Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Apple exec Eddy Cue took the stage at SXSW in Austin on Monday to talk about Apple’s latest moves into content. The biggest news of the day is that Apple has agreed to purchase the all-you-can-read magazine subscription app Texture. Cue also talked about Apple’s plans for TV shows and answered questions about purchasing Netflix.…
Netflix’s latest A/B test is drawing criticism from child advocacy groups. On Friday, Variety reported that Netflix is testing collectible “patches” for some kids’ shows. These are collectible images that viewers gain access to after watching “Fuller House,” “Trollhunter” or “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” The patches are their own rewards, collecting them doesn’t offer…
A federal judge in California has ruled that a class action lawsuit against Yahoo related to a series of data breaches at the company can move forward. Verizon, which bought Yahoo last year for a reduced price of about $4.5 billion, had asked the judge to dismiss many of the lawsuit’s claims. Yahoo users have…
From Power Rangers to Pacific Rim, we’ve always had the same dream: controlling a badass robot and saving the world. Now’s the time. The X Prize Foundation (stylized as “XPRIZE”) is a nonprofit helmed by Peter Diamandis that funds technological grand challenges. Since the inaugural 1996 competition, challenge themes have included adult literacy, AI, women’s…
A new cryptocurrency and porn platform is banking on you wanting to spank it in return for internet money. Vice Industry Token Inc. hopes that offering consumers, content creators, and distributors free “money”—in the form of its proprietary cryptocurrency—will help shake up the adult entertainment industry. The concept behind Vice Industry Token (VIT) is seemingly…
Long before Wikileaks was promoting “radical transparency” in the digital age, CounterSpy was publishing a magazine that named CIA station chiefs and exposed covert operations. Now, 23 issues from its 32-issue run have been pulled from the CIA’s own archives and digitized for your perusal. We can neither confirm nor deny that the agency is…
What Microsoft Research lacks in cinematography skills, it’s making up for with super-fun solutions to virtual reality’s biggest problem: the lack of real-world feedback. In a blog post published late last week, Microsoft detailed four different experimental methods for delivering haptic feedback, including a cane that would allow the visually impaired to “see” in VR,…
Our brains are hard-wired with an unhealthy fascination with fire, and humanity will probably never get to the point where we treat it with as much respect as it deserves. But that’s because playing with fire is always so much fun! And watching videos of mad inventors building super-sized, flame-throwing lighters undoubtedly scratches a primitive…
The rise of widely accessible streaming video platforms has allowed niche organizations to spawn media companies that pump out propaganda content that they can beam directly to your living room. If you need a break from the gun-porn of NRA TV, but still want a glimpse into a strange apocalyptic alternate reality, you can tune…
Just when you thought that the fidget spinner fad had gone the way of the dodo bird, hoverboards, and 3D TVs, a Japanese company, MinebeaMitsumi Inc., known for manufacturing electronic components, and Mitsubishi, used 50 engineers to design and build a near-flawless fidget spinner over a six-month period that eventually set a new Guinness World…
It was a black tie evening of glamour, champagne toasts, and lizard flesh at the annual Explorers Club dinner gala this weekend, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was one of the guests of honor. The Explorers Club has been promoting scientific inquiry and adventure for over 100 years and it regularly meets to hand out…
Ever since the 19th century, when disease was first linked to sewage-contaminated water, humans have gone to great lengths to escape their own filth. Meanwhile, animals have gone on reveling in the stuff—eating it, strategically dropping it, flinging it around just to pass the time, etc. Same goes for mud, piss, vomit, blood and rotting…
The British government, which is currently alternating between panicking over Brexit and not preparing for Brexit, originally planned to have to have its very prim and respectable new system for preventing people under the age of 18 from looking at naked people on the internet operating by April 2018. But per the Telegraph, the Conservative…
There is justice in this world. Just this week, for instance, Facebook succumbed to shame and deleted a shitty “security” app design to collect your personal data. A crucial NASA-led effort to help study climate change launched. Twitter announced plans to suck less. And Martin Shkreli got sentenced to seven years in prison while crying…
The FBI has arrested the owner of Phantom Secure, one of a number of phone companies that it claims sells customized BlackBerry and Android devices for use in international criminal organizations. Per Motherboard, court records and interviews with anonymous sources indicate that the FBI, along with Canadian and Australian police, targeted Phantom Secure for deliberately…
The government of Sri Lanka ordered internet and mobile service providers to temporarily block Facebook and its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as separate messaging service Viber, this week as part of a crackdown on what officials said was rampant online hate speech fueling real-life violence. Per the New York Times, government spokesman Harindra…
Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which has to date sold the dream of a massive tunnel-based transportation system to get (wealthy) people’s cars around faster and also mislabeled “flamethrowers,” is now selling itself as the future of mass urban transit. In a series of tweets on Friday, Musk explained that the focus of the company’s Los…
President Donald Trump’s administration said on Saturday it’s taken the first official steps to ban bump stocks, accessories that enable semi-automatic rifles to fire at rates approaching fully automatic ones, the Associated Press reported. According to the AP report, the new regulations proposed by the Justice Department would classify the hardware as a machine gun,…
A few months ago, I got a package containing four bottles of Never Too Hungover, one of those hangover remedies that you’re supposed to drink the night before, and another you’re supposed to take the next day. I pounded beers as if I were rushing a fraternity with the knowledge that I’d be immune from…
Facebook subsidiary Instagram and stumbling competitor Snapchat have both disabled GIF-embedding service Giphy after an extremely racist image began spreading on the platform, TechCrunch reported. According to TechCrunch, the GIF in question read “N***** CRIME DEATH COUNTER,” accompanied by a small graphic of a primate and a game show host shouting “Keep Cranking Bonzo, the…
