Being on your phone during a stage production is considered pretty rude, especially if it’s opening night, and even if you’re Kanye West.

The artist was called out on Twitter by one of the stars of Cher-inspired musical The Cher Show, Jarrod Spector, for spending time on his phone during Monday’s opening night performance.

SEE ALSO: Should you believe in ‘The Cher Show’ on Broadway?

West was attending the show with his wife, Kim Kardashian West, a couple that weren’t ever going to blend in with the crowd — or the cast.

“If you look up from your cell phone you’ll see we’re doing a show up here,” tweeted Spector, who plays Sonny Bono, while the performance was underway.

Fellow Broadway star Patti Murin, who plays Princess Anna in the stage production of Disney’s Frozen, backed up Spector’s gripe.

So, what was Kanye doing on his phone while a Broadway musical was serving up its opening night performance? According to the New York Times, West’s representative said the artist was “taking notes.”

“Kanye was on his phone taking notes. He loved the show and was incredibly impressed by the production,” read a statement published by the news outlet.

West apologised, replying to Spector’s tweet, “Please pardon my lack of etiquette. We have so much appreciation for the energy you guys put into making this master piece.”

The Times also pointed out Kanye wasn’t the only person with their phone on during the performance, with a few forgetful theatregoers reportedly sporting buzzing phones.

And he’s not the only celebrity to be called out for being on their phone during a Broadway performance, with one of the more famous instances involving two-time Tony Award winner Patti Lupone, who snatched an audience member’s phone away mid-performance at Shows for Days.

Madonna was once busted for being on her phone during an Off-Broadway performance of Hamilton, with Lin-Manuel Miranda reportedly unhappy with the pop icon. 

In a now-deleted tweet, the show’s creator wrote: “Tonight was the first time I asked stage management NOT to allow a celebrity (who was texting all through Act 2) backstage. #noselfieforyou.”

Tony Award-nominee and Hamilton cast member Jonathan Groff went even further, saying he had no remorse for Madonna, “because that bitch was on her phone. You couldn’t miss it from the stage. It was a black void of the audience in front of us and her face there perfectly lit by the light of her iPhone through three-quarters of the show.”

Celebrities, your fellow audience members might not be able to see you on your phone during a performance, but the cast sure can. 

YouTube can now add “most popular iPhone app of the year” to its list of accomplishments.

Apple just released its lists for the most downloaded apps of 2018 and YouTube took the number one spot, beating out Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat for the honor. 

SEE ALSO: These old and obsolete tech products actually make great gifts

YouTube held the #3 spot last year, when Bitmoji and Snapchat came in at #1 and #2 respectively. This year, Snapchat dropped to third place and Bitmoji down to sixth, with Instagram climbing to the #2 slot.

These are the top 20 free apps of the year, according to Apple

1. YouTube

2. Instagram

3. Snapchat

4. Messenger

5. Facebook

6. Bitmoji

7. Netflix

8. Google Maps

9. Gmail

10. Spotify Music

11. Amazon

12. Uber

13. WhatsApp Messenger

14. Pandora 

15. Wish 

16. TikTok 

17. Cash App

18. Google Photos

19. Google Chrome

20. Twitter

While there aren’t many surprises on that list, it’s notable that YouTube has now edged out Instagram and Snapchat. Though not a new app by any means, YouTube is increasingly becoming the app social media companies need to compete with. Earlier this year, a Pew poll found that YouTube is the most-used app among teens. 

Two other notable additions this year include TikTok, the music video app formerly known as Musicall.y, and Cash App, Square’s P2P payments app.

Over on the paid app charts, photography apps once again came out on top. The most popular paid app was (for the second year in a row) Facetune, followed by special effects app kirakira+.

Like last year, Apple also released separate rankings for games where — surprise, surprise — Fortnite took the top spot for free apps. Also making the list was PUBG and HQ Trivia.

