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As cable TV slowly slouches toward the grave, providers are wringing every last dime they can from Americans. New market research shows that the cost of paying for TV has risen by 50 percent since 2010. Leichtman Research Group published a new report on Wednesday based on a survey of 1,152 households around the United…
Have you heard the good news? The flying car is almost here! At least that’s what so many news sites have been telling me this month. Take, for instance, this recent article from Auto Week about Terrafugia—a company that’s been promising to deliver a flying car for over a decade now—headlined, “Your Flying Car Is…
You can now download and install iOS 12.1. That means you’ll finally be able to use Group FaceTime (LOL), access over 70 new emoji, and get rid of the annoying image blur that caused “Beautygate.” If you own an iPhone 8 or iPhone X, it also means that your processor will get throttled as the…
A number of border control checkpoints in the European Union are about to get increasingly—and unsettlingly—futuristic. In Hungary, Latvia, and Greece, travelers will be given an automated lie-detection test—by an animated AI border agent. The system, called iBorderCtrl, is part of a six-month pilot led by the Hungarian National Police at four different border crossing…
There’s always a risk involved when grabbing the latest software update for a device as soon as it’s released. You want to try out all those new features, but there’s bound to be a bug or two discovered as the masses get their hands on it. That gamble didn’t pay off for some Apple Watch…
When Marshall Cordell started buying human bones in the late 1970s, he says a full skeleton from India cost “probably $199.” Back then, almost all real human skeletons came from India, and companies there sent him catalogs listing everything from skulls to finger bones for sale. “They were literally like an auto parts shop, only…
Beyond Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube, Google Assistant is shaping up to be one of the most important Google products in the years ahead, and it’s already more pervasive and more advanced than you might have realized. Here’s everything Google Assistant can do and everywhere you can find it. When you hear “Google Assistant” you…
2018 may have been a pretty sedate year for phones, with many flagships including the Galaxy S9 and iPhone XS trotting out essentially the same design for a second tour of duty. But as we move closer to 2019, phones like the Oppo Find X and this wonderful, new dual-screen device suggest things could get…
There’s this weird sort of fervor that surrounds the MacBook Air that I’ve never fully understood. Sure, when Steve Jobs pulled the first one out of a manila envelope in 2008, it was cool as hell. But in the 10 years since then, Apple’s once industry-leading laptop was neglected and abandoned to the point that…
Conspiracy theories are almost always bullshit, but actual conspiracies are often easy to identify because one of the parties with knowledge of a plot cracks under the pressure or leaks information about it to others. For example, the Watergate plot fell apart largely because of the testimony of Mark “Deep Throat” Felt, an FBI associate…
Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Palo Alto drivers might want to watch out—Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle firm Waymo just won the right from the California DMV to deploy its cars to those cities, without the characteristic human safety operators that have been a hallmark AV testing. In a company blog post, Waymo…
The U.S. Justice Department has charged two Chinese intelligence officers, six hackers, and two aerospace company insiders in a sweeping conspiracy to steal confidential aerospace technology from U.S. and French companies. For more than five years, two Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) spies are said to have run a team of hackers focusing on…
Every Halloween, the folks at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory put everyone else’s jack-o’-lantern game to shame with some heavily engineered pumpkins. This year brought some of the nerdiest entries in the contest’s history. The JPL team held its showcase yesterday afternoon, and the winner hasn’t yet been publicly announced. But when we contacted NASA, a…
Apple has finally updated the MacBook Air. Sort of. Because Apple doesn’t just kill old products, it’s left the old MacBook Air up for sale for $1,000. You should not buy it. Ever. If someone you love comes home with its box in their hands please slap it out of their hands. And if they…
The iPad looks like it’s finally poised to stop being a movie watching machine and actually fulfill the promise Apple has repeatedly proselytized: that the iPad is a productivity machine. A new processor, better application support, and a few tweaks to the design have further brought the iPad Pro into a space where it could—conceivably…
Should you find yourself in the southern hemisphere beneath dark skies, look up: You’ll see two faint, glowing smudges beside the vast, glowing trail of our Milky Way galaxy. These two Magellanic Clouds are galaxies, too, though smaller ones orbiting our own. And some time in the past, perhaps back in the dinosaur days, those…
For years, Apple’s mobile devices have been off in their wonderland of proprietary ports while the rest of the tech world did its best to converge on a few simple standards. I’m talking about the 30-pin connector used on the original iPod and iPhone, which later gave way to the Lightning connector in 2012. And…
Apple’s second launch event this fall brought with it few surprises, with no talk of that long-awaited Mac Pro revamp, nor an overdue update on whatever the hell is happening with AirPower. But many of the rumors did pan out today as Apple breathed new life into its outdated Mac Mini and brought Face ID…
DJI has revealed that one of its drone products is having issues that are causing some to plummet from the sky. The company released a warning on Friday: DJI is aware of a small number of reports involving drones in the Matrice 200 series that have lost power mid-flight. Flight safety and product reliability are…
A United States Geological Survey employee allegedly infected the scientific agency’s networks with malware after visiting thousands of porn websites on their government-issued laptop. According to a report released this month from the Office of Inspector General, many of those sites had malware. The report, released on October 17, details the IG’s investigation into “suspicious…
