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As America grapples with a seemingly endless series of shootings, school districts across the country are partnering with security companies to introduce highly advanced surveillance technology that goes far beyond CCTVs and passcodes. In New Mexico, an elementary school now uses ballistics detection technology that can spot shooters. In Arkansas, a school board recently approved…
On an earnings call this afternoon, Amazon’s chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky dropped an unexpected bit of information: The price of Amazon Prime is increasing to $119. Prime, which gives customers of the ecommerce giant a variety of perks in addition to free shipping, hasn’t changed its annual price from its current $99 rate in…
When the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities were made public earlier this year, things were a mess. Practically every Intel processor made in the last decade had backdoors that potentially let normal programs and software access what are supposed to be protected areas of a CPU’s kernel. Naturally, Intel set out to fix these holes,…
On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee held what is destined to go down as one of the dumbest hearings in US history. In order to explore potential political bias on social media platforms, conservative commentators Diamond and Silk were invited to testify under oath. The proceedings should have never happened, but here we are. For…
Earlier this month, North Korea announced the closure of its nuclear testing site, saying it’s suspending all nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. The surprise move by President Kim Jong Un may be an attempt to ease relations prior to a summit with Donald Trump, but a new reports suggests the collapse of North Korea’s…
You know how annoying it is when people take out their phones in the movie theater while you’re just trying to enjoy seeing the Avengers fight Thanos or whatever? Well, Fox wants to make that a feature with a new film based on the Choose Your Own Adventure books. There is an app involved. According…
On Thursday, 14 women who say they were sexually assaulted and harassed by Uber drivers published an open letter to the company’s board of directors, urging Uber to free them from arbitration. This would mean that they would be able to have their cases heard in a trial by jury, and not behind closed doors by…
Some smartwatches come with powerful processors, lots of storage, and robust software, but have limited capabilities compared to smartphones thanks to their tiny touchscreens. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and ASU Tech, however, have now created a smartwatch prototype with a built-in projector that turns the wearer’s arm into a smartphone-sized touchscreen. Despite what you…
There are few gambles in the tech world as big as spending billions to build a new computer processor from scratch. Former AMD board member Robert Palmer supposedly compared it to Russian roulette: “You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out.” Six…
There’s a new documentary series in development called Artist Depiction about NASA artists and their visions for the future. Or, in many cases, their past visions of the future. And it all looks incredible. The project is being directed by Brett Ryan Bonowicz, a man who’s captivated by how previous generations predicted the world of…
British lawmakers grilled Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer on Thursday, asking him questions about the social media company’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which roughly 87 million Facebook users had their data pilfered through a personality quiz app. When one of the members of Parliament asked about Palantir having “improper access” to…
Iranian government officials see the popular messaging app Telegram as a vehicle for anti-establishment dissent and have been trying to convince users to switch over to Soroush, a new app developed in the nation. The app comes equipped with a unique number of emojis, including a woman in a chador holding up a sign proclaiming…
In its latest attempt to please anxious parents, YouTube is finally offering an option to (slightly) favor human moderators over algorithms in its app for kids. The YouTube Kids app now lets parents limit the selection of channels kids can watch to those that are human-curated. Along with some other changes, this should make it…
Last fall, Apple broke tradition by launching three iPhones instead of its usual two. But even more than that, Apple’s bold $1,000 handset had a weird name and new facial recognition tech that no one had really seen before. Now, reports from CNBC and others are saying the iPhone X is going to get killed…
Using computers and MRI scans, researchers have created the most detailed reconstruction of a Neanderthal brain to date, offering new insights into the social and cognitive abilities of these extinct humans. But as to whether these characteristics were responsible for their ultimate demise remains an open question. New research published today in Scientific Reports suggests…
It’s not uncommon for cartoon characters to find themselves unwittingly dragged through all the chaos of a saw mill. From the audience’s perspective, it’s usually hilarious. But when you send a small camera on a log through a saw mill, scary doesn’t even begin to describe the experience of being pulled through all that machinery.…
Just in time for spring, Snap has released a new version of its original Spectacles, after FCC filings unveiled a bit more about the upcoming pair of camera sunglasses. You’ll also be happy to know, if you wrote them off entirely due to their garish appearance, that you made the right choice. These Spectacles look…
Released in 1979, the original Sony Walkman completely changed how people listened to music. Your tunes were free to go anywhere—and sound like complete garbage. The quality of music on cassette tapes can’t compete to today’s digital formats, but if people still like the sound of crackly records, surely there are people who miss the…
It’s still weird, isn’t it? German Chancellor Angela Merkel is palling around with robots at every opportunity, with her most recent robo-encounter happening just yesterday on ‘Girl’s Day’ at the chancellery in Berlin. Does Merkel know something that we don’t about the impending robot uprising? Probably. Will she finally tell us what’s going on? Almost…
The US Air Force conducted America’s first successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of the year, firing an unarmed Minuteman III from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California yesterday morning. The missile landed in the Pacific Ocean at an undisclosed location. The test comes in the wake of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un proclaiming…
