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Finance titan Wells Fargo admitted in regulatory filings this week that a software glitch had resulted in some 625 customers incorrectly being denied or not offered mortgage modifications, with approximately 400 of them subsequently losing their homes. News of the glitch was first reported by Reuters, which noted it was just one facet of “numerous…
Starbucks wants to be crystal clear: Despite recent stories about their involvement in some sort of blockchain project, they are not going to be accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for coffee. On Friday, Starbucks and a number of other companies including the Intercontinental Stock Exchange, Microsoft, and BCG announced they were forming Bakkt,…
Venezuelan government officials say that two explosions at a military assemblage in Caracas on Saturday were in fact an attempt on President Nicolas Maduro’s life using bomb-carrying drones—and though the exact nature of just what happened is still being disputed, the idea that it indeed involved bomb drones isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Here’s…
A computer virus infected systems at multiple Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) factories on Friday night, disrupting operations at precisely the same time it is attempting to ramp up production for tech giant Apple’s future lines of iPhones, Bloomberg reported. According to Bloomberg, the company in question is the “sole maker of the iPhone’s main…
The Democratic National Committee is warning candidates, party officials, and campaign workers to steer clear of Huawei and ZTE mobile devices—apparently under the concern that the smartphones could used to spy on them. Per CNN Money, a “senior Democratic source” said that DNC chief security officer Bob Lord wrote to candidates in the midterms saying,…
In May 1986, the venerated Carnegie Hall concert venue in New York City shut down for 30 weeks of major repairs. The beautiful music hall had hosted legends including Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Judy Garland, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, and The Beatles, but after nearly 100 years, the building was in serious need of…
As it goes, the futility of a feature is painfully apparent when someone decides to exploit it. For me, this feature is Facebook’s ability to allow event hosts to manually change someone’s RSVP. I noticed the feature itself late last year when a friend of mine figured it out and was predictably being a dick…
You might thing your home network is complete after you buy a good router, but that’s not true! There’s a lot of ways to to improve it, and how you compute. But the best gadget to invest in after a solid router is a Network-Attached Storage, or NAS drive. If you’re new to the idea…
Earlier this week, reports emerged that Google has been internally developing a censored search engine that would bring the company back within the confines of China’s Great Firewall. The company has refused to answer questions about the project but it may have to open up. On Friday, a group of lawmakers demanded to know more…
One of the most famous charity organizations in the world—the March of Dimes—has suddenly become much less charitable to the scientific causes it funded. The organization has canceled research grants totaling $3 million that it had already awarded to dozens of scientists, Nature reported Friday. As per Nature: On 24 July, 37 grant recipients received…
Not everything I do on my phone is Bad. I turn to Strava to motivate myself to run. With Spotify, I play music I like for a reasonable fee. And thanks to Crunchyroll, I can watch absurd anime like Toriko and lovely, meditative shows like Polar Bear Cafe wherever I want. My thumbs may ache…
Look, I’m no emoji expert, but there’s one thing I do know: The basic smiley emoji is a goddamn liar. And using it makes you a liar, too. I first noticed the fraudulence of this emoji’s yellow visage when praising a colleague for writing a good story. “Nice work!” I said. “🙂” Creeping Jesus, I thought,…
There is plenty of reason to be skeptical when this FCC decides to do anything that isn’t a gift to the biggest telecoms in the nation. But on Thursday, it created new rules that could help upstarts like Google Fiber break into wireless and broadband markets. It’s a rare instance in which less regulation might…
When you hear about the concept of missile defense in space, your first thought might be Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, more commonly called Star Wars. But ideas for an invisible missile shield in the sky are much older than the 1980s. As just one example, we have this Sunday comic strip from 1959, which…
A leading medical university in Japan wanted more male students—so it’s reportedly been lowering the entrance exam scores of female applicants for years. The school, Tokyo Medical University, has been “systematically” reducing all female applicants’ scores by 10 to 20 percent since around 2010, according to the Asahi Shimbun. “Many female students who graduate end…
Another day, another “leak” of what appears to be Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 9 smartphone. It’s natural Samsung would be more than willing to express excitement for its sequel to the Galaxy Note 8—a phone that didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But for this device to so thoroughly and steadily leak prematurely, just…
Back at CES in January, French company Blade seemed to promise the moon. For a monthly fee, the company would give users access to a high-end Windows 10 machine, with the latest CPU from Intel and a beefy Nvidia 1080 GPU built in. The computer would be housed at a server farm, which means as…
Our phones affect our lives in all kinds of ways, from socializing to travel, but these ever-present pocket gadgets can also act as early warning devices for a host of important alerts—from life-saving notifications to convenient warnings about your commute. Here we’ll show you what’s possible, and which apps you’ll need. 1) Bad weather approaching Few…
The glaring divide between the U.S. intelligence community and the Oval Office on the issue of Russian election meddling was never more conspicuous than at Thursday’s White House press briefing. Gathered to set the record straight—and get bombarded with questions about President Trump’s oft-contradictory statements regarding Russia—was White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, Director…
The U.S. government is stepping up its sensitivity to foreign governments insisting on reviews of software company’s source code. A provision in the defense spending bill that passed on Wednesday will require companies to disclose if they’ve allowed other governments to review the code of any software that is used in U.S. military systems. The…
