The developer platform GitHub, which is widely used for storing, sharing, and collaborating on code, will apparently soon be a Microsoft company.

Microsoft has reportedly acquired the San Francisco-based hosting service and might announce the deal as soon as Monday, a Bloomberg report said, according to “people familiar with the matter.”

Murmurs about the acquisition bubbled up late last week as the CEO-less GitHub was reportedly in talks with Microsoft about a sale. Its co-founder, Tom Preston-Werner, resigned in 2014 after harassment allegations surfaced. Read more…

More about Microsoft, Developers, Acquisition, Coding, and Open Source

The Game Boy Camera isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you think “high end.”

The unusual peripheral, released in 1998, could be inserted into the Nintendo handheld’s cartridge slot to give you a lo-fi digital camera capable of capturing a 128×112 black and white image. Now, a full 20 years later, someone’s managed to make the thing work with a massive Canon zoom lens.

That someone is Bastiaan Ekeler, a product designer and photography enthusiast. The idea came to him recently after he saw how photographer Tim Binnion managed to shoot the 2018 Chinese Grand Prix using a Game Boy Camera and a clip-on telephoto lens for smartphones. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Gaming, Photography, Canon, and Game Boy

A drone that follows you around with a sun-blocking umbrella is only a prototype, but it has a major flaw: it’s annoyingly loud.

Sure it’s a convenient way to stay out of the sun and keep your hands free, but the Japanese company Asahi Power Service’s “Free Parasol” concept still needs reworking.

Demos of the device have been around for the past few years and even in the latest video (at the top of this post) that annoying hum and buzz renders the entire concept useless. 

Listen for just a few seconds and imagine walking around with that incessant buzzing for an hour — that’s how long the company wants to have the head-detecting drone last. The drone is expected to come to market in 2019, according to Tokyo-based SoraNews24. It’s intended for golfers on sunny greenways. Read more…

More about Drones, Umbrella, Noise, Tech, and Drones

Walmart is trying out outsmart e-retailer Amazon with a new text-to-order service, Jetblack. 

Launching first in New York City, the service cooked up in Walmart’s tech incubator, Store No. 8, is aimed at “time-strapped” families that are too busy to browse for birthday presents, cleaning supplies, or toiletries online. Forget about physically going to a store — no way. Just text what you need.

Instead of searching for products on a mobile app or on a website, Jetblack is more of a text conversation — with a computer. You can text thoughts, ideas, musings, and the “personalized shopper” will come back with recommendations and reviews. You can even send over a picture and the Jetblack assistant will look for it. You can also text straightforward orders for when you know what you want. Read more…

More about Texting, Artificial Intelligence, Jet, E Commerce, and Walmart

Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” has been discussed, dissected, parodied, and riffed upon in an assortment of ways since it first dropped in early May. But this right here is its first appearance in Fortnite.

The WiZiBlimp YouTube channel’s recreation of the video is impressive on a technical level. It kind of goes off the rails a bit at the end, but for the most part “This Is Fortnite” is a faithful recreation of the original creation’s key moments.

But as anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes thinking about Childish Gambino’s latest effort knows well, “This Is America” is about so much more than the piece of music that runs behind it. This is a nifty thing to watch, but it doesn’t really say or do anything more than emulate. All the nuance is lost. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Music, Gaming, Childish Gambino, and Fortnite

Precisely one month ago, a 500-foot long crack in the ground opened up in Hawaii’s Leilani Estates neighborhood, spewing lava into the air. At the time, volcanologists weren’t sure what might happen next, and whether lava flows would continue through the community.

Since then, the state reports that lava has now blanketed over 2,300 acres of land, over 2,000 people have been evacuated, and a “vigorous eruption” of lava continues in the southeastern corner of Hawaii.

On June 2, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said lava crossed over highways and filled a small lake, which “apparently evaporated all the water.” By this morning, the USGS reported the lava flow was half a mile wide, and headed toward the ocean. Read more…

More about Science, Hawaii, Volcanic Eruption, Lava, and Usgs

If it wasn’t clear after opening weekend, it sure is nowSolo is likely to end its run in theaters as the biggest box office bust in Star Wars history.

The current weekend estimate for U.S. ticket sales is $29.3 million, representing a 65 percent drop-off in attendance after last weekend’s opening sprint of $84.4 million ($103 million if you also count Memorial Day Monday).

This is more than just a rough start. In the realm of first-run releases (i.e. not counting Special Editions and re-releases), only Star Wars: The Clone Wars fared worse. And that “movie” was really just three episodes of the then-new animated TV series stitched together; its theatrical release, which dropped to less than 1,000 theaters after a month, was largely meant to hype the show. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Film, Star Wars, Box Office, and Solo A Star Wars Story

Justice continues to close in on Harvey Weinstein, ever since he surrendered himself to the New York police on May 25 (before being released on bail). Now, one more survivor accusing him of rape is adding her story to the legal battle.

CNN reports that Melissa Thompson joined the three other women who filed a class-action lawsuit against the infamous, disgraced Hollywood producer. Before the new charges, he already stood accused of first and third degree rape, as well as first degree criminal sexual act. 

Though Thompson’s story sounds very similar to the litany of other allegations brought to light by women over the past seven months, it adds a fresh layer of (alleged) insidiousness from Weinstein’s lawyer.  Read more…

More about Entertainment, Social Good, Harvey Weinstein, Metoo, and Entertainment

When Mashable first learned of the rumored relationship between Saturday Night Live‘s Pete Davidson and pop star Ariana Grande, we were baffled. Skeptical, even. Who, how? What’s in the water at Studio 8H?

But the couple made it social media official this week and we realized we were suddenly obsessed.

It happened, as John Green once wrote, “slowly, and then all at once.” One minute we were saying “literally what the hell” and another minute we were coming up with the best portmanteau for their relationship (Peteiana is the cumbersome top option, but there’s something to be said for the journalism-nerd moniker “AP Style”). Read more…

More about Entertainment, Music, Celebrities, Snl, and Culture

It wouldn’t be a huge annual trade show without a few appetite-whetting leaks.

Just a few short days before Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) kicks off on June 4, an apparent leaks points to some incoming MacOS updates. While there’s surely more to be revealed, it looks like MacOS 10.14 will sport both a “dark mode” and an Apple News app.

The discoveries come from developer Steve Troughton-Smith (h/t 9to5Mac). He came across the new bits while he was fiddling around with the Mac App Store API.

Buried behind the scenes, Troughton-Smith discovered a 30-second preview of Xcode 10, Apple’s forthcoming update for its OS development tools. View it right here. Read more…

More about Tech, Apple, Leak, Macos, and Wwdc 2018