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Enlarge / The Android component for Google Play Music Podcasts. Note the new "Podcast" option in the navigation drawer. (credit: Android Police)

If you remember a few months ago, Google announced it would be jumping back into the podcast arena with "Google Play Music Podcasts." It launched a site to take RSS submissions from content creators and promised the product would be launching "soon." That product now appears to be live for some users.

Google hasn't made an announcement yet, but Android Police has screenshots of the Android component, which lives inside the Google Play Music app. If you have Play Music version 6.3 and (critically) have the server-side switch for podcasts turned on, you'll see a new section in the navigation drawer called "podcasts."

The section contains a searchable podcast catalog, which allows you to subscribe and auto-download shows. The Now Playing screen has been tweaked with 30-second skip and rewind buttons, and the app will alert you when new shows arrive and start downloading. For now, it seems the podcast section is pretty bare bones, feature-wise. There's no variable playback speed, no importing of existing RSS lists, and search isn't limited to just podcasts.

Jonathan Gitlin

The C-HR concept car was shown off at last year's LA Auto Show. It's still going into production but will be branded as a Toyota.

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Japanese car companies have been experimenting with US-market sub-brands for quite a while now. Toyota arguably owns the trend—and the most successful example—with Lexus, which rebranded Japanese-market Toyotas like the Soarer and Camry with a side helping of added luxury. Others followed suit (Nissan and Infiniti, Honda and Acura), and Toyota tried it for a second time with Scion, a sub-brand aimed at the young. Today, the company announced that Scion is no more.

“Scion has had some amazing products over the years and our current vehicles are packed with premium features at value prices,” said Andrew Gilleland, Scion vice president. “It’s been a great run and I’m proud that the spirit of Scion will live on through the knowledge and products soon to be available through the Toyota network.”

In addition to more youth-oriented cars, Scion also let Toyota experiment with ideas like no-haggle pricing and a slimmed-down options list (not to be confused with the huge number of accessories for personalizing one's car).

Invited witnesses prepare to testify about climate science and the Paris agreement.

Tuesday saw yet another congressional science committee hearing on the topic of climate change. At least the topic of this hearing, convened by House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas), was ostensibly focused on policy rather than arguing the science. The title was “Paris Climate Promise: A Bad Deal for America.” Of course, climate science still took some shots along the way.

Rep. Smith opened the hearing with what would be a recurring theme: the Paris agreement will damage the economy without much climate benefit. But Smith couldn’t resist bringing up his ongoing feud with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He said:

An example of how this administration promotes its suspect climate agenda can be seen at the National Oceanographic [sic] and Atmospheric Administration. Its employees altered historical climate data to get politically correct results in an attempt to disprove the eighteen year lack of global temperature increases.

NOAA conveniently issued its news release that promotes this report just as the administration announced its extensive climate change regulations. NOAA has refused to explain its findings and provide documents to this Committee and the American people. The people have a right to see the data, evaluate it, and know the motivations behind this study.

Here's a quick review: There’s no evidence that NOAA scientists did anything but their jobs, there is no eighteen-year lack of global temperature increases, the update to NOAA’s dataset had been in the works for years, NOAA provided Smith with personal explanations of how the work was done and why, all the data has been publicly available all along, and NOAA has provided him with the e-mails between staff (but not scientists) he demanded.

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Nearly a year after promising to "completely stop talking to the press," famed game designer Peter Molyneux is... talking to the press. Specifically, he's breaking his silence in a wide-ranging and reflective interview with Eurogamer to promote Godus Wars, a new real-time strategy twist on the faltering god game.

To be fair, a year is a long time for a serial over-promiser like Molyneux to keep publicly quiet about what he's working on. The direct cause of the long silence, as Molyneux himself admits directly to Eurogamer, was a February 2015 Rock Paper Shotgun interview that led off with the blunt question "Do you think that you're a pathological liar?"

"It was one of the most bruising moments of my life," Molyneux told Eurogamer. "My world changed after that interview. ... That was the point where I said, this is just not going to work. To be called a pathological liar, which he said at the start... it's just not going to work, because how do you ever gain people's trust and belief after a journalist says that?"

(credit: Lynn Friedman)

Comcast has been steadily losing cable TV subscribers for years, but it turned things around in the most recent quarter by adding 89,000 video customers.

The 89,000 net additions in Q4 2015 was Comcast's best result on the video subscriber front in eight years, according to today's earnings release. Comcast did lose 36,000 video customers over the entire year, but even that was "the best result in nine years," Comcast said.

The broadband business continued to boom, meanwhile, with net additions of 460,000 in the quarter and 1.4 million for the year. Overall, Comcast now has 22.3 million video customers, 23.3 million Internet customers, and 11.5 million phone customers. The phone business added 139,000 subscribers in the quarter and 282,000 during the full year. Many of the additions came from existing customers adding a service. Comcast's total customer base increased by 281,000 in the quarter and 666,000 in 2015 for a new total of 27.7 million.