Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Big fans of the cloud as we are, there’s no doubt relying solely on keeping your stuff stored remotely is a risky strategy. Accounts get hacked. Companies fold. And if you don’t have backups of your most precious Snapchats and Gmails, then they can disappear in a puff of data center smoke. Here’s how to…
Sometimes, we humans let our dumb values prevent us from taking biological realities seriously. Take pooping, for example: People have decided pooping is gross, even though it’s a thing that most of us do literally every day. Now, some scientists think that even cannibalism is worth another hard look. Cannibalism naturally occurs in lots of…
Elon Musk just announced the launch of a new website, x.com. The billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX made the announcement on Twitter at 1:21am Pacific time this morning. But so far there isn’t much to look at. The website is just a single letter X. Musk formerly owned x.com when he was a co-founder…
Microscopic tardigrades, also known as “water bears,” are the toughest animals on the planet, capable of withstanding intense radiation, extreme temperatures, and even the vacuum of space. In a fascinating new study, researchers have shown that tardigrades are poised to survive literally anything that nature throws at them—and that of the animals alive today, they’ll…
Taking selfies with art is an entire photographic subgenre unto itself. So, when an exhibition is touted as a “series of wondrous, over-the-top sets for the perfect selfie,” why wouldn’t you pull out your camera and a snap a pic for the ‘gram? This is why. The video below was taken at a group show…
On July 4th, AlphaBay Market went down and scared the hell out of users. One of, if not the most popular destination for illicit goods on the dark net, the site took over Silk Road’s throne after its founder was arrested. According to a new report, AlphaBay has suffered the same fate and international authorities…
On Wednesday, during an off the record chat aboard Air Force One, Trump used his revival of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines as an example of how he’s not Putin’s puppet. In what seems likely to be a new method of handling/editing Trump’s public remarks, the White House released excerpts from the transcript…
A former Congressional staffer has been indicted on charges of cyberstalking after allegedly distributing nude pictures and videos of a member of the US House of Representatives and her husband, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. Juan McCullum worked as a legislative assistant to Delegate Stacey Plaskett, a non-voting Democratic delegate for the Virgin Islands.…
Samsung’s refurbished Galaxy Note 7, aka the Note Fan Edition, was announced last month. But instead of excitement, everyone had one question in mind: Will it also explode? Upon the announcement, it wasn’t clear what parts on the Note FE would be new and which would be old. The main concern was the potential reuse…
This week marked a major milestone in medicine: On Wednesday, a Food and Drug Administration panel unanimously recommended the approval of the first CAR-T therapy, a pioneering new cancer drug from Novartis that genetically engineers a patient’s own white blood cells to recognize and attack the cancer cells invading their body. The headlines were emphatic.…
Bears, they’re just like us. And I’m not referring to a subset of hairy humans, but to some furry critters in Wisconsin whose diets contain a staggering amount of junk food. Seriously! There’s a reason for their sugary diet. This population of bears in Wisconsin lives by the law—hunters can feed them bait for up…
Earth’s magnetic field does way more than guide our compasses and cause occasional worry. It’s part of the reason there’s life at all on this planet—it protects us from harmful solar radiation that might otherwise blow our ozone layer away. But there’s still a lot about the magnetic field scientists don’t understand. Most importantly, they’re…
Under capitalism, money imprisons us all, but for one man in Corpus Christi, Texas, this arrangement transcended mere metaphor recently. On Wednesday afternoon, the contractor (whose name has not been released) was fixing a lock in a room connected to a Bank of America ATM when, suddenly, he trapped himself in. Having left his phone…
New research shows that ravens can plan ahead for different types of events, and even resist the urge to take an immediate reward in favor of getting a better one in the future. These capacities are often considered the exclusive domain of humans and great apes, so their presence in birds comes as a surprise.…
Remember when encrypting stuff was really hard? It kinda drives me crazy to think about how much time I wasted trying to set up encrypted OTR chat on Adium a few years ago, and now we can just download Signal or WhatsApp or Messenger and bam! Our chats are encrypted, just like that. We can…
Virtual reality is cool and all, but it won’t really become mainstream until a) it’s affordable and b) it doesn’t require a $1,000+ gaming PC. But it seems Facebook is attempting yet again to make VR a thing. Facebook is creating a new Oculus VR headset that’s not only untethered, but also cheap, according to…
Do you deliberately avoid visiting friends who live in multi-story buildings without an elevator? No one would fault you—having to climb even just a single flight of stairs is like being forced to workout against your will. But thanks to engineers at Georgia Tech and Emory University, stairs might one day do all the hard…
An Airbnb host near Big Bear, California, who cancelled reservations last-minute and blamed the user’s ethnicity, must now take an Asian American studies course and pay $5,000. “I wouldn’t rent it to u if u were the last person on earth,” “One word says it all. Asian,” and “It’s why we have trump… I will…
“Old” is a very relative term when talking about computer history. By the looks of it, however, Radiohead hid a computer program on the tape that comes with the 20th anniversary edition of OK Computer, and making it work feels like time travel. That’s because you’ll need an ‘80s-era, 8-bit British computer, the ZX Spectrum,…
Many animals are good at healing us emotionally, like capybaras and tiny kittens in tiny hats. Regrettably though, if we got really sick, no amount of golden retriever puppies could do anything to help us. Komodo dragons, on the other hand, might not be “adorable” in the traditional sense, but they could save us from…