The full list of the top 20 most downloaded free games is below:

1. Fortnite

2. Helix Jump

3. Rise Up

4. PUBG MOBILE

5. Hole.io

6. Love Balls

7. Snake VS Block

8. Rules of Survival

9. ROBLOX

10. Dune!

11. Subway Surfers

12. Episode 

13. Word Link 

14. Toon Blast

15. Color Road!

16. HQ Trivia

17. Twisty Road!

18. 8 Ball Pool

19. Kick the Buddy

20. Sniper 3D Assassin: Gun Games

In addition, Apple’s App Store editors also announced their own picks for the best apps of the year. They named sketching app Procreate Pocket as the overall best iPhone app of the year and Donut Country the top game. 

You can check out the full rankings over on iTunes, where you can also view the most popular podcasts, books, movies and television shows.

She’s a one-name icon, so it feels right that it would take three people to bring her to life eight times a week.

The Cher Show, which just opened on Broadway, gives Cher the musical treatment — which, in theory, should be a perfect marriage for the campy, vampy icon.

The show is a pretty standard biopic/jukebox musical, tracing the life, loves, and dresses of Cherilyn Sarkisian. And while it doesn’t hit the highs of all-timers like Jersey Boys or Beautiful — stories that have larger themes than just “here are the songs of the artist you love,” fans of the singer should have a good time reminding themselves throughout this highlights reel why she is the ultimate survivor. 

While not explicitly framed as a variety show, there is a show-within-a-show element from book writer Rick Elice where the three women portraying the superstar — Micaela Diamond as Babe (young Cher) alongside Teal Wicks as the glam Star, and, mainly, a truly great Stephanie J. Block as Icon Cher — filter in and out, conversing with each other about their unfolding life.  

SEE ALSO: Why ‘Torch Song’ on Broadway is worth checking out

Things kick off with young Diamond, desperate to be a singer, and quickly falling in love with Sonny Bono (an excellent supporting turn by Jarrod Spector). From there it’s off to the races, as we’re quickly treated to a fairly fast-paced version of the highlights of the next section of her life: international success, the Vegas shows, The Sonny and Cher Show, a baby. It’s frothy fun and full of great tunes, babe, but you’d be forgiven for hoping there would eventually be a little, well, more to it. It’s CHER, bitches.

Fans of the singer should have a good time reminding themselves throughout this highlights reel why she is the ultimate survivor.

A first-act highlight — where Bob Mackie (Michael Berresse) parades out a handful of Cher’s most iconic dresses in a fashion show of sorts during “Dressed to Kill” — had the audience cheering, and showcased the electricity that’s a bit more muted in other parts. Cher the icon is campy and fun with an incredible sense of humor; more of this show should have followed that track.

SEE ALSO: Despite amazing puppetry, ‘King Kong’ on Broadway is a mess

That it works at all is a credit to Block, who gives a truly stellar performance. Not only has she perfected the instantly recognizable voice, but she delivers many lines with an archness that shows her amusement with all of what is unfolding. She’s a blast to watch, whether she’s joining some sailors in the iconic “If I Could Turn Back Time” video look or giving emotional romantic advice to her heartbroken younger self. 

The second act struggles to find a thru-line. We’re following Cher’s life, yes, but as we’re quickly bouncing from her doomed relationships with Gregg Allman (Matthew Hydzik) and regular guy Rob Camilletti (Michael Campayno) they aren’t really around enough to make much of an impression. Why’s Cher so upset it’s not working out? 

There’s also the confusing choice to bring back the young Babe Cher when we get to the section about Cher’s acting career. It’s a fulfillment of a childhood dream, sure, but it mostly just feels like an excuse to give Block a break (that Block then pops back in to give the Oscar acceptance speech makes the decision feel like a shrug). The three-Cher concept works best when they are weighing in on the life choices of the others: Who hasn’t thought, If 16-year-old me could see me now!

Happily, director Jason Moore knows how to end a musical. As we run through the never-ending farewell tours, we get our triumphant moments of joy, with everyone, audience included, ready to groove to “Believe” and more. Jukebox musicals can be hit or miss, but icons who pioneered autotune are forever. 

