Photo shots fired!

Google announced an update to its Photos app for iOS on Monday. Now, iPhone users can edit the background blur and focus of portrait mode images within the Google Photos iOS app. Customized portraits, here you come!

The new capability is a boon for iPhone users without the latest models. Users who have anything but an iPhone with an “X” in its name now have a great reason to install a Google app on their iPhone.

More about Google, Apple, Iphone, Google Photos, and Depth Effect

This post contains many, many spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Now that some people have seen Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald it’s time to discuss some of the movie’s more shocking, upsetting, and truly bizarre moments. 

Because, wow. Even for Harry Potter, this movie got weird. Spoilers abound, so scroll down at one’s own risk. 

1. So the opening shot refers to MACUSA as the “American Ministry of Magic.”

As if they hadn’t spent a whole movie making people say MACUSA to explain why it is different from the British Ministry of Magic. Read more…

More about Fantastic Beasts 2, Fantastic Beasts The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

It’s official: Skybound Entertainment will release the final episodes in Season 4 of Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

Skybound, for those who don’t know, is the publishing label co-founded by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. The company’s been a longtime partner on Telltale’s series, and even formally announced an intention to finish the series after Telltale closed down in September.

The early October announcement noted that Skybound would endeavor to “work with members of the original Telltale team to finish the story in a way the fans deserve.” But the company shared no further details at the time, and all’s been quiet ever since. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Gaming, The Walking Dead, Telltale Games, and Skybound Entertainment

Smart home devices were the hot, gift-worthy items during last year’s holiday season and 2018 is shaping up to be no different. A big part of the reason for this is because these smart home devices tend to see great discounts on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making now the ideal time to shop for loved ones — or snag a gift for yourself. Trust us, we won’t tell anyone. We promise.  

SEE ALSO: All the best Black Friday 2018 sales, right in one place

Although some of the deals are not official yet, a large number of them are active right now, so you can take advantage of these fantastic sales from Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target before the Black Friday shopping holiday even begins.  Read more…

More about Home, Amazon, Black Friday, Phillips, and Mashable Shopping

Nearly 20 years on and several disappointing sequels later, Shrek is still on our minds.

As it has been for over 200 people, who have contributed to a huge and very weird project called Shrek Retold, a scene-by-scene remake of the 1999 film.

Behind it all is 3GI, the team responsible for the annual festival dedicated to the cantankerous ogre, Shrekfest. A mix of animation, bizarre 3D renderings, and live action scenes, the film’s trailer really speaks for itself.

Shrek Retold is set to be released on 3GI’s YouTube channel on Nov. 29. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Film, Culture, Shrek, and Culture

Facebook’s former chief security officer is defending the social network amid the fallout from the New York Times’ bombshell report on the company this past week.

Alex Stamos, who was the company’s CSO from 2015 up until the summer of 2018, wrote a piece published in the Washington Post on Saturday responding to the New York Times report. Stamos attempted to dispel the Times’ report claiming that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, fearing blowback, delayed taking action following his team’s discovery of Russian interference in the 2016 election via a misinformation campaign on the platform. Read more…

More about Facebook, Russia, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Elections

It’s the afternoon of a day ending with “y,” so you know Donald Trump has offended someone already.

Look no further than Trump’s Fox News interview with Chris Wallace. A clip from that interview went viral earlier on Sunday when Wallace asked the president to respond to comments by Bill McRaven, the former Navy SEAL who oversaw the operation the ended in the death of Osama Bin Laden.

McRaven had previously criticized Trump’s frequent attacks against the media — specifically, his characterization of the press as “the enemy of the people” — as “the greatest threat to democracy” he’s ever witnessed. The former SEAL spoke up again in August after Trump’s apparently punitive revocation of former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance. Read more…

More about Twitter, Politics, Culture, Donald Trump, and Culture

At the beginning of the year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made changes to its website pages on fracking. 

A watchdog group known as the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative tracked those changes across the EPA’s site and just released a report documenting the group’s findings. The result of the changes has left an official U.S. government website looking more like an extension of the fossil fuel industry than a federal agency with a mission to protect the environment.

The most obvious EPA website change from the report is the very title of the fracking page. Previously called “Natural Gas Extraction – Hydraulic Fracturing,” the EPA webpage on fracking is now titled “Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas Development.”  Read more…

More about Fracking, Environmental Protection Agency, Epa, Science, and Climate Environment

Just in case you had any doubts, darts and farts do not mix well.

In fact, when the two become involved, things can get pretty ugly. Just ask Gary Anderson (Grown Man #1) and Wesley Harms (Grown Man #2,) professional dart players who recently accused each other of farting at the Grand Slam of Darts in England.

As The Guardian reported on Friday, after Anderson of Scotland beat Harms, a Dutch player, 10-2 in a match that earned him a spot in the quarter-finals, some foul-smelling accusations came out.

In a post-match interview, Harms said he wasn’t playing up to his normal caliber because Anderson straight up farted on the stage before him, leaving him to endure a “fragrant smell.” Read more…

More about Uk, Culture, Farting, Darts, and Culture

YouTube has just rolled out dozens of free-to-watch full-length feature films on its platform. The only catch is that the content is ad-supported.

First noticed by AdAge, YouTube began launching ad-supported Hollywood films under a “Free to watch” section on its Movies & Shows vertical. Films like Legally Blonde, The Terminator, Rocky, Hackers, and All Dogs Go to Heaven are listed on the page with a “Free with Ads” tag displayed under the title. Users can watch these films at no cost with commercial interruptions and pop-up banner ads like the ones displayed on other YouTube videos.

(The ads appear to go away for YouTube Premium subscribers, based on our testing so far.) Read more…

More about Youtube, Hollywood, Streaming Services, Tech, and Movies Tv Shows