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Camille Boyer and cinematographer Nik Mirus worked with a Montreal-based agency called Caravane to create a surreal short film called Club Palace. It looks like a computer animation student’s final-year project, but in reality it was all filmed using real-life miniatures and clever practical effects. The lighting, detailed sets, and precise camera movements will make…
Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has agreed to a forensic audit to determine whether the firm improperly retained data scraped from Facebook profiles. Facebook announced the audit in a statement, calling it a “comprehensive internal and external review” to determine whether Cambridge Analytica had truly deleted…
University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan told colleagues in an email this weekend that he’d volunteer to testify before Congress about his role in Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to CNN. House and Senate Democrats are prepared to accept Dr. Kogan’s offer. According to Facebook, Dr. Kogan provided Cambridge Analytica—a political data analytics firm hired…
Devices like the Google Home are billed as AI-powered assistants that can help make your life easier, but that doesn’t mean Google’s intentions are entirely altruistic. That little speaker sitting in the corner is listening to you, and sending at least some of that data back to Google, which is now using that info to…
No matter how wrong you are or how petty the infraction, the only rule of an online slapfight is to never, ever back down. As a result, a Russian novel’s worth of insults have been written on Our Cursed Internet, ranging from incisive quips to sourced-and-cited takedowns. For two Redditors with strong feelings and a…
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Facebook has never faced a scandal like the one it’s currently fighting through. Revelations over the weekend about its reckless sharing of user data sent its stock price plunging on Monday, and fresh calls for regulations on the social media network are looking more real than ever. In the last…
Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital. The deadly collision—reported by ABC15 and later confirmed to Gizmodo by Uber and Tempe police—took place around 10PM at the intersection of Mill Avenue and Curry Road, both of which are multi-lane…
Slice up a photo of a dog and reassemble it, and you’ll be left with two images of the same pup. Slice those photos up again, and somehow you’ll then have four images of that doggo. It seems like an impossible optical illusion, but this neat trick is actually a very basic demonstration of how…
The next time Netflix takes more than a couple of agonizing seconds to start streaming a movie, use that time to appreciate just how good you’ve got it. In the latest episode of Wonders of the World Wide Web, Squirrel Monkey takes a fictitious look back at what the streaming service would have been like…
Researchers at Northwestern University think they’ve stumbled upon an unexpected new use for the so-called supermaterial graphene: an easy-to-apply, safer, and sturdier black hair dye that could give other permanent dyes a run for their money. The new dye even made hair immune to frizz and static electricity. A few years ago, Jiaxing Huang, a…
With millions of them churned out at the height of spinner-mania, fidget spinners are going to be around for a long time after the fad has faded, whether you like it or not. So it’s good to see people finding alternate uses for the novelty widgets, like building complex Rube Goldberg machines that end with…
After months of teasing (including some great demos at CES), HTC’s Vive successor, the HTC Vive Pro, is finally on sale. It’ll cost $800 for the headset alone and ship beginning April 5th. While the upgraded dual-OLED displays and integrated headphones capable of 3D spatial audio are cool, the high-end Vive Pro won’t actually include…
It takes a healthy amount of vanity to gift someone a portrait of yourself, but a life-size, lickable, lollipop version of your face? That would require something closer to full-blown narcissism—or a private, long-running in-joke I never want to be a part of. Firebox’s new “Face Licker” service (yep, that’s what it’s calling it) simply…
The United States Navy’s newest submarine, the USS Colorado, went into service this weekend. In the Pentagon’s announcement Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer called the vessel “a true marvel of technology and innovation.” But part of the 377-foot-long Virginia-Class submarine is operated with a 12-year-old Xbox 360 controller. Thee USS Colorado is able…
One of the major keys to Apple’s success over the years has been the tight control it exerts over the components in its devices. Many things such as the iPhone’s A-series processors and metal and glass chassis are designed in house, in order to meet the company’s demanding specifications, before being sent to big manufactures…
Two decades of healthy growth, followed by four to eight decades of slow-motion physical and mental collapse—that’s life, for most of us, despite the efforts of various deluded cranks and tech billionaires. Time spares nothing, and seems particularly to have it out for our faces, paying just as much attention to skin-level deformations (worry-lines, wrinkles,…
What a ridiculous time to be alive. Tensions are escalating around the world. Schools are spying on our kids. One of America’s most successful airlines keeps screwing with our dogs. And even our toothpaste is lying to us. But here’s to brighter times this spring, which is right around the corner. Cheers! America’s Binge-Drinking Problem…
Julian Assange likes to boast that WikiLeaks has a “perfect record” of “accurate vetting.” But if Assange’s Twitter account is any indication, Assange can’t even spot a ridiculous parody of “edginess” when he sees it. Rob Rousseau, a freelance writer from Montreal, created some fake Ricky Gervais quotes and posted them to Twitter earlier today.…
According to the BBC, Russian ambassador to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov now says that the nerve agent used in the poisoning of 66-year-old former Russian spy-turned-double-agent Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia Skripal in the city of Salisbury, England may have actually came from a nearby British lab. Prime Minister Theresa May declared…
Those looking to run advertisements for cryptocurrencies and related products may soon have to steer clear of Twitter, which Sky News reported on Sunday is “preparing to prohibit a range of cryptocurrency advertisements amid looming regulatory intervention in the sector.” Sky News wrote it had learned that prohibitions on ads for “initial coin offerings (ICOs),…
