Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

This patent battle between Apple and Samsung is the lawsuit that just won’t go away. Since 2011, the two smartphone giants have been fighting over five patents due to the claim that Samsung infringed on Apple’s intellectual property when it made a handful of devices including the original Galaxy S 4G, the Galaxy S2, and the Droid Charge.

While we’re not expecting any major phone news to come out of WWDC (aside from the possible appearance of the iPhone SE 2), all sorts of iPhone rumors are hitting the street as Apple’s annual developer conference nears. The rumors range from some plausible changes and upgrades to some very silly-looking new colors.

Benedict Cumberbatch aside, the best part of Marvel’s Doctor Strange movie was the animated spells the magical characters could generate out of thin air. Given our world lacks real magic, a Japanese cosplayer has found a way to simulate the same effect using a modded Nerf blaster and a spinning LED wand.

Thanks to a quirk of astrophysics, astronomers were able to observe features just tens of kilometers apart near a spinning neutron star located 6,500 light-years away from Earth. This is like using a telescope in your backyard to see DNA strands on the moon. Scientists have studied the “black widow pulsar” for several decades, and it got its name because it’s thought that the pulsar, a small neutron star, is slowly killing its brown dwarf companion.

Following critical coverage of his electric car company, Tesla, Elon Musk has been on a Twitter tear against the media, threatening to build a service that would allow the general public to rank the trustworthiness and “core truth” of stories, journalists, publications, and editors. Musk claimed to be toying with the name “Pravda,” a reference to the state newspaper of Soviet Russia.

With electric vehicles rapidly becoming more viable for long distance trips, enthusiasts like to push the limits of what their cars can do on a single charge. Two men in Denver set out to break the record distance in a Model 3 this weekend and after 32 hours, they were victorious. Unfortunately, the car is refusing to go any further.

Last month, a handful of extremely popular music videos on YouTube were defaced. Now two 18-year-old French citizens are in police custody and have been charged with crimes related to the hack of Vevo YouTube accounts. Per Variety, the teens were taken in by law enforcement officers in Paris. The 18-year-olds, identified as “Nassim B.” and “Gabriel K.A.B.

Researchers at Avast Threat Labs say that more than 100 different low-cost Android devices from manufacturers like ZTE, Archos, and myPhone come with malware pre-installed. Users in more than 90 countries, including the US, are said to be infected. The good news is there’s a fix. According to the report, this adware variant has been in the wild for three years. It’s called “Cosiloon” and was first noticed by Dr. Web in 2016.

Alan Bean, the fourth of just 12 people to walk on the moon and one of the first Americans to spend an extended period living on a space station, died Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital. He was 86. “Alan was the strongest and kindest man I ever knew. He was the love of my life and I miss him dearly,” Leslie Bean, his wife of 40 years, said. “A native Texan, Alan died peacefully in Houston surrounded by those who loved him.

While some of his classmates wanted to execute senior pranks that would potentially disrupt classes, Missouri high school student Kylan Scheele opted for some tomfoolery that was a little more chill. “Other people were going to release live mice or, you know, building a beach in the front lobby area,” Scheele told Kansas City’s Fox affiliate. “And I thought let’s do something more laid back, so I just decided to post the school for sale.