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Perhaps there is a world, in a distant galaxy, where I am being paid $6,000 a word to write this introduction. In that world, I’d almost certainly feel compelled to make it as long as possible—to ruminate at length on the philosophical implications of the multiverse, perhaps even write detailed breakdowns of the cultures/landscapes of…
Huawei has apparently lost all hope, or patience, that it will ever free itself from U.S. sanctions, which have effectively choked off its access to much-needed chips. The company is purportedly getting ready to do something about it. The solution: build its own chip plant. According to a report in the Financial Times, Huawei is…
In trying to avoid accusations of anti-conservative bias, Facebook has reportedly been bending the rules for high-profile Republicans. Sources told theWashington Post that Facebook has held off on punishing President Donald Trump’s family members and other conservative groups and personalities who repeatedly violate its rules against misinformation, even removing strikes in some cases. And it did…
Online platforms are in the midst of a reckoning, and it hasn’t been pretty. Disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories have run rampant online for years, bleeding into the real world in terrifying or even deadly incidents, but websites only recently began cracking down on them in earnest with comprehensive fact-checking policies. Now, the internet’s largest…
If you’ve been hearing static or crackling sounds on your AirPods Pro, rest assured: You are sane. The sound issues are actually an Apple problem, and the company wants to fix them for you for free. Apple launched a service program on Friday for AirPods Pro manufactured before October 2020. According to Apple, users with…
The majority of people can probably recite one of the most basic lessons of the coronavirus pandemic: Don’t get too close to others, especially without a mask. Knowing that, it would be totally reasonable to think that the picture above is from a previous Halloween, before “coronavirus” was part of our daily vocabulary. Except it’s…
3D printers usually work by extruding long strings of molten plastic onto a surface. When MIT Media Lab researchers spotted a broken printer squirting out plastic erratically, they had an idea: By programming a normal home 3D printer, they could simulate that erratic extrusion and create a sort of light, flexible lace out of hot…
There’s a new development in the seemingly neverending game of chicken between TikTok and President Donald Trump over a nationwide ban. On Friday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania blocked the Trump administration from outlawing U.S. transactions with Tiktok, which was set to take effect Nov. 12. Unlike last month’s ruling, where another federal judge blocked…
Tesla bumped up the price of its “full self-driving” software option to $10,000 on Friday, making good on CEO Elon Musk’s promise last week to implement a roughly $2,000 price hike in the U.S. It follows the launch of a limited beta version of the software, which lets a select number of U.S. customers use…
It’s heeeereeeee: the 2020 elections are just four days away, which means the next 100-plus hours may be the longest of your life. Given the results of the election are unlikely to emerge on November 3 and the current presidential administration has made clear it intends to claim victory no matter what happens, it might…
I do not keep up with the Kardashians. I know they exist. I know they’re rich and have a reality TV show. I know they get made fun of a lot on Twitter, particularly over extravagant birthday parties. I’m aware there is more than one, but I don’t know the exact number. I do know…
Apple’s new subscription bundles launch today as Apple One. But how much are you really saving by subscribing to apps you might not even need? Well, a good amount, actually—particularly when you consider the sum you’ll save over the course of the year. As with most subscription bundles, the more you spend, the more value…
In an era of Jeffrey Toobin and always-on webcams, scammers have launched a new grift that involves claiming that they have access to your naked Zoom videos. Trust me: They don’t. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try to convince you otherwise. Documented by antispam researchers at Bitdefender, the scam email begins innocuously enough: “Hello.…
On my 32nd birthday, my 22-year-old sister mailed me a first-generation Tamagotchi. Too young to have suffered the Tamagotchi herself, she may have sweetly assumed that I was once the kind of focused, enraptured child from the throwback commercial—one with an innate or even competent grasp of faddish handheld electronics. She would be wrong. The…
Does Chris Christie enjoy humiliation? The evidence is mounting. After spending four years debasing himself by supporting President Trump, the former New Jersey governor landed in the hospital with a covid-19 infection stemming from a White House superspreader event. Now he’s giving back to the people by offering anyone the chance to humiliate him on…
Login credentials belonging to several Martin County, Florida, election officials were inadvertently exposed by what an election security researcher says was an unsecured backup database that had likely been publicly accessible since 2017. The California-based security firm UpGuard said Thursday that more than 1,200 accounts assigned to county officials—at least six of which were assigned…
Aeronautical engineers have built planes that can streak across the sky at over 4,000 miles per hour, but still haven’t come close to designing aircraft that can maneuver with the astounding agility of a bird. Researchers at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne figured, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and have designed a…
Years after revelations regarding Russian interference in 2016 started to come to light, the tiresome odes to “Soviet Russian tradecraft” ought to leave us wondering what’s changed. At this point, the fact that there were multiple Russian-led campaigns to sow disinformation around the 2016 election has become a well-documented fact. All took advantage of social…
Amazon has refreshed its Echo line again, and this time the speakers are shaped like balls rather than cylinders—though all of the key functionality remains the same. Your Echo can do so much more than summon Alexa, so we’ll steer clear of giving you a long list of commands you can use—you already know most…
As if this Hunter Biden smear campaign couldn’t be more clearly manufactured, Martin Aspen, the author behind a viral phony “intelligence” document about the Vice President’s son that made it to Trump’s inner circle, is not the Swiss security analyst he claims to be. Namely because Martin Aspen doesn’t exist. Even his profile picture is…
