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In a series of tweets in July, Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk referred to a cave diver involved in the rescue of a Thai soccer team as a “pedo guy.” Now Vernon Unsworth, the diver in question, has filed a lawsuit against Musk in California’s Central District Court alleging defamation. Unsworth was publicly…
For a brief moment, back in the early 2010s, Path flourished. The more personal, more private social network was once reportedly valued at $500 million, but after years of irrelevance, it’s shutting down next month. Path unequivocally failed, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we gave its original mission just one…
Happy iOS 12 day, everybody—after being announced back in June, the final version of Apple’s mobile OS gets pushed out to eager iPhone and iPad users across the world today. You’ll need an iPhone 5C or newer or a 2013 iPad or newer (anything that could run iOS 11, essentially), and when you’ve got the…
When I reviewed Nintendo’s Labo kits a few months ago, I was genuinely impressed that the company had managed to create playable accessories out of cardboard. However, a few months later they’re starting to show some wear and tear, and glue and tape can only go so far when it comes to repairing them. That’s…
There’s a case to be made that audio on an analog medium like a vinyl record can sound better, at least in some aspects, than a digital music file. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about video. Alas, a company called Supersense now sells the hardware you need to enjoy an analog video experience again—but…
Linus Torvalds, the founder of the Linux open-source operating system, has been leading his developer community with sarcasm, insults, and abuse for three decades, and many people think it’s time for a change. On Sunday, Torvalds sent out an email saying he’ll be taking time away to work on himself and try to stop being…
When Apple’s long-awaited wireless charging mat was a complete no-show during the recent iPhone Xs launch event, alarm bells started to sound. After teasing the device a full year ago alongside the announcement of iPhone X, AirPower doesn’t seem to be making any progress. Now, some industry insiders have started sharing info about what’s really…
Wrangle up the right studies and you can make anything look deadly. Breakfast cereal—at least, the kind without cartoon mascots—might seem innocuous, and might be marketed as healthy, but that’s no reason to think that every naturally-flavored bite isn’t speeding you towards the grave. Nothing, in this world, is above suspicion—not even tasteless health-store bran…
Republicans have come up with a lot of excuses for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. Some say it never actually happened. Others say he shouldn’t be held accountable for something he did as a teenager. But still others seem to think that it’s all…
The European Union passed its disastrous Copyright Directive this week, including amended versions of its onerous Articles 11 and 13 (the so-called “link tax” and “upload filter,” respectively). There’s still time to make sure it never passes into law by defeating a final ratification vote in January, though given the 438-226 vote on Wednesday it…
Amazon is reportedly investigating whether independent merchants operating on their platform are greasing the palms of staff to divulge confidential information about the site, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. According to the report, Amazon staff (primarily located in China) are taking bribes of anywhere from $80 to over $2,000 in exchange for internal…
Every major streaming video service has approached the Imax theater chain about the possibility of theatrical releases, Imax CEO Richard Gelfond told investors at a conference this weekend. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Gelfond told attendees that Imax releases were an ideal way for services like Netflix and Amazon to “event-size” original productions that increasingly…
Google’s widely reported search engine prototype for China, which is allegedly code-named Dragonfly, not only blacklists search terms to comply with the wishes of government censors but ties all searches to devices’ phone numbers, according to a report on Friday from the Intercept. Google pulled out of China in 2010 amid censorship concerns and a…
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will test a system at 2:18pm ET on Thursday afternoon that lets the president send a message to most cell phones across the U.S. following a disaster, terrorist attack, or other serious threat to public safety. Yes, that means Donald Trump can now put your phone on blast. No,…
There’s dread in my bones at every iPhone event now. Tim Cook and his pals stand on that stage and they smile up at the audience and they patiently explain to us why their new phones are their best phones even though those same phones have gotten too damn big. It seems like it’s been…
The feud between federal Republican officials and the architects of California’s recently passed (but as of yet unsigned) net neutrality legislation intensified Friday, with State Senator Scott Wiener, the bill’s principal author, accusing the FCC of being bought and paid for by the telecom industry. Wiener, a Democrat of San Francisco, returned fire in a…
Chrome just celebrated its 10th birthday earlier this month, and even though it’s not quite the super fast and lightweight web browser that made people fall in love with it a decade ago, Google hasn’t stopped trying to cram new features into Chrome. In the newest version of the Chrome 70 beta, Google hopes to…
If you missed the memo, Apple showed off new iPhones this week, but it also kept a few older models on sale—all the way back to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, which first made their bow back in 2016. But maybe iPhone doesn’t have to be a new new iPhone. For simplicity’s sake…
Fritz Kuhn was a despicable man. But he and his fellow Nazi followers in the United States thought he had a valuable reputation to protect. Which is why Kuhn sued Warner Bros. for libel in 1939 after the Hollywood studio released a film called Confessions of a Nazi Spy. If you know Fritz Kuhn’s name…
From workplace voodoo dolls and self-inflicted colonoscopies to cannibalistic diets and using roller coasters to pass kidney stones, here are the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes. It’s that time of year again, when some of the strangest science gets its turn to shine. To be clear, the Ig Nobel Prizes aren’t meant to…
