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The CEO of Backpage, a classified ads website, pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy, money laundering, and facilitating prostitution. Carl Ferrer will face up to five years in prison. His plea agreement requires that he permanently shut the website down immediately, according to a statement from the Justice Department, as well offer “technical assistance” to…
On Friday a court ruled that Telegram should be blocked inside Russia due to its failure to turn over its encryption keys. In 2016, Russia passed “anti-terror laws” that require messaging services give authorities the ability to decrypt communications. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has defied the order and now says he has a workaround. Russian…
Donald Trump signed an executive order last night seeking a review of the United States Postal Service’s business practices—something other government agencies have already done—in what is widely understood to be part of the president’s continued attacks on Amazon. The review body, as outlined, would be headed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and will have…
In the mid-‘90s, public use of the internet boomed, and it’s been all downhill ever since. I mean, let’s be honest with ourselves for a second, while the internet can be used to do great things, most people would rather browse cute cat pics or sling hate speech than work on anything productive. So to…
Last year, Singapore announced that it wants to turn every lamppost in the country, around 110,000 in total, into a wireless sensor network. And seeming to confirm the worst fears of privacy advocates, Singapore now says it plans to test cameras capable of facial recognition as part of its pilot program. GovTech, the federal agency…
The Flintstones, a cartoon about life in the Stone Age, has just surpassed The Jetsons, a cartoon about life in the distant future, when it comes to technological innovation. Researchers have successfully trained artificial intelligence to generate new clips of the prehistoric animated series based on nothing but random text descriptions of what’s happening in…
On Thursday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced that the ride-sharing company will roll out a number of new safety features to protect both riders and drivers. It’s certainly a positive and much-needed move from a company that has resisted introducing these features despite having a past pocked with sexual assault and murders. In the blog…
Chinese police say they used facial recognition to identify, then arrest a man attending a crowded concert in Nanchang, China’s third largest city. South China Morning Post reports that security cameras equipped with the software pinpointed the man out of the estimated 50,000 other people also in attendance at the concert. Identified only by his…
For more than a decade now, FBI directors have been ranting about investigators being cut off from prized intelligence sources thanks to the widespread adoption of digitally encrypted communications. The truth, of course, is that humanity’s ever-increasing reliance on the internet has given today’s Federal Bureau of Investigation access to more data than its disreputable…
Researchers working in the Canadian high north have discovered two super-salty lakes buried deep beneath the Arctic ice. Untouched for thousands of years, the subglacial lakes may provide a tantalizing glimpse into the kinds of alien life that might exist on Europa and Enceladus, two ice-covered moons in the far reaches of our Solar System.…
“Filled with bone,” wrote one reviewer of Banquet’s Salisbury steaks. Others related similar experiences on the TV dinner manufacturer’s website. Now, the USDA has announced that 135,000 pounds of the family-size dinners are being recalled for possible contamination “with extraneous materials, specifically bone” or, as several news outlets put it, “due to bone contamination.” Reviews…
The director of cellular agriculture at JUST Inc, formerly known as Hampton Creek, has started his own company, business filings show. Mission Barns Inc. was incorporated in the state of Delaware on March 2, 2018, by Eitan Fischer. Fischer was JUST’s director of cellular agriculture, another name for “cultured” or “clean” meat, growing animal products…
Johnson & Johnson has teamed up with Transitions Optical, the company known for making those glasses that automatically darken when you go outside, to bring the unique technology to contact lenses. If you hate wearing glasses, they’ll save you from also having to wear sunglasses outdoors, but only if you’re okay with having creepy alien…
Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, but some experts say Polynesian explorers beat him to it. There’s little evidence to support this fringe theory, but scientists have pointed to the presence of sweet potatoes, a plant thought to be native to the Americas, in the South Pacific as potential proof. A genetic analysis…
Surprise, surprise, turns out Apple’s debut foray into the world of voice assistant-enabled speakers isn’t quite living up to the company’s initial expectations. According to a Bloomberg report, the company has lowered the number of Homepods being manufactured by one of its partners, Inventec Corporation, and is reportedly looking to make a second smart speaker,…
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat for 10 hours of questioning before House and Senate committees this week. Most of his answers were versions of those already found in official Facebook statements. But when he received a tough question, rather than answer on the spot, he vowed to get to the bottom of it. We’ve made a…
A GoFundMe fundraiser for a German shepherd puppy’s emergency surgery reportedly received nearly 700 donations over 28 days, totaling $14,065. But police now say the dog’s owner intentionally caused the injuries and GoFundMe has promised to refund the donors. The 5-month-old dog, Atlas, died on February 3rd. When the dog’s owner, 24-year-old Reid M. Herjo,…
Yesterday, Google sent out an internal email to G Suite administrators announcing a new design for Gmail on the web sporting a “fresh, clean look.” Images of the presumed redesign were then leaked to Android Authority before appearing on Imgur late last night with key info redacted via large black blocks. And now today, The Verge…
Taking a trip away from home can be good for the body and soul, but it also means you’re going to be without the safety net of your home and office Wi-Fi, and might even involve piggybacking on a different data network and living through a different time zone. Your smartphone can adapt, if you…
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an international watchdog group, has confirmed that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned using a military-grade nerve agent called Novichok. The findings come as Russian officials continue to deny that Russia had anything to do with the poisoning of the former double agent. The…
