Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
It’s probably not a good idea to brag about crimes on a dating app until you’re certain your match isn’t a cop—or a game warden. Last month an Oklahoma hunter matched with a 24-year-old man named Cannon Harrison. Not realizing her new connection is a game warden for Oklahoma’s Department of Wildlife Conservation, the hunter…
During his first day on the job at a small 3D-modelling company, Griffith noticed that his new colleagues’ workstations were hopelessly out of date. So he took the initiative to suggest some automation upgrades to the higher-ups, who concurred. Two years later, 20 employees—some of them good friends—were out of work. “I feel bad because…
Jeff Bezos surprised fans and investors this morning with news that him and long-time romantic partner MacKenzie Bezos (neé Tuttle) would be divorcing. The news comes just a day after Amazon, Bezos’s ecommerce firm, was named as the most valuable company on the planet—dethroning Microsoft for that honor. Though MacKenzie has not yet announced what…
The state of Florida passed a law in 2015 banning the use of drones to monitor citizens from the air. But police in Miami Beach, Florida have come up with a clever workaround: They’re using a tethered blimp, called an aerostat, for crowd surveillance and they argue that it’s not a drone. The Miami New…
One of the most exciting innovations for home entertainment is Dolby Atmos. The technology adds an element of height to the audio coming out of your sound system, and the effect is honestly game-changing. Vizio has a wacky idea about how to make Atmos even better. What if your soundbar could do Atmos at will?…
It’s day 19 of President Donald Trump’s government shutdown. And with no end in sight, hundreds of Americans have turned to the crowdfunding website GoFundMe in an effort to pay for basic necessities like groceries, medicine, and rent. Over 800,000 Americans have been furloughed or are working without a paycheck right now. And those Americans…
The devil is in the downloads, says Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. In a recent interview with the state-run Russia-1 TV network, Kirill warned that smart devices like cell phones and social networks could enable the rise of Satan’s chosen and the rule of darkness until the end times.…
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei and the daughter of its founder Ren Zhengfei, was detained in Canada late last year at the behest of U.S. authorities, who allege she oversaw a complex financial scam to violate nuclear sanctions on Iran. The incident has become a major source of tension…
With signs that the New York trial of notorious Mexican drug lord and alleged mass murderer Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is entering its end phase, prosecutors on Tuesday played copies of what they said were audio recordings of Guzmán the FBI obtained “after they infiltrated his encrypted messaging system” with the help of Colombian and…
Last year was a rough one on AI’s public profile, and rightfully so. Major programs powered by machine learning, like Amazon’s recruiting software, were revealed to be biased against women. Others were dangerously ill-conceived, like Predictim’s babysitter-vetting algorithm. Even some of the biggest tech companies themselves stood up and said, look, facial recognition is out…
Okay, it’s the first day of CES, which means the TV makers have all announced their TVs, and yes they’re all neat looking, especially the 8K TVs top manufacturers are promising to ship this year. They are legit beautiful—so why am I so underwhelmed? In part, I know enough about the technical obstacles to an…
It’s that time of year, again. Time for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to announce his annual personal challenge. In previous years, he did normal things like vowing to learn how to speak Mandarin. Then, life got messy and last year he pledged that he would only work on fixing Facebook. This year, he’s determined to…
A family in Salinas, California, had only been using their new Ring security camera for about a month before it captured nightmare fuel—a stranger fellating their doorbell around 5:00 am on Saturday morning. The homeowners received an alert when the security system was triggered by the licker’s movement, according to Salinas local news outlet KION.…
CES, the annual conference showcasing the cutting-edge in consumer tech, has a reputation for not only being dominated by men, but largely catering to them. That bias was spectacularly on display this week after an impressive-sounding sex toy had its award revoked for being “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image.”…
After vowing to end the practice of selling their customers’ location data to “shady middlemen” last summer, we now know that at least there major wireless carriers—T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint—were completely full of shit. That practice has continued, and Motherboard on Tuesday produced the receipts. An investigation led by the site found that for a…
To many meat-eaters, the Impossible Burger is a rude idea. This plant-based beef substitute is designed to look like meat, grill like meat, and taste like meat. As someone who recently tasted an Impossible Burger for the first time, I can safely say that these claims aren’t true. Then, at a buzzy event in Las…
Last week, the Muslim civil rights organization CAIR urged Amazon to take down doormats and bath mats on the site featuring Islamic religious text, arguing that the products “would be stopped-on or otherwise disrespected by customers.” Soon after, Amazon told CAIR it was removing all of the flagged items, which included 20 products from a…
OK, it’s a small coaster, but after a couple years of attending CES, between the Google vending machines, the Google-branded monorail, and a bunch of new features for the Google Assistant, it feels like Google is flexing on the world’s biggest trade show in a way it never has before. Headlined by a new translation…
Departures at Heathrow airport in London, the busiest airport in Britain, were stopped over reports of a drone flying nearby, in a bizarre case that echoes disturbances at London’s Gatwick airport last month. “We are responding to a drone sighting at Heathrow and are working closely with the Met Police to prevent any threat to…
Last week, public figures in Germany experienced the “biggest data dump” in the country’s history. Following a remarkably swift investigation, authorities say they have obtained a confession from the person responsible. Quieting fears that the doxxing attack against hundreds of politicians was state-sponsored, it appears the culprit is a 20-year-old high school student. On Tuesday,…
