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“He wants to be known as the TV Santa Claus. I don’t know,” one homeowner told Virginia ABC affiliate WTVR-TV. So begins the tale of a human who literally stuck a giant television on his or her head so they could bring joy to the world in the form of unwanted TV sets. And just as it did for the person who brought it to our attention, it has totally made my day. We’re talking big, heavy old-school CRTs. More than 50 of them, according to the report. Left right on people’s porches. Just get a load of that swagger as he or she strides up on camera: And how do the homeowners repay this generosity? By letting our local news camera operator get a delightful shot of the cops hauling a truck full of old TVs away. Incredibly, this isn’t even the first time the TV Santa Claus has struck. “The same thing happened in a different neighborhood last August,” WTVR-TV reports. But I highly suggest you stop reading my words and go watch (and read) the original story. It is a gift that keeps on gi...

This might seem like common sense: if your 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina Display is a fire risk, you can’t bring it on an airplane. But Bloomberg is reporting that the FAA is taking the extra step of explicitly banning select recalled MacBook Pros from being brought aboard as cargo or carry-ons — seemingly singling out these devices like it did with the infamous Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone. In a statement to The Verge, though, an FAA spokeperson suggested that its actions here were actually pretty routine — a reminder to airlines that any device with a recalled lithium-based battery, including the MacBook Pro, isn’t allowed on planes: The FAA is aware of the recalled batteries that are used in some Apple MacBook Pro laptops. In early July, we alerted airlines about the recall, and we informed the public. We issued reminders to continue to follow instructions about recalls outlined in the 2016 FAA Safety Alert for Operators (SAFO) 16011, and provided information provided to the public ...

After an eight year hiatus, the HTC Wildfire brand is making a comeback with the HTC Wildfire X, a new device for the Indian market. However, this probably isn’t the brand revival you’re expecting. For one, the handset isn’t being produced by HTC at all. Instead, the Taiwanese manufacturer has licensed its branding to InOne Smart Technology, a Chinese manufacturer known for its Lava-branded smartphones, according to XDA-Developers. This is also a low-powered budget device, rather than a flagship HTC handset from the company’s glory days. Inside there’s a MediaTek Helio P22 chipset with a 3300mAh battery, up to 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Then, on the outside, you’ve got a 6.22-inch 720p display and a triple camera setup consisting of a 12-megapixel main sensor, a 8-megapixel sensor with a 2x optical zoom, and a 5-megapixel depth sensor. These specs aren’t particularly terrible, but you can do better for the price. The Realme 3 announced back in March, and has a faster Helio ...

Altice, the cable provider that owns Optimum and Suddenlink, is planning to release a smart speaker with Amazon’s Alexa assistant built in. The device, called the Altice Amplify, will allow customers to change channels and control other functions of their TV without reaching for the remote. It’ll also offer quick access to popular streaming apps like Netflix on the company’s Altice One cable system. But Altice is trying to differentiate in an area that you wouldn’t expect from a cable company: sound quality. The Amplify will feature technology from Devialet, a French company (that specializes in high-fi audio. A few years ago, my colleague Dan Seifert wrote about how Devialet was trying to put its sound into a range of products, and the Amplify is a clear example of that strategy. Obviously, I can’t speak to how this thing sounds at the moment — it’s not going to ship until sometime in the fall — but here’s the press release rundown on the Amplify’s audio performance: SPA...

Samsung will announce the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus tomorrow, August 7th, at its Unpacked event in NYC. But if you don’t want to wait until then to find out more, the Note 10 has suffered yet another leak — through Samsung’s own marketing materials, no less. Droid Life has shared several full-page snippets of Samsung’s materials, which give the best look yet at many of the rumored features we’ve been hearing about. According to the presentation, the Note 10 will have a 6.3-inch display, and the Note 10 Plus will have a 6.8-inch screen, both with a hole-punch selfie camera. Droid Life recently updated its post to include pricing for the two phones. The smaller Note 10 is said to cost $949, and opting for the larger Note 10 Plus will cost $1,099 to start. As expected, the included S Pen is capable of a few new tricks, like new air gestures and remotely switching between camera lenses. The Note 10 phones will supposedly also have a “Superfast Charge” feature that gives “hours o...

The inventor of the jet-powered “Flyboard Air” hoverboard will try to fly across the English Channel once again this weekend, after his previous attempt ended in failure. The Associated Press reports, via France24, that Franky Zapata will make the crossing attempt on Sunday, when he will try to make the 20 minute flight from Sangatte in France to St Margaret’s Bay on the south coast of England. Although the route will be the same, Zapata’s team said the refueling station will be different this time around to try and avoid a similar crash to the one that occurred last week. The Flyboard Air only has enough fuel to fly for around 10 minutes at a time, forcing Zapata to stop to refuel halfway across the 20 minute crossing. Last time it was this refueling stage that was the French inventor’s undoing, as he missed the platform by “a few centimeters,” and tumbled into the Channel. This time, his team said they will use a bigger boat stationed in French waters for re-fueling, which had pr...

A few days ago, Facebook disentangled itself from a nettlesome investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into how the company violated users’ privacy. And then, with that matter now squarely behind it, Facebook on Tuesday stepped forward to share some information about its effort to read our minds. Two years after the company announced its mind-reading initiative, Facebook has an update to share. The company sponsored an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of California San Francisco in which they built an interface for decoding spoken dialogue from brain signals. The results were published today in Nature Communication. The work itself is fascinating, as you might expect from the subject matter. Brain-computer interfaces aren’t new, but the existing ones aren’t particularly efficient — particularly the ones that don’t involve drilling into your skill. Facebook’s approach relies on high-density electrocorticography, aka ECoG, which implants sensors on the bra...