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Listen to Miss Alabama (second-place Miss USA!) share her expertise on American Freedoms and why they needed to be erased with wholesale surveillance of phone calls and texts, so that she can feel more safe when going “to the movies” or “to the mall,” in Alabama. Donald Trump’s tacky annual television show always supplies plenty…
Digg’s RSS reader begins rolling out next week. Everyone should have access by June 26, which is great timing in light of Google Reader shutting down July 1.
Answering The Guardian readers’ questions, Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that more details are coming no matter what happens to him: “All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.” https://gizmodo.com/nsa-surveillance-scandal-feds-shut-down-snowdens-secu-511588927
Watson may have been able to trounce a pair of Jeopardy champs, but it can’t hold a candle to the new king of number crunching, the 3.12 million-core Tianhe-2. Built by China’s National University of Defense Technology at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, the Tianhe-2 supercomputer runs on a proprietary Linux build. The system…
Just when you thought that mankind’s genius could go no further, four years of research has given birth to a new apex in cork innovation. Please say hello to your newest wine-stopper, the Helix cork. The product of a collaboration beween the industrious lushes at cork manufacturer Amorim and those at bottle-making company O-I, the…
There’s no tablet flavor of the iOS 7 beta, but using a simulator feature on Apple’s XCode developer platform, German site Apfelpage has given us a look at what the next-gen operating system will look like on the iPad. Aside from a few changes, it’s pretty consistent with what we’ve already seen from iOS 7.…
If you needed a reminder, this is why new input technologies like eye tracking are so important.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is one of the most wanted men on the planet, both by folks that want him to spill more beans, the powerful people who want him to stop. Today, he granted the Guardian an exclusive Q&A, and he’s already making it clear that this whistle-blowing won’t end with him. In response…
‘Tis the season for outdoor music festivals—which, traditionally, means days of sliding over mud-slick fields in galoshes. But in Lyon, a group of designers and engineers dreamt up an alternative: a Kinect-powered interactive amphitheater that radiates light based on the footsteps of attendees. The pyramid was custom-built for Nuits Sonores, an annual EDM festival that…
It’s only natural to be a little skeeved out by the idea that the government is slurping up your private data behind the scenes, but there’s a very public piece of your data being collected as well: the look on your face. There’s already a national database of over 120 million faces, and the Washington…
As much fun as test driving pre-production cars may seem, cruising around a course meant to see how hard a car can take a beating usually means a few hits to the human inside, as well. Not to mention the fact that human drivers are notoriously high maintenance—always wanting things like “food” and “sleep” and…
Fascinating: “Psychologists now believe that a person’s capacity for self-control (on an everyday level) is finite. After a certain amount of willpower is used up on one difficult task, there’s nothing left over to get other things done.” It’s called ego depletion—or a good excuse not to clean the dishes after dinner. Image by Shutterstock
Starting next year, Netflix will begin showing exclusive shows starring characters your children are already intimately familiar with. The collection will include nearly 300 hours of programming, and it could end up being a more important chip than a dozen Arrested Developments. The collaboration is with Dreamworks, vendor of kid-friendly franchises like Shrek and Kung…
In the 21st century, a significant change is underway in the food industry: farming is moving indoors. The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in the basement of a Tokyo high-rise, in an old warehouse in Illinois, or even in…
According to an unnamed TechCrunch source, Facebook is getting ready to launch video sharing on Instagram at the end of the month. The announcement could come at this Thursday’s Facebook press event so get your fun compounds and portmanteau’s ready. InstaVine? Snapstagram? MyFaceTube?
Apple says that the government obtained data from 9,000 to 10,000 devices as part of investigations on “robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.” The company also claims it doesn’t chat messages or videoconferences. https://gizmodo.com/apple-says-exactly-what-and-how-much-the-nsa-took-513757537
Jay-Z’s modestly entitled Magna Carta Holy Grail drops on the similarly nondescript Fourth of July. But despite his clear lowering of expectations for the album, he’s somehow found it within his heart to muster up some publicity by letting Samsung give away a million copies for free three days early. Galaxy owners only need apply.…
Yesterday the whole world celebrated the 50th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova’s historic space adventure. The solo flight of the Soviet’s Vostok 6 spacecraft on the 16th of June 1963, aboard the first female cosmonaut, was a really big hit in the communist countries. Even the Hungarian weekly car magazine dedicated its cover to the brave,…
The impact of the NSA’s secret surveillance through PRISM and other means has sent reverberations through out the tech industry and the world at large. The latest ripple: Apple’s full accounting of its interactions with government spies in the past year or so. Here’s what went down. https://gizmodo.com/what-is-prism-511875267 In an open letter entitled Apple’s Commitment…
According to Deadspin’s Timothy Burke—who reportedly has never wore a swimsuit and high heels on a catwalk—Miss Utah gave the worst answer in a Miss USA beauty pageant since Miss South Carolina: “Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on…
