Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

Last week, Gizmodo noted Peter Thiel’s strange radio silence regarding the theatrical implosion of Donald Trump, whom the Silicon Valley billionaire and Facebook board member stumped for at the Republican National Convention. According to the New York Times, however, Thiel is nowhere close to abandoning his candidate. Citing “a person close to the investor,” the paper reported on Saturday that Thiel “will give $1.

Netflix’s content library isn’t just getting smaller, it’s also increasingly losing its best movies. The Streaming Observer did some analysis, and found that only 31 movies from the IMDb Top 250 are currently available on Netflix. The IMDb Top 250 isn’t a perfect barometer for “best movies ever,” but as crowdsourced film ratings databases go, it’s solid. And hey, The Shawshank Redemption is an excellent film.

Bad news, would-be lunar colonists: that dusty, airless space rock you dream of escaping to is apparently swarming with deadly projectiles. According to a new study, Earth’s nearest neighbor is being bombarded by small, fast-moving chunks of debris, at a rate 100 times faster than impact models previously estimated.

Tinder, with its data-driven approach to romance, has always had a slightly creepy feel—it’s basically just a game to win, after all. But now, with a new feature called Smart Photos, the app has gone one step further in turning its users into human guinea pigs whose every swipe is catalogued and carefully tracked. Tinder announced Smart Photos in a blog post this morning.

Do not be alarmed by this heavily armed, parasitic wasp that bears no close relationship to any other organism, and is such a badass that it apparently traded flying for leaping like a grasshopper. Mercifully, Aptenoperissus burmanicus went extinct a long time ago. Encased in 100-million year old amber, this spectacularly well-preserved wasp was unearthed in the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, one of the richest deposits of Cretaceous fossils on Earth.

Amazon has just launched its long-awaited Spotify competitor, Amazon Music Unlimited. Like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, and Deezer, Amazon Music Unlimited offers on-demand access to tens of millions of songs. And like those services, it also offers “thousands” of “hand curated playlists” and personalized stations. So why would anyone want Amazon Music Unlimited? If you’re an Amazon Prime member, it might come down to price.

A third replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has caught fire. Michael Klering of Nicholasville, Kentucky told WKYT that he woke up at 4am and his room was filled with smoke. The phone that Samsung had recently replaced was burning. “It wasn’t plugged in. It wasn’t anything, it was just sitting there,” he said. According to WKYT, later that day Klering began feeling extremely ill and went to the Emergency Room. “I was vomiting black so it was very scary.

Spherical, orb-like aliens are one of science fiction’s most beloved tropes, from countless golden age classics to appearances in Star Trek and Dr. Who. It’s unclear whether this is a case of science fiction inspiring innovation or simply great minds thinking alike, but now, prominent scientists are saying spheres may indeed be the way to go for interstellar travel.

A joint mission led by the European Space Agency and Roscosmos arrives at Mars next week, and its first order of business will be to make history. If all goes well, NASA is about to lose its bragging rights as the only space agency to successfully land probes on the Red Planet. ExoMars, an astrobiology mission designed to hunt for signs of geologic and biological activity on Mars, is on track to reach orbit on October 19th.

The modern internal combustion engine first came from Germany and now Germany wants to put a nail in its coffin. The Bundesrat has passed a resolution to ban the ICE beginning in 2030. Germany’s Spiegel Magazin reported this morning that the country’s top legislative body was able to reach a bi-partisan agreement that hopes to allow only zero-emission vehicles on EU roads in 14 years. For the resolution to be instituted across Europe, it will have to be approved by the EU.