Category Archives: Blog

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter may seem like the perfect destination for your spring break trip, but vacationing Potterheads be warned: You-Know-Who still reigns in Los Angeles.

For a limited time this spring, Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle, a new projection light show at Universal Studios Hollywood, is bringing the dark magic of Lord Voldemort and his legion of Death Eaters to the skies of the park. 

Complete with Dementors, Thestrals, and Acromantulas galore, the highly-anticipated spooky show is a departure from the park’s typically jovial Potter themes. 

“After the success of Nighttime Lights at Hogwarts Castle, which told the story of the four houses, and The Magic of Christmas at Hogwarts Castle, which was able to express the emotion of the holidays, we were looking for new stories to tell,” Senior Director of Entertainment Production Stephen Siercks explained to Mashable. Read more…

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The internet is collectively concerned that a 15-year-old YouTuber is pregnant and married. 

Danielle Cohn, who goes by Dani, got her start on Musical.ly before it became the app now known as TikTok. She now has 1.2 million YouTube subscribers and 3.5 million Instagram subscribers. Dani and her mother, who manages her, are controversial figures in the influencer world. When she was 13, Dani was in a relationship with a 17-year-old Musical.ly star, which some of her followers found inappropriate. 

Now, her followers are worried that she’s either married and pregnant, or is pulling an elaborate, inconsiderate prank on the internet for clicks. Public records and an older YouTube video on Dani’s channel seem to point to the latter, but the situation is still hazy.  Read more…

More about Youtube, Married, Musical.Ly, Culture, and Web Culture

All video creators will be soon be equal on Facebook — at least when it comes to their Facebook Page format.

Facebook has been reaching out to its legions of video creators with Facebook Watch show pages informing them that this page format will soon be no more. These creators will soon find their show pages reverted to Facebook’s video page template. The change was first discovered by social media consultant Matt Navarra and confirmed by Digiday. 

“We can confirm that we’re merging the Show Page template and Video Page template on Facebook,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement to Mashable. “We believe this move will help simplify the publishing process for our partners.” Read more…

More about Facebook, Online Video, Facebook Pages, Facebook Watch, and Tech

The rumors were true. Xbox is going disc-less.

Microsoft has confirmed that the previously rumored Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is a real thing. It’ll cost $250 — that’s $50 less than the model that comes with a disc drive — and will arrive bundled with three entire games: Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 3, and Minecraft. Blu-ray support is out though, obviously.

Pre-orders went live with the announcement, and the console will launch on May 7. While the price of Xbox consoles will likely change over time, Microsoft’s announcement did note that “we expect to maintain at least that price difference between the two consoles going forward.” Read more…

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Charging a second-generation Apple Pencil may temporarily cause your car key fob to stop working.

As 9to5Mac reports, Apple recently updated this support document, which details how to use Apple Pencil with your iPad or iPad Pro, to warn users about this weird “signal interference” issue affecting its latest stylus.

The second-gen $129 Apple Pencil, released in November, only works with the new 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pro tablets. To charge it, you simply attach the stylus to the magnetic connector on the right side of your iPad Pro. But don’t charge it near your car key fob.

“If you’re charging your Apple Pencil (2nd generation) with your iPad Pro and your car’s keyless entry device (key fob) is nearby, signal interference might prevent you from unlocking your car with your key fob,” Apple warned. Read more…

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Only a week after K-pop queens Blackpink smashed records on YouTube, BTS has overtaken them.

The video for the band’s latest earworm, “Boy With Luv,” which features singer Halsey, is the most viewed music video debut in YouTube history, a company spokesperson confirmed to Mashable.

The pastel colour-heavy video, which debuted on Apr. 14, earned 74.6 million views in its first 24 hours. It eclipses the record previously set by Blackpink for “Kill This Love,” which had 56.7 million views within a day — this surpassed Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next,” at 55.4 million one-day views. Read more…

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For a couple seasons now, we’ve been waiting for the Mad Queen Daenerys to implode her own chances at the throne. Now, finally, the Season 8 premiere and promo for next week’s episode hint at just how it might happen.

Poetically, it’s an act that directly parallels the downfall of her father, the Mad King Aerys. Apparently, Targaryens never learn to stop playing with fire.

Daenerys started showing her most concerning “burn them all” tendencies in Season 7. The Loot Train Attack on the Lannister armies was fair game, because that’s just war (and it was rad). But her hot-tempered cruelty was on display for all to see in the aftermath of the battle, when she didn’t give a second thought to turning Randyll and Dickon (lol) Tarly into Drogon BBQ for not kneeling. Read more…

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If you’re a fan of dark mode on just about every device you own, you’re really going to like the next version of iOS.

That’s because iOS 13, the iOS update expected later this year, will finally add a system-wide dark mode, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. 

According to 9to5Mac’s sources, the update will ship with a dark mode that you can control in the main settings app. Reportedly similar to the dark mode in macOS, the iOS version will enable a darker theme throughout your phone. (Though individual app developers would presumably still need to support the feature as well.)

More about Tech, Mobile, Iphone, Ios 13, and Tech

Bike-sharing is coming to the Lyft app for New Yorkers.

Starting in May, Lyft-owned bike-sharing company Motivate will offer its Citi Bikes directly through the Lyft app. Citi Bike has 12,000 bikes available in NYC, though this past weekend some 1,000 of the electric-assist bicycles available for rent in New York were pulled due to a braking problem. 

While there’s no set timeline for when the electric bikes will return to the streets, Lyft has since swapped out the potentially faulty bikes with classic pedal bikes – with no electric motor to give you a boost. Bikes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C. were also affected. Lyft says it only pulled 15 percent of available bicycles in all three locations. Read more…

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New Pixel phones might be just around the corner.

Weeks ahead of its annual I/O developer conference, Google’s put up a teaser on its store website insisting “on May 7, something big is coming to the Pixel universe.”

The teaser section is accompanied by a video for a commercial of Avengers: Endgame, wherein the Google Assistant and Pixel 3’s various camera features such as Top Shot and Playmoji augmented reality avatars are used.

The teaser reveals absolutely nothing about what to expect on May 7, but Android Police strongly believes Google might announce two new phones — the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL — on May 7. Read more…

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