Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Would more Nazis and terrorists on social media make our internet more free? FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, speaking Tuesday at a panel on the “future of internet freedom,” asked and answered this question in staunchly libertarian terms, calling out YouTube, Facebook and Twitter’s purported double standards against conservatives and identifying them as the “actual threat”…
Because jumping off a mountain with just a pair of thin fabric wings underneath your arms isn’t already dangerous enough, professional wingsuit flyers Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet decided to do that and then try and land inside an airborne plane, using a side door that was just a few feet from the aircraft’s spinning…
Karim Baratov, the 23-year-old Canadian man implicated in the hacking of 500 million Yahoo accounts, pleaded guilty to multiple charges in a California court today. Baratov pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, and eight counts of aggravated identity theft. He could face up to 20 years in prison…
Stand down, fierce citizens. Google has fixed its beer emoji. The beer icons that were once half empty but confusingly topped with froth are now full. Oh and those un-American burger emoji with cheese on the bottom bun? The cheese is now on top. The updated emoji are included in the forthcoming Android 8.1 release.…
Up until this month, revenge porn wasn’t criminalized in New York City, and there are still 11 states without laws criminalizing the unwanted distribution of private images. But on Tuesday, four US Senators introduced a revenge porn bill, titled ENOUGH, the Ending Nonconsensual Online User Graphic Harassment Act. The bill was introduced by Senators Kamala…
In software, there are bugs, and there are dangerous bugs. It looks like macOS High Sierra has one of those dangerous bugs; one that could give someone full access to virtually any user account. And holy buckets, it is scary. Update 11.29.2017 – Apple released a patch. Here’s how to install it. Turkish software developer…
Impressed with the new spit and polish of Firefox Quantum? Or ready to return to the warm embrace of Safari? We now carry so much of our digital lives around with us in our browsers that switching isn’t all that straightforward—here’s how to make sure you take everything with you when you jump from one…
Who lives on the ground in the world of The Jetsons? Homeless people and walking birds. This isn’t a fan theory. This is canon. Fight me. Whenever I see jokes about The Jetsons on Twitter (and there are a lot of good ones) people inevitably float fan theories about the show. Some people believe that…
US District Judge William Alsup, who is presiding over Waymo’s trade secret theft lawsuit against Uber, announced today that the trial, which was set to begin next week, will be delayed as the court tries to determine whether Uber withheld crucial evidence. Waymo, the self-driving car company spun out of Google’s moonshot unit, has accused…
A battered wooden fishing vessel containing eight partially skeletonized bodies washed ashore in northern Japan over the weekend. Disturbingly, it’s just the latest in a string of similar “ghost ships” that seem to be coming from North Korea. At the moment, it’s unclear how long the boat had been floating in the Sea of Japan…
At this point, anyone pretending to know what the ceiling is on Bitcoin should be considered no more reliable than a palm reader. On Tuesday, the trading price of the most prominent cryptocurrency hit $10,000 for the first time. And that nice round number will almost certainly have the kind of psychological effect that brings…
If you had access to a crash test facility, whenever you weren’t smashing cars you’d probably be spending all of your free time thinking of other things you could launch at a wall at 120 miles per hour. Like toys, which the good people at Switzerland’s Dynamic Test Center did, and were kind enough to film…
Kickstarter revealed the Amorphous Blob responsible for eating its old logo eight days ago. Eight! And hardly anybody has noticed. The Globby Thing, dark greenish-blue and oozy, was created by New York design studio Order and type designer Jesse Ragan, and it has perched atop the crowdfunding site for more than a week, seemingly overlooked…
A trove of US military data, described by security researchers as being “highly sensitive,” was reportedly unearthed on a publicly accessible Amazon server two months ago. The data apparently lacked even the basic protection offered by a password. The leak, a portion of which is said to have exposed internal data and virtual systems pertaining…
These days, it’s no surprise to hear about primates controlling a robotic arm with their brains—even paralyzed humans have done it. But how would a brain need to adapt if one of the limbs was missing? New research from scientists at several US universities hooked some rhesus monkeys up to a robot arm-controlling brain-machine interface.…
With all the data that’s constantly sent and received by our phones, there’s been an ever-increasing focus on combating viruses, malware, and other online attacks, to the point that we sometimes forget what’s going on in the real world. But good physical security is still one of the most important things when it comes to…
Looking for a creepy and unsettling way to start your morning? No? Well, too bad, you probably shouldn’t have clicked on this story because the hyper-realistic CG experiments in Simon Christoph Krenn’s short film, Parasitic Endeavours, are going to leave you feeling a little disturbed. WARNING: NSFW VIDEO BELOW The CG heads and twisted human…
If you don’t have access to a proper recycling facility, a talented blacksmith who goes by shurap on YouTube has found another way to recycle old batteries by turning them into a gorgeous Damascus-steel knife that also uses a recycled Maglite flashlight for its handle. A word of caution, however. When foraging for metal inside…
YouTube says that it’s removed ads from some 2 million videos and over 50,000 channels that featured disturbing content aimed at kids. Some of that content actually exploited children in videos. And while we’ve long known that YouTube struggles to keep bad stuff off of its platform, the fact that tens of thousands of channels…
The Department of Justice has charged three Chinese nationals with allegedly hacking into the email account of an “influential economist” working for Moody’s Analytics, as well as stealing secrets from German engineering firm Siemens AG and GPS manufacturer Trimble, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to the Journal account, the individual widely rumored to be…
