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Election officials have reportedly alerted law enforcement to a blast of goonish emails threatening to blackmail voters unless they vote for Donald Trump. According to Vice, which first picked up the story, the subject line read “Vote for Trump or else!” and opened with “We are in possession of all your information.” CNN has reported…
According to a CNN report, President Trump is allegedly pressuring the Department of Defense to give Rivada Networks, a company with several well-known Republican investors, what is basically a no-bid contract for extremely valuable mid-band 5G spectrum. That’s a mouthful, but here’s the gist: Rivada currently has a “request for proposal” (RFP) that would bypass…
Whether we’re talking about the Obama administration or the Trump era, the position of law enforcement agencies has been that tech companies need to give authorities a backdoor into encryption. The infosec community agrees that this would just make us all less safe. Along the way, we’ve known that cops use expensive devices to break…
This morning Acer announced its latest lineup of consumer notebooks across its Swift, Spin, and Aspire series. And they all include an Intel 11th-gen processor with Iris Xe Graphics. Some of them we already knew were coming, like the Swift 5 which will be Evo-certified, and the smaller and less expensive Swift 3, but Acer…
It’s hard to be a kid obsessed with gadgets when you’re lacking a disposable income, but as a child of the ‘80s and ‘90s, one of my earliest attainable electronic obsessions were digital watches. I grew up in a time when companies like Casio and Timex were competing to cram as many features into their…
After ripping off features from TikTok, Snapchat, and just about every otherpopular app, it seems like Facebook is setting its sights on the hyperlocal platform Nextdoor, just days after rumors emerged it was chasing a multi-billion dollar IPO. First shared by social media guru Matt Navarra on Twitter, Facebook’s new “Neighborhoods” feature is being branded…
One of the remaining struggles with making virtual reality experiences feel more ‘real’ is the lack of tangible interactions between the user and objects that only exist in VR. To help bridge that gap, Microsoft Research has developed a wearable device with a hammer-like appendage that swings in and out of a VR user’s palm,…
I admit I’m kind of a sucker when it comes to Porsche Design gadgets (I once bought a Porsche Design lighter for well over $100 for no real good reason) because even though devices like the Porsche Design Book One, multiple Huawei phones, and others are typically wildly expensive, there’s something about their ultra-sleek styling…
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are a fun way to skirt money-laundering lawsand pay for drugs, but, according to reporting by Reuters, it appears you’ll now be able to use it to pay for Beanie Babies and fake Rolexes. That’s right: PayPal is getting into the crypto game. The breathless reporting by Reuters and other sites claims…
As part of Instagram’s ongoing crackdown on the scourge of fake followers leaving fake likes on the accounts of equally fake influencers, parent company Facebook announced earlier today that it filed two separate lawsuits targeting four individuals whose stock and trade was selling fake engagement. The post notes that Facebook had previously sent multiple cease…
There’s learning and then there’s “learning.” According to a report in the Huffington Post on Tuesday, students in a 10th-grade history class at Maumee High School in Ohio were offered extra credit to do a little of the latter by watching videos produced by Prager University (PragerU). That is not, in fact, a university, but…
Even with its new A14 chip, Ceramic Shield screen, and revamped design, Apple’s new MagSafe for iPhone charging might be the iPhone 12’s most important new feature because it solves the most annoying thing about traditional wireless chargers. The MagSafe charger for iPhones appears to be a major innovation, but it’s also created a few…
Atari continues to struggle with getting its long-promised throwback console to consumers, but in the meantime it’s turned one of its most iconic games into a portable gaming machine that allows two players to smack a blocky ball back and forth across a virtual ping-pong table. Pong is back…again…but now in a more portable version.…
The White House has, in a way, complied with a federal judge’s order to get clarification from President Trump himself on whether he intended to declassify some of the most sought after documents in his government when he tweeted that he… declassified said documents. As of today, the administration’s position is that was all some…
In the latest example of Google’s public-facing privacy push turning out to be little more than a farce, it seems the tech giant was accidentally exempting some of its own sites from a feature meant to clear browser caches and cookies in its Chrome browser. Whoops! This loophole first came to light when iOS dev…
Yet another gaming app is being removed from the iOS App Store. This time it’s Stadium, an app that offered a workaround for the fact that you can’t get Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service on iOS. Stadium works by streaming Stadia games via a web browser. This technically isn’t against Apple’s draconian App Store rules;…
A pair of Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday introduced the latest bill proposing to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act on the grounds that algorithms used by social media platforms—namely, Facebook—have facilitated extremist violence across the country resulting in U.S. citizens being deprived of their constitutional rights. The “Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act,”…
I don’t like my OS doing things or adding things without my permission as much as the next person. As a life-long Windows user, that little pop-up telling me to restart my PC has gotten on my nerves more times that I can count—but it’s not like Windows doesn’t give me the option to turn…
There’s a myriad of reasons to replace cow’s milk with alternatives like nut milks, oat milk, or soy milk, but for those who enjoy the experience of consuming animal-sourced dairy products, the alternatives just aren’t the same. So Impossible Foods, makers of the Impossible Burger and other plant-based meat alternatives, are working on another food…
In what is the most significant update to New York City’s subway map since the 1970s, the MTA has launched a new digital diagram for straphangers that’s easier to navigate, provides seamless updates, and even shows you a cool little animation of your train kinda, sorta moving down the tracks. Even if you don’t live…
