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The current iPad Mini 4 was originally introduced in 2015, and after almost three full years without a meaningful update, earlier this year I wrote that it might be time to give up hope about ever getting a new one. But if the latest reports are true, Apple’s smallest iPad might still have a shot…
Remember that viral video of the former NASA engineer who got sick and tired of people stealing his packages? He built an impressively high-tech glitter bomb to prank the thieves and even lent the sneaky invention to friends so they could do the same. Well, it turns out that some of the video was faked…
Flights have resumed at London’s Gatwick Airport after a full day of cancellations yesterday due to a mysterious drone that was spotted repeatedly in the area. Flying drones near an airport is illegal because flights are unable to take off and land due to possible collisions. The British military was even called out to search…
Thanks to Facebook’s incessant flood of wrongdoing making headlines nearly daily, any of us would be forgiven for forgetting about its pivot to the blockchain. But the social media giant’s cryptocurrency is reportedly still on, even as it becomes increasingly clear that nothing is sacred online and the internet was maybe a mistake. Citing sources familiar…
A security lapse on Blind, an anonymous workplace platform branded as a way for employees to flag improper behavior, temporarily exposed sensitive user data, TechCrunch reported Thursday. While the company said it deleted the data stored on one of its servers after being alerted to the issue, the lapse may have left exposed users’ personal…
You are in the market for a laptop. You are aware that Windows and Chrome OS laptops are cheaper and are now just as well crafted and designed as Apple ones. You do not care. You want an Apple laptop. As an avowed user of the platform for 20-plus years, I support this decision to…
Uber’s driverless cars are cruising around Pittsburg again, returning from their hiatus following a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona. That self-driving test car struck and killed a cyclist on March 13—little more than nine months ago. A backup driver was behind the wheel, but police reports show they were streaming The Voice at the time…
Do you need urgent medical care but are far away from a hospital? We’ll bring the hospital to you! At least, that was the futuristic idea behind this edition of the newspaper comic, Closer Than We Think. And while it still feels a long way off, there are signs that we’re slowly but surely moving…
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday unsealed charges against two Chinese intelligence officers for their alleged involvement in extensive hacking campaigns that targeted more than 45 businesses in attempts to steal intellectual property and other confidential business information. The list of alleged victims includes a wide range of commercial and defense technology companies and several…
So you bought a loved one an Amazon Echo. Maybe it was on sale, or maybe it was on someone’s list. But inevitably, an Echo is a bad gift. It’s also a lazy gift. But don’t worry. It’s not too late to return it and get a better gift. The Echo is still the problematic,…
When Altria—formerly known as Philip Morris Companies and parent company of Marlboro—invested $12.8 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul, it put a huge $38 billion valuation on the biggest e-cigarette maker in the game. That’s a ton of money. However, as a part of the deal, a special $2 billion dividend was also…
Out of the three major sectors of the economy—agriculture, manufacturing, and service—two are already largely automated. Farm labor, which about half the American workforce used to do, now comprises around 2 percent of American jobs. And we all know the rust belt song and dance, beat out to outsourcing and mechanization. Which is largely why…
With all the talk about Russians using social media to amplify divisive political messaging and influence voter turnout, little attention has been paid to the inevitable use of those tactics by Americans. According to the New York Times, it’s already happening: A group of researchers actually mirrored Russian methods in the 2017 Alabama Senate race…
An Amazon user in Germany recently requested data about his personal activities and inadvertently gained access to 1,700 audio recordings of someone he didn’t know. Germany’s c’t magazine reports that in August the Amazon user—exercising his rights under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation—requested his own data that Amazon has stored. Two months later, Amazon…
This year was dismal for home robots, but that’s not deterring Japanese startup Groove X from announcing the Lovot, an adorable and cuddly robot designed to manipulate your emotions. I mean, look at this guy. It looks like it came straight from a Hayao Miyazaki film, a cross between a Minion and a seal, or…
While plenty of smartwatches and trackers can measure your heart rate, most don’t really have a medical purpose outside of familiarizing yourself with a baseline. Even the Apple Watch Series 4 comes with a lot of caveats about its ECG and atrial fibrillation features. But Omron’s HeartGuide smartwatch is the first wearable to successfully measure…
Drones! People can’t stop flying ‘em, whether they’re harmless hobbyists, police looking to expand their surveillance powers, criminals looking to evade them, corporate profiteers, failed assassins, or dumbasses who violate airspace restrictions or interfere with emergency operations out of ignorance, recklessness, or outright malice. It’s that last category that is presumably the cause of a…
Having rounded out the year with yet another bombshell report from the New York Times about Facebook’s mishandling of user data, the beleaguered social media company is now hitting back at claims that it allowed its partners to view Facebook users’ private messages. Apparently on damage control duty in the wake of a report that…
Remember when Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything got everyone worked up into a tizzy after he bent an iPad Pro in half with his bare hands and mused whether Apple’s new tablet might be a little weak? Well, it seems he may have been onto something. Originally, when Zack bent his iPad Pro, claims about potential…
Anthony Levandowski—formerly of Google, where he reportedly contributed to at least one serious crash and did not alert the police while overseeing its self-driving car program, and of Uber, where he allegedly imported stolen secrets from Google and was fired after being sued over it—rides again. Levandowski claims to have taken the first ever hands-free…
