Download

Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note 8, Apple reportedly slows down its car project, and Jason and Stephen are still thinking about this week's total solar eclipse.

Florence Ion, Stephen Hackett, and Carolina Milanesi

The Galaxy Note 8 is here, and Samsung is hopeful that consumers who appreciate the Note’s features and its signature stylus will be willing to give the brand another chance after months of hearing warnings aboard airplanes and other public transit about the dangers and potential for destruction posed by the recalled smartphone.

Galaxy Note 8 has arrived. Looking a lot like a Galaxy S8 with dual cameras and a stylus... which is not a bad thing at all.

The company has put off any notion of an Apple-branded autonomous vehicle and is instead working on the underlying technology that allows a car to drive itself.

"We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in an interview on Bloomberg Television that amounted to his most detailed comments yet on Apple’s automotive plans.

Elon Musk has posted the official first photo of his SpaceX space suit on Instagram, teasing that more details will come in a few days. Musk says the suit actually works, and was tested to double vacuum pressure.

Ohhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh!

Jason's eclipse story.

Stephen and Jason's podcast, recorded during and after the solar eclipse.

Support shows like Download on Relay FM!

With smartphones and live streams, we can all watch the news unfold in real time, but at what cost? Insurance companies are offering discounts for data, and we all wonder what's going on with Facebook Marketplace.

Alex Cox, Stephen Hackett, and Mikah Sargent

According to a new BuzzFeed News analysis, Facebook Live has a violence problem far greater than the one portrayed in national headlines.

Apple and Aetna have held several secret meetings to discuss offering the Apple Watch to Aetna’s 23 million customers, according to CNBC.

Car insurance companies are offering customers discounts to let them track their driving habits.

FrontRow is meant to be worn around your neck, with the rear camera at or around chest height, facing out. This way, you can quickly grab it and snap a photo or video whenever you see something you deem picture-worthy.

If you're looking for stuff to buy online, check out Facebook Marketplace -- it might now be available in your country.

Facebook is rolling out a few camera features it began testing earlier this summer, and the most exciting one is the ability to create GIFs.

This week we discuss the sexist Google "manifesto" and its aftermath, as well as Disney's announcement that it's launching two different streaming services.

Aleen Simms and Megan Morrone

In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” he writes, going on to argue that Google’s educational programs for young women may be misguided.

Ex-Google engineer James Damore says problems with the company’s culture and diversity programs prompted him to write the memo on gender differences that ignited a social media firestorm and led to his dismissal.

Susan Wojcicki's daughter asked her a question. “Mom, is it true that there are biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech and leadership?”

App Camp For Girls is a one-week summer day program where girls* can put their creative powers to work, designing and building apps, while learning more about the business of software and being inspired by role models in the industry.

Google's new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance Danielle Brown, responded to the document in a memo to employees.

In a memo to employees, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct, and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

The former Google employee who was fired after posting a missive criticizing the company's diversity efforts calls his dismissal illegal and says he is "exploring all possible legal remedies."

"You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it."

Hard drives and SSDs come in pretty standard shapes at this point: there are 3.5-inch drives for desktops, 2.5-inch ones for laptops, and the newer M.2 standard that basically looks like a giant stick of RAM. Intel’s new enterprise SSDs are changing that with the company’s new “Ruler” design, which is designed to optimize storage density while also reducing the amount of power and cooling.

Disney will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own streaming service, the company has announced. It intends to launch the service in 2019.

BAM is the engine behind a growing number of streaming services.

It's phone season! Apple spilled the beans on the next iPhone and Samsung prepares to reintroduce the Note brand after last year's debacle. And Apple reports iPad growth, but is it too late for the tablet market?

Florence Ion and Michael Gartenberg

The bundle revealed all sorts of features of not only Apple's upcoming smart speaker, but a whole lot about the next iPhone.

John Gruber shares his thoughts on how this leak may have taken place.

Samsung will take the stage on August 23 to unveil the Galaxy Note 8, but the specs seem to be pretty widely known.

Once loaded into a 1,600-foot-long concrete tube in the Nevada desert, the pod hit 192 mph in about 5 seconds, using an electric propulsion system producing more than 3,000 horsepower.

It’s been more than three years since Apple posted year-over-year growth in iPad revenue. That’s a really long time—and a long slide downward on just about every iPad chart you can think of.

This week we talk a lot about how technology has changed how we consume movies and television. Also, how many video streaming services do we really need? Plus we pour one out for the iPod--but not for Adobe Flash.

Lisa Schmeiser and Natalie Jarvey

The Dunkirk director has been loudly dismissive of the company’s policy on theatrical releases.

Netflix is making a more aggressive play in the film industry with a goal to release 40 feature films by the end of the year.

The Cannes Film Festival locked horns with Netflix over streaming-first films, including Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories.

Okja is a 2017 action-adventure film directed by Bong Joon-ho and co-written by Bong and Jon Ronson. The film stars an ensemble cast headed by South Korean child actress Ahn Seo-hyun, alongside Hollywood actors Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Nobody is all caught up on TV, so that means everything is evergreen. Welcome to the new consumption model.

Ever since Netflix started debuting original series in 2012, the streaming giant has been adding shows at an increasingly rapid rate. The platform also has been renewing the vast majority of them — until now, that is.

After premiere night, all new episodes will be available on-demand weekly on Sundays exclusively for CBS All Access subscribers in the U.S.

Warner Bros. DC Comics have announced the launching of a DC-branded digital streaming platform sometime in 2018.

