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As the U.S. prepares for war in space, China’s bringing the space war home. Its ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle is reportedly capable of hitting a target from a kilometer away, igniting flammable objects, and burning through human skin. And it’s ready for production, the researchers behind the project claim. A weapon that fires a destructive…
Even though Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told journalists at Computex that new GPU’s wouldn’t be available for “a long time,” new rumors and leaks indicate that the upcoming Nvidia GTX 1180 could get announced much sooner, possibly as early as late August at Gamescom in Germany. Originally, Nvidia was scheduled to showcase what people expected…
Google’s messaging options are a mess, and it just rolled out a new tool to muddy the waters even further: Android Messages, but on the web. It gives you access to your Android SMS chats through a web browser, and lets you send and receive messages. So does it make life any easier for those…
Everyone, from time to time—or at every single moment of every single day—wishes they could somehow escape technology. It’s not ultimately that fun to be inundated at all hours with the collapse of society, the weekend activities of people you barely knew ten years ago, bad memes, worse TV, etc. You can smash your phone,…
Last summer’s infamous neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was supposedly about “free speech.” But that claim was always ridiculous. The latest evidence? Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of the rally, sued a woman for swearing at him. And a judge in Charlottesville has now awarded Kessler $5. Kessler sued Donna Gasapo for $500 because…
Do you ever get that feeling that someone is pulling a fast one on you? That’s the feeling we’re starting to get with Amazon Prime, the flagship service that provides two-day shipping and all sorts of other perks…but quietly keeps trickling up in price. At what point do you consider dropping a service that you’ve…
E-commerce giant Amazon wiped out nearly $15 billion in value from Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid this week when it announced a nearly $1 billion deal to acquire PillPack, an online prescription service, sending the competition scrambling for cover. It’s unclear just how Amazon plans on integrating PillPack into the rest of its offerings, with…
It’s a day of the week, so that means it’s time for more revelations about Facebook’s sharing habits that it hadn’t previously revealed to users. In the latest entry in the endless attempt at retroactive transparency, Facebook revealed to Congress that it shared data with 52 hardware and software companies, including some firms headquartered in…
AT&T is increasing the price of DirecTV Now, its subscription streaming service, by $5 a month effective August, Cordcutters News, CordCutters and Engadget reported this weekend. That brings the price of the package to $40 per month for basic service and $75 per month for extended offerings. In a statement to the two sites, AT&T…
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is under 13 concurrent federal investigations into everything from his exorbitant 24/7 security detail and habit of backstabbing whistleblowing subordinates to pricey plane tickets and cozy relationships with lobbyists. But apparently that’s not enough for the EPA’s principal deputy general counsel and chief ethics officer Kevin Minoli, who the New…
MoviePass has been operating for nearly a full year on its too-good-to-be-true premise of offering essentially unlimited movie passes to subscribers for just $9.99 per month. It’s the monorail and, according to a report from the Miami Herald, company CEO Ted Farnsworth sure seems like a dead ringer for Lyle Lanley. Farnsworth, the head of…
New York officials announced the conviction and sentencing of Nevada-based Sungame Corporation and its CEO Neil Chandran for grand larceny and securities fraud, saying the fraudsters would be forced to pay up $2.8 million to redress hundreds of people the company scammed with promises of free 3D tablets or go to jail. Chandran, who was…
Because we’ve apparently learned nothing and are doomed to relive the same news cycle over and over, Yelp has once again become the home for airing political grievances. This time, a Canadian restaurant was made the target of negative reviews after the manager asked a man in a “Make America Great Again” hat to leave.…
Shocker: It turns out that President Donald Trump was perhaps not really being all that honest when he walked out of a summit with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un this month and declared “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” Per Reuters and NBC News, US intelligence officials (albeit ones speaking…
Internet-connected devices are known for having their fair share of security issues—especially when it comes to cameras. But here’s a new one: the BBC reported this week that a smart home security camera started sending video clips to the wrong person. The BBC first caught wind of the problem shortly after one of its employees…
Law enforcement officers in Maryland used facial recognition technology to identify the suspected shooter believed to be responsible for killing five staff members and injuring at least two others in the offices of newspaper company Capital Gazette on Thursday. Authorities were able to ID the apparent shooter by taking a photo of the suspect in…
Authorities arrested a California man on Friday who had allegedly sent several death threats to Ajit Pai, the Donald Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission behind the death of net neutrality rules. According to a Department of Justice press release, the individual in question is 33-year-old Norwalk resident Markara Man, who the DOJ wrote…
Patreon, the service of choice for independent artists and creators, has once again cracked down on adult content makers. This week, a slew of Patreon creators who make suggestive material received notification that their pages were suspended or shut down. According to a report from Motherboard, the primary reason given to those hit by the…
Tinder may be known primarily as a millennial hookup app but thanks to a little pressure from a 69-year-old, married Baby Boomer senator, the dating service is more secure. Tinder parent company Match Group announced this week in a letter to Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden that it will finally encrypt photos uploaded by its users.…
Getting a phone call connected to Air Force One, even if you’re someone without any sort of prestige or military or diplomatic rank whatsoever, is apparently about as challenging as using sleight of hand on a dog—a really gullible dog who swallows car keys and constantly runs into the same glass door. John Melendez, aka…
