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Netflix’s next step in interactive storytelling brings the format closer to bridging the gap between film and video games, as it will allow viewers to decide how the adventurous character gets through each level before moving on to the next chapter. Now, the company’s latest news has us wondering: Will the next chapter involve drinking…
Silly and Cruel Beauty Gadgets That Were Destined for Failure
Yes, Patreon is making adjustments again—as some creators have suspected and feared. The recurring crowdfunding site agonized over a relatively small change in how it does business, and in doing so it’s setting an example few other platforms live up to. After an attempted fee change in December of 2017, which Patreon’s current SVP of…
Trailblazing mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck from the University of Texas at Austin has been awarded the 2019 Abel Prize—regarded as one of the highest accolades in mathematics. She is now the first woman to receive the illustrious award. Earlier today, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded the Abel Prize to Karen Uhlenbeck, 76, for…
A pair of bills that limit speech online were signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, promising harsh penalties for those who criticize the nation and its officials or post fake news. Those who repeatedly post disrespectful content about authorities—including Putin—could spend up to 15 days in jail. And individuals who share…
An 18-year-old man who shared a video of Friday’s terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand has been charged with distributing the video and inciting violence. The man allegedly posted a photo of one of the mosques targeted in Friday’s attacks with the words “target acquired.” He faces up to 28 years in prison, according to…
If you’ve ever browsed through your Instagram feed and thought “Oh that shirt is cute but haha, thank god that’s way too much effort for me to actually leave this app and buy it”—bad news, friends. Instagram announced that starting today, it’s introducing an in-app checkout feature. The way the checkout feature works, users in…
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave a powerful speech in that country’s parliament today expressing solidarity with the victims of Friday’s terrorist attack that left 50 dead and dozens injured. Ardern also had strong words for the social media companies that enabled the shooter to broadcast his massacre around the world. “We will look…
In a dusty plastic bin under my bed lies at least four laptops, six cellphones, and a half-dozen hard drives. I have no idea what’s on any of them. Most of these devices predate the cloud-storage era, and so likely contain solitary copies of photos, texts, and emails, among other confidential files (porn?) that I’d…
The pro-Donald Trump National Enquirer obtained nude and other intimate photos of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez—which Bezos says it used as leverage in a blackmail attempt—by paying $200,000 to Sanchez’s brother Michael Sanchez to hand over text messages between the two, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Michael Sanchez…
Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent out a baffling tweet saying that he had “funding secured” to take the company private at a share price of $420 (which some readers may recognize as the weed number). It turned out no such deal had been finalized, the Securities and Exchange Commission slapped Musk with fraud…
A Google exhibit at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday appears to be teasing some sort of hardware related to its widely rumored video game streaming service, albeit with a logo that looks like Doritos and the wifi symbol had a monstrous love child. A Google representative on site confirmed to Gizmodo…
If you thought ray tracing was only going to be possible on Nvidia’s pricy line of Turing GPUs, you would be wrong. Today the company has announced ray tracing support for a wide range of GPUs ranging from the Nvidia GTX 1060 all the way up to the super beefy Titan V. The 1060 can…
Mirai malware, which can infect and grant even unsophisticated actors control over hundreds of thousands of IoT devices, is responsible for some of the most devastating distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks ever seen. Just a few years ago, millions of people on the U.S. East Coast were basically left without internet access after a successful attack…
Back in December, New York City approved the nation’s very first minimum wage pay floor for app-based drivers—a historic victory Lyft undercut almost immediately by challenging its implementation in court. Today, drivers got more good news when a judge denied Lyft’s motion for an injunction that would block the minimum wage for its drivers. The…
New York City’s newest luxury neighborhood, Hudson Yards, officially opened on Friday and visitors are already scrambling to photograph or mock its gilded pinecone landmark structure dubbed the Vessel. But, as Gothamist points out, Hudson Yards seemingly claims rights to all such photos of the $150-million giant honeycomb floating above an active train yard, so…
The growing reality for social networks is that they will perpetually be exploited in new and terrorizing ways and there may not be a sweeping solution for bad actors. The hope is that solutions outpace abusers. This race was on disturbing display over the weekend as a horrific video of a gunman opening fire on…
A company called Tombot thinks it’s come up with a way to improve the quality of life for seniors facing challenges when it comes to being social: a robotic companion dog that behaves and responds like a real pup, but without all the responsibilities of maintaining a living, breathing animal. The company even enlisted the…
MySpace, one of the first social networking sites that allowed bands to share their music directly with fans, reportedly lost years of songs during a server transfer last year. Tellingly, however, the world only seems to have taken notice this week. Today, the BBC and other outlets reported that MySpace admitted to losing music, photos,…
It’s no secret that the 1980 comedy movie Airplane! is a parody. But for some reason, I’ve spent my entire life believing that Airplane! was a broad parody of 1970s disaster movies. And while the movie clearly took inspiration from some of those films, it’s actually a very specific parody of a movie from 1957…
