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Reuters has a new interview with Donald Trump that has its fair share of terrifying moments. Like when Trump says that he misses his old life and thought that being president “would be easier.” Or when Trump says that a “major, major” conflict with North Korea is possible. But the most jarring moment might be…
President Trump will give a speech at the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering in Atlanta later today. The NRA has fought tirelessly to make sure that gun owners can take their guns anywhere. But ironically, conference attendees won’t be able to hold onto the rock-hard steel of their sensuous guns as they watch Donald Trump’s…
The Matrix is one of those movies that’s tough to see with a fresh pair of eyes. Not only is it the kind of film that burns itself into your memory but the subsequent sequels were so messy that it’s easy to forget just how tight the storytelling in the first film is. One of…
Donald Trump’s first 100 days are up tomorrow and he needs to accomplish something other than appointing a supreme court justice to a stolen seat. Because he can’t get any legislation passed, he’s going to settle for his old fallback: signing an executive order. This time, the order will pave the way for America to…
Travis Kalanick’s “brother from another mother,” Anthony Levandowski, has officially stepped down from leading Uber’s self-driving car division. Levandowski is a key player in a lawsuit filed by his former employer, Google, that claims he stole tech that Uber is incorporating into its cars. This isn’t a minor legal proceeding. It could prove to be…
The future of Windows computers could soon be worn on your face. Today, at a special media event in New York City, we got our hands on the first Windows 10 “mixed reality headset” from Acer. The device is only a developer kit for now, but it’s expected to be commercially available by the holiday…
Back in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “quite proud of the impact that we were able to have on civic discourse,” doubling down on his stance that the rise of misinformation, spread of outright propaganda, and rapid erosion of trust in the fourth estate were anyone’s problems but his. A whitepaper from…
Yesterday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plan to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order, which prevented internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or prioritizing certain traffic, and reclassified providers as “common carriers.” Up to that moment, Pai had kept reasonably quiet about how he planned to dismantle net neutrality, saying only that he favored…
The next time you complain about spending thousands of dollars on a precision camera lens, stop and think about all the all hard work that went into its design and creation. As camera maker Mats Wernersson reveals, were you to make a lens yourself, you’d be spending days ensuring every last component was flawless. In…
At altitudes of 15,000 feet, Tibetans live in environments that would incapacitate most humans. New research has uncovered several genetic mutations that appear to be responsible for these high-altitude superpowers—including a trait inherited from an extinct human species. Geneticist Chad Huff of the University of Texas, along with colleagues, have uncovered variants of five distinct…
Back in August, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a bunch of films held by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). We looked at one yesterday from 1976 about nuclear extortion, and we’ll explore the others in the coming weeks. But there was one that I requested that the NNSA can’t…
Yesterday the Department of Homeland Security launched a new hotline to “assist victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens.” The resulting “fuck you!” from average Americans was swift and hilarious. Less than a day into its pitiful existence, the VOICE hotline has been rendered unusable by tipsters claiming to have seen criminal aliens of the…
An unprecedented collaboration involving 20 countries, 75 institutions, and over 250 marine geologists has yielded a new atlas that’s providing our best glimpse yet of the seafloor at both polar regions of the planet. The images are of significant scientific value, but they’re also quite beautiful. It’s called the Atlas of Submarine Glacial Landforms, and…
The smart speakers are coming! Wandering into our living rooms, listening for our voice commands, pulling random bits of trivia from the web, spitting out weather forecasts, and controlling a growing number of home appliances. But they’re always listening and currently there isn’t an easy to way to know when they aren’t (apart from hitting…
On Thursday, United Airlines released a list of “substantial changes” to its policies after gruesome video of an elderly man being brutally dragged from a United Airlines plane went viral. The changes are largely pointless PR (“additional training” and a new “customer solutions team”), but a few seem in direct response to the incident earlier…
Barack Obama may have been the first president with a Twitter account, but Donald Trump will definitely be remembered by history as the first social media president. President Trump tweets morning, day, and night—eliciting plenty of love from his supporters and torrents of hate from his detractors. But Trump’s constant tweets have presented a new…
Have you seen this screenshot from an old episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy? It shows Nye with the caption, “Gender is determined by your chromosomes.” Alt-right social media users have been posting it because Nye recently said that gender is on a spectrum. But the old image is completely fake. The screenshot has…
With its Creators Update for Windows 10, Microsoft promised that users would have the option to postpone future updates for a limited period of time and many rejoiced. But now that the update has started rolling out, it’s become apparent that there are still some stability issues and performing a manual installation isn’t recommended right…
“It sounds impossible but it’s closer than you may realize,” Facebook’s Regina Dugan recently told audience members at the F8 developer conference. Dugan was referring to the social network’s plans to read users’ thoughts. Just in time to inject some practical considerations into that terrifying scenario, researchers have proposed four new human rights to protect…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love Juicero. I love this dumb, insanely over-engineered, $400 juice squeezing machine that works marginally better than using your own hands. And it turns out I may share that passion with the nation’s First Daughter, Ivanka Trump. As pointed out by several Twitter users, in…
