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Huawei shows us why we shouldn’t expect truth in advertising. Huawei still hasn’t made it big in the United States, but it’s a giant in the worldwide market. Over the weekend, the Chinese electronics manufacturer released a new ad for its Nova 3 device in Egypt. It’s a typical sun-and-fun commercial with a couple living…
Have you seen this video of a very human-looking robot walking up a driveway? It’s gotten a lot of people online freaked out about the coming robot apocalypse. But you can rest easy… for now. This “robot” was created using computer graphics. As in, it’s totally fake. The video was created using the Unity video…
There are a lot of dumbass smart gadgets out there, but smart lights aren’t one of them. Yet while Philips Hue remains the leader in intelligent lighting solutions, some of the company’s recent releases, such as this range of outdoor lighting options, have seemed useful—but not super exciting. With the new Hue Play and Hue…
An entire industry—with its own spokespeople, podcasts, best-sellers, retreats, truisms, etc.—has sprung up around sleep. Give or take a contrarian or two, the message of most of this stuff seems to be that sleep is good, and that if you’re not sleeping seven or eight hours a night, you should be. And since you’re probably…
The Fitbit Charge 3 seems shockingly light. That’s going to be the first thing that really strikes you about this fitness tracker. You pick it up and it lacks all the heft you’re accustomed to for a device like the Charge 2 or its predecessor. It’s lighter than my Apple Watch too, which is impressive…
PepsiCo will buy the Israel-based DIY soda company SodaStream in a deal worth $3.2 billion. The move is widely seen as an effort by Pepsi to prop up its catalog of “healthy” food and drink options as it continues to wage battle against longtime rival Coca-Cola. Both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have invested heavily in both…
Read anything interesting in the news lately? No, really. I’m still catching up, because for much of the past week, I was vacationing in lovely Cook Forest, Pennsylvania, during which my access to the internet was limited to whatever stretches of 4G could be obtained amid supply runs to town. This was indeed lovely—an excuse…
Three months ago, I had no idea who recording artist Grimes was, but after weeks of nonstop drama and intrigue, reports she’s been unfollowed on Twitter by her boyfriend Elon Musk have me shook. Musk, who heads aerospace manufacturer SpaceX and electric car company/ever-shifting robotic death maze Tesla, has had a rough go of it…
An Apple store in Amsterdam’s Leidseplein square was briefly evacuated after an explosion believed to be the result of an overheating iPad battery resulted in leaking vapors, Dutch broadcaster AT5 as well as Dutch blog iCulture reported. The device was quickly dealt with by Apple staff who put the device in a container with sand,…
Retail giant Walmart has apparently concluded that the experience of visiting its massive retail stores can be kind of unpleasant and appears to be working on technology that would, uh, simulate a flashy version of that experience from the comfort of your couch. Per a report in Bloomberg, Walmart has applied for patents concerning a…
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has filed an official discrimination complaint against Facebook, saying the site’s dizzying array of advertising tools makes it simple for advertisers to illegally exclude wide swathes of the population from seeing housing ads, Politico wrote on Friday. In a press release, HUD wrote that Facebook’s “targeted advertising” model…
The president has a lot of fervent grievances—everything from the “enemy of the people” news media to the “angry Democrats” supposedly on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team—but social media has now apparently earned his lasting enmity. A few weeks ago, Gizmodo reported that Twitter appeared to be demoting some accounts with a long history of…
Poor TiVo. The pioneer of live TV recording was just minding its own business, muddling along in a world it doesn’t recognize when news broke that Amazon is looking to start a fight. That’s all it takes to send investors fleeing. But why does Amazon reportedly want in on this antiquated market? Bloomberg reported this afternoon…
The U.S. government is demanding for Facebook to “wiretap” its Messenger app so agents can hear a suspect’s spoken conversation, as a part of an investigation into the MS-13 gang, according a report from Reuters. Reuters is basing the report on accounts from three people reportedly briefed on the criminal probe. The anonymous sources told…
“Our sex lives are about to get very interesting!” Maxine Lynn, an intellectual property attorney in the sex-tech space, tells me. The reason for her enthusiasm? A patent—or, rather, the absence of a patent, one that many say has inhibited innovation in the sex toy industry for two decades. The teledildonics patent, which was filed…
The Spotify logo is tilted. It took me entirely too long to know this for sure. For at least three years, I’ve been tapping and clicking the app icon and watching the logo appear as the service loads. Looking at the lime-green circle with its black, curved lines, it just seemed a little off-kilter. But…
OnePlus is well known among smartphone and tech enthusiasts, but more than four years after releasing its first handset and partnering with supermodels and trendy fashion brands like Colette to help push its products, OnePlus still isn’t exactly a household name in the U.S. However, according to a report from CNET (that was later backed…
When I was a kid, my favorite movie in the world was 1985’s Captain EO. Yes, the 17-minute Michael Jackson sci-fi fantasy played at the Disney theme parks, but it also made an appearance on TV. My parents recorded it on VHS for me, and I honestly wore out the tape rewatching it so many…
Tesla shares fell by more than 8 percent on Friday morning as worries about an SEC investigation increased and CEO Elon Musk gave the New York Times an interview in which he discussed his mounting problems at the company. Despite everything, Musk says he’s just going to keep tweeting. Isolating exactly which issue at Tesla…
A mysterious outbreak that seemingly sickened hundreds of Chipotle customers in Ohio might finally have a known culprit. On Thursday, health officials reported that traces of a common foodborne bug called Clostridium perfringens had been found in some of the victims’ stool samples. It’s likely the outbreak was spread by improperly heated food. The latest…
