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Another purported casualty of the coronavirus pandemic has surfaced, folks: Amazon brick-and-mortar discount stores. Yep, the e-commerce giant considered opening up permanent retail locations to peddle unsold inventory before the world descended into lockdown, Bloomberg reported Thursday. While the fallout from covid-19’s spread has shuttered a record number of stores across America and recent consumer…
A number of prominent U.S. colleges have become the newest, unlucky recipients of a cybersecurity migraine currently affecting dozens of organizations all over the world. You may have heard something about Accellion—the global cloud provider whose secure-file transfer product (called FTA) was beset by a hacking campaign back in December. If you haven’t heard about…
Two more services are losing support for regional sports as the RSN streaming drama continues. In joint statements today, Sling TV and its parent Dish TV announced that their customers were losing support for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network and NBC regional sports networks. Sling TV is losing NBC Sports Washington, NBC Sports Bay Area, and…
One of the hosts of the anti-conspiracy theory podcast QAnon Anonymous is no longer so anonymous. The pseudonymous counter-extremism researcher publicly known as Travis View until today knows more about the rabidly pro-Donald Trump QAnon community, which believes that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are the masterminds of a demonic, Illuminati-style cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles, than…
The pandemic has thrown gadget release schedules all out of wack, so while we wait for new devices to officially be announced, leaks today suggest Google’s next two products could be a new Nest security cam and updated Pixel Buds. In an FCC filing spotted by 9to5Google, a new “wireless streaming device” with the model…
The battle between streaming services for your binge-watching hours continues. Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Peacock parent NBCUniversal has been mulling pulling its movies from services like Netflix and HBO Max to boost its own content offering. The outlet additionally reported that contracts that HBO Max and Netflix have respectively…
Police in the U.S., including officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), have been accessing vehicle location data provided by car parts manufacturers, a new report from Forbes reveals. Documents reviewed by the news outlet show police using this data to track suspects involved in criminal investigations. Per Forbes, Customs and Border Protection…
Rather than dole out what is, essentially—at least to one of the richest companies on the planet—a handful of spare change, Facebook set out to purposely undermine one of the most important legal protections Americans have against unwanted robocalls. Today it accomplished that mission. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued an opinion that negates…
April Fool’s is the worst holiday, but this is one stunt we can get behind. Someone built an obviously fake Nvidia RTX 4090 and 4090 Ti to get into the spirit—and to poke fun at the current graphics cards situation—and it’s so ridiculous it has to be seen to be believed. Spotted by PCMag, Denmark-based…
Imagine this: You’re over at your best friend’s house going through their Xbox library. They’ve been wanting to try out one of the latest, hyped-up first-person shooters, but they don’t own it. You do, but it’s through a cloud gaming service. It doesn’t look great on your phone, and your friend doesn’t have a Chromecast…
A small indie bookseller in Chicago is taking on Amazon with a new class action alleging that the e-commerce giant conspired with major publishers to keep prices high and competition low. The actual suit, which was filed last week, alleges that Amazon colluded with the Big Five in book publishing—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House,…
As 5G connectivity becomes more widespread—fueled by its great hype machine—the wonders promised seem incomprehensible at times. Remote control of fleets of vehicles from hundreds of miles away. Squads of cars or trucks that move in perfect synchronicity, communicating with not just one another but with the road itself. Shopping in a store where you…
In late 2018, Microsoft struck a $480 million deal with the U.S. Army to deliver augmented reality headset prototypes based on its HoloLens system. Well, it appears the military is a fan because it’s inked a contract to get a whole lot more of them. As in, over 120,000 headsets worth up to $21.88 billion…
Normally April 1 is a day for jokes and pranks, but this year it also marks a funeral of sorts: the death of Cortana on mobile devices. Following Microsoft’s decision to shut down Cortana on smart speakers, including the Harman Kardon Invoke earlier this year, Microsoft is now pulling support for the Cortana app on…
There are people so obsessed with trains that they’ll travel the world just to spot a rare locomotive. And then there’s Jason Shron, who’s not only built a replica of a passenger train car in his basement, he’s also found a clever way to simulate a train ride by strapping a tiny video camera to…
Matt Lorion, a 17-year-old TikTok influencer known for promoting cryptocurrencies online, has released a new video apologizing for a Star Wars-themed scam he promoted. Last week, Lorion sang the praises of a new cryptocurrency called Mando that turned out to be a pump-and-dump scam. But Lorion says he had no idea it was a fraud.…
Papua New Guinea’s health minister, Jelta Wong, spoke with an Australian think tank over videochat on Thursday about challenges PNG faces in combatting the covid-19 pandemic. PNG is seeing a resurgence of the disease along with a growing wave of misinformation being spread online about vaccines, and the talk is an interesting look at how…
Look out, n00bs. Hackers are apparently deploying fake game “cheats” for Call of Duty: Warzone. They sure won’t help you merk your opponents, but they will inject a crapload of malware onto your computer. A recently disclosed report from game publisher Activision shows that discussion of such schemes was recently observed on several different dark…
Now’s the time of year when it pays to be extra wary of pranks and promotions that seem too good to be true. But starting tomorrow, yes, on April 1, Verizon has some big discounts on phones and trade-ins for broken devices that are totally legit. Verizon said new customers can get up to $1,000…
The sex trafficking scandal surrounding Florida U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz is getting gnarlier by the day, both because of the circus sideshow of supporting characters it brings with it and the good questions it raises about why we, as a country, insist on electing people to our federal government who seem like they could be…