Apple has discontinued the last two stand-alone music players in the iPod line. Only the iOS-running iPod touch remains.

Adobe has announced it will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020.

Google asks for our input to help filter what it shows us, but are we tainting machine learning with our own biases? Also: Why the future of video games is, surprisingly, in the past.

Jessica Dennis and Jason Cross

Shopping holidays and how consumers can tell the good deals from the bad; high-end smartphones and the tech journalists who love them; and a lump of coal in your Prime Day stocking by the name of Net Neutrality.

Jacqui Cheng and Jon Phillips

The rise of electric cars and the future of the personal vehicle market, the ability (or lack of same) for free websites with huge audiences to make money and be profitable, and another ugly week for the culture of the tech industry.

Matt Egan and Carolina Milanesi

Every car Volvo unveils by 2019 will have an electric motor, either as an all-electric EV, plug-in hybrid or hybrid, making it the first major automaker to stop selling cars with only gas or diesel engines.

Tesla’s long-awaited mass-market electric car will begin rolling off the assembly line this week. But even as it moves ahead, the automaker is encountering challenges to its ambitious plans for growth.

Chinese companies have plans for additional factories with the capacity to pump out more than 120 gigawatt-hours a year by 2021, according to a report published this week by Bloomberg Intelligence. That’s enough to supply batteries for around 1.5 million Tesla Model S vehicles or 13.7 million Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrids per year.

When looking at the future of commuting, brands and industry watchers might want to consider the reality of how America feels about this topic is not dissimilar to how America felt about the recent US presidential election. Urban vs. rural, millennials vs. baby-boomers, higher income vs. lower income, male vs. female. All play a role in separating reality from fantasy.

France is joining a growing movement to force the extinction of vehicles that run on fossil fuels, saying on Thursday that it would aim to end the sale of gasoline and diesel cars by 2040.

HopSkipDrive is a ride service for kids designed to help you take some of the stress out of your family's busy schedule. It was created by three moms who understand the struggle of getting kids around town safely.

The Reddit user who initially claimed credit for President Donald Trump's tweet that showed Trump tackling CNN issued an apology Tuesday for the video and other offensive content he posted -- one day after CNN identified the man behind the account and attempted to make contact with him.

As Verizon completed its acquisition of Yahoo, a number of Tumblr employees, as well as those at other Verizon-owned properties, like the Huffington Post, were laid off.

The United States has lifted the in-cabin ban on laptops and other large electronic devices on U.S.-bound flights from Dubai and Istanbul, Emirates and Turkish Airlines said on Wednesday.

Rachel Renock, the chief executive of Wethos, and her business partners said they received sexist comments while seeking financing.

The upheaval over sexual harassment in the technology start-up continued with the resignation of a prominent Silicon Valley investor who said he had been “a creep” and more women saying they would come forward to talk about their experiences.

Shira Ovide writes, "This has been the year of "brave" women. And I'm getting sick and tired of women having to be so brave."

Ten years ago, the original iPhone went on sale, launching the smartphone market as we know it today. More recently, the EU fined Google 2.4 billion euros in an antitrust case, and the Amazon Echo Show has shipped to customers.

Serenity Caldwell and Stephen Hackett

Ten years ago, after six months of hype and after waiting in very long lines around Apple and AT&T retail stores, people first got their hands on the iPhone.

Apple changed the world when it launched the iPhone 10 years ago, but the technological march toward computers in everyone’s pockets began long before that.

Stephen was an Apple Genius-in-training and working part-time on the sales floor at the local Apple store when the first iPhone went on sale.

Google was fined a record 2.4 billion euros for unfairly favoring some of its own services over those of rivals.

The suit, filed in April 2012, alleged that Apple Inc. and five book publishing companies conspired to raise and fix the price for e-books in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Ben Thompson outlines the three questions that are at the heart of antitrust regulation of digital companies.

Before the Internet, truths could hide in plain sight. In today's world, truths can come out, and even go viral, in mere moments.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-Show-Alexa-Enabled-Black/dp/B01J24C0TI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8

Amazon is looking to push organic kale with its purchase of Whole Foods, while also taking on clothing subscription services. Over at Apple, an internal meeting about secrecy leaked to the press. Oh, sweet irony.

Lisa Schmeiser and Megan Morrone

Amazon agreed to buy the upscale grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.4 billion.

Amazon's mission statement is pretty bold: "Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."

A new program that will let you try on clothes before you buy them. Select at least three Prime Wardrobe-eligible pieces and Amazon will ship your selections to you in a resealable return box with a prepaid shipping label.

Amazon is using the subscription box phenomenon as part of a broader effort to be top of mind when people buy clothes. The online retailer is developing its own stable of fashion labels to sell suits, dresses, lingerie and more.

For online sellers, winning the race for the buy box is similar to landing the first result on a Google search or, in the brick-and-mortar world, being displayed in the most visible, highly trafficked sections of supermarket aisles.

Called Tertill, the round, 2.5-pound bot uses sensors to identify weeds in a vegetable or flower garden. It then uses a spinning string trimmer to cut off weeds near the ground.

Apple's approach includes former NSA agents, secrecy members on product teams and a screening apparatus bigger than the TSA.

Museum Historian John Markoff moderates a discussion with former iPhone team members Hugo Fiennes, Nitin Ganatra and Scott Herz, followed by a conversation with Scott Forstall.

The extreme heat forecast for Phoenix on Tuesday has caused the cancellation of 20 American Airlines flights out of Sky Harbor International Airport.