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FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a passionate advocate for protecting net neutrality, announced plans on Tuesday to step down from the agency. Clyburn, the only black voice on the five-member commission dominated by Republicans, previously served as interim FCC chief in 2013, becoming the first African American woman to lead the agency. The daughter of Rep.…
Americans are scrambling to get their taxes filed with Uncle Sam on Tuesday, and as they cross the final hurdle on the Internal Revenue Services website, they’re getting a disturbing message: Direct Pay is currently unavailable. The Acting Commissioner for the IRS says you still have to pay, though. As of publication, if you visit…
Southwest Airlines flight 1380 from New York to Dallas had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia today. One of the plane’s engines reportedly exploded, breaking a window and causing a woman to nearly be sucked out. One person has been confirmed dead, and passengers are sharing photos and videos from the incident—including ones taken…
A coalition of leading tech companies on Tuesday made public a vow never to aid any government in offensive cyberwarfare, while also promising to increase information sharing about malicious code to stem the tide of cybercrime. Microsoft, Cloudflare, Facebook, Github and Cisco are among the 34 major global technology and security companies that have signed…
A couple of years ago, scientists discovered an enzyme in a waste recycling center in Japan that digests plastic. During a recent experiment to understand how this enzyme works, scientists accidentally created a mutated version that breaks down plastic even better than the one found in nature. The discovery could go a long way in…
When Apple bought Texture, a subscription magazine app reportedly valued at around $50 million, last month, the move seemed like a bit of a head-scratcher. I mean really, who the hell still reads magazines? But for people who know anything about Apple, it was clear that Texture was just a jumping off point for something…
A tutor and several accomplices were recently caught running a complex exam cheating operation in Singapore that one prosecutor called “highly sophisticated.” Unfortunately for them, it apparently wasn’t sophisticated enough to avoid getting busted. According to prosecutors, 32-year-old Tan Jia Yan ran the operation, which involved surreptitious FaceTime calls, hidden Bluetooth devices, and flesh-colored earpieces.…
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a class action lawsuit against Facebook over the company’s face recognition practices, with potentially millions of plaintiffs, can move forward to trial. In 2008, the state of Illinois established the Biometric Privacy Act, or BIPA. The law requires that all companies that collect biometric data (like thumbprints and photos…
Using just a 55-gallon barrel, three baboons liberated themselves the confines of a biomedical research facility this weekend for about half an hour before they were captured and returned to incarceration. Texas Biomedical Research Institute (TBRI) holds about 2,500 animals, including 1,100 baboons, which the facility uses to test vaccines and drug therapies. The baboons…
An igloo-looking habitat sits on a volcano’s rocky soil. Six astronauts have been living there isolated for months, doing geologic field work. It takes around twenty minutes for any message to travel between the habitat and Earth. Except the habitat is on Earth—it’s the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), sitting 8,200 feet above…
Microsoft just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and is delaying its Spring Creator’s Update (codenamed Redstone 4) due to a bug that resulted in an increase in Blue Screen of Death crashes. Luckily, the issue was spotted in an Insider build of Windows 10, specifically build 17133, meant for developers and not public…
The Russian government ordered the Telegram messaging app be banned last week due to its failure to turn over encryption keys to authorities. But as the app’s founder promised, Telegram is still working. Now, Russia is breaking the internet in the country by blocking millions of IP addresses in a scattershot attempt to quash the…
It’s not just you. Twitter is down. At least for a lot of people in the US, Europe, and Japan. Down Detector is showing heavy outages in the Northeastern United States, Britain, Spain and Japan. As I sit typing this from Western Australia I can confirm that I haven’t had Twitter working since 9:50am New…
Officials from Britain and Russia are still fighting over who exactly poisoned former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. But whoever did it, one thing is certain: The cleanup is costing a lot of money and labor as the UK combs through every blade of grass that…
The parents of two children slain during the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, have filed defamation lawsuits against InfoWars founder Alex Jones as well as one of his contributors for fueling conspiracy theories alleging the parents played a role in the massacre that left 26 people dead. Court documents…
Harvey Weinstein is a disgraced movie producer who will be remembered as one of the most vile sexual predators to ever emerge from Hollywood. But before the “open secret” of his crimes truly became open, Weinstein was hobnobbing with politicians nearly as often as he was making movies. One of those politicians was President Bill…
Federal authorities have arrested the former CEO of an Alaskan telecoms firm—who just so happens to be the very individual Federal Communications Commission chair and telecom flack Ajit Pai tapped to run a broadband advisory panel—on charges that she tricked investors into pouring $250 million into a fraud scheme. Per the Wall Street Journal, Quintillion…
The fire that raged through President Donald Trump’s famous New York skyscraper and headquarters, Trump Tower, and killed residential tenant Todd Brassner on April 7th appears to have been the result of too many power strips, the New York Fire Department said on Monday. According to the FDNY, fire marshals—the agency’s police force handling serious…
Lea Kissner is back at her alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, armed with a crisp gray blazer, a slide deck, and a laptop with a ‘My Other Car Is A Pynchon Novel’ sticker on it. Since graduating in 2002, she’s earned a PhD at Carnegie Mellon in cryptography and worked her way…
The nation’s biggest telecoms will offer a public demonstration of the latest technology for blocking illegal robocalls at an expo in Washington, DC, later this month. The Stop Illegal Robocalls Expo, hosted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), will take place on Monday, April 23rd, at the Pepco Edison…
