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The never-ending scandals at Uber have reached a point of reckoning and according to multiple reports, the ride-sharing startup’s board will be making some major decisions today. Along with a review of the long-in-the-works report on harassment, it will reportedly consider a leave of absence for Travis Kalanick and a top executive is expected to…
Security research group Access Now has discovered a clever attack being used against influential social media users as a means of disseminating fake news. The “Doubleswitch” not only involves hijacking verified accounts but makes it extremely difficult for the legitimate owner to regain control of their handle. According to the report, activists and journalists in…
Most people know the “I’m not a robot” single-click version of CAPTCHA which is able to identify that a user is human by the way that they move their mouse. Researchers have now found a way to apply that principle to catching identity thieves in the act. https://gizmodo.com/google-has-finally-killed-the-captcha-1793190374 One of the biggest issues with identity…
When State Representative Ramon A. Perez says he didn’t mean to print a screenshot of a Wikipedia page with open porn tabs, we believe him. When he says that he didn’t realize the open porn tabs were visible when he handed out the page, we believe him. When he says that he didn’t personally take…
At the start of the week Apple showed off some of the upcoming features in macOS HIgh Sierra, but the company’s keynote by no means covered everything in the desktop OS update. We’ve been using the developer beta of macOS 10.13 for the last few days and scouring the web to uncover some of the…
Laws, the Trump administration doesn’t like them. They don’t like following the law, they don’t like the fact that laws impede their agenda, and they don’t like that they’re bad at getting laws passed. Now, Trump’s social media director has been informed that he’s violated the law with a tweet and there will be repercussions…
Technically E3, video games’ biggest trade show of the year, starts next Tuesday. That’s when the doors will open at Los Angeles Convention Center and over 500,000 attendees will swarm hundreds of booths filled with the latest video games, consoles, and gaming paraphernalia. But the event really starts Saturday night, when EA, one of the…
The fact that we all walk around with our heads down compulsively tapping on our phones is no longer even worthy of satire, it’s just a fact of life. Binky is an app that’s kind of like a social network that doesn’t connect you to anyone. It understands the banality of our mobile screen time…
At a White House press conference today, President Trump accused former FBI director James Comey of perjuring himself before the US Senate—a very serious charge—and further advanced the ridiculous charade that he can prove it all with secret “tapes” which almost certainly do not exist. After managing to stop tweeting for an entire day (hallelujah),…
Lots of species do some wild sex stuff. The purple stone crab is no exception: Females have seminal receptacles, a special organ that just holds and stores sperm for later. Researchers studying the purple stone crab’s female parts wanted to get a better look at these sperm holders. But they’re not just any sperm-holders. The…
By now it’s well documented that those tiny plastic microbeads used in face scrubs and toothpastes are contaminating lakes and oceans at an alarming rate. Starting next month they’ll be officially banned in the US for personal care products, but oily faces rejoice, eco-friendly replacements are already in the works. https://gizmodo.com/why-those-little-plastic-microbeads-in-your-soap-are-so-1588673783 A single bottle of…
In the early 20th century, seeking riches, fur and its medicinal qualities, the people of Europe hunted the Eurasian beaver to near extinction. Clever scientists, though, had an idea of how to atone for their sins. The North American beaver, at least from the outside, seemed nearly identical. They would introduce this far-flung cousin to…
After turning a hamster into a self-portrait artist and a bunch of inanimate rocks into a band, Neil Mendoza has created a bizarre contraption that lets goldfish finally extract revenge on the humans that have imprisoned them in tiny bowls for decades. Sort of. In five years, when goldfish have successfully overthrown most of humanity’s rule…
Whiskey tastes like warm poison. To be fair, if you add an ice cube to the mix, it tastes like chilly poison. Even my very nice mom, in her infinite wisdom, once described whiskey as “horrible shit.” Nevertheless, those who insist there is a difference between good and bad whiskey will be happy to know…
You do not mess with ravens. Because if you dupe them, they’ll remember. Or so says a team of Austrian and Swedish scientists. In a small study on captive-bred ravens, they found that the birds remembered when scientists tricked them out of getting a good treat. Such a study has important implications for understanding the…
Winter was setting in and some of Chelsea Manning’s most devoted followers began showing all the signs of doubt. Days before the 2016 election, the 28-year-old had tried for a second time in only a few months to end her own life. Manning’s supporters openly wondered whether she would survive the remainder of her sentence…
The Attorney General of California sent an 11-page letter to the Interior Department, vowing to fight an April executive order from Trump that could potentially resize or even revoke the protected status of six different monuments in the state. The executive order cleared Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, to review 26 national monuments across…
Yesterday, a New York state appeals court rejected an appeal filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) seeking legal rights for a pair of captive chimpanzees. It’s a major setback for the group, but the battle to secure human-like legal protections for highly intelligent and self-aware animals is far from over. Tommy and Kiko will…
Once again, Silicon Valley’s oligarchs have been summoned to Donald Trump’s golden table, this time to assist the Jared Kushner-led American Technology Council in “modernizing” the government, a goal which is at once vague and arguably antithetical to every promise the president ran on. The guest list includes the top brass of Facebook, IBM, Google,…
Xenon is a peculiar element. It certainly has one of the most mysterious names (from the Greek xenos, or “stranger”). As a noble gas, it refuses to bond with other elements except under exotic conditions. And its uses are all about as creepy as its name: Folks use it for its eerie glow, to detect…
