Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
It’s that time again—another USB standard is upon us, ready to upgrade your device’s ports and cabling in the coming years. Here we’re going to explain everything you need to know about USB4, including the speed improvements in the pipeline and the new capabilities it’s going to borrow from Thunderbolt 3, which shares the same…
You wear it once and throw it away. At least that was the idea. During the 1950s and 60s an idea emerged that was decidedly sci-fi. The future was supposed to be filled with disposable clothes that could literally just be thrown in a fire after you were done with them. Disposable clothes were supposed…
Following a report from the New York Times earlier this week that such a move was imminent, Chinese telecommunications company Huawei has announced that it is suing the United States government for restricting federal agencies from using its products as it continues to hit back against claims that it poses a national security risk. As…
The Nintendo Switch already felt like the best part of a VR experience thanks to the wizardry of the Joy-Con controllers in some games, but now it’s going full VR. Tonight the company announced the Nintendo Labo: VR Kit, an $80 Labo kit that lets users build a VR headset out of cardboard. This is…
Two cost-cutting rounds of layoffs affected hundreds of Snap employees last year beginning in March. While the company, which owns Snapchat, maintains that the majority of these employees were men, a greater number of employees across some teams who worked directly with the company’s top brass and were laid off were women, the Wall Street…
On Wednesday, the saga of the most infamous GoFundMe campaign in history came closer to a conclusion. A woman and a homeless man whom prosecutors claim engaged in a fraudulent scheme that raised $400,000 on the crowdfunding site have pleaded guilty to federal charges. According to the Associated Press: Johnny Bobbitt, 36, of Philadelphia, pleaded…
Look at the photo above. “Why that’s Donald Trump and highly recognizable tech CEO Tim Cook!” you might think. But you’d be wrong, because below is video of the President calling the magnate by his true name during today’s Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting. “We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple,” said Trump. Early in…
The head of the U.S. intelligence community is no longer required to publish an annual report detailing the number of civilians and enemy combatants killed in U.S. drone strikes abroad. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Wednesday revoking the reporting requirement, which had been implemented in the Obama administration’s final year. Section three…
An air-to-air imaging technology developed by NASA has resulted in the first images ever taken of interacting shockwaves produced by in-flight supersonic jets. The new images, in addition to being beautiful, will help NASA design jets capable of producing gentle rumbles instead of loud sonic booms when breaking the sound barrier. The project, called AirBOS,…
And on the sixth day of March the clouds above Menlo Park parted, and lo, Mark Zuckerberg spoke of privacy. Today was another Big Idea day for Mark, one where our pallid, lab-grown CEO shovels 3,000 words of pure disruption down our collective throats (in the form of a lengthy Facebook post). This particular sermon’s…
A 13-year-old girl living in Kariya, Japan has been investigated and chastised by police for sharing a prank link online. The link reportedly initiates a pop-up window designed to be impossible to close online. According to Japanese outlet NHK, the junior high school student was “guided” (a form of youth offender intervention in Japan) for…
Multiple outlets report that Apple has changed its policy regarding repairs to iPhones with third-party battery replacements. These reports say that Apple will now fix iPhones even if the device has a non-Apple battery inside. And since batteries are perhaps the most essential repair for a mobile device, this is a big deal not only…
Top congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced legislation to restore the open internet rules repealed by the Trump administration in December 2017. Democrats in the House and Senate introduced companions bills aimed at reinstating the Obama-era net neutrality rules that prohibited broadband providers from blocking or throttling websites or offering preferred businesses higher-quality service for additional…
When you die in real life, your social media accounts remain—often as a digital mourning space for friends and family. Facebook is a particularly prominent example of that, and now the company is rolling out a new Tributes feature that lets users leave messages in a dedicated section of a memorialized account (that is, one…
There are a few ways to hide or camouflage the bundle of cables that hang from most wall-mounted TVs—power, HDMI, etc.—but none are as truly invisible as the wireless technology that was recently revealed in a patent Samsung filed with the World Intellectual Property Office in March of last year. It eliminates cables altogether using…
Jerry Merryman, one of three people at Texas Instruments credited with inventing the world’s first handheld electronic calculator in the 1960s, died at a Dallas hospital on February 27. Merryman was 86 years old. In the fall of 1965, Merryman and his coworkers at TI were tasked with creating a handheld electronic calculator in an…
T-Mobile is trying to merge with competitor Sprint in a hotly contested, $26 billion mega-deal that could be blocked by the Federal Communications Commission or the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division. T-Mobile has also spent $195,000 at a DC hotel operated by President Donald Trump, who has refused to divest himself from his business interests…
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has acknowledged it made a major mistake when it bought Italian blockchain analytics firm Neutrino, whose senior management staff included several members of infamous Italian firm Hacking Team—which has reportedly sold powerful hacking and surveillance tools to oppressive governments. A 2015 report by Motherboard found that Hacking Team sold software to “Kazakhstan,…
Ride-hailing giant Uber has been found not criminally liable in the death of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who tragically became the first known pedestrian to be killed by a self-driving vehicle when she was struck by an Uber test SUV in Tempe, Arizona in March 2018. Per Quartz, Yavapai County attorney Sheila Sullivan Polk—the official handling…
It now appears all but certain that Chelsea Manning will soon appear before a federal grand jury and—likely—be forced to testify about her association with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange nearly a decade ago. A federal judge on Tuesday denied a motion filed by Manning’s legal team to quash the subpoena. Outside the U.S. District Courthouse,…
