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Australia’s Liberal Party government has announced that it will soon be illegal to purchase anything over $10,000 AU ($7,500 US) with cash. The government says it’s, “encouraging the transition to a digital society,” and cracking down on tax evasion. But not everyone is happy with the move. “This will be bad news for criminal gangs,…
Cleveland.com and WKYC got their hands on documents revealing a portion of Cleveland, Ohio’s failed pitch to Amazon to land the company’s planned second headquarters. The records reveal the city was prepared to throw some substantial incentives at Amazon if it decided to call Cleveland its new home. The 27-page document deals primarily with logistics…
The Federal Communications Commission summoned all of its regulatory strength Thursday and dropped a record $120 million fine on a notorious robocall operator who placed nearly 100 million spoofed calls. It’s just a shame that the punishment probably won’t accomplish anything. Adrian Abramovich of Miami, Florida was on the receiving end of the largest forfeiture…
Several news outlets have claimed that scientists have created a “cloaking device” like those seen on Star Trek, but that’s not quite what happened. The cloaking devices on Star Trek bend light to render an object invisible, and the new device merely deflects sound. The technology also isn’t so new, as others are working on devices…
Sitting with a friend in a bar in mid-March, a former Cambridge Analytica employee said he was having a beer when someone texted him Facebook’s announcement that it was kicking the data firm off its platform “pending further information.” “I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my God,’” he told Gizmodo. “This is going to be insane.”…
A team of computer science students has embedded subliminal audio signals into music, allowing them to secretly seize control of devices that respond to voice commands. In a New York Times report published Thursday, a group of students from the University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University detail the highly troubling research that lets them…
You probably haven’t experienced the crippling anxiety of thinking about increasing your Klout score in quite some time. As of May 25, you won’t have ever have to do it again. On Thursday, the social ranking company announced to its 708,000 Twitter followers (meh) that it will be shutting down. Klout was founded in 2008…
The New York Police Department is testing out a device called the “Skim Reaper” in an effort to hinder credit card fraud. The technology, developed by an engineering professor and two graduate students from the University of Florida, slides into credit card readers found on ATMs or gas dispensers to quickly detect the presence of an…
By combining satellite radar with seismic data, an international team of researchers has re-assessed the effects of North Korea’s most recent nuclear test at Mount Mantap, offering disturbing new estimates for the strength of the device used and its influence on the mountain itself. In 2003, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea became the…
There are typically two approaches to taking usable photos in low-light conditions. You can either use a slow shutter, which requires a tripod to eliminate blur, or electronically increase the sensitivity of a camera’s sensor, which introduces ugly noise artifacts. But there’s now a third approach that takes advantage of machine learning to artificially boost…
Matt Denton has been putting his 3D printer to good use again, possibly the only good use for those plastic-extruding machines. He’s super-sized all the pieces in Lego’s 1979 Technic Bulldozer set, which required over 600 hours of printing to recreate all 372 parts. Re-assembling all of those pieces into a five-foot long Lego Technic…
IBM employees will reportedly no longer be allowed to use any form of removable storage to transfer data while at work. The Register reports the announcement to staff was made today by Shamla Naidoo, the company’s global chief Information security officer, who explained that “the possible financial and reputational damage from misplaced, lost or misused…
Behind the scenes at a BattleBots tournament looks part science fair, part NASCAR pit stop. Robot bits are strewn across work benches, sparks are flying, and crews are furiously prepping for the next battle, replacing smashed parts with new ones and testing their weapons. In one corner, sits Chomp. Chomp looks like a regular BattleBot…
The 2015 Open Internet Order, which established federal protections for net neutrality and barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling legal content online, will formally cease on June 11, the Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday. When that happens, the agency’s new rules, passed by the commission’s Republican majority in December, will go into…
For more than a year, we’ve heard that Russian operatives used Facebook groups and targeted ads to influence the 2016 election and sow discord in the United States. Facebook has declined to release the ads to the public, but on Thursday, Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee dropped a data dump of 3,500 examples…
Kinect was never for you. Yeah, you with the Xbox One that was bundled with a Kinect. That big honking spatial camera was an impressive piece of tech, but it never did you much good as a console add-on did it? Microsoft announced the return of the Kinect on Monday at Build, its annual developer…
Spotify apparently no longer wants to promote terrible people across its streaming platform. That’s the undercurrent of its freshly announced “Hate Content and Hateful Conduct Public Policy.” The meandering statement revealed that Spotify is establishing a number of external and internal policing methods for content. The first artist affected by this change appears to have…
Computer, tablet, or phone not starting, or seemingly frozen in time? Before you take it down to the local repair shop, or send it off to the professionals, here are the cheat codes to use to try and get your device back on its feet—it might be you can save yourself a hefty repair bill…
Build a better mousetrap, and they say the world will beat a path to your door. But the artists at Studio AATB probably shouldn’t expect much foot traffic after finding a way to use a wall-mounted robot arm to improve one of the oldest ways we have to tell time: the sun dial. Because our…
Tesla’s hit a few speed bumps in getting all the pre-ordered Model 3’s out the door and onto customers’ driveways. But perhaps the company can learn something from Daniele Benedettelli, who created a fully autonomous Lego car factory using the iconic building toy. Now, I’m not saying Musk should consider rebuilding his factories out of…
