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The crypto world saw a dizzying surge this year of NFTs being used to sell ownership of everything from works of online art to random tweets, though it was never clear just why NFTs were commanding such staggering prices. Bragging rights? Status symbols? Or just pure speculation driven by skyrocketing cryptocurrency prices and its attendant…
If you have observed the emergence of Brood X, the one-in-17-years cicada swarm, and thought, I want that in my mouth, you are not alone. The cicada consumes the plant fluids; the American consumes the cicada; the FDA warns Americans about consuming cicadas. It is the natural order. This afternoon, the FDA emphatically tweeted a…
It’s hard to tell what will go viral online at any given time. Carp? Sure. Andrew Cuomo’s Nipples? That happened. The latest darling of the internet’s eye is less fishy and less… fleshy than both of the above, but no less bizarre: a low-grade knock-off of Apple’s Notepad app that was developed by a tiny…
In a bid to become the most Instagrammable music service, Spotify announced several new personalized playlists and features. They include the “Only You” in-app experience, similar to the year-end Wrapped playlist, and a beta feature where you can create an algorithm-infused playlist between you and a friend. You can try out Only You right now,…
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the savviest person when it comes to shopping online. Sure, I can spot obvious scams without much work, I’ll sometimes spend hours poring over product reviews and still end up falling for products that faked their way to earning five stars. While I can’t stop shitty sellers…
A light-powered microscope has a resolution limit of around 200 nanometers—which makes observing specimens smaller or closer together than that all but impossible. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have found a clever way to improve the resolution of a conventional microscope, but surprisingly it involves no upgrades to the lenses or optics…
Not content with having attacked our nation’s beer, hamburgers, and oil, ransomware hackers now also want to ruin Americans’ summer vacation, too. A cyberattack has targeted the Massachusetts Steamship Authority, the primary ferry service responsible for chauffeuring sun-baked vacationers back and forth between the mainland and Martha’s Vineyard and its neighboring isles, the agency announced…
The board game formerly known as Settlers of Catan isn’t hard to learn, but there are elements that are hard to master, like always remembering to claim resource cards after the dice is rolled. Sam March’s gorgeous custom Catan board solves that with tiles that automatically light up so it’s much easier for players to…
The media layoffs continue unabated. The former president’s blog, From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, has ceased all editorial operations, deleted its website and all existing posts, and let go of what was presumably its only staffer (Trump). Following months of bragging that he would start his own platform after being booted from Facebook,…
The Huawei Watch 3 is here, and as far as smartwatches go, it looks pretty good on paper. It’s just that, on the heels of Samsung giving up on Tizen and partnering with Google for a unified wearable platform, this doesn’t feel like an auspicious time to launch a flagship smartwatch running a proprietary OS.…
Californians, your state senators (who are not your mom), see that you trip balls and/or go on spiritual journeys, which is just fine. On Tuesday, the state senate voted to pass a bill that would legalize the possession and ingestion of psilocybin and psilocin, ketamine, LSD, MDMA, DMT, mescaline, and ibogaine. Ya know, shrooms, acid,…
In the ongoing saga of Apple’s long-rumored plans to build an electric car, a new report claims the company has hit a bumpy stretch after multiple top managers from the auto development division have left the company in recent months. According to Bloomberg, former Tesla engineer Doug Field remains in charge of the division overseeing…
Twice a year, the #PitchYaGame Awards puts a call out for independent game developers around the world to share their latest creations, with cash prizes awarded to the best entries. The latest call for entries was yesterday, and it included a wonderfully original game called Viewfinder that’s part Portal, part Inception, with a dash of…
The Amazon Fire TV sticks and cubes are some of the best media streaming devices around, and while the basics of selecting and watching content are easy enough to pick up, there’s more advanced functionality that you might not be aware of. These are some of the tricks you can do on a Fire TV…
Amazon wants to see recreational marijuana use legalized at the federal level, according to a new blog post from Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon’s consumer side businesses. The company will also stop drug testing for weed, according to Clark, and treat cannabis like mainstream employers already treat alcohol. Presumably, that means you shouldn’t do it…
Russian criminals are likely behind the cyber attack on JBS Foods, the world’s largest beef and pork processor, according to the White House. The FBI has been brought in to investigate and JBS promises the “vast majority” of its meat processing facilities in the U.S. will be up and running by Wednesday. JBS was hit…
French and German political leaders are “seeking full clarity” after a recent report has alleged the U.S. colluded with Denmark several years ago to spy on European government officials—even going so far as to read bureaucrats’ emails and text messages. A recent investigation from Denmark’s independent public service broadcaster (DR) shows that Denmark’s top intelligence…
Regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission have sent Tesla two separate warnings about CEO Elon Musk being on thin ice for his tweets in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, cautioning that the entrepreneur’s recent posts were in violation of a 2018 settlement agreement mandating that lawyers sign off on his social…
Paramount Pictures has found a way to avoid paying taxes on franchises including Spongebob Squarepants, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek by routing revenue from international licensing through a complicated network of foreign subsidiaries, according to a new study. Researchers with the nonprofit Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, partially funded by the Dutch government, released…
Users of Amazon Ring and Echo have only about a week to opt-out of the tech giant’s sketchy new IoT service, Sidewalk. The feature goes live on June 8th and promises to share an encrypted sliver of your home network with the networks of other nearby Amazon IoT device users as a way to “improve…
