document on Tuesday , Microsoft announced that it's in the process of phasing out the Control Panel, a 39-year-old Windows feature, in favor of the Settings app. This may not be a surprise for many Windows users. Since October 2020 , Microsoft has been redirecting users away from the Control Panel, goading them to use the Settings app instead....