Quora, the question-and-answer site that bludgeons users into signing up, has been hit with a major data breach.

In a blog post titled “Quora Security Update,” the site revealed that the data of approximately 100 million users may have been compromised as a result of unauthorised access to its systems on Friday.

SEE ALSO: Marriott data breach affected 500 million customers over four years

“We’re still investigating the precise causes and in addition to the work being conducted by our internal security teams, we have retained a leading digital forensics and security firm to assist us. We have also notified law enforcement officials,” Quora co-founder and CEO Adam D’Angelo wrote in the blog post.

The data includes account information, such as name, email address, password, and data imported from linked networks, as well as public content and actions, such as questions, answers, upvotes and comments.

Non-public content could have also been accessed, such as answer requests, downvotes, and direct messages. Quora claims that a low percentage of users have sent or received direct messages.

Quora added that the overwhelming majority of content accessed was already public on its site. Anonymously authored questions and answers were reportedly not affected by the breach, and the company said it doesn’t store information from anonymous users. 

The company will now notify users whose data has been compromised, and will invalidate passwords for users who use one to sign in.

In 2017, Quora served approximately 190 million unique visitors a month, and was valued at $1.8 billion following a funding round that same year. 

It’s not alone in significant data breaches, with Marriott and Dunkin’ Donuts hit over the last week in what feels like an increasingly regular occurrence.

I’d heard about 5G. But I didn’t know just how fast it would be until I was watching myself miss free throws in real time.

On Monday, Verizon opened the doors to its 5G Experience pop-up shop in downtown Los Angeles. In the space, visitors tested out Verizon’s 5G Home network. 

Internet service providers say 5G will be hundreds of times faster than 4G, and at least four and a half times faster than wireless broadband. Last year, average download speeds for broadband were around 65 Mbps. Verizon promises its “5G Ultra Wideband” — despite sounding like a pair of maternity pants — will deliver speeds between 300 Mbps and up to 1 GB per second.

Those numbers are exciting. But they’re just numbers. To showcase what that actually means, Verizon filled its pop-up demo with devices that streamed and multi-tasked without a hitch. Now, the “experience” was clearly an optimized version of the network — perfectly constructed to deliver the best possible version of 5G. But if it bears any resemblance to reality, the promise of 5G could be the real deal. 

SEE ALSO: 5 things to know about 5G

Verizon launched its first commercial 5G broadband network in October in four cities: Houston, LA, Sacramento and Indianapolis. 

The entirety of the four Chosen Cities aren’t wired with 5G … yet. For example, my home on the Westside of Los Angeles doesn’t have the option.

We’re not talking about mobile 5G. That may take awhile, though Verizon and Samsung announced Monday they’re unveiling a phone that will be able to connect to 5G in the first half of 2019. 5G-connected enabled iPhones, on the other hand, likely won’t arrive until 2020.

Still, Verizon’s 5G home network might be about to make life for streamers, gamers, and other people who consume a whole lot of content online a lot less annoying.

The pop-up had three experiences to demonstrate what 5G can do. The space was connected to 5G via a node on a telephone pole across the street, which beamed the signal to the receiver in a corner of the room. None of the devices used for the demos were hardwired to the internet.

Verizon first showcased the power of 5G to stream a high-quality virtual reality experience. I sat in a circle swivel chair, put a VR headset and headphones on, and was told by a very well-trained employee that I would be taking a trip to the moon.

A VR video promoting the new Neil Armstrong movie, First Man, played. It was a little cheesy, but getting to sit in the spacecraft, and swivel around to see Earth out the window, was affecting. And, most importantly, those millions of dynamic pixels in 3D were all coming through a wireless connection — without any lag.

My WiFi sometimes gets cranky just streaming Hulu shows. The moon VR experience was in a different league in terms of data consumption, and 5G seemed to handle it no problem.

