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Anyone who’s had a covid-19 test requiring a nasal swab knows it’s not the most pleasant experience. Part of the problem is that the swab has to be left in place for 10-15 seconds to ensure an adequate sample is absorbed. But a company born from 3D printing research at MIT says it’s created a…
Breaking from Alabama: We are this much closer to learning the results of the historic union election at Amazon’s Bessemer, AL warehouse. The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) reports that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has received 3,215 ballots. This means that a majority of about 5,800 workers cast votes. No, the…
Until recently, the carding store Swarmshop was a popular, illicit online market where cybercriminals could go to sell and purchase stolen credit card and banking data. However, the store’s luck may have run out—and it may have taken a little of your luck with it. On March 17, a huge cache of the site’s user…
Twitter launched a new emoji early Thursday that will appear anytime a user tweets the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance. The so-called Milk Tea Alliance refers to the pro-democracy movement in Asia that has been organized, at least in part, through actions online. “To celebrate the first anniversary of the #MilkTeaAlliance we designed an emoji featuring 3 different…
LG will continue to provide operating system updates for its mobile phones over the next three years, even after the company stops making phones entirely by July of this year, according to an announcement posted on LG’s website. And that’s good news for anyone who recently bought an LG phone or may be thinking of…
Facebook on Wednesday ran its first public beta test of Hotline — a web-based Q&A platform that seems like it was dreamed up as the platform’s answer to the current voice chat app craze. More specifically, Hotline is designed to function as a sort of love child between Instagram Live and Clubhouse, TechCrunch reports: Creators…
Dallas police officers used unauthorized facial recognition software to conduct between 500 and 1,000 searches in attempts to identify people based on photographs. A Dallas Police spokesperson says the searches were never authorized by the department, and that in some cases, officers had installed facial recognition software on their personal phones. The spokesperson, Senior Cpl.…
No one wants to return to Twitter more badly than Donald Trump. When the site banned finally banned our malodorous then-president for inciting the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, which killed five people, he didn’t give up until he began tweeting from his campaign’s and the official presidential accounts and got them banned too.…
Amazon wanted its workforce to break its back for 10 hours straight, four nights a week, hauling boxes. It got what it wished. As a result, its labor pool is growing stronger by the day—just not to its advantage. Today, Amazon workers walked out of DIL3, a Chicago delivery facility. At this point, workers have…
Boston Robotic’s Spot quadruped robot seems to be hitting the battlefield with a group of French Army trainees in a series of drills and simulations that explore how these currently unarmed robots could work side-by-side with humans. The soldiers-in-training used Spot for various reconnaissance tasks during a two-day trial of the technology. As reported by…
A federal court has sentenced a Missouri man who tried to buy the deadly poison dimethylmercury, a notoriously toxic substance that can kill in just a few drops on the skin, on the dark web to 12 years in prison. According to the New York Times, 46-year-old Jason William Siesser of Columbia, Missouri, had already…
Now you can use Apple’s Find My app to track down items that aren’t made by Apple. The company announced today that it has expanded its Find My network to third-party gadget makers. Those manufacturers can now build products with support for Find My, allowing users to find their non-Apple belongings on the network where…
T-Mobile would really like to bring you aboard the 5G train. As part of its latest Un-carrier initiative, the company announced it’s letting customers upgrade their smartphones to a 5G phone for “free,” offering a $60 home internet plan, and promising unlimited data for all. The carrier telegraphed that it had some big 5G plans…
Apple’s offering a bit more clarity surrounding the anti-tracking tech that’s going to debut this spring. On Wednesday, a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that Apple’s so-called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) protocol will crack down on all identifiers an app might use to track you—not just identifiers that Apple owns. A quick reminder for folks…
Following Apple’s WWDC announcement and Microsoft’s Build reveal, Google has announced a date for its own developers conference, Google I/O 2021, which will kick off virtually on May 18. Given the current state of the pandemic and ongoing vaccine distributions, the move to go online-only for Google I/O 2021 makes a lot of sense. Google…
One of the unique challenges of 3D printing is that models that feature structures hanging in mid-air, like the spout of a teapot, also need temporary structures to support the soft extruded plastic until it hardens. This can result in a lot of wasted material, because those supports are just discarded afterwards. A new prototype 3D…
So-called pirating apps have been around for years—and they have only gained popularity since covid-19 put us all indefinitely on the couch, phone in hand, awaiting a reason (that never comes) to stop streaming. Well, not all pirating apps have your content-viewing interests in mind. Enter “FlixOnline.” Until recently, this app sat in Google’s Play…
“Remember this?” Budweiser asks, in a new commercial promoting covid-19 vaccines. What follows are a series of snapshots of the before times, when we swigged at the barbeque, sloshed around at the bar, flung beer all over each other at the frat. Jimmy Durante croons, with nostalgic record cracking, the World War II-era hit “I’ll…
For anyone who has been looking for an instant film camera that produces nostalgic prints and has the retro styling to match, Fujifilm’s new Instax Mini 40 might be right up your alley. At its core, the $100 Instax Mini 40 is essentially an Instax Mini 11, but with an updated design that harkens back…
Reviews of the Sonos Roam might’ve taken the spotlight yesterday, but it appears the portable speaker isn’t the only thing the company’s been working on. Two Ikea FCC filings and a cheeky Instagram story all but confirm that two new Symfonisk speakers are likely on the way. Two FCC filings from Ikea were first spotted…
