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YouTube has removed “hundreds” of videos advertising an essay-writing service, EduBirdie, following a BBC investigation that concluded over 250 channels were promoting the Ukraine-based company. According to the BBC, the investigation ultimately discovered more than 1,400 videos with over 700 million views promoting EduBirdie, with the topics covering “range of interests including: pranks, video games,…
UK authorities have ordered Cambridge Analytica, the sketchy election firm at the center of a data scandal involving at least 87 million Facebook users, to hand over all of the information it acquired on a US voter in a move that could potentially open the floodgates for others to know what information the firm stockpiled…
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has until Tuesday to decide whether to approve a dubious bill that would make it illegal to access a computer or network “without authority,” Wired reported, in what looks an awful lot like legislators trying to make something they don’t understand a crime. Here’s the backstory: The state government and its…
A little over a decade after the release of the original iPhone, it seems we have arrived at some basic grounds rules for phone use in movie theaters: calls are verboten, texting is a major offense, and checking your screen in anything but the most surreptitious manner is frowned upon. But what about when watching…
Just in time for the weekend, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed an $8,500 fine to Idaho State University for losing track of a single gram of weapons-grade plutonium missing since 2004. Great. The commission’s statement detailed the loss of the plutonium, which, according to the Associated Press, is enough to make a dirty…
Concerts used to be one of the most analog activities a person could do. But those days are going the way of the paper ticket, and now the gatekeepers of live events are determined to inject some digital anxiety into your drug-fueled Phish party. Ticketmaster is jumping into the facial recognition business Ticketmaster already had…
Google I/O is around the corner, and while the company has already teased us with some revamped services, we’re expecting to see a lot more. Personally, I’m hoping to see improvements to Google Lens, the image recognition tool the company has put into a few of its apps. Because right now, my friend, it ain’t…
Everyone wants to go to Iceland to get that perfect selfie for their dating profile and briefly feel what it’s like to exist in an actual paradise. But last month, a man who is suspected in a heist of $2 million-worth of bitcoin mining gear only wanted to get out. After pulling off a daring…
Vine is dead, again. On Friday, Dan Hoffman, a co-founder of the defunct six-second video app, announced via Twitter that v2, his Vine sequel, is now indefinitely on hold. Hoffman said his vision of a small passion project was engulfed by too much attention, and that he would need a larger team and potential investors…
Do not be me. I was desperate for a new Apple laptop to replace my dying 2012 one and as soon as the 2016 Macbook Pro with Touch Bar was available to buy I ordered it. This was a major redesign for Apple, and experience with other products told me that buying the first generation…
NORAD, the agency that tracks missile threats to the US and Canada, just sent out a tweet welcoming the US Cyber Command to the big leagues. The US Cyber Command was elevated to a combatant command today, the country’s 10th, after previously working under the US Strategic Command since 2009. But we have just one…
After a calamitous data breach exposing the personal information of more than 145 million U.S. citizens, Equifax shareholders this week voted to re-elect all of the company’s board members following its first annual shareholder meeting since the incident. MarketWatch reports that several board members, including Chairman Mark Feidler, faced a significant, albeit futile, resistance. Sixty-four…
Google’s big once-a-year developer conference kicks off Tuesday May 8th. While much of Google I/O is meant to support coders and the people who create apps and software for Google’s various platforms, what gets announced at the event will impact anyone who uses Android, Chrome OS, Wear OS, or any of Google’s many first-party apps—so…
Wealthy elites sank more than $600 million into Theranos, the rapidly flatlining blood-testing startup, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. The startup’s CEO and founder Elizabeth Homes, once dubbed “the next Steve Jobs,” brought in multi-million dollar investments from big names like Education Secretary Besty DeVos and the Walton family. Now, newly unsealed…
Breakfast may or may not be the most important meal of the day, but it’s also arguably hardest to make. Can you really trust yourself to safely use a hot stove while you’re still half asleep? Obviously not, and why go to all that effort when you can build a Lego machine to make you…
The Department of Defense has accused China of hitting US military aircraft with blinding lasers. The laser beams, which allegedly came from China’s military base in the African nation of Djibouti, have been striking aircraft landing at the nearby US military base. Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a news conference on Thursday that the…
Earlier this week, Facebook fired an employee who was accused of abusing their access users’ profiles to stalk women. Had that employee’s alleged victims worked at Facebook, they would have been alerted by a special internal tool, according to a new report. The rest of us, however, get no such protection. According to the Wall…
This TV set was the futuristic vision of illustrator Frank R. Paul in 1922. And I absolutely love it. I’m pretty obsessed with the ideas that illustrators, writers, and technologists had for television in the 1920s. It was a decade when radio broadcasting went from niche to mainstream. So the ideas that people had for…
The governor of Hawaii has declared a local state of emergency in the vicinity of the Mount Kilauea volcano following an eruption late yesterday on the state’s Big Island. Dramatic video footage of the eruption showed plumes of magma shooting into the air, while lava poured from a fissure that opened up near a residential…
Today, President Trump is scheduled to speak at the NRA’s convention in Dallas at 1:45pm ET, 12:45pm local time (10:45am PT). And while all of the major cable networks will probably air the speech, you can still watch, even if you’re not near a TV. The White House is streaming his speech on YouTube, which…