Next, a Verizon employee tried to get me to play Rocket League, which was stressful, since gaming is not something I do. He explained to me that we were playing a graphics-intensive game — one you can normally only play on a PC or game console — on a phone connected to the 5G network. A gaming handset connected to the phone via Bluetooth, and the phone wirelessly broadcast its screen to a high-definition TV above. Two other gamers on TV-connected phones played along, all of us connected to Steam via the 5G network. 

I got the picture that this was a feature that someone like my partner — who ran an impossibly long ethernet cable through our attic so that he could hard-wire his gaming computer to our router — would definitely appreciate. And no more hearing a swear word plus “I’m lagging out!” from the other room while I watch Netflix.

Finally, I shuffled over to a tiny basketball court, where two employees held basketballs in their hands. I put on a VR headset that had a camera attached to it. The camera livestreamed its feed to the VR headset, without any discernible lag. As an employee talked to me, standing in front of me IRL, I watched his lips move through the livestreamed image of him, perfectly in time to the words I was hearing with my own analog ears. When I watched him hand me the ball through my headset, I knew just where to reach out and grab it.

Then came the embarrassing part. The basketball demo was meant to show the livestream’s speed and accuracy. So, ostensibly, I would be able to shoot hoops, just as I would in real life. I held the ball, bent my knees, released, and watched the basketball fly past my eyes into the air … and way to the left of the basket.

I am happy to report that I was just as terrible at shooting hoops in livestreamed VR as I was in real life. But I got the point: livestreaming with 5G was apparently no different to my weak human brain than seeing something with my own eyeballs.

Verizon set up a showcased living room, demonstrating the router and receiver set-up for 5G, which looked a lot like what most people are probably used to. The difference was that the receiver wasn’t hardwired to the internet — only the nodes outside were. 

Despite the literal hoops Verizon made its 5G network jump through, it’s impossible to say for sure whether 5G will be the Prince That Was Promised by the ISPs. The experience lab had a special set of large receivers power the internet in the room; ordinarily, a home would just have one considerably smaller one. Plus, the node the receivers were connecting to was just across the street. That sort of proximity won’t be guaranteed for every home, or device, in the future. Which is all to say that at the “5G experience,” everything was optimized to work perfectly.

However, I have been to enough conferences, concerts, meetings, and public events where WiFi and sometimes even the hardwired internet fails. At the Verizon experience, I didn’t notice any load time for anything — not even the VR moon landing. I kid you not when I say that not a single frame was out of place, including during the gaming showcase and my basketball #fail. So even knowing that this event was staged to show off Verizon’s shiny new toy, I still walked away impressed, and ready to live in the 5G future, where we can do away with that silly concept: patience.

For most of us, it’s a long trip to see the works of Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch Golden Age painter behind Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Google is making those works accessible on your phone with its Arts and Culture app, where you can use augmented reality to visit a virtual art gallery full of Vermeer’s works.

SEE ALSO: An AI made a $16,000 work of art, and it’s actually pretty cool — Future Blink

The pocket gallery is accessible in the Meet Vermeer section of the app, which compiles all of the painter’s works in one multi-room exhibition, in what’s been described as “the first ever international online retrospective” of Vermeer.

The project combines 36 paintings from 18 museums across seven different countries, and you can wander through the gallery’s rooms, which have been curated to tell the story of the painter’s artistic development.

Aside from the pocket gallery, another neat feature in Meet Vermeer is the ability to examine the artist’s most famous masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, up close, allowing you to view each brush stroke as if you were really standing right in front of it.

Or you can take a guided tour of the painting, which has been put together by Dutch art gallery the Mauritshuis, the real home of the masterwork. 

It’s a pretty neat way to get to know one of the world’s most renowned artists in one location. Given Girl with a Pearl Earring last sold for $30 million in 2004, making a real life Vermeer retrospective like this a pretty damn expensive proposition.

Google has previously made art galleries accessible virtually through its Museum Views feature, which gives users a Street View-like experience through spaces like New York’s Museum of Modern Art, to the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, France.

More art to the people, we say.