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MoviePass failed me last night—and now I know why. I arrived at Brooklyn’s Court Street movie theater the requisite 30 minutes early and made sure the app KNEW I was within 100 yards (91.44 meters) of the theater. But even after trying to troubleshoot the app itself, I had to fork over $16 to attend…
Designing robots that emulate how creatures move and walk helps us not only understand the world around us, but also improve how automatons of the future will get around. But on the other hand, that same research has given birth to this creepy centipede robot toy that squirms around on 18 flailing legs like a…
Lego might be the most popular toy on Earth, but it’s about to get some stiff (jiggly?) competition from Kraft-Heinz, which just tweaked the recipe of its Jell-O gelatin mix, making it thicker and sturdier. It’s only available in new Jell-O Play kits that also include plastic molds for making squishy bricks that can be…
Google has been steadily improving its smart speaker with updates facilitating more fluid conversations, as well as the addition of routines for chaining together multiple tasks with a single command. Now Google is adding scheduling to the mix, which means your mornings can start just the way you want them, at the same time, every…
The effort began at an Applebee’s in Redwood City, a link in a chain of towns that dot that peninsula that connects San Francisco to Silicon Valley. Robert Taitt, a security officer who works on Facebook’s campus, signed his union card there. He was one of the first of more than 3,000 Silicon Valley security…
Even though we’re still in the middle of summer, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9 launch is less than two weeks away. With the launch scheduled to take place on August 9th—two to three weeks earlier than previous Note launches in years past—the Note 9 looks like it’s trying real hard to get out in front of…
For weeks, Facebook has faced tough questions for allowing Alex Jones’ InfoWars page to spread conspiracy theories that incite harassment while simultaneously pledging to fight misinformation. The situation has led to Jones taunting Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg seemingly excusing Holocaust deniers. On Thursday, the company finally took some confusing action that probably won’t satisfy anyone. InfoWars has become…
Police say a couple in their 60s woke up in their Palo Alto, California bedroom around midnight last Saturday to find someone looming above them wearing a mask, or possibly a black T-shirt covering their face. The intruder asked for their wifi password. According to a city press release, one of the residents sprung to…
If you like old school gear that seems like it would kill you if you look at it wrong, well, we have an auction for you. The Telephone Pioneers of America was a group founded by various employees and bigwigs at telecom companies back in 1911. Alexander Graham Bell, the man Americans are often taught…
Following an apparent change to Twitter’s auto-populating search dropdown first discovered by Gizmodo over the weekend, the platform has responded to a wave of angry, uninformed criticism on its official blog. https://gizmodo.com/twitter-may-be-demoting-controversial-accounts-in-searc-1827788070 While Gizmodo’s findings indicated the platform had made it slightly more difficult to discover the accounts of known bad-faith actors, this unannounced change…
In a letter this May, Senator Ron Wyden called on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to recuse himself from an ongoing FCC investigation into companies gathering real-time location data on cellphones users. As an attorney six years ago, Pai represented one of the firms now central to the investigation. The firm, Securus, a major provider of…
This week, 47-year-old Christopher Kruithof filed a complaint against the FBI, alleging that the federal law enforcement agency was blocking his phone after he viewed child pornography on it. They weren’t—police reportedly chalked it up to a ransomware virus. Kruithof’s complaint was, as you may have already realized, effectively an admission that he was viewing…
PepsiCo really doesn’t want anyone talking shit about its corn puffs online. There is a rumor that Kurkure, a corn puff product developed by the company in India, is made of plastic. The conspiracy theory naturally thrived online, where people posted mocking videos and posts questioning whether the snack contained plastic. In response, PepsiCo obtained…
It feels like it was only a matter of time before Robert Mueller started investigating Donald Trump’s tweets. And it seems that time has come. The New York Times reports that the special counsel “is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements” from the president about James Comey and Jeff Sessions. Specifically, Mueller reportedly wants to know…
Monika Glennon has lived in Huntsville, Alabama, for the last 12 years. Other than a strong Polish accent, she fits a certain stereotype of the All-American life. She’s blonde. Her husband is a veteran Marine. Her two children, a boy and a girl, joined the military as adults. She sells houses—she’s a real estate agent…
As soon as you start up a new Android phone, you get prompted to sign in with your Google account—but what if you don’t want to do that? Maybe you want to take advantage of Android but limit what Google knows about you, or maybe you just prefer the alternative apps; whatever the case, here’s…
In the 1990s, archeologists in Mexico City unearthed a 500-year-old skeleton near an ancient Aztec temple—a victim of human sacrifice. A grisly discovery, yes, but perhaps even more chilling was what the beheaded skeleton was holding: two small whistles, one in the shape of a skull. When a researcher blew into one of the tiny instruments,…
Keeping multiple voice assistants in your home can lead to the occasional misfire, causing a far-flung device in the bedroom to react while you’re attempting to extract the weather forecast from the one in your living room. Amazon addressed this quirk with its own Echo devices in 2016, and now it’s bringing that improved listening…
23andMe customers might just play a role in helping create one of Big Pharma’s next blockbuster drugs. On Wednesday, the genetic testing company announced it was entering a partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to develop new drugs and therapies. As part of the collaboration, the company will allow GSK to peek at the (voluntarily…
Bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle isn’t terribly challenging for someone with even a modicum of hand-eye coordination, but what if you were blindfolded and had to only rely on your ears? That makes the challenge almost impossible, but unexpectedly it turned out to be an effective approach for this ball-juggling contraption. Building a machine…
