Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Peter Thiel is reportedly leaving Silicon Valley. According to the Wall Street Journal, the venture capitalist and embattled Trump supporter is moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles and taking some of his businesses with him. He’s even reportedly mused about resigning from the Facebook board. Why? Peter Thiel apparently needs a safer space to…
When Apple unveiled Animojis alongside the iPhone X, it was only a matter of time until other smartphone makers pushed out their own versions. Some look like straight-up clones of Apple’s tech, like the kind you get on the mid-range Honor View 10. However, Samsung appears to be going for something a little different for…
Thousands of FedEx customers were exposed after the company left scanned passports, drivers licenses, and other documentation on a publicly accessible Amazon S3 server. The scanned IDs originated from countries all over the world, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, and several European countries. The IDs were attached to forms…
During his short tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai has made so many destructive and controversial decisions it’s hard to keep up. However, his decision to change broadcast TV ownership rules, clearing the way for a massive acquisition by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, has always been one of the shadiest. And…
If a museum hosts a tacky holiday party, it should be aware that it could bring in the type of people that will vandalize and steal historic art. Case in point: Authorities say an attendee at an ugly sweater party at The Franklin Institute snuck into the museum’s Terracotta Army exhibit last December, cracked off…
The number of smart connected devices in our homes is growing at a rapid rate, and that means more opportunities for unwelcome visitors to access your devices and your network. Whether you’ve got one smart home device or one hundred, here’s what to do to make sure your setup is as safe and secure as…
The seemingly endless string of iOS bugs is a sickness that just won’t go away. Just a month ago, people discovered that a strange hyperlink could cause Messages to crash. And while that issue has been patched, a new bug has appeared that can wreck Messages, along with a number of other major apps. First…
You can cook food worthy of five-star restaurants, even if you’re the most inexperienced cook. You just need to throw a bit of money at your kitchen. It will be wasteful. It will be expensive as hell. But it will taste incredible. I know this because I tried it. I lived the Modernist Cuisine lifestyle.…
Fox News host Laura Ingraham spent her show last night talking about the horrific shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead. But she devoted six full minutes of her program to just how “safe” the AR-15 assault rifle is. Seriously. Ingraham, complete with an Ash Wednesday cross on her…
In the past few weeks, the entire information security industry has grown very anxious about Meltdown and Spectre, two classes of exploits that can be used to manipulate vulnerabilities in the way many varieties of modern processors (but especially Intel ones) handle a performance-improving technique called speculative execution and extract hidden system data. While numerous…
Just before 3pm today, a shooter opened fire on the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, killing at least 17. After being taken into custody several hours later, the suspected shooter was identified as Nikolas Cruz. As the victims of this incident are treated, details with varying degrees of credibility…
Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation that would allocate more than $1 billion to secure America’s voting systems amid rising concerns that Kremlin-backed hackers will once again try to interfere in US elections. “We cannot let the Russians laugh about and take joy in the success they had in the last election.” Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi…
The IT company supporting the Winter Olympics apparently never had a chance. According to CyberScoop, it was hacked well before the Pyeongchang games ever began. Destructive wiper malware dubbed “Olympic Destroyer” is reportedly behind a series of security breaches disrupting the Games, including local wi-fi downtime and the crash of the Winter Olympics website, which…
In Manhattan, people are known to covet a phone number with a 212 area code—sometimes paying up to $1,000 for those three little digits. But in Iraq, the scramble for the coolest number is on another level entirely, with some cellphone numbers being valuable enough to pay off a modest mortgage. In an eye-opening look…
On Monday, video surfaced on Reddit showing a SkyRunner “flying car” crashing into a building. And while the video is certainly horrifying, there wasn’t any context for the accident—just the typical Reddit jokes. But we just learned more from SkyRunner. Thankfully, both the pilot and the passenger survived. The full video is on YouTube: According…
Facebook is bleeding users, with external researchers estimating that the social network lost 2.8 million US users under 25 last year. Those losses have prompted Facebook to get more aggressive in its efforts to win users back—and the company has started using security prompts to encourage users to log into their accounts. Sometimes, Facebook will…
A senior US official doctored an email last year to justify taking her boss’s wife on a taxpayer-funded trip to Europe that turned into a extravagant vacation—replete with Wimbledon championship tickets, tours of Westminster Abbey and Denmark’s Rosenborg Castle, and of course, a cruise along the Thames. The trip taken by Veterans Affairs chief David…
While it produces fantastic audio, Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker has also annoyed early users with obtuse software limitations, a lack of real Bluetooth connectivity, and missing multi-room playback support that won’t come until later this year. And now there’s one more irritation to add to that list, as it seems the HomePod can damage…
With Mobile World Congress coming up at the end of the month, the smartphone world is ramping up to peak hype in preparation for the Samsung Galaxy S9’s expected debut there on February 25th. The rumors are flying so we scoured the net and gathered up the most credible leaks and rumors to give you…
Messenger Kids, Facebook’s messaging service for children, is rolling out to Android users today. It’s a bold move, given that the app has gotten a lot of heat since its launch in December. Nearly 100 child health advocates signed a letter to Mark Zuckerberg last month urging him to delete the app, and Wired reported…
