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The Trump administration’s efforts to strong-arm Beijing-based ByteDance into selling its U.S. subsidiary TikTok to an American company are closing in, with enterprise software giant Oracle attempting to get regulators to clear a deal. Unsurprisingly, everyone involved is really making a garbage fire out of it. The White House, claiming that TikTok’s owner poses a…
Ready for Amazon to get even more ubiquitous in your day to day life? The e-commerce giant is planning on opening 1,000 to 1,500 small distribution hubs in suburban areas across the country, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, in part spurred by major delays in shipping during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The e-commerce company saw extensive…
Spoiler alert: Yeah, sure! For more than a decade, we’ve become accustomed to having screens in our cars. Like the keening heard over the loss of the manual transmission, some of the loudest voices echoing from the chantry of vehicular enthusiasm have added a verse about big-screen automotive interfaces to their Luddite lament. Well not…
Controversial changes ordered by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy caused an estimated 85 million more packages to arrive late in one week and, in some districts, nearly a 20 percent drop in on-time deliveries, a new Senate report finds. The report, prepared by Democratic staff on the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, describes a significant…
We learned two things about Facebook today. First, it’s working on Project Aria, an experimental platform that will eventually lead to a pair of AR glasses that will stream data to your face. Next, we learned that it’s in partnership with sunglasses manufacturer Ray-Ban to make, we assume, a fancy pair of the company’s signature…
“It’s the worst, but I just can’t delete Facebook,” the increasingly common refrain goes—at which point the person in question will make a melodramatic show of how successfully the no good, very bad company has successfully allowed them to offload their social responsibilities. Chief among these? Remembering birthdays. Most of us were, at some point,…
On October 6, Christie’s will be auctioning off Stan—one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found. The skeleton could fetch a record price at the auction, with estimates as high as $8 million. Standing 13 feet tall (3.9 meters) and nearly 40 feet long (12 meters), Stan would make for a spectacular addition…
Say hello to iOS 14, which is rolling out as a free over-the-air software upgrade for iPhones right now (if you have an iPhone 6s or newer, then you’ll see it today). The latest version of iOS brings with it a whole host of new features and improvements, and we’ve rounded up 17 of our…
Armed militias organized hate-filled rallies outside of dozens of mosques with Facebook's help.
As a child, I’d wander. My mom would take my siblings and I to the mall, and inevitably my little developing brain would be bored by shopping that did not involve me personally. I would disappear. My mom remembers these times with a vague hint of concern; my sister remembers them with irritation. I just…
Any interior designer will tell you a splash of color can really help a room pop, but what if your goal is creating a space that’s boring and entirely forgettable? Instead of reaching for a vibrant shade from Benjamin Moore, just grab a can of this Commodore 64-colored spray paint that promises to make anything,…
The Department of Justice released a chilling audit yesterday detailing the imminent threat of drones to prison security. What could these robotic sky criminals of the future look like? Bellies large enough to hold a convicted murderer, chainsaw launchers, invisibility cloaks that allow them to soar at top speed through clear blue skies undetected? Anything…
The human driver meant to act as a fail-safe for an autonomous Uber car that struck and killed a Tempe, Arizona woman has been charged with negligent homicide by local authorities, the Associated Press reports. The 2018 crash was the first recorded case of a pedestrian being killed by a self-driving car. Phoenix officials formally…
Two plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the new Boeing 737 Max aircraft weren’t a result of one single issue, but instead were caused by the failures of Boeing staff, Boeing management, and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a new 245-page report released Wednesday by the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. In…
Garmin is the MVP when it comes to GPS-tracking watches made for athletes. Every serious runner in my life swears by their Garmin, despite the fact that you can easily find a cheaper, a more stylish, lifestyle-focused smartwatch with GPS built right in (which was not the case when Garmin first hit the scene). Nope.…
For film enthusiasts, the pandemic has presented an ongoing question: Should we invest in better at-home entertainment, or does it make sense to hold out for the (presumed) reopening of cinemas? Gadget makers would very much prefer the former, with companies like Samsung and Epson framing the pandemic as good a time as any to…
A Chinese intelligence firm’s database on 2.4 million people—including some 50,000 Americans—was recently leaked, exposing it to researchers. Per a Tuesday report in the Register, Fullbright University Vietnam researcher Chris Balding and Australian security researcher Robert Potter co-authored a recent paper on Beijing-based company Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Technology, whose data on millions was obtained by an Australian…
I’ve been ridiculed. I’ve been ignored. I’ve been hassled for my love of watches. But today is a reckoning. All of my education, my effort, my endless fascination with horology is paying off. Why? Because Apple did something wrong. The Hermes collection of Apple Watch bands includes mention of a set of leather models with…
Just hours after the reveal of Apple’s new services bundles, the tech giant has already taken criticism for evidently favoring its own apps over those with which it directly competes in its App Store. Apple’s long-rumored push into services bundles comes as little surprise for a number of reasons. One is that some of Apple’s…
Another September, another Apple Event, and this year, we got two new Apple Watch models: the Apple Watch Series 6 and the Apple Watch SE. But do you know which watch is also still around? The Series 3. And, I know the Series 3’s $200 price tag is enticing—a steal, even—but for the love of…
