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What did kids from the year 1904 think would happen by the year 1919 or even the year 2019? They imagined fancy airships in the sky, “automobiles for everything,” and wondrous house-cleaning robots. They even imagined trips to Mars by the year 1919. Seriously. At the turn of the 20th century, the Minneapolis Journal newspaper … Continued
Autonomous vehicles were supposed to make driving safer, and they may yet—some of the more optimistic research indicates self-driving cars could save tens of thousands of lives a year in the U.S. alone. But so far, a recklessness has defined the culture of the largest companies pursuing the technology—Uber, Google, and arguably even Tesla—and has … Continued
Internal Google documents obtained by the Guardian warn full-time Google staff to treat temps, vendors, and contractors (TVCs)—which comprise just short of half of the company’s 170,000 workers around the globe—much differently than they treat fellow full-timers. According to the Guardian, an internal training document titled “The ABCs of TVCs” (seemingly written by parent company … Continued
For the last seven years, SplashData has revealed its annual list of the most commonly used passwords of the year. This time around, the results reveal that, uh, we still have work to do. The 2018 Worst Passwords of the Year list was determined after SplashData evaluated over 5 million passwords that have leaked online … Continued
Apple announced overnight that the tech giant will open a new $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, just a mile away from their existing presence in the city. The 133-acre campus will house 5,000 employees, with an eventual capacity for as many as 15,000 workers. Apple also plans to expand its presence in cities like … Continued
A man who police suspect of attempting to rob a shuttered Chinese restaurant in San Lorenzo, California found himself in a potentially fatal situation after he became trapped in a metal duct, where he reportedly remained for two days before someone found him. Photos shared by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office showed the man trapped … Continued
Gaming hardware manufacturer Razer has launched a cryptocurrency mining program named Razer SoftMiner to put spare graphics card capacity to work—for them, not for you. Some context: Mined cryptocurrencies (be they bitcoin, ether, etc.) operate by using a distributed network of processors to verify transactions and generate new coins by solving complicated math problems (mining). … Continued
Should we hold companies like Equifax and Facebook responsible for the protection of our personal information in the same way we hold banks and hospitals responsible? Should we expect the same level of control over data we’ve given to Google as we do with information shared with our doctor or lawyer? A new bill introduced … Continued
There is a lot more artificial intelligence, and it is sprouting and multiplying everywhere. In schools, in job openings, in media coverage. The number of AI-based startups, conferences, research papers, and patents is skyrocketing. That’s perhaps the simplest way to frame the findings of the 2018 AI Index Report, which collects data around a number … Continued
One of the more annoying realities of ordering online is that if your package is left somewhere conspicuous before you’re able to grab it, there’s a good possibility some opportunistic bandit will nab it. This certainly goes for Amazon packages, for which reports of theft are a dime a dozen. And anyone who’s ever lost … Continued
We’re less than a month away from the biggest tech show of the year(I can feel my heart rate rise just thinking about it), but it seems Samsung couldn’t wait until early January to announce its new Notebook 9 Pen. Available in 13 and 15-inch versions, Samsung’s 360-degree 2-in-1 is aimed at creative types, and … Continued
At a Taylor Swift concert earlier this year, fans were reportedly treated to something they might not expect: a kiosk displaying clips of the pop star that served as a covert surveillance system. It’s a tale of creeping 21st-century surveillance as unnerving as it is predictable. But the whole ordeal has left us wondering what … Continued
Laundry days are the worst. Not because I hate doing laundry—I love warm, fluffy, clean clothes—but because I need cold hard cash to use the machines at my local 24-hour laundromat. Legitimately, I’ve sat here for 20 minutes trying to think of anything besides laundry that I regularly use greenbacks for. I got nada. Apple … Continued
A report on internet speeds across the country released on Wednesday shows which cities and states have the slowest and fastest broadband—and which providers are the fastest. Internet testing company Ookla says it measured internet speeds from more than 24 million unique users while making the report of fixed broadband speeds for the second and … Continued
Solidifying its powerful monopoly on duck-related online content, the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is now the proud owner of duck.com. The development comes after Google finally relented in an age-old dispute. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that draws on search results from hundreds of sources and doesn’t create profiles for user data and shows everyone … Continued
Russian state TV apparently became confused yesterday while airing footage of a technology forum aimed at kids. A TV reporter proclaimed that Boris the robot, seen above, “has already learned to dance and he’s not that bad.” The only problem? Boris isn’t a real robot. It’s just a man in a suit. This “robot” actually … Continued
Last year, I was trying to solve a mystery. Facebook’s “People You May Know” tool was outing sex workers’ real identities to their clients, and vice versa, and I was trying to figure out how. A sex worker using the pseudonym Leila told me she had gone to great lengths to hide her identity from … Continued
Remember two days ago when Samsung introduced the Galaxy A8s in China and trotted out the CEOs of the fake Supreme brand to announce a collaboration for future products? After much backlash from fans who love paying a premium for branded tchotchkes, Samsung wants you to know that it’s possibly, maybe, considering not pursuing that partnership … Continued
Intel’s had a rough year, with major departures, security disasters, dwindling sales compared to its competitor, and the general appearance of a company trailing the competition technologically speaking. But in the twilight days of 2018 Intel’s laid out a plan of action to remind us all of exactly why Intel first crushed the competition to … Continued
Did you see the tweets supposedly “debunking” the huge fires that were burning during the protests in Paris? In reality, the “debunkers” are bullshit. The photos weren’t merely taken from different perspectives—they were taken on completely different days on completely different streets. First take a look at the the bullshit “debunkers” with sarcastic titles like … Continued