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It’s the smartphone conspiracy theory that just won’t go away: Many, many people are convinced that their phones are listening to their conversations to target them with ads. Vice recently fueled the paranoia with an article that declared “Your phone is listening and it’s not paranoia,” a conclusion the author reached based on a 5-day…
If you own a phone or a computer (and we’re assuming you do) there are bugs and annoyances that you just have to learn to live with. On the flip side, there are also problems that hint at something much more serious going on with your device—issues you shouldn’t learn to live with, but should…
Should Microsoft end its federal contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? This was the question posed to tens of thousands of Microsoft employees late last month—all users of the anonymous messaging board Blind. Less than half responded, “Yes.” According to Blind, 55.68 percent of Microsoft employees believe the company should continue its work…
Something is toxic in the state of Denmark, as a pair of researchers recently discovered while archiving books at a university library. Analyzing old books doesn’t sound like particularly dangerous work, unless those books happen to be covered in deadly arsenic, as researchers Jakob Povl Holck and Kaare Lund Rasmussen from the University of Southern…
After launching last year at MWC 2017, Samsung’s current flagship tablet, the Galaxy Tab S3, is starting to feel a little outdated. So naturally, rumors have begun leaking out about Samsung’s upcoming refresh, with the most recent leaks even showing off purported renders of the Tab S4’s final design. Based on what’s been leaked so…
Last month, members of European Parliament voted to move forward with a sweeping overhaul of the European Union’s copyright laws that critics say will impede the spread of news, kill memes, bolster tech giants, and stifle innovation. Ahead of the final vote this week, Wikipedia Italy has joined protests across the continent by blocking users…
I know what you’re thinking: Innovation has slowed in Cupertino. I agreed until I heard this news. For years we’ve lamented that some of Apple’s biggest big ideas haven’t been big at all. Perhaps the most sterling example is the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, which I exclusively use for the purpose of accidentally activating Siri.…
Wedding proposals are just one of the many minefields you have to navigate on social media platforms, and Ivan Miranda isn’t making things any easier. He’s designed and built an autonomous printer that can draw messages in sand, so now’s probably a good time to brace yourself for an endless barrage of “will you marry…
Numerous news sites reported that as of this weekend, retailer Best Buy was calling it quits on CD sales, apparently all citing a report from Billboard in February giving a July 1st, 2018 kill date at the chain. That’s not the case, though it does appear to be true that Best Buy has made the fairly…
The US Postal Service will have to pay a sculptor who recreated the Statue of Liberty for a New York-themed Las Vegas hotel over $3.5 million after it used his version instead of its much more famous predecessor on Lady Liberty-themed stamps. The USPS put a Getty Images photo of artist Robert S. Davidson’s Las…
The federal investigation into Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal—in which prior versions of Facebook’s advertising API allowed the shady election data firm to partner with an app to harvest data on at least 87 million users without their consent—has expanded to include a multi-agency inquiry into the social network’s data practices. Per the Washington Post,…
Millions of people use third-party apps in conjunction with their Gmail accounts, and hundreds of millions of messages flow through the service on a regular basis. Last year, Google itself vowed to stop scanning users’ personal emails for data-driven advertising gold but it reportedly is still giving outside apps the ability to snoop through inboxes.…
That black school children are treated more harshly than white children by teachers is no secret, as plenty of studies and painful anecdotes have repeatedly shown. But some recent research published in the journal Contemporary Educational Psychology suggests an even more discouraging reality: The incoming generation of teachers shows bias against black kids, too. Researchers…
Facebook disclosed a new “bug” on Monday that temporarily let some users who’d been blocked on the service send messages to the people who had blocked them. The bug also let some previously-blocked users view posts that were shared “to a wider audience,” such as publicly or with friends of friends, Facebook said. Facebook’s privacy…
Sending pictures to others is one of the most basic functions of a smartphone, but when your phone’s texting app starts randomly pushing out photos without your knowledge, you got a problem. And unfortunately, according to a smattering of complaints on Reddit and the official Samsung forums, it seems that’s exactly what happened to a…
Waking up in New York City can be like a safari—all you need to do is listen rather than open your phone the second your alarm goes off. I might notice five different species from my bed: sparrows cheeping, blue jays jay-ing, mourning doves cooing, cardinals pewing, and even a chickadee, well, chicka-dee-dee-deeing. If you’re…
So much for President Donald Trump’s guarantee of “massive” drops in drug prices in the near future. On Monday, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced a slew of price increases for many of its best-selling brand name drugs, including Viagra, the Financial Times first reported. Amazingly enough, it’s the second time Pfizer has increased some of…
The Ugandan government has implemented a law forcing mobile users to pay taxes to use mobile money and social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Skype. As of July 1, people in Uganda have to pay 200 Ugandan shillings (about 5 cents in USD) a day if they want to use social media…
Spotify just found out there’s such a thing as too much Drake. This weekend, Spotify users were bombarded with the stern visage of Aubrey “Drake” Graham as part of a promotional deal, known as “ScorpionSZN,” meant to promote the artist’s latest album, Scorpion. While Drake is definitely a household name, that doesn’t mean everyone on…
Instagram has apologized to a British photographer after removing her photo of a gay couple kissing, saying the post was removed “in error.” London photographer Stella Asia Consonni uploaded photos of couples as part of an art series on modern relationships, published in i-D magazine. After posting the photo, Instagram removed it, sparking public backlash.…
