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Since its discovery over a hundred years ago, the 240-page Voynich manuscript, filled with seemingly coded language and inscrutable illustrations, has confounded linguists and cryptographers. Using artificial intelligence, Canadian researchers have taken a huge step forward in unraveling the document’s hidden meaning. Named after Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish book dealer who procured the manuscript in…
Donald Trump delivers his first State of the Uniom tomorrow, addressing a beleaguered nation tired of public, easily-avoidable fuckups on the world stage. Luckily the invitations mailed out for the event were free of basic spelling mistakes. Speculation abounds on what Trump will address in his State of the Uniom speech, though immigration and the…
You might love your iPhone because it’s easier than ever to take snapshots of your misbehaving dog. Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh loves his Apple product so much he made a feature film with it. It’s a horror flick, and Soderbergh reportedly enjoyed the experience so much he wants to shoot all his movies using…
Elon Musk’s tunnel-drilling company made millions over the weekend by selling a product that has nothing to do with tunnels or drilling. On Saturday night, Musk announced pre-orders for the Boring Company Flamethrower, a $500 gimmick that is really more of a flame-sputterer than a flamethrower. Flamethrowers shoot out an ignited stream of flammable liquid…
The State of Kentucky has pulled out of the Interstate Crosscheck System, Gizmodo has learned, making it the eighth state to quit the program so far—even though it cost nothing to participate. A source with direct knowledge of the decision told Gizmodo that Kentucky never used the data that it received from Crosscheck for the…
A few months before the EU enacts substantial new privacy rules, and just in time for Data Privacy Day, Facebook has both revamped privacy controls for users to make them simpler and published its internal “privacy principles,” which detail the company’s commitment to protecting user data. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), made law last…
We’re nearly a month since The Register first revealed that every single major processor in devices today is subject to a series of harrowing security vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown. Today, in light of news that Intel informed foreign interests of the vulnerabilities before the US government, and that Microsoft is pulling its latest…
Earning a high severity level from Lenovo’s own security advisory, anyone currently using a select number of the company’s Thinkpad, ThinkStation, and Thinkcentre systems should know that there’s an important vulnerability that needs to be fixed. That’s because hidden within Lenovo’s Fingerprint Manager Pro software, there’s a flaw on machines running Windows 7, 8, and…
When Apple launched the MacBook Air at the end of January 2008, it was an overpriced marvel of design and tech. The laptop, a silvery sliver of machined aluminum, was .76 inches at its thickest and weighed less than three pounds. In an impractical but effective on-stage demonstration, Steve Jobs unveiled the the $1,800 computer…
The Trump regime is considering a plan to nationalize at least part of the 5G wireless network that’s currently being developed by American telecom companies, according to a report by Axios. And while Reuters says it has confirmed the basics of the report (while noting it’s mostly just an internal spitballing session that hasn’t reached…
As iTunes creaks and wheezes its way into its 17th year of existence, for a lot of music lovers it’s fallen from favor as the go-to application for managing a local library and cranking out the tunes. If you’re looking for something that can provide a simpler, more intuitive way of playing music from your…
A short-lived and relatively unknown cryptocurrency project built on Ethereum called Prodeum disappeared this weekend—along with the money a small number of hapless investors sunk into it. All that remained of its website was a white page with the word “penis” written on it. Compared to the recent $400 million worth of NEM that was…
The first bitcoin transaction ever was by man who bought two pizzas. That arrangement would be worth over a $100 million today. Regret was baked into Bitcoin from the beginning. Last year, somewhat inexplicably, Bitcoin’s price rose more than 1,000 percent. That number has since dipped, but a single bitcoin is still, as of this…
People around the world use the app Strava on their smartphones and Fitbits to track how far they run. But researchers have discovered that an “anonymized” data dump released by Strava last year has accidentally revealed sensitive locations, including US military bases around the world. The user data was released in November as a “2017…
President Trump is the most famous Twitter user in the world. But there remains some mystery about how he tweets. Does he dictate all his tweets to assistants? Is he tweeting himself? And when he’s tweeting for himself is he sitting on a big, golden toilet? The American public has a right to know. We…
Do you have $500 lying around and want to spend it on something that will, inevitably, lead to a much costlier disaster? Elon Musk has you covered. His Boring Company—yes, that’s the one that digs tunnels—has released a flamethrower for some reason that probably has more to do with branding than a pivot to manufacturing…
ATM manufacturers are warning that criminals are hacking into their devices using a method called “jackpotting”that has recently spread to the U.S. according to Reuters. Both Diebold Nixdorf Inc and NCR Corp issued alerts, though they “did not identify any victims or say how much money had been lost.” NCR told Reuters that none of its…
There’s being into video gaming and there’s identifying as a hardcore gamer. Both are fine! But the latter group has developed a well-earned reputation for being rife with bigoted jerks, from the whole mess over Gamergate to more recent instances like PewDiePie’s repeated instances of racism. It’s also not a coincidence that hardware manufacturers have…
Two additional gamers have been named in a court case involving a Los Angeles man who allegedly phoned in a hoax emergency call over a Call of Duty friendly-fire dispute, resulting in a Wichita, Kansas police sniper shooting and killing an innocent man. Authorities charged 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, who allegedly posted online under the username…
Please brace yourself. According to a Saturday expose in the New York Times, some of your favorite social media influencers may not really be influencers at all. Instead, they may be social media fakers. As someone who had previously assumed celebrities adhere to a sort of Iron Law of Ethics, it rocks my worldview to…
