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When most of us think of companies paving an uncompromisingly ethical path into the future, we’re not thinking about Google. Even when the company does seem to actually give a shit about surveillance, moves to keep our private lives private could just as easily be construed as something it does for market power, rather than…
The Transportation Security Administration discovered roughly three times the number of firearms in carry-on bags last month compared to last year despite an immense drop in airline passengers due to the covid-19 pandemic. TSA said its screeners had found “15.3 guns per million people” last month compared to “5.1 guns per million” in July 2019…
The longest verifiable home run in professional baseball history was hit by Joey Meyer of the minor league Denver Zephyrs at a distance of 582 feet. Shane Wighton, an engineer known on YouTube for his sport-cheating inventions including a never-miss basketball hoop, things he can break that record with a baseball bat literally packed with…
It isn’t often that I think to myself, “Wow, this operating system update is jam-packed with features tailor-made for the dystopia we’re living through right now.” Yet that’s what keeps rolling through my mind as I use the watchOS 7 beta, which is now available for the public to try. The Apple Watch software upgrade,…
Pears: the arch-goddess of the fruit pantheon, the inspiration of Cézanne, and to the untrained eye, dangerously similar to apples. As iPhone In Canada first reported, Apple has filed a notice of opposition against a meal planning app called Prepear for using a pear logo which is pear-shaped and pear-green. In a Change.org petition, Prepear lamented…
You may not know who Frances Allen is off the top of your head, but you should. Not only was she the first female IBM fellow, but she was also the first woman winner of the prestigious Turing Award. If that wasn’t impressive enough, Allen also pioneered computer compiling—the process by which the gadgets we…
Officially, Microsoft’s upcoming dual-screen Android phone—the Surface Duo—remains slated for a holiday release. However, following a new round of leaks and rumors, there’s a growing pile of evidence indicating that the Surface Duo’s launch could happen a lot sooner. Late last week, longtime Windows enthusiast Paul Thurott posted on Twitter that Microsoft was planning virtual briefings…
Earlier today, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took a break from overseeing the company’s current legal struggles to roll out his latest argument as for why his company’s thousands of drivers across the country shouldn’t, in fact, be considered employees. As Khosrowshahi explained in his new New York Times op-ed, the problem isn’t actually the way…
In addition to low power consumption and excellent legibility in bright sunlight, E Ink’s electronic paper displays are just as flexible as OLED screens. So while folding phones and tablets are grabbing headlines, folding eBook readers could soon be a thing too, as this prototype from E Ink reveals. Goodereader, a site dedicated to eReader…
There are some things that belong in a computer. Wires, chips, whirring mechanical doodads—what most of us would think of, sensibly, as “hard drive stuff.” Absent from this list—absent from most lists, except those dealing with repugnant, six-legged disease vectors—are cockroaches. A cockroach in a hard drive? That is simply not where a cockroach is…
Apparently, some more metrics on our tweets is exactly what is missing from our lives during a global pandemic. Or at least that’s what Twitter thinks. As reported by the Verge, Twitter is testing a new feature that would show users the amounts of “Retweets with comments” on each tweet. Strangely though, this metric, which…
E-commerce, one of the most-cited culprits behind America’s dying malls, may soon become the mall. Cue The X-Files theme music. The nation’s leading mall owner, Simon Property Group, is purportedly in talks with Amazon to house fulfillment centers in some of their vacated department store real estate, people familiar with the matter told the Wall…
Klout, a website that defined the unctuous early days of social media, used to rate you based on your online presence. In its heyday, a high Klout score could get you special privileges – maybe a free soda – and bragging rights at the Rosewood hotel, the literal Hotel California where VCs checked you into…
While we’re all waiting to see if Microsoft succeeds in striking a deal to buy TikTok, bam! Surprise! Another big tech company, although not nearly as big as Microsoft, has apparently entered the fray, saying that it too is interested in arguably one of the hottest apps currently on the market. That company is purportedly…
The Trump administration’s sanctions are hitting Huawei hard, and the Chinese tech giant now says it will run out of processors chips for its smartphones by September without access to U.S. venders, according to a weekend Associated Press report. Huawei, one of the world’s leading telecommunications providers, has been blacklisted since May 2019 from sourcing…
Reddit got Trumped. On Friday, many users visited their favorite subreddits and found something unexpected: pro-Donald Trump Make America Great Again campaign banners and messages supporting the president. It was not a coincidence. Weeks after Twitter suffered an embarrassing hack that compromised influential accounts, attackers took aim at Reddit on Friday, specifically at a number…
TikTok will file a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration as soon as Tuesday to dispute the president’s recent executive order banning the widely popular video-sharing app over national security concerns, a person directly involved in the suit told NPR under the condition of anonymity. The lawsuit will reportedly contend that President Donald Trump’s order…
Toshiba will officially no longer be making PCs. To be fair, in recent years it had taken a step back from making laptops, but this goes beyond that. It’s a complete exit. In a little-reported press release published this week, Toshiba issued a short and to-the-point statement announcing that it had transferred its remaining minority…
In an attempt to correct the perception of a small but very vocal minority that claims Facebook’s silencing conservative voices on its platforms, the company’s reportedly swung too far in the opposite direction and essentially gave a free pass to conservative pages to spew their bullshit online. According to leaked documents reviewed by NBC, Facebook…
Manhattan, 2020: You step out of your taxi minutes after the rain stops. Your square and heavy roller briefcase plops down into a small puddle by the curb. Don’t worry, the leather doesn’t get too wet, and the awesome piece of high-tech equipment inside isn’t damaged at all. You extend the roller arm on the…
