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The folks at Neowin made an exciting discovery at E3 this week. Originally teased as an April Fools’ joke over a year ago, Hyperkin’s Smart Boy was not only on the show floor with an updated design this year, it was also fully-functional, with a possible official release closer to December. Designed to be a…
Amazon recently announced that the Alexa AI powering its Echo and other hardware has now learned 1,000 “skills” (up from just 135 in January). In case you’re not up to speed with all the new tricks, we’ve picked out 40 of our favorites—you can discover the other 960 yourself. Our previous Echo guide focused on…
Believe it or not, there really is more than one company using balloons to cover the world with wi-fi. Space Data Corp has sued Google, claiming that it stole the idea for Project Loon during a 2007 meeting. Apparently, Google had considered buying Space Data—which uses balloon technology to provide wireless for oil companies—almost a…
The father of a victim of the Paris terrorist attacks is suing Facebook, Twitter and Google for “knowingly” letting ISIS recruit on their platforms and even indirectly paying them through ad revenue. Reynaldo Gonzalez is the father of Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, a study-abroad student from California who was the only American that died in the…
Bolivia has rejected an “offensive” donation of 100,000 chickens from Bill Gates, saying the billionaire philanthropist should apologize for not knowing that Bolivia already has enough poultry. “How can he think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce?” said César Cocaric, the country’s minister of…
Once, emoji was just emoji. Now it’s another way for businesses to look into our souls—er, feeds—and see if we might like to buy something. Twitter is rolling out a new feature that lets advertisers target people who have tweeted a specific emoji. The social network, which hasn’t made a profit despite a decade of…
It’s always fun to melt your brain from what looks like the laws of physics breaking. Therefore, it’s always fun to see a pilot pour water up into a cup while upside down in a fighter jet. It’s something we’ve seen plenty before, but this view is especially cool. You get to see the entire…
Shanghai Disney Resort opened its gates to the public today, and in every single aspect it’s the crown jewel in a Disney Princess theme park tiara. But it wasn’t enough to build a $5.5 billion megapark that’s four times the size of Disneyland. Disney also used the opportunity to gain a greater foothold in China—which…
If you have ever attempted a life as a counterfeiter, or done a stupid school project where you tried to print your own money, you already know this: you can’t make a copy of any type of bill, no matter the denomination. For older bills, it was because of the Eurion constellation, which is an…
Tech-enthusiasts of the 1920s were obsessed with turning everything electric. They wanted electric mixing bowls, electric dishwashers, and even electric haircuts. It may seem like an obvious idea today, but back in the 1920s, an electric haircut was straight out of science fiction. The cover of the August 1923 issue of Practical Electrics magazine included…
If you still believe that a hand-written letter carries more emotional weight than an auto-generated response to a text message, these star-filled envelopes will even let you send an entire galaxy to your friends and loved ones—if they peer inside. Once they’ve neatly sliced off the end of the envelope (not torn it to shreds)…
The macOS 10.12 beta is now available to developers, and we’ve just spent a day testing out all the new features. Here are our first impressions of Apple’s new desktop operating system that will power Macs for at least the next year. The most noticeable update to Apple’s desktop OS is the addition of Siri.…
The results of a FDA inspection into a Whole Foods prep kitchen—which mixes up those ready-to-eat meals and snacks perfect for an impulse buy—have been revealed. Prepare to be nauseated. The agency released a copy of the warning letter it sent to Whole Foods about the sorry state of a prep kitchen that makes the…
Dialogue is not exactly cinematic. It’s just people talking to each other, and it’s not always fun to watch either, since it’s often just words spewed to further the plot. But what makes some dialogue scenes so much better than others? Is it good dialogue like a real conversation? Nope. Dialogue should seem real on…
Since 2011 the FBI has used facial recognition software to identify people during criminal investigations. The agency combs through a database of over 411 million photos, including everything from mugshots to driver’s licenses. Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that’s critical of the technology. The GAO is concerned about not only the…
Six months after researchers in China bioengineered monkeys to have autism, a Japanese team of scientists has used the same technology to create monkeys with Parkinson’s. It’s a scientific first, and it could lead to effective treatments—but do the ends justify the means? As reported in New Scientist, a team led by Hideyuki Okano from…
Update 6/15/16 1:30 p.m.: Another woman, Isis Lovecruft, who is a staff developer at the Tor project, has accused Appelbaum of sexual assault. We’ve added her statement at the bottom of this story. Another woman has accused ex-Tor Project developer Jacob Appelbaum of sexual assault. This comes after Appelbaum recently stepped down from the Tor…
Drinking from a canteen’s spout is fine when you’re just rehydrating after a hike. But once camp is set up, you’ll probably be drinking something other than water, and that’s where this canteen from the Stable Goods Co. really shines. Flip it over, remove the bottom, and suddenly you’ve got a wide-mouthed pint glass. Even…
The ideal navigation system automatically knows where you want to go, and the fastest route to get you there, with minimal button pushing. And with a new feature called Regular Routes that memorizes your most-driven destinations, Volkswagen’s nav units move one step closer to that dream. Now that GPS navigation systems are a standard feature…
A computer technician who works for Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers leak, has been detained in Geneva on suspicion that he recently stole large amounts of data from the firm, French newspaper Le Temps reported. The Panama Papers, a 2.9 terabyte leak of files by an anonymous person…
