Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
A critical flaw in electronic locks left millions of hotel rooms worldwide vulnerable to hackers. Now, the security researchers who developed the attack are helping hotels patch the problem, literally door to door. Tomi Tuominen and Timo Hirvonen, who both work for the international cybersecurity firm F-Secure, uncovered a design flaw in the software of…
Apple CEO Tim Cook has had a particularly long and tortuous relationship with our big boy in the White House. To recap, it’s included Donald Trump’s calls for an Apple boycott, awkward phone calls where the president promised Cook tax cuts if Apple did more manufacturing in the US, humiliating advisory meetings, Cook’s outrage over…
Apple has released iOS 11.3.1, which includes what the tech giant says is a fix for an issue where people who used third-party repair services to replace their displays had their devices become unresponsive. According to release notes, “iOS 11.3.1 improves the security of your iPhone or iPad and addresses an issue where touch input…
California man Eric Lundgren, an electronic waste entrepreneur who produced tens of thousands of Windows restore disks intended to extend the lifespan of aging computers, lost a federal appeals court case in Miami after it ruled “he had infringed Microsoft’s products to the tune of $700,000,” the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Per the Post,…
Up until the 20th century, the use of bone daggers among the Papuan males of New Guinea was commonplace. Many of these daggers were forged from the femurs of large birds, but some were made from the bones of humans. New research shows which of the two materials provided for a superior dagger, demonstrating that,…
Rising 108 feet in the air, Christ the King is said to be the tallest statue of Jesus in the world. Since 2010, it’s loomed over the residents of Świebodzin, Poland, and it’s apparently already getting some upgrades. Signal broadcasting equipment was recently spotted embedded in the statue’s crown, but no one’s quite sure what’s…
Facebook has been revamping its policies over the last few weeks, undoubtedly in response to the fact that it impressively failed at protecting many of its users’ data. In its latest batch of updates, the social network announced that new third-party apps will no longer be able to post on Facebook on behalf of users.…
Instagram is finally giving users the ability to download some of their data. After teasing the tool a few weeks ago, the Facebook-owned service released a data export feature today, and it does more than just let you retrieve a copy of your filtered photos. All users can now access the data export tool from…
Over the past 24 hours, headlines from USA Today to the National Review have declared net neutrality officially dead. Fortunately, those stories are dead wrong—not that it truly matters, since the big day is at most a few weeks away. Notwithstanding, as long as the media is going to fixate on all the tedious officialities…
When it comes to Rube Goldberg machines, if you have to ask why, you’ll probably never understand the joy of building impossibly complex machines to accomplish the simplest of tasks. Need a piece of tape? This machine takes almost five minutes to do nothing but dispense a sticky strip. And that’s assuming all the mechanisms—made…
JUUL e-cigarettes have become incredibly popular with teens for their high levels of nicotine and sleek design. But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the product in its sights, and today announced an aggressive new push to keep the faddish nicotine product away from kids. Last month, the FDA began age-compliance checks with retailers…
Altaba, the holding company formed to carry the remains of Yahoo after it sold its core business to Verizon, has agreed to pay a $35 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission for Yahoo’s failure to quickly inform users about several massive breaches. Hackers stole credentials for all 3 billion Yahoo accounts as well…
Yesterday evening in Toronto, 10 people were killed and another 15 injured by a van driving erratically in the Canadian city. The driver, 25-year-old Alek Minassian, is being held on 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. Other than one former classmate’s descriptions of him as socially awkward and introverted, little…
People using social engineering to runs scams posing as tech support isn’t exactly new, but that doesn’t mean you can let your guard down. In fact, it seems this is a problem that’s only getting worse after multiple organizations revealed that last year the number of tech support victims had risen between 24 and 86…
In 1854, at the height of the California Gold Rush, the San Francisco Mint produced less than 300 special $5 coins. Only three were known to survive into modern times. Until today, that is. Now there are four. The owner of the fourth coin, who wishes to remain anonymous, really was convinced that the coin…
The common conception of a technologically enabled apocalypse foresees a powerful artificial intelligence that, either deliberately or by accident, destroys human civilization. But as a new report from the RAND Corporation points out, the reality may be far subtler: As AI slowly erodes the foundations that made the Cold War possible, we may find ourselves…
Facebook has publicly released its most complete community guidelines to date after many years keeping the specific rules its moderators used to govern the platform secret. The update tacked over 5,000 more words onto the already unwieldy document, which now includes highly specific examples of banned or heavily regulated content. Is any of it at…
On Tuesday morning Spotify announced a relatively big change to its mobile app. At an event in New York City, the Swedish music giant announced that users who don’t want to pay up for a premium plan will soon be able to get their hands on more features, including the ability to personally choose songs…
If you’ve got something you want to hide away, then you’ve got plenty of options on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS—options that we’ll run through here. Even if the kids or a stranger should get access to your devices somehow, these files will stay hidden from view and locked away. Before we get started, though,…
It seems that in Amazon’s never-ending quest to get you to buy more stuff, there’s nothing the company won’t try to make taking delivery of said items a tiny bit easier. Last year, it started with Amazon Key, a program that lets Amazon couriers unlock your door so they can deliver packages inside your house.…
