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It’s been quite the month for Indiana Jones-inspired madness, after a sealed 2,000-year-old sarcophagus was discovered in Alexandria, Egypt, on July 1. Nobody knew what was inside, but some feared that the black granite coffin might be cursed. Those fears were put to rest on Thursday, when the sarcophagus was finally opened. It was full…
A Silicon Valley venture capitalist’s pipe dream to split up California into several states inched a little closer to reality last month when it made it onto the November ballot. But on Wednesday, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided to scrap the plan from the ballot. Tim Draper, the billionaire behind the measure, responded to…
Embroiled cloud computing company Salesforce tried to sanitize its image through a hefty donation to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services—one of the highest-profile organizations resisting our draconian immigration policy. RAICES said no thanks—and at least six other high-profile organizations are now threatening to cut ties with the company. Salesforce’s work…
YouTube has barred a channel belonging to parents who were convicted of child neglect after they stirred controversy for their prank videos depicting abusive behavior. Mike and Heather Martin lost custody of two of their children and were sentenced to five years of probation last year. Authorities began investigating the Martins after other YouTubers, like…
Some moments in life demand a live stream: Protestors swarming down your street. The immediate aftermath of a World Cup final. Maybe even a best man speech. Livestreaming allows your friends, family, and followers unprecedented access to what’s going on around you, and nearly every major social network and video app seems to have some…
While the local catholic church and its bell tower undergo renovations in Lucerne, a small town in Switzerland, the city reached out to students at the nearby university to help find a replacement for the hourly chimes that are now silenced. Their solution? Blast out the sounds of a smartphone’s ringtones instead, the BBC reports.…
Do you know WWII veteran Richard Silagy or his family? Silagy lived in Cleveland, Ohio, sometime after World War II and hid a time capsule filled with personal items in his home. The time capsule was recently discovered by a housing contractor doing improvements on the house, but a search online for Silagy or any…
In 1997, scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were recording the sounds of underwater volcanic activity when they picked up a noise that was so incredibly loud—louder than any underwater sound ever detected—that they initially thought it must be an equipment malfunction. But then another underwater microphone picked up the same noise……
British police have reportedly identified two suspects in the nerve agent poisonings that left one person dead and three others injured. The suspects were identified after UK police combed through “months” of surveillance footage at British airports, as well as security camera footage from around Salisbury. Both CNN and the BBC refer to an unnamed…
Elon Musk probably hopes the matter of him baselessly smearing one of the divers who helped rescue a Thai soccer team from a flooded cave complex as a “pedo guy” is resolved with his issuance of a half-assed apology on Wednesday. However, the question of whether he will face a lawsuit lingers on—as does the…
After a rough week of criticism over Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s shoddy explanation for why he won’t ban conspiracy site Infowars—including a very awkward tangent into apparently believing Holocaust deniers are not “intentionally getting it wrong”—the social media giant has announced it will begin removing misinformation that provokes real-world violence. Per the New York Times,…
In a new interview published today, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg goes long on a wide range of topics including selling data, taking holocaust deniers at their word, fake news, and one simple idea that’s crazy enough, it just might work. Speaking with Recode, Zuckerberg continued his apology tour that’s followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The…
Earlier this year, Hawaiian residents received a text—“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII”—wrongly signaling that a nuclear bomb might be headed their way. An employee reportedly mistook a drill for a real attack and sent the alert to all cell phones in the state. Today, U.S. senators introduced a new bill that aims to both…
On Sunday, Elon Musk’s long-simmering internet meltdown reached a full boil when he called a man who was mean to his submarine a pedophile. This gave the Tesla founder’s harshest critics and fiercest fanboys something they could finally agree on: the guy needed to give it a rest and log off. A Twitter sabbatical, basically…
Federal agents arrested the man behind the porn operation “StraightBoyz” on Tuesday, after he allegedly spent years tricking men into having sex acts performed on them on camera, and posting the videos online without their consent. According to the Miami Herald, which obtained documents about the case, Bryan Deneumostier, 33, posted ads on Craigslist soliciting…
A security researcher has, yet again, discovered thousands of U.S. voter files with a minimal amount of effort. Given that over the past year virtually every registered U.S. voter has been exposed by one data breach or another, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to feign our surprise. According to the researcher, Kromtech Security’s Bob Dianchenko, the…
A bill just passed in Egypt that will empower the government to block users on social media for spreading “fake news” if they have over 5,000 followers. As of Wednesday, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi still needed to ratify the legislation into law, which he is expected to do given his government’s unmerited crackdowns on journalists and…
The surveillance state is now entering sewers. Chinese police are reportedly testing waste water for the presence of illegal substances, using the data to find illegal drug manufacturers in the country. As drugs pass through people’s bodies, they may be leaving a trail for police to follow. Li Xiqing, an environmental chemist at Peking University…
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was anointed as the richest man in modern history this week, and he’s just a hair’s breadth away from being worth more than the entire Walmart dynasty. The original big-box retailer is feeling the pressure and is reportedly looking into launching it own streaming service to compete with Prime Video and…
Considering Android’s massive mobile market share, this was pretty much an inevitability. But today it finally happened for real: The EU slapped Google’s parent company Alphabet with a record fine of nearly $5.1 billion for violating European antitrust regulations. According to EU officials, Google’s terms for licensing its full-featured version of the Android OS—which requires…
