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Commercial interruptions just will not die. The birth of streaming television has given us a merciful respite from the mind-numbing ad breaks that finance broadcast TV. But you can’t keep a bad thing down, and Amazon is reportedly developing an ad-supported, free version of its popular Prime video service. Citing several “executives familiar with the…
What if, instead of frantically trying to find a power outlet when your smartphone is about to die, you simply had to hold it in your hand and scroll through Instagram for a while? That’s the future the Matrix PowerWatch teases, because it’s able to charge itself using nothing but the warmth of your body.…
A DC judge has ordered the Justice Department to limit the scope of three search warrants targeting Facebook accounts of anti-Trump activists who’ve drawn the federal government’s ire. The government was sharply criticized by privacy advocates after serving the dragnet warrants, two of which target political activists Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour. A third warrant…
In preparation for this week’s UN Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, Switzerland, the Future of Life Institute has released a disturbing sci-fi short that shows what might happen if we fail to place an international moratorium on autonomous killing machines. Currently, drones employed by the US military require humans to stay in the loop,…
Facebook has been on a mission to stamp out the spread of misinformation and propaganda since last November, after reports first began to shed light on the role that social media played in the US election. But the fact-checkers the company has relied on don’t seem to have much faith in the tech giant’s plan…
Uber has struck a multi-billion dollar deal led by investment companies Softbank and Dragoneer. The agreement will not only give SoftBank a major stake in Uber—it is looking to buy up at least 14% of the company—but it will help put a rest to one of the many ongoing battles for new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.…
It’s nice to have a job, and it’s nice to work in an office. Yet, as average guy Frank May expresses in a new YouTube video, the workplace comes with frustrations, too. In May’s case, it’s a too-fancy water machine that costs his company $1,000 a year and does nothing right. The machine in question…
Australia’s most populous city is getting a new fleet of inner harbor ferries, one of which, due to an online naming poll, will be Ferry McFerryface. Why should we have expected any less? The internet’s commitment to the [thing]y Mc[thing]face construction has been steadfast so far, beginning in 2016 with a British research vessel dubbed—under…
An international committee devoted to the future of particle accelerators has recommended that scientists halve the energy of the next big collider, according to a statement issued last week. The decision comes at a time when scientists worry they may not find any more new particles with the world’s present-day largest particle collider, the Large…
While Reddit sometimes overstates its value as a space for authentic conversations online, the massive community-driven website has served as a kind of town hall where everyone from everyone from Elon Musk and Barack Obama to a dildo manufacturer have responded to questions from completely un-vetted strangers. Sometimes it goes well. For Electronic Arts, the…
Google Assistant is keen on taking as big a role in your life as possible, and to that end Google keeps pouring new features into the app, whether it’s on your phone, your dinky smart speaker, your Pixelbook, or your Nvidia Shield. Here are 7 capabilities that the Assistant has been given that you might…
Within 20 to 40 years, sex will no longer be the preferred method of reproduction. Instead, half the population with decent health care will–no shitting you–have eggs grown from human skin and fertilized with sperm, then have the entire genome of about 100 embryo samples sequenced, peruse the highlights, and pick the best model to…
Soon, Android will finally let you monitor which apps use the most battery life on your phone. If you’re confused and thought you already had this functionality, you might be right! Some Android skins, like the one on the Galaxy S8, and some apps, like Greenify, already make it possible to detect which applications are…
Apple’s new Face ID security for the iPhone X has sparked a number of concerns, with the biggest being how secure the biometric system really is. The tech giant says that while the facial recognition system is intended for convenience rather than absolute security, it’s less vulnerable than its Touch ID predecessor—though testing has shown…
Numerous advertisers pulled out from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show this week after Hannity urged his viewers to treat claims Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually molested minors decades ago with entirely too much skepticism. Among them were Realtor.com, 23andMe, and ELOQUII, but most notable was Keurig, which makes an eponymous brand of single-serving coffee…
Hey! You know that that awful Twitter account run by the president? Yeah, the incredibly ominous one that’s managed to overshadow even the day-to-day chaos of his administration and might one day lead us to nuclear war? The one he used to thirstily neg North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un this weekend, for some reason?…
LinkedIn, one of the few Western internet companies with a large footprint in China, saw a major setback there this week when it removed its individual job-posting function under pressure from authorities, the New York Times reported. According to the Times report, new government regulations imposed after a wave of pyramid schemes resulted in a…
Mark Karpelès, the former chief of spectacularly failed Japanese Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, is on trial in Japan on charges he embezzled millions from the company before its collapse. He, Mt. Gox, and his current company Tibanne (which owns 88 percent of Mt. Gox) are all bankrupt. Yet Karpelès could still walk away with hundreds…
Maybe it’s happened to you. You’re cruising around YouTube and then boom: a video of Spiderman hanging out with girls in bikinis trying to make Elsa from Frozen jealous and then the Joker appears, ready to fight. This would seem like a weird video to any sane adult. But the weirdest thing is that it’s…
Ride-hailing apps like Uber, Lyft, and countless smaller startups are afforded access to information you might prefer other people didn’t know. In most cases, you’re providing explicit details concerning your whereabouts, as well as your destination. As long as that data stays private, it’s all gravy: You safely get home from the bar, the driver…
