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It’s a microscopic case of mistaken identity. A new study published in PLOS Pathogens has found that a 16th-century mummified child may have actually been infected by an ancient strain of hepatitis B, not smallpox as scientists believed for decades. But the finding, if correct, adds even more mystery as to how this still widespread,…
In just a few days, upwards of 175,000 industry insiders, exhibitors, and members of the media will once again descend upon Las Vegas in attempts to set the pace of tech for the next 12 months. Not only will some of the world’s largest and most influential companies such as Samsung, LG, Ford, and others…
Uber cofounder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick is close to selling “nearly a third” of his equity in the company, Reuters reported late Thursday. Kalanick has so far retained his 10 percent ownership of the company, even after resigning from his position as CEO in June. Reuters reports the sale, the first time Kalanick has ever…
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday released the final text of the order spelling the death of net neutrality in the United States. A fight to overturn it is being waged on multiple fronts: In Congress, Democrats are rallying to reverse it with a resolution of disapproval; the seats of lawmakers who don’t join the…
An Australian movie theater chain said it has ended “dynamic pricing” trials on Wednesday after Redditors complained of “price gouging.” Last week, an anonymous user uploaded an internal memo from Village Cinemas describing concession stand increases during busy periods. After images of the memo circulated online, Village Cinemas announced that all pricing trials had been…
When news of major vulnerabilities impacting processors manufactured by Intel, AMD, and ARM broke this week, the Register warned that patches for the problems could slow processors down by up to 30 percent. However, Google and Amazon say that they haven’t hit any serious slowdowns after applying their patches. The vulnerabilities, nicknamed Meltdown and Spectre,…
If you thought Echos were only good for invading your privacy and enticing hackers, then boy do I have some news for you. Amazon just introduced a new addition to the Smart Home Skill API for Alexa: cooking. Your voice-controlled assistant could potentially be burning down your house in no time! Alexa’s new cooking capabilities…
Today marks two records in the altcoin world: Ethereum’s per-coin value broke $1,000, and the rising value of Ripple supposedly boosted its co-founder Chris Larsen to an estimated net worth of $59.9 billion. Despite a very real speculation bubble around cryptocurrency, these financial gains are mostly on paper, and the two coins couldn’t be more…
Security researchers revealed disastrous flaws in processors manufactured by Intel and other companies this week. The vulnerabilities, which were discovered by Google’s Project Zero and nicknamed Meltdown and Spectre, can cause data to leak from kernel memory—which is really not ideal since the kernel is central to operating systems and handles a bunch of sensitive…
It’s been just two days since The Register first reported that all Intel x86-64x processors were subject to a severe security vulnerability, and already Intel has been hit with at least three separate class action lawsuits related to the vulnerability. The Register first reported the news on January 2nd, noting that the solution to fixing…
Republicans in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use has been legal since 2012, weren’t prepared to put up with Attorney General Jeff Sessions today. Even if they were, their constituents wouldn’t stand for it. After news spread Thursday that Sessions was prepared to rescind an Obama-era policy, known as the Cole Memo, that helped pave the…
My smartphone is a sassy Australian woman, and my alarm clock is a nice American woman. When I turn on a new Windows laptop another cheery woman asks me if I’d like to set up Cortana. When I drive, it’s yet another woman that tells me to turn left. And when I’m cooking in the…
You know the drill: when it snows on America’s East coast, everyone else has to read endless explanations of “weather bombs” and “polar vortices,” regardless of where on Earth they live. But you have to admit, this thing looks amazing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES satellite snapped this picture of winter storm Grayson…
A police department in Britain has started using Amazon’s Alexa to broadcast daily briefings in people’s homes, with the longterm goal of making the smart assistant a key part of the police force. “The work that we’re doing now is first and foremost our ability to push out information to the public that they may…
To the best of our knowledge, we humans can only experience this world in three spatial dimensions (plus one time dimension): up and down, left and right, and forward and backward. But in two physics labs, scientists have found a way to represent a fourth spatial dimension. This isn’t a fourth dimension that you can…
Despite its best efforts, Microsoft’s Groove Music service never really caught on. So back in October, Microsoft shut the service down and told its users to switch to Spotify. Unfortunately, that decision had some unintended consequences for Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana, which relied on Groove Music’s library to help people identify songs. This change was…
The little pocket supercomputers we all constantly carry around with us aren’t just supplying us with useful information, they’re also collecting a host of data on us and our habits, all of the time. Here’s a guide to what gets collected by your smartphone and the apps running on it, and how you can take…
Stool transplants are exactly what they sound like: moving poop from a healthy person into a sick person, perhaps via a pill or an enema. I bring this up because most people cringe at the idea—but they’re a treatment proven effective for some antibiotic-resistant infections caused by the Clostridium difficile, or C. diff bacteria, which…
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know that he’s not just the guy running a social network that knows way too much about you and has an unbridled misinformation problem. He’s also a guy with a life outside of the machine! Since 2009, Zuckerberg has set out “to learn something new” each year. And today he…
Aadhaar, India’s massive biometric database, is facing new allegations of compromise after local journalists reported paying the equivalent of $8 in Indian rupees for full administrative access. With nearly 1.2 billion assigned numbers, the Aadhaar program, launched in 2009, is the largest national database of people in the world. The unique 12-digit codes assigned to…
