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For years, Facebook has served as a catalyst for violence against Myanmar’s minority Rohingya population and the company has failed to effectively moderate hateful content inciting such brutality. On Monday, a report from the New York Times found that over the last several years, military officials in the region have been running a massive campaign…
Palm, the innovative brand behind the PDA, is reborn and it’s coming out of the gate with a product that aims to create a whole new category of smart device. Simply called “The Palm,” this is a perfectly functional Android 8.1 smartphone with a custom skin and it can run the full version of your…
When you go into the privacy settings on your browser, there’s a little option there to turn on the “Do Not Track” function, which will send an invisible request on your behalf to all the websites you visit telling them not to track you. A reasonable person might think that enabling it will stop a…
If you’ve ever woken up on the brink of a heart attack, drenched in sweat and convinced you’ll never live down the shame of sprinting nude through downtown Pittsburgh, you know that some dreams are more memorable than others. Most dreams, in fact, seem totally unmemorable—at least in the sense that we can’t remember them.…
Apple’s about to get a big assist from Adobe when it comes to the company’s efforts to legitimize the iPad Pro as a productivity tool. Today, at its MAX conference in Los Angeles, Adobe confirmed that Photoshop CC—a full, un-compromised version of its photo-editing app—will be available for the iPad early next year. Versions of…
Saudi Arabia is threatening to give 5-year prison terms and heavy fines to anyone caught spreading “fake news” online, a warning to those discussing the suspected murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The threat, published over the weekend in the Saudi Gazette, echoes one of President Trump’s favorite phrases to demean any journalism that…
If you’re receiving this message, please be advised that Site Gamma-Iota-Zeta has been compromised. Repeat, Site Gamma-Iota-Zeta has been compromised. This is not a drill. Containment failures detected for the following Class V entities: Magic Leap. A toilet paper roll with a Fitbit on it. BDSM-Bot. The witches from Hocus Pocus. The fossil-fuel industry. Mary…
It’s been a hell of a week for the Pentagon, which can’t seem to keep itself out of headlines recently. Now, it says it’s been hit by a cyber breach of Defense Department travel records that may have compromised the credit card data and other personal information of its workers. A United States official with…
The fraud case against the ex-management of crooked blood-testing startup Theranos, former CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, is just one component of a larger investigation into the company, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Theranos claimed to have developed a miraculous line of blood-testing machines capable of running complicated tests on the amount…
It’s no secret that law enforcement often resorts to workarounds for Apple’s security features, but the Face ID technology of the iPhone X makes things tricky. According to a report from Motherboard, forensics company Elcomsoft is advising law enforcement to not even look at phones with Face ID. This is because with its Face ID…
Last week, Google dropped its bid for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), a massive military cloud computing contract potentially worth up to $10 billion, amid employee backlash and concern the project could violate their “AI principles.” Now an open letter claiming to be from an unspecified number of Microsoft employees is urging the Redmond,…
The United States military temporarily grounded all of its F-35 jets, the Defense Department’s priciest fighter jets, for inspection Thursday following a crash in South Carolina last month. The cause of the crash is believed to be the result of a faulty fuel tube, though inspections of all F-35 planes operated by the U.S. and…
Lime—the San Francisco-based company behind those scooters that threatened to call the cops on people—lost a request on Friday for a temporary restraining order that would have delayed two competitors from launching in the California city next week. TechCrunch reported Friday that Lime filed the lawsuit this week as a last-minute attempt to stop the…
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist-in-exile, frequent critic of the ruling House of Saud, and Washington Post columnist, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Since then, Turkish government officials largely speaking under the cover of anonymity have insisted that Saudi security forces waiting in ambush inside tortured and murdered him…
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Optical illusions take advantage of shortcomings in the visual system. Certain special designs can trick our brain as it’s trying to process the information that’s coming in. Learning more about what can trick our minds would help us learn more about the human mind itself. That’s part of the reason why Robert Williams and Roman…
“Today, our world feels divided.” Rony Abovitz, CEO of the infamous mixed reality startup Magic Leap stood awkwardly on a circular stage, surrounded by hundreds of attendees of his company’s first developer conference, and first major public-facing event, eyeing a teleprompter, arms behind his back. “It feels broken,” he said. “Our new medium of spatial…
Late last month, Facebook disclosed a massive security vulnerability that it claimed affected some 50 million login tokens, but details were somewhat thin on its impact pending further investigation. In a blog post today, the results are in some ways better and worse. The company believes its initial estimate of 50 million compromised login tokens—it…
If you received an email from “hackers” claiming they recorded you watching porn and will send all your data to your loved ones if you don’t promptly pay up, take a beat. It’s probably a scam. A Dutch journalist first spotted the sextortion scam in the Netherlands on Thursday, reporting that scammers had already made…
From the day Uber started offering its ride-sharing service, it’s been fighting with drivers and governments over its lack of benefits and low wages. On Thursday, it signaled that it wants to give drivers a peace offering in the form of a piece of the company. Axios obtained the full letter that Uber sent to…