Grab your boots and broomsticks Harry Potter fans, LeakyCon is headed to Texas
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F640023%2F14d9aef4-63c4-4ffb-baf0-f37d413af6ed.jpg)
Hogwarts is heading to Texas next year.
LeakyCon, the huge Harry Potter fan convention, will set up shop in Dallas in August.
Named for the Harry Potter fan site The Leaky Cauldron (which is the name of the London pub at the entrance of Diagon Alley), the event brings together some of the world’s most hardcore Potterheads.
Pack your Astronomy books, LeakyCon is heading to The Lone Star State! LeakyCon 2018 – Dallas, TX – August 10-12 https://t.co/4hQWaIvBqO pic.twitter.com/fB19f2mQnH
— LeakyCon (@LeakyCon) October 31, 2017 Read more…
More about Harry Potter, Fans, Texas, Leakycon, and Entertainment
Donald Trump’s Twitter went down
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F640233%2F35a49a5b-e418-4772-94d6-96d414e95a18.jpg)
For a few brief, blissful moments on Thursday, Donald Trump’s Twitter account didn’t exist. The account — which now has 41 million followers — went offline for some five minutes before being restored back to its old state.
Reporters noticed the issue immediately, and attempts to reach his page displayed the “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” error message.
Wait, what? https://t.co/qS72W51Wmn
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 2, 2017
The account appeared to come back online within minutes.
The last tweet posted to the account before the issue was a video clip announcing Jerome Powell as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Read more…
More about Donald Trump, Tech, and Politics
View More Donald Trump’s Twitter went downiOS glitch makes using the iPhone’s keyboard a nightmare
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F639869%2F0d2fdd36-5051-47ea-ae8d-9c33bd15f555.jpg)
Apple Messages is one of the iPhone’s killer apps, streamlining text messages and making the iPhone almost impossible to abandon — but texting is infuriating if all the letters don’t actually work.
We became privy to a new iPhone keyboard glitch after a few Mashable staffers recently started having issues with their iPhone keyboards, specifically with vowels. The issue started when iOS 11’s predictive text feature began to display an odd character in the place of the letter “I,” offering up “A[?] instead and autocorrecting within the message field. The people were running iOS 11.0.3 and 11.1, using iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus devices. Read more…
More about Keyboard, Imessage, Ios 11, Tech, and Smartphones
Here’s how to get one of those Star Wars vacuums if you don’t want to shell out $800 up front
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F640140%2F12636ed8-482f-45b0-a16b-6d6d0ab07506.png)
Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.
If you’re following Mashable Deals on Facebook (and you really should be—we’re fun!) you’ve probably seen the Samsung POWERbot in action.
More about Samsung, Star Wars, Vacuum, Mashable Shopping, and Shopping List
View More Here’s how to get one of those Star Wars vacuums if you don’t want to shell out $800 up frontPandora tried to become more like Spotify and now it’s bleeding users
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F640000%2F4bdeac46-6e7b-4302-bf12-0f8d1549353e.jpg)
Pandora is trying to reinvent itself as more than free internet radio. But subscriptions come with a price.
Pandora has been losing users with each earnings report, at 73.7 million active listeners this quarter compared to 78.1 million this time two years ago.
Pandora Q3 Users:
2015: 78.1M
2016: 77.9M
2017: 73.7M— Lucas Shaw (@Lucas_Shaw) November 2, 2017
The 4.4 million dropoff in users comes as Pandora tries to make itself a player in the on-demand music streaming wars, up against Spotify, Apple Music, and the rest.
This quarter, Pandora touted that its total paid subscribers were up 29 percent year-over-year to 5.19 million. For comparison, Spotify has 60 million subscribers and Apple Music has about 30 million. Pandora’s subscriptions brought in $84.4 million in revenue. Read more…
More about Music, Spotify, Pandora, Music Streaming, and Business
Vetted buys VetPronto in yet more on-demand consolidation
Consolidation continues to dog the world of on-demand startups — literally and figuratively. In the latest development, Vetted, a startup focused on veterinary services is acquiring VetPronto, an almost identical peer. A few months ago we covered the launch of Vetted, an on-demand veterinary startup that raised $3.3M from investors like Amplify LA, Sterling.VC and Foundation Capital. At… Read More
Stop waking up with a sore throat—these are the bestselling humidifiers on Amazon
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F638491%2F64010666-3ce4-4590-990c-3afb8fbacb75.jpg)
Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.
The end of the year means two things—red Starbucks cups and really, really dry air. If you’re dealing with a sore throat and chapped lips every day from Halloween to Easter, it’s time to invest in a quality humidifier.
If you’ve never let a humidifier into your life, you seriously don’t know what you’re missing. Maybe the idea of adding water vapor to your living space doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but believe me—it’s a total game changer. Read more…
More about Mashable Shopping, Shopping List, Shopping Amazon, Shopping Home, and Bestselling
View More Stop waking up with a sore throat—these are the bestselling humidifiers on AmazonNoel Gallagher’s band has a killer scissors player (someone who plays the scissors)
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F639979%2F5568d267-2750-461c-893c-10f17ceeab55.png)
When most people see scissors, they think, “Ah, scissors, the things you use to cut.”
When musician and former Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher sees scissors, he thinks, “Ah, scissors, the things you use to make beautiful British rock music.”
This way of thinking — this vision — would explain the scissor player (lead scissorist) featured in Gallagher’s band The High Flying Birds during a recent televised BBC performance.
SEE ALSO: It’s Christmas now: Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ has entered the iTunes charts
In case you’re confused, let’s clear something up: this is what it sounds like it is. Read more…
More about Music, Weird, Scissors, Noel Gallagher, and Culture
4 hacks that totally embarrassed the US government
Cyberattacks are a fast-growing and increasingly dangerous threat to modern society, especially when they target the highly sensitive information stored within government databases. Four recent attacks have made the U.S. government seem, at best, unpr…
View More 4 hacks that totally embarrassed the US governmentNew technology puts the AI in aid for US veterans
As part of their latest endeavor to improve care for our country’s combat vets, the Department of Veterans Affairs has invested in a rapidly advancing form of intelligence: the artificial kind. The opportunity to use this growing tech to improve veteran healthcare has rightfully attracted positive attention to some intriguing new initiatives. Read More
VCs’ carried interest is safe for now, preserved in a new tax bill released today
The House tax bill released earlier today has something for VCs (and private equity folks, and hedge fund managers) to celebrate: it doesn’t touch the carried interest tax break that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton vowed to do away with on the campaign trail last year. Read More
Logitech is experimenting with a keyboard built for Virtual Reality
As simple as it seems, dealing with the keyboard is of the weirder challenges that many notice the first time they check out virtual reality. Even if you’ve been touch typing for decades, even just figuring out where the heck your keyboard is can be hard once you’ve popped a headset over your eyes and dropped into another world. Logitech, makers of about a zillion different… Read More