Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Unsurprisingly, the latest AI advancement in body camera technology comes no closer to increasing police accountability or officer transparency. As the public’s push for body cameras has died down, tech companies are now making their own appeal for body cameras to the police departments that buy them: offering sharper, smarter surveillance. On Monday, Motorola Solutions…
Films like Jurassic Park have led us to believe that Tyrannosaurus rex was capable of chasing down its prey at full tilt. New research done with simulations suggest this dino was no sprinter, and that it couldn’t move any faster than a brisk walk. Well, a brisk walk for a nine ton carnivore. At a…
As Sega’s Hail Mary pass on hardware, the Dreamcast wasn’t exactly the miracle the company prayed for. But the long-dead console still has a massive fanbase, as a clever hacker who managed to port the infinitely addictive Flappy Bird to the Dreamcast’s interactive memory card recently demonstrated. The VMU, or Visual Memory Unit, was an…
Things have been looking bleak at Google Fiber for a while now. The burgeoning internet service provider lost one chief executive late last year, and this week, it lost another one. Greg McCray, who took the helm of Google Fiber only five months ago, just stepped down. The reasons why are unclear, but they appear…
Do not try this at home. Concerned OnePlus 5 users have been reporting online that they’re having difficulties making 911 calls. It’s unclear if all OnePlus 5 models suffer from the same troubling glitch, but at least three users have claimed to have the bug on their device. Owners of the new phone posted on…
Galaxy magazine was a pulpy, science fiction paradise from 1950 to 1980, publishing some of the most important futuristic voices of the 20th century—to say nothing of the amazing cover illustrations. And you can read hundreds of issues from its heyday online, all thanks to Archive.org. The magazines have been online for a few years…
Australian Senator Larissa Waters recently went viral after she made history by becoming the first woman to breastfeed in the country’s Parliament. But Waters resigned today after it was revealed that she has dual citizenship in Australia and Canada, a breach of Australia’s constitution for sitting senators. Waters, a member of Australia’s Green Party, became…
A goat that was extremely bored, ornery, or both decided to smash in the front door of polyurethane manufacturer Argonics Inc.’s Colorado office this weekend, and the mystery may have gone unsolved were it not for the company’s surveillance system. Argonics uploaded video to YouTube of the goat’s July 16 rampage on Monday, writing its…
Amazon is an unstoppable beast, consuming all industries that are ripe for disruption and unfortunate enough to cross its path. On Monday, its latest victim was the struggling food delivery service Blue Apron. https://gizmodo.com/whole-foods-employees-must-be-shitting-their-pants-righ-1796274910 Following Amazon’s bombshell announcement of an agreement to acquire the Whole Foods grocery chain for $13.7 billion, stock prices for competitors…
Malfunctioning Dalek and British Prime Minister Theresa May, fresh off of securing the support of the far-right Democratic Unionist Party, has reportedly set a timetable for her government’s plan to force all porn sites operating in the U.K. to check the ages of its users. According to Ars Technica UK, by April 2018, May’s government…
Cloudflare and Credo Mobile today lost their fight to speak publicly about the National Security Letters they and other tech companies receive, which demand user data and frequently forbid companies from ever disclosing the demands to their users. The two companies received NSLs from the FBI in 2011 and 2013, requiring them to secretly disclose…
Around 50,000 residents of Zambia’s Western province were without electricity on Sunday, after a baboon wandered into a power station and fiddled with the equipment. Incredibly, the baboon managed to survive the incident. As Africa News reports, the blackout affected homes and businesses in Livingstone, a popular tourist town near Victoria Falls, and the surrounding…
Remember Myspace? Yeah, it’s still a thing. And for months, the social network reportedly had a security flaw that made it ridiculously easy to hack into any profile with just a date of birth. Security researcher Leigh-Anne Galloway first reported the flaw on her blog Monday morning. She said she’s been trying to get Myspace…
Last week, Twitter’s security team purged nearly 90,000 fake accounts after outside researchers discovered a massive botnet peddling links to fake “dating” and “romance” services. The accounts had already generated more than 8.5 million posts aimed at driving users to a variety of subscription-based scam websites with promises of—you guessed it—hot internet sex. The bullshit…
Building a robot that can replicate everything a human can do is both impossibly complicated and expensive. So, researchers at the IT University of Copenhagen are taking the exact opposite approach: building incredibly simple robots, on-demand, that only do what humans can’t. In a paper recently published to the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters journal,…
Winnie the Pooh, the adorable cartoon bear with an obsession for honey, has been censored in China. It’s all apparently due to a meme that makes fun of President Xi Jinping. Specifically, social media mentions and images of Winnie the Pooh have been blocked in the country, according to the Guardian. Stickers of the yellow…
I’m not scared to say it: I love a good Subway sandwich. My dad used to take me to the only Subway in town after we went grocery shopping, and I remember tracking my growth based on how much of the toppings I could see over the tall counter. Now, it seems, Subway wants to…
Some songs stick to your soul like ectoplasm. Whether you’re at the club or Chuck E. Cheese, sometimes you hear a certain song that brings you back to a moment in your life you’d forgotten. Good music is fun but ephemeral—the best music stays with you forever, sometimes a little too long. Seriously, stop buying…
In a world seemingly intent on destroying itself, the humble capybara is a wholesome good. The oversized friendship guinea pig is a reminder of what humanity could achieve if we stopped yelling at each other on the internet. That’s why this week on Animals Are Good, we’re celebrating the world’s largest—and chillest—rodent, the capybara. Capybaras…
These days, the folks at Fox News are outraged by even the possibility of someone getting doxxed. But they didn’t have such high standards back in the early 2000s. In fact, back in 2003, the network posted the unlisted home phone number of a rival TV host on its website until he apologized for saying…