The Touch Bar is serious business. Apple’s interface guidelines warn against all kinds of fun things that developers probably started thinking about when the new MacBook Pros leaked earlier this week. No doubt some apps will find a way to be creative even under the stern eye of Apple’s party police, but it’s clearly discouraged. Read More
It’s a good day for consumers, and the advertisers are tearing their hair: the FCC today voted to adopt new privacy rules that severely restrict what data ISPs can collect from you without your consent. The Association of National Advertisers called the rules “unprecedented, misguided and extremely harmful.” If that isn’t a strong endorsement, I don’t know what is! Read More
MIT is getting into the incubator business in a big way with “The Engine,” a major fund and accelerator space aimed at nurturing early-stage companies solving big, difficult problems in tech and science. After The Engine raises its targeted $150 million fund, up to 60 companies at a time will benefit from the university’s equipment, services, and considerable pool of expertise. Read More
For years we’ve been skeptical, and rightly so, of the “art filters” you can put on your photos, webcam videos, and so on. But Google may have made them relevant again — or at the very least interesting — by letting you mix and match them in real time using a single specialized neural network. Read More
Whenever there’s a shutdown of internet access or restrictions placed on an app, we shake our heads disapprovingly because we know it’s a fundamentally bad idea to do that. But what exactly is the cost of those shutdowns? A new study from the Brookings Institution suggests well over $2 billion over the last year. Read More
Big robots like Spot may be great for carrying things or trotting out onto stages, but just as much sophisticated engineering goes into creating tiny ones as well — and this little flyer from the University of Pennsylvania is one the tiniest yet. 
The death of Vine was perhaps not entirely unexpected, but it’s sad nevertheless. Luckily, six-second videos are pretty easy to archive for posterity, and all-purpose GIF platform Giphy wants you to do just that. 
