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Following allegations of sexual misconduct and amid an investigation by National Geographic and Fox Broadcasting Company, Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson has broken his silence. While he apologized for making one woman feel uncomfortable, he denied a lingering allegation that he drugged and raped a woman while they were in graduate school together. In a…
The New York City Police Department has suspended a detective after learning he recorded a 32-second video of his testicles on a body cam in what appears to have been a horribly ill-advised prank, the New York Daily News reported on Saturday. According to the Daily News, law enforcement sources and internal police documents said…
The leading ride-share company may be eyeing an acquisition of one of two leaders in electric scooter rentals, according to a new report from the Information. In what the report said could amount to a “multibillion-dollar deal,” Uber has reportedly launched discussions to buy either Bird or Lime. The three-bylined report published Friday cited several…
Bitcoin, as well as smaller cryptocurrencies like XRP and ether, had a terrible November that saw $70 billion in value wiped off the market, CNBC reported on Friday. Bitcoin closed at $3,878, well below $6,000, which proponents had long insisted was its “floor” but in retrospect appears to have been a magic number. That’s 80…
I’m just going to come right out and say it: Urinating while standing is a terrible idea. It creates a host of messes including splash back and disgusting drips, and inevitably the toilet seat gets left up, leading to someone accidentally plummeting into the porcelain abyss. But until we can all agree to just sit…
A report earlier this week that vape giant Juul was in talks with Altria for a minority stake in its company apparently hasn’t jibed well internally. According to screenshots reportedly obtained by Axios of internal conversations between Juul employees over Slack, some employees initially raised questions over the legitimacy of the reports. Others reportedly claimed…
As further evidence that we’re all trapped in an increasingly surreal waking nightmare, Vice President Mike Pence tweeted a photo-op on Friday of himself with a sheriff’s deputy whose uniform prominently sported a patch for QAnon, the elaborate, pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theory with 4chan roots. The tweet has since been deleted. The photo was flagged…
It looks as though Hangouts will join a growing list of Google chat products to bite the dust. After years of indications that such a move could be imminent, Google may finally be shutting down its Hangouts platform for consumers. Citing a source “familiar with the product’s internal roadmap,” 9to5Google reported Friday that the end…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and the good looking criminals of Firefly are finally going to be available for free online for anyone to revisit or watch for the first time. This should be a cause for celebration. But they’re coming back courtesy of Facebook Watch, and as much as I’d love for friends to…
Of all the reactions thus far to the “jaw-dropping” Marriott hotel-chain data breach, the strongest unsurprisingly came from the U.S. Senate’s leading privacy advocate, Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon. “If history is any guide, this megabreach will be like the others that came before it—the company will apologize, proclaim that it values its customers’ privacy,…
On Friday morning, the Marriott hotel chain disclosed that its Starwood reservation system had experienced one of the largest data breaches of all time. By Friday afternoon, a class action lawsuit was already filed in a U.S. District Court. Law firm Morgan & Morgan has asked a court in Maryland to grant a class action…
The bed is an intimate place—so it makes sense that social media freaked out this week over a creepy clause in the privacy policy of mattress maker Sleep Number. In short, the policy states that the company may collect “Audio in Your room to detect snoring and similar sleep conditions.” On Reddit and Twitter, users…
The golden age of personal technology has given rise to many a scourge, including the upsetting trend of people AirDropping unsolicited dick pics to strangers. Thankfully, three New York City councilmen introduced a bill on Wednesday that would criminalize digitally whisking your dick photos to anyone who doesn’t want to see them, which is probably…
Facebook seems interested in moving into Google’s territory of, well, territory. The social media company teamed up with the MIT Media Lab to propose a new system for developing addresses using machine learning. The paper, released as a pre-print earlier this month by researchers Ilke Demir at Facebook and Ramesh Raskar of MIT, states that…
If you haven’t seen the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, you can probably picture the iconic line of dancers kicking in unison, like a salute to American entertainment from a century ago. Well, this year the show got a surprising update: drones. Dozens of tiny autonomous quadcopters built by Intel float over the…
In case you needed another reason not to buy a HomePod, Amazon just announced that support for Apple Music is coming to Echo devices starting the week of December 17th. With the new addition, Echo devices joins Sonos’ family of products as the other major non-HomePod platform offering compatibility for Apple’s streaming music service, which…
Marriott, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, announced on Friday that it has experienced a jaw-dropping data breach that may have exposed the personal data of up to 500 million guests going all the way back to 2014. In a filing with the SEC, Marriott explained that it first learned about the breach on…
Google’s Project Dragonfly, the controversial project for a censored search product for China, has sparked two separate letters from the company’s employees arguing either for or against the project. As of Friday, however, a letter in opposition of the project had amassed more than 600 signatures, eclipsing the reported figure of a separate letter defending…
Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg was directly involved in the company’s decision to seek information on billionaire philanthropist and vocal Facebook critic George Soros, the New York Times reported Thursday. Citing people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, the Times reported that Sandberg specifically requested information on Soros’ financial interests.…
After Amazon informed its customers last week that a “technical error” had inadvertently exposed their email addresses, the e-commerce giant is now reportedly offering gift cards as restitution to victims of the breach. Tom’s Guide reported Thursday that it viewed email and chat correspondence between Amazon and customers who claim they were offered Amazon gift…
