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A Danish man has been handed down a six-month conditional sentence for merely sharing information about Popcorn Time, the once-popular torrent-based streaming client that was targeted for extermination by copyright lawsuits . According to the Copenhagen Post, a court in Odense found the man guilty of “promoting the illegal online film streaming service Popcorn Time…
If you’re in the market for a new smartphone then you’re naturally going to want to look up key details such as processor speed, RAM, storage space, battery size, and the camera’s megapixel rating, but weighing up these raw specifications is increasingly becoming a waste of time. Here’s why. The short answer is that phones…
During the first Cold War, American and British spies would sometimes place coded messages in newspaper classified ads to communicate with each other. And according to new reports in the New York Times and The Intercept, the National Security Agency (NSA) has updated the tactic, using its public Twitter account to send secret messages to…
Zurich-based designer Florian Schulz has reimagined Twitter not as a mind-numbing torrent of breaking news, gifs, and nazis, but as something else he calls a “social network.” We’re not too sure about this “social network” idea, but the results are pretty intriguing, at least in an experimental way. Services like Facebook and Twitter show you…
Terry Hilliard traveled to from his home in Ocala, Florida, to Cocoa to watch in person the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch that took place on Tuesday. The next morning, Hillard was found dead in his hotel room. Cocoa police found Hilliard, 65, at the Dixie Motel, where he was staying, at around 11am Wednesday,…
Halfway through a contentious trial, Waymo settled its high-profile lawsuit against Uber in a deal that gives Google’s parent company Alphabet $245 million in Uber equity—a slightly larger stake than Google already has—and allows Waymo to keep tabs on Uber’s self-driving car program. It’s a crazy twist that lets both companies off the hook and…
The most entertaining part of watching the modern Olympics is hoping you catch some kind of drama, scandal, or debacle. And while the IOC has hoped that the addition of new sports like mixed doubles curling will breathe new life into the games, the Olympics should instead introduce sports like mixed doubles interactive Pong—now that…
Last year, after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published her blog post alleging the company was rife with sexual harassment and discrimination issues, the allegations against Uber and other Silicon Valley companies began to pour out. These were issues that had plagued women and people of color in Silicon Valley for years, but for many…
Humanity, man. We’ve had a good run, and have come up with some really neat stuff, but I think we could all use a bit of a breather. Nothing permanent, just a short break where we stop for a moment and maybe reconsider our priorities. I’m not saying all of our priorities are bad. Some…
A lot of people are banking on a future ruled by artificial intelligence, but in its current form, AI can still be hilariously dumb. Take, for instance, a neural network’s attempt to create candy heart messages. Some are pretty mild, like “LOVE BUN” and “YOU ARE BABE,” while others, like “SWEAT POO,” are not the…
Despite all the hype and hoopla for Google’s “first” homegrown phone, the Pixel was met with a lukewarm reception when it launched back in the fall of 2016. It wasn’t very pretty and it’s build quality wasn’t great either, and it often suffered from a host of issues. But the most frustrating of these problems…
If you want to operate a drone commercially, you need to get a license. And yet, since the Federal Aviation Administration began requiring licenses in 2016, only one person has gotten in trouble for operating a commercial drone without one. And he was just given a slap on the wrist. According to records obtained by…
Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven on Friday announced the self-driving car company had settled its lawsuit against Uber over its alleged use of stolen trade secrets, bringing a sudden end to a year-long legal battle. Google’s parent company Alphabet, which owns Waymo, will receive a larger stake in Uber under the terms of the settlement, sources…
As much as USB-C is a vast improvement over the USB connectors of yesteryear, we’re still bummed that it replaced the MagSafe connector on the recent generation of Apple’s MacBooks. We’re not getting any less clumsy, but these magnetic breakaway plug adapters look like they could ease the fear of tripping over our other power…
Russian authorities say they have arrested several engineers employed at the the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics in Sarov, a top secret nuclear weapons facility, because they were involved in a cryptocurrency-mining scheme at work. The tightly guarded nuclear facility is where the USSR’s first nuclear bomb was built. According to the BBC, it…
Logan Paul returned from the month-long hiatus related to his “suicide forest” video, which cost him his YouTube RED show and preferred advertising status. Paul made it a whole two days before doing something else reprehensible, and now the video platform has temporarily cut off all advertising to his channel. Offenses this time apparently include:…
According to a new report, Amazon has plans to launch a new delivery service, first with its third-party merchants, then expanding nationally. And executives at companies FedEx and UPS are no doubt waking up to frantic phone calls about what their industry might look like in five years. The new delivery service will reportedly be…
Facebook has begun testing a “downvote” button with some users, available only in a limited number of post types, the Daily Beast reports. The deployment of downvotes, even on a limited scale, comes after years of rumors of a “dislike” button, which the company itself has helped fuel through mixed messages. Reddit, the website best…
A former high school principal in Kentucky was reportedly confiscating students’ phones in an attempt to steal their nude photos and then submit them to a Russian-based porn trading site. The principal, Stephen Kyle Goodlett, was just sentenced to nine years in federal prison after a judge found him guilty of possessing and distributing child…
Facebook researchers have developed a new tool that maps 2D images onto humans in videos. The 2D images themselves look silly, but they’re proof of concept that AI can be trained to look past environmental noise and identify humans in complex scenes. Facebook’s AI research team released a paper last week detailing the process. The…
