In the tech world, a lot happens in a week. So much news goes on, in fact, that it’s almost impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of everything. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of the top 10 tech stories you may have missed. Everything from SpaceX’s historic landing, to Kim Kardashian’s butt emoji — it’s all here.
The Falcon 9 rocket on Monday night made a perfect touchdown – upright and on hard ground – at Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking the first time for Elon Musk and his team to achieve the incredibly complicated maneuver. The triumph is a major step forward for SpaceX’s ambition to develop reusable and reliable rocket technology aimed at drastically reducing the cost of space missions, and marks a truly landmark moment for space travel.
You know your company has been around a long time and that you’ve released a lot of products when a museum exhibit pops up, purely to showcase your impact on the world. That’s exactly what Apple now has in Prague, where a museum offers what it boasts is the largest private collection of historic Apple hardware in the world.
As part of its “Creating Amazing” design campaign, Lexus commissioned a team of specialists to make wheels completely out of ice for its NX crossover. Artisans from Hamilton Ice Sculptors took three months to create frozen copies of the vehicle’s five-spoke alloys and Yokohama tires, and when they were done, they actually drove the thing down a London street.
The Thin Ice Weight Loss Clothing Line, recently backed on Indiegogo by more than half a million dollars, is designed to trick your body into thinking you’re cold and burning fat to keep you warm. The team behind Thin Ice is kicking off the line with two items to target areas of your body with a lot of thermoreceptors (nerves that detect temperature changes).
Final reports on both domestic and worldwide ticket sales for Star Wars: The Force Awakens now indicate that the film has indeed broken the global opening-weekend record with $529 million worldwide, surpassing the previous record of $525 million set by Jurassic World. The Force Awakens also earned slightly more in U.S. theaters than early reports suggested, with the final tally for the film confirmed to be $248 million domestically — the new all-time record for opening weekends in U.S. theaters.
Next page: 5 more tech stories you might have missed this week
The world’s most expensive home, Château Louis XIV, which just sold for $301 million to a private buyer, was built to resemble 17th-century palace Versailles, but has more amenities than your average modern-day home. Sitting in a 56-acre park, the 20-bedroom home has a long list of ridiculous features. It took 200 people three years to build the home for developer Emad Khashoggi and his company Cogemad
After years of holding out, the Beatles are finally going to start streaming your way. Given the history of exclusivity of the band’s music in digital form, it’s surprising just how many services the Beatles catalog is coming to. Spotify and Apple Music are getting the catalog just as you’d expect, but so are Google Play, Tidal, and even Amazon Prime Music.
Film awards season is upon us, but this year, Johnny Depp has received a less-than-thrilling distinction. The actor has earned the top spot on Forbes magazine’s list of Hollywood’s most overpaid actors of 2015. To rank the actors, the difference between their films’ global box offices and estimated production costs are compared to their compensation for the projects. Forbes found that Depp returned just $1.20 for ever $1 that he is paid.
Marvel’s universe may have once been confined to its comic books, but thanks to some pretty crazy innovations, we just might be closer to bringing superheroes, or at least their powers, into real life. Thanks to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we now have software that effectively gives us X-ray vision.
If you’re a Kimye fan obsessed with instant messaging, then Kim Kardashian West just released the app for you. Kimoji follows on the high stiletto heels of the Kim Kardashian: Hollywood mobile game, this time offering users the chance to share Kim-centric emojis with friends.
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites see the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, and you can get around geo-blocks, censorship, and ISP throttling. The best VPN services are paid, but there are still a handful of free options that do the job well.
Most free VPNs come with a hidden cost, because running servers isn’t cheap and a company that doesn’t charge you has to make its money somewhere else. Many do so by logging your browsing activity and selling it to advertisers, while others flood you with ads and track you across apps.
There's nothing quite like curling up with a good book on a cold evening. As much as I love the feel of a physical book, books take up a lot of space, and carrying more than one on a trip quickly becomes a chore. That's where e-readers come in, and the Amazon Kindle remains one of the best options.
Amazon just refreshed its Kindle lineup with thinner, lighter designs, a new flush-front display, and colors that wrap from front to back. Add the Kindle Scribe and the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft to the mix, and you have more choices than ever before.
A good Android app should earn its place on your phone. It might make an everyday task easier, handle something the built-in software can't, or let you change an experience that never quite worked for you.
These 20 apps cover everything from quick notes and password management to automation and local file sharing. Some are free, others charge for advanced features, and a few take some effort to figure out. The point isn't to install them all. It's to find the ones that make your phone work better for you.