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Are you a postdoctoral researcher with a hankering to help the US government hone its brain-warfare skills? Well, Uncle Sam has just the job for you! The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently posted an opportunity online for a postdoctorate fellow who will “examine how BNNs work and determine if they can…
A woman in Anchorage, Alaska was pulling off an embezzlement scheme so sly that even an IRS audit didn’t uncover the theft. But then her boss’s grandson infected peepaw’s computer with a virus, ultimately leading to the discovery of false checks. Raenette K. Yangson, 42, has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for…
It sucks when a new technology comes along and creeps everybody out. It sucks even more when that technology is so good, so life-changing that even the most discerning consumer sets that anxiety aside and says, “Who cares if Apple owns detailed biometric data about my face?” That’s what Face ID has done to me…
It’s hard to overstate the pulpy absurdity of Uber’s 2017. It started with sexual harassment claims, accelerated with verbal barbs, and ended with an unmasked nest of spies. Still facing terrible press, a “bro culture” image, and a federal investigation, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told the World Economic Forum in Switzerland Tuesday that the leaks were…
This is starting to get sad. Prior to receiving notice from Gizmodo this morning, Kris Kobach’s office was leaking sensitive information belonging to thousands of state employees, including himself and nearly every member of the Kansas state legislature. Along with a bevy of personal information contained in documents that, according to a statement on the…
Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered the partial jawbone from what appears to be a modern human. Dated to between 175,000 to 200,000 years old, the fossil is 50,000 years older than any other human fossil found in the region, suggesting humans left Africa far earlier than previously thought. The fossil was found in Israel’s Misilya…
There is no greater force in America than The Brand—and those who disrespect it suffer the consequences. This law was recently demonstrated by the owners Grumpy Cat (née Tardar Sauce), the viral internet superstar with a permanent Clint Eastwood-like scowl, who scored a massive $710,001 payout from a copyright infringement lawsuit. The cat’s owner, Tabatha Bundesen,…
Ajit Pai, the former Verizon lawyer and FCC chairman who repealed net neutrality despite public opposition, may not be running a clean ship. Shocking, I know. But stay with me here. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo publicly resigned from a Federal Communications Commission panel today because, he says, the panel is filled with telecom flacks…
Even when they’re built from concrete and steel using proven engineering principles, I still get anxious when crossing certain bridges. So there’s less than a zero percent chance that I’ll ever try crossing this 1,640-foot test of bravery in Siberia. It looks like it could instantly collapse under the weight of just a single snowflake.…
Twitter has never been an ideal platform for sharing photos—largely because users can’t be sure what portion of their image will show up in a tweet’s image preview. If the most important part of a photo is cropped out, followers probably won’t be inclined to click through to see the whole image. Yesterday Twitter announced…
Back in 2016, CNN bet $25 million on a celebrity vlogger with an app called Beme he himself seemed to have abandoned. The network hoped that Casey Neistat and his Beme co-founder Matt Hackett would help lure in millennials, but on Thursday, BuzzFeed reported that CNN is shutting down the media venture. Neistat and Hackett…
It’s two minutes to midnight. And that’s really bad news if you’re a fan of planet Earth. The so-called Doomsday Clock, a symbol of how close the world is to total annihilation, was moved 30 seconds closer to midnight in a press conference this morning. The last time it was at two minutes to midnight…
Across the country, more and more people are working from home as commute times continue to rise. But if you still have to physically drag yourself to the office, there are concrete actions you can take to improve your daily grind. Namely, the addition of a little dog that sings along to your favorite string…
Oh Miitomo, it seems like it was just yesterday when you arrived on phones as Nintendo’s first mobile app, bringing a tiny bit of that Mario joy and magic to the small screen. But after less than three years on the market, Nintendo is killing off the Miitomo app in just a few months on…
One US senator is calling out the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for pushing the moronic notion that there is somehow a good way to add backdoors to encryption used to protect devices like Apple’s iPhone. In a speech earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray carried on the time-honored agency tradition of…
50 Cent has a way of pulling money out of thin air by making prescient early investments. Though he hasn’t been doing so great lately, he’s still got some tricks up his sleeve. It turns out he accepted Bitcoin payments for his 2014 album Animal Ambition and never cashed them out. Suddenly, he’s richer than…
Music streaming is the future, apparently, which means the digital download had a bright and brief existence—lasting from the end of the 1990s to (presumably) the end of the 2010s. But before you erase all your carefully collected MP3s from the disk and close down the iTunes Store for the last time, we’ve got some…
It’s one of the most obnoxious and common experiences on the internet—you check out a product online, let’s say a new mattress, and then for weeks afterward, ads for the mattress stalk you around the internet, showing up on every website you visit. Maybe you decided to buy another mattress, or maybe you even bought…
In a clear middle finger to the Republican-controlled FCC and its chair Ajit Pai, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order on Wednesday mandating that state agencies only purchase internet service from providers who agree to abide by the net neutrality rules the FCC just threw out. Per the Washington Post, Cuomo’s order…
What began as one of the original Kickstarter success stories, Pebble quickly matured into one of the most beloved smartwatch brands, years before Apple found its groove with the Watch. But after being bought out by Fitbit, it was only a matter of time before Pebble’s endeavors came to an end. And in a blog…
