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For those who feel the merger between AT&T and Time Warner is a dangerous consolidation of media power, today is bittersweet. The Department of Justice has decided to go forward with a lawsuit to block the merger. But if reports that the suit is motivated by the Trump administration’s desire to punish CNN for its…
Oregon Governor Kate Brown, having apparently never used a chatroom in the ‘90s, declared November 20th to be a statewide “Day of Cyber.” While I would infer this to mean she wants everyone to wank to steamy AIM messages, the day is really meant to herald the launch of the Cyber Oregon Cybersecurity Awareness Initiative…
Citing “five sources with knowledge of the conversation,” Buzzfeed News reports that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called his commander-in-chief an “idiot” and a “dope” during a private dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz. Catz has had a notably close relationship with the Trump administration and denied the comments when asked by Buzzfeed. https://gizmodo.com/guy-in-charge-of-all-the-nukes-relax-im-not-gonna-let-1820579526 Catz,…
If you’ve ever seen an outdoor swimming pool between cleanings, then you’re well aware of the death trap that standing water can be for flying insects. Bees, grasshoppers, and flies all easily tumble into the chlorinated sea, only to find themselves drenched and unable to fly away. But one type of fly is both at…
Scientists know of 750,000 or so asteroids and comets—and all of them are part of this fine solar system. That is, all of them but one. And as new research shows, it’s weird as hell. Today, scientists are reporting their analysis of ‘Oumuamua, an interstellar object spotted last month. The oddly-shaped, fast-moving rock immediately surprised…
When the Apple Watch launched in 2015, Belle Gibson was touted by Apple as a star. Not only had Gibson supposedly cured her own cancer through healthy eating, she now had an app for both the iPhone and Apple Watch that could help others do the same. But now that her own cancer and “cure”…
Even with the hours of preamble as I shuffle through the airport to my gate, flying is still an amazing experience for me. But taking off in a commercial airliner isn’t anywhere near as magical as the way Jean-Baptiste Chandelier takes flight in this stylishly-edited new video, which makes paragliding look as close to being a…
Active on Google Play Store as recently as last Friday, a mobile banking trojan infected thousands of users who thought they downloading games or innocent-looking apps, according to research published by a trio of cybersecurity firms. The malware, known as BankBot, was concealed inside various flashlight and Solitaire apps, and was first detected by researchers…
Law enforcement officials investigating the Nov. 5 mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, have served Apple with a warrant for the data held on an iPhone SE used by the shooter. The warrant was served two days after a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said during a press conference that the agency…
Things seem to be looking up at Uber’s embattled self-driving car unit. The company just made a deal with Volvo for as many as 24,000 XC90 sport utility vehicles to be delivered between 2019 and 2021. Uber then plans to add its own driverless technology and unleash a fleet of robo-taxis onto the world. It…
Bug bounty programs are indispensable tools for finding security vulnerabilities and are used by major tech companies like Google and Microsoft. Following an order from the US Army for personnel to stop using DJI drones due to security issues, the company launched its own bug bounty program. Now, one researcher says he found an incredible…
A building implosion is a one-time thing; once a structure has been razed, there’s no resetting for a take two. That’s why The Weather Channel set up its livestream camera of the Georgia Dome’s demolition over half an hour before the first scheduled kaboom—except it forgot to double-check the local bus schedule. Mere seconds after…
Archer Lars Andersen doesn’t post a lot of videos to his YouTube channel. But when he does, it’s to show off a mind-melting new trick he’s mastered, like getting arrows to change direction mid-flight so that he can hit targets hidden behind obstacles that he can’t actually see. This would have undoubtedly been a useful…
When you hear something is chock-full of antioxidants, the mental conclusion is often: That’s it—that’s the elixir of life, I have to eat a lot of that. But why do we all assume that loading up on anti-oxidants will somehow be the key to infinite youth? This week, news outlets reported on a new study…
Amateur life-risker Joerg Sprave has successfully built custom slingshots capable of firing everything from bowling balls, to Christmas trees, to lethal Lego bricks. His latest creation, a slingshot that can launch full-size swords, is as ludicrous-sounding as it is awesome to see in action. Sprave’s slingshots are mostly built from wood, but the giant elastics…
To be a giraffe among giraffes, or a pigeon among pigeons, is to live at all times in that scene from Being John Malkovich—a world in which everyone you know looks pretty much exactly like you. However wondrously varied the animal kingdom might be, on a species-level its residents tend to look more similar than…
At least some delivery workers for Instacart, a so-called gig economy app that dispatches an army of shoppers and drivers to deliver groceries and other supplies directly from retail stores to customers, have launched a two-day strike from Sunday to Monday in protest of what they claim are abusive working conditions and pay rates below…
There’s a popular conception that whatever you post online lives eternal—and while it’s probably true, the reality is that for most people hitting that delete button is usually sufficient to at least hide an embarrassing post from prying family, friends, and potential employers. Anyone who’s ever been on Facebook or sent a tweet knows the…
Earlier this year, remotely piloted robots transmitted what officials believe was a direct view of melted radioactive fuel inside Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s destroyed reactors—a major discovery, but one that took a long and painful six years to achieve. In the meantime, the program to clean up the destroyed reactors has seen numerous setbacks…
The U.S. military’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is one of the most existentially terrifying arsenals ever assembled, and a conflict involving the detonation of even small percentage of those weapons could potentially destabilize the entire world. With a commander-in-chief who has shown a fairly incredible misunderstanding of how nuclear strategy works as well as a…
