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The Disney nerd community recognized a sad anniversary yesterday. It’s been 20 years since the ride Horizons closed at the Epcot theme park in Walt Disney World. But there was one bright spot. People were able to share home videos of the beloved “extinct attraction” on YouTube. Some of the videos that were being widely…
Home robots had a bad 2018, and compared to previous years, they’re not as visible on the ground at CES 2019, too. The robots that haven’t bit the dust tend to be of the “teach kids how to code” variety, or conceptual bots like the laundry folding FoldiMate that at this point are more CES…
Yesterday I spent two hours listening to the CEOs of rival companies talk trash about each other. It reminded me of my parents right after their divorce. Nvidia was shit talking AMD, and AMD politely responded with just enough bite for you to take notice. Yesterday, AMD announced a new graphics card, the $700 Radeon…
Following increased pressure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Juul Labs is taking a notably different approach from its ad campaigns of yore—the ones accused of making its e-cigarette products widely appealing to kids. The company unveiled new TV spots this week as part of its “adult education campaign” aimed at enticing adults to…
Given the nightmarish hustle of Donald Trump’s administration, it’s hard to believe that it was less than a year ago when Trump met North Korean totalitarian strongman Kim Jong Un for a historic nuclear summit in Singapore in June 2018. The two men described each other in glowing terms, watched a bizarre “Destiny Pictures” film…
A 26-year-old Seattle man who described himself online as both a member of the far-right Proud Boys group and a believer in the sprawling QAnon conspiracy theory, Buckey Wolfe, is in custody after allegedly stabbing his brother in the head with a sword on Sunday, the Seattle Times reported. Prosecutors say Wolfe stabbed his brother…
The Philadelphia Police Department said Wednesday that Johnny Bobbitt Jr., the homeless man linked to an alleged GoFundMe scam that raised more than $400,000, was arrested after he failed to appear in court in New Jersey the previous day. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia department, Jeff Chrusch, confirmed the arrest to CBS News, which reported…
Senate Democrats called on federal agencies Wednesday to investigate the practice by major telecommunications companies of selling location data generated by subscribers’ mobile devices following an undercover investigation by a security reporter that shed new light on a black market trade. In a report Tuesday, Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox described the process he underwent to…
Twitter will be rolling out beta updates including “conversational”-style speech bubbles and indented/color-coded replies based on whether you follow another user in the coming weeks, the Verge reported on Wednesday. Other features under consideration, but which will not be available in the forthcoming beta, include green-colored status availability icons that might indicate whether a user…
The corporate lawyer and former chief U.S. law enforcement officer nominated to replace Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department has a controversial past involving the warrantless surveillance of Americans and once fought to make it easier for phone companies to secretly hand over customer records to the government, legal experts at the American Civil Liberties…
As the dust settles on CES and all of the big gadgets have astounded or disappointed, it’s time for another round up of the little devices that weren’t notable enough to warrant their own coverage but still deserve plenty of love. ZenPod It’s been about a year since the fidget spinner fad died off and…
At this year’s CES Innovation Awards—the consumer electronic show’s “annual competition honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products”—a sex toy company was selected as an honoree in the Robotics and Drone category, only to have their award swiftly rescinded by the organization’s administrators after they deemed it “immoral” and ineligible. The sex toy,…
Old people may have the worst internet journalism literacy, according to common sense, and partially backed up by new research on the spread of so-called “fake news” immediately before and after 2016 presidential election. A study published today in the Science Advances journal suggests that elderly Facebook users in the U.S. were far more likely…
While working on a property in Sydney, Australia, a man says he found a wall-mounted phone that “looked dirty and was not working.” Luckily for us, he filmed his subsequent investigation. Can you guess what was wrong with the phone? Well, can you? It was bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.
With hundreds of food-safety inspectors furloughed due to the ongoing government shutdown, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended all “routine” inspections of U.S.-based food-processing facilities, according to a Washington Post report citing excerpts from an interview with the FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb. The Post reports that Gottlieb has a plan underway that could…
AT&T has been using some shady marketing to convince the world it’s leading the pack on the road to next-generation wireless technology—5G. And one of its executives seems to believe that consumers will love the company’s shadily branded service. AT&T has begun showing the “5G E” icon on some Android phones, instead of “4G LTE.”…
When a lot of people picture an exoskeleton, they might imagine Matt Damon wearing a robotic jumpsuit of sorts in the entertaining but critically panned move Elysium. Samsung has a different idea for how this technology might work. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the company showed off a line of exoskeleton…
The visitors started coming in 2013. The first one who came and refused to leave until he was let inside was a private investigator named Roderick. He was looking for an abducted girl, and he was convinced she was in the house. John S. and his mother Ann live in the house, which is in…
Usually, the biggest announcements at CES are over with by the end of the first day, but during its second-day keynote AMD CEO Lisa Su announced a new GPU, the AMD Radeon VII. According to Su, it is the very first 7nm graphics card available to consumers. While Nvidia is leaning on the eye candy…
Products by the security software company Kaspersky Lab were banned from use by the United States government last year over security concerns, and its reputation has been badly damaged. In a surprising twist, Kaspersky personnel were reportedly the source of crucial information that led investigators to a former NSA contractor accused of stealing an enormous…
