The crowdfunded cult of Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer wouldn't exist in her current form without Patreon. That's not to say Amanda Palmer the person would dematerialize if Patreon didn't exist, but Amanda Palmer the artist would be a completely different beast. As it stands, Palmer is an i...

Crowdfunding is better than Netflix for YouTube’s creep queen

One day six months ago, Christine McConnell picked up the phone and learned that her Netflix show, The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, wouldn't be renewed. The production company called with the news, citing an email it had received from Ne...

Alex Garland’s ‘Devs’ explores free will in the age of predictive computing

Alex Garland deconstructed the Turing test with Ex Machina, and tormented our psyches with a horrifying alien invasion in Annihilation. Now he's tackling free will versus a deterministic universe in Devs. And instead of trying to cram all that philos...

Oprah’s Book Club is coming to Apple TV+

Oprah Winfrey is one of the A-list celebrities Apple has enlisted for Apple TV+. Winfrey has already signed on for a series with Prince Harry on mental health, and she's expected to release another documentary, Toxic Labor, about workplace harassment...

A dentist made a game in MS Paint and it’s terrifying

The scariest thing about World of Horror might be the fact that it's being lovingly crafted by a part-time dentist. Pawel Kozminski is the sole creator of World of Horror, and he also practices dentistry in Poland, splitting his time between poking a...

Amazon Music HD offers lossless streaming starting at $12.99 per month

Amazon is launching a new tier for its Music subscription service that will offer high quality, lossless audio streams and downloads, the company has announced. With Amazon Music HD, as the plan is called, Amazon says people are going to have access...

Consensual phishing: How to crack your half-forgotten crypto password

Phil Dougherty has a side hustle as a friendly hacker. By day, he's a software developer at the University of Wisconsin, building free educational games and conducting research on the ways people play them. Meanwhile, back at home, Dougherty is the s...

For Disney, it’s all about ‘quality over quantity’ with Disney+

The Disney+ Showcase at the D23 Expo started with a live performance from the cast of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. And that wasn't just about getting the crowd fired up. For Disney, it was an opportunity to give its biggest fans a ta...