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On Thursday, New York City voted to criminalize revenge porn. That means the nonconsensual dissemination of intimate photos and videos online is now a misdemeanor offense in the city and is punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to one year in jail. The legislation was introduced last year by Council Members Rory I. Lancman…
An alliance of more than 50 civil liberties groups and more than 50 individual AI experts sent dual letters to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday, calling for the end of a plan to screen immigrants with predictive “extreme vetting” software. In a separate petition also launched today, several groups specifically urged IBM not…
Still having a hard time finding a Nintendo Switch? The hunt’s only going to get harder now that the holidays are here, but why add to your pre-Christmas stresses when you can just build your own playable version of Super Mario out of cardboard, and save yourself hundreds of dollars? In addition to cardboard, a…
New observations of nearby pulsars—lighthouse-like neutron stars beaming energy—seem to have deepened a mystery that’s been bugging scientists for around a decade. The Earth is being hit with too much antimatter from outer space, and no one is sure why. Super high-energy radiation from outer space bombards this planet daily. These “cosmic rays” can have…
Need to run downstairs to fetch the laundry? Or maybe there’s a phone call you just have to take? Life with a baby can make even the smallest chores feel like a herculean task if you don’t have a nanny. But it turns out, if you keep your floors clean using a robot, maybe you…
A new online service was launched Thursday morning to keep your browsing habits out of the hands of marketers and help you automatically avoid millions of malicious websites. The new Domain Name System (DNS) service offered by Quad9—a nonprofit founded by IBM Security, Packet Clearing House (PCH), and The Global Cyber Alliance—is free to use…
As the Galaxy Note 8 and iPhone X push phone prices higher than they’ve ever been before, the line between flagship and midrange phones have become so blurry that those terms don’t mean much anymore. But now, OnePlus is back with an upgraded version of the OnePlus 5, and it might help us rebalance this…
On Wednesday, auction records were shattered when an anonymous buyer spent $450.3 million to be the proud owner of a “long lost” painting “by” Leonardo da Vinci. The thing is, it may not have even been painted by Leonardo, it’s in terrible shape, it’s not especially good, and in the financial world of art, none…
Who delivers Amazon orders? Increasingly, it’s plainclothes contractors with few labor protections, driving their own cars, competing for shifts on the company’s own Uber-like platform. Though it’s deployed in dozens of cities and associated with one of the world’s biggest companies, government agencies and customers alike are nearly oblivious to the program’s existence. In terms…
Through the lens of a talented photographer, familiar scenes can be turned on their heads, fooling your eyes into seeing something completely different. In this video, it looks like Lars Leber captured the ocean as waves churned up a blanket of sea foam, but in reality it’s a long timelapse of clouds slowly rolling through…
Well, this is it. We’ve finally gotten to the point where observing two black holes slamming together, possibly the most way-out physics-based idea one could wrap their head around, has become “routine.” How did we get here? The LIGO Scientific Collaboration has announced the observation of another pair of colliding black holes from June 8,…
Late Wednesday, the official Twitter Support account announced big changes to the murky rules concerning which accounts get verified with a bright blue check mark on the site, and which don’t. The new guidelines come just a week after it verified Jason Kessler, the organizer behind August’s deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. After facing…
President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to reverse a Barack Obama-era ban on the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia to the U.S., ABC News reported on Wednesday, in a remarkably petty attack on rules intended to protect species registered under the Endangered Species Act. According to ABC News, a U.S. Fish and…
Anthony Levandowski is the artificial intelligence whiz at the heart of the nasty legal dispute between Waymo and Uber. Following his unceremonious firing from Uber, he’s been keeping himself busy by founding a church based on the idea of worshipping a future AI deity. As he shares more details about his philosophy, we have to…
We’ve looked at a lot of different time capsules over the years. And quite frankly, most are incredibly boring. But they don’t have to be. There are two ways to combat the scourge of Boring Capsules. The first method to ensure that future generations won’t be bored to tears by your capsule creation is to…
The White House on Wednesday revealed a 14-page document outlining the process the US government uses to determine how and when it tells private companies about security flaws; or conversely, under what circumstances it refrains from doing so. It is known as the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP). The purpose of the process, established under the…
In an infamous Twitter meme that misquotes Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan, naked, blue, and seated in a crater alone on Mars, says: “I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.” He’s a perfect candidate for Windows 10 Mixed Reality, Microsoft approach to virtual…
Did you actually read all the works you cited in your high school and college papers? If not, you’re probably not the only one. Because a non-existent paper seems to have been cited over four hundred times by supposedly reputable research. Leiden University professor Pieter Kroonenberg found the “phantom reference” in a nonexistent journal while…
When it acquired Whole Foods in August, Amazon said that Prime members would eventually get “special savings and in-store benefits” at the grocery stores, and the company just announced the first one: It’s for turkey! For Thanksgiving! A whole 20 percent off (non-organic) birds! If you’re a member of Amazon Prime, all you have to…
Mozilla’s new Firefox Quantum browser launched on Wednesday, and there’s a lot to like about it. One change you might notice right away is that it now defaults to the Google search engine instead of Yahoo. Mozilla is framing this as doing the right thing for its users, but in reality, it may just be…
