This week, Elon Musk-backed OpenAI released to the public the latest version of their GPT-2 predictive text generator, which is capable of taking a writing prompt and continuing based on 40 gigabytes of data pulled from around eight million websites. This is impressive, next-gene … | Continue reading
Someone going by the handle “antifa-data” uploaded what appears to be the entire SQL database of Iron March—a defunct fascist web forum where the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) terrorist organization reportedly first organized—to the Internet Archive on Wednesday. | Continue reading
Elon Musk-backed non-profit OpenAI, which claimed to have developed a machine learning-powered text generation software so powerful that it couldn’t be ethically released to the public, has... done just that. | Continue reading
Bitdefender–the tireless actuary of the Internet of Things–were able to crack into homeowner’s personal WiFi networks via Amazon’s Ring doorbells, the video-enabled auto-locks that allow homeowners to remotely open the door. And as Bitdefender’s Chief Security Researcher Jay Bala … | Continue reading
On Friday, federal health officials announced a breakthrough in solving the mystery of why people are getting seriously sick from vaping. They detected vitamin E acetate—an oily, synthetic form of the vitamin commonly added to black-market THC vape products—in lung fluid samples … | Continue reading
As the drunken mist clears in the wake of Adam Neumann’s long con that was WeWork, employees are calling for a modicum of sanity. In preparation for thousands of layoffs, which the company has reportedly delayed because it can’t afford severance, the non-unionized group who call … | Continue reading
When New Horizons zipped past Pluto on July 14, 2015, the NASA spacecraft was only able to observe one side of the dwarf planet. Scientists have now reviewed data collected by New Horizons during its approach and as it traveled away, resulting in the most detailed analysis yet of … | Continue reading
Early Thursday morning, people all over the U.S. and Canada began receiving strange text messages that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The texts were from people they knew but they lacked context and appeared to have been sent months ago. And it really freaked some folks out! M … | Continue reading
Scientists analyzing data from a defunct satellite say we should all consider that our universe might be round, rather than flat. The consequences, they explain in a new paper, could be crisis-inducing. | Continue reading
Federal investigators have determined an Uber self-driving car that killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona in March 2018 lacked programming to either recognize or respond to the presence of jaywalkers on the road, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. | Continue reading
Speaking in Washington, D.C. earlier today, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he’s convinced of AI’s potential to fundamentally alter human consciousness—including changes in our self-perception and to our strategic decision-making. He also slammed AI developers … | Continue reading
In a letter aimed at gutting Facebook’s rationale for allowing misleading and dishonest political ads across its platform, a prominent civil rights organization on Tuesday issued a stern warning to Mark Zuckerberg, outlining a number of federal laws to which, the group claims, F … | Continue reading
The anonymous forum 8Chan—a haven for far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists, and internet filth—came back online today after going dark in August due to its association with several mass shootings. Rebranded as 8kun (“kun” and “chan” are both honorific titles in Japanese for … | Continue reading
We know that we’re all spending too much time glued to our phones, rather than looking at the person we’re talking to, the movie we’re watching, the sunset we’re missing, or the children we’re ignoring, and Google and Apple know it too. Google has pushed out six ‘experimental’ ap … | Continue reading
Using some relatively inexpensive and readily available technology you can find at any well-stocked electronics store, Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the s … | Continue reading
It never came close to realizing its creators’ aspirations of developing a cheap $50 laptop that could introduce kids from all over world—even those in developing nations—to the personal computer. But the OLPC XO-1, the first device released by the One Laptop Per Child organizati … | Continue reading
“Slim by Chocolate!” the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. It made the front page of Bild, Europe’s largest daily newspaper, just beneath their update about … | Continue reading
The Untitled Goose Game that became a viral phenomenon right after its launch a month ago has been vulnerable to hacking, according to a report from a security researcher. | Continue reading
Nearly 50 years ago—before Interstellar, A Brief History of Time, and certainly the Event Horizon Telescope—postdoctoral researcher William Unruh was attempting to explain black holes to a crowd at an Oxford University colloquium. There were no reference points with which to comp … | Continue reading
The U.S. Air Force’s top secret spaceplane, the Boeing X-37B, landed in Florida early Sunday after 780 days—over 2 years and one month—in orbit around the Earth. And we still have no idea what it was doing while it was up there. | Continue reading
The customer records of nearly 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud users were discovered by a security researcher this month in an inadvertently exposed database which has now been secured. | Continue reading
With the decade winding down it’s time for us to set our sights on the next one. The 2020s promises to be anything but dull. From the automation revolution and increasingly dangerous AI to geohacking the planet and radical advances in biotechnology, here are the most futuristic d … | Continue reading
Comcast, one of the largest and most reviled internet service providers in the country, has reportedly been lobbying against efforts by companies like Mozilla and Google to switch on or test, respectively, a tool for encrypting your browser history, thereby making it trickier for … | Continue reading
The Pixelbook Go is the cheapest Chromebook Google has made to date. Google’s flagship Chrome OS devices typically start at $1,000, so the $650 price tag on the base-level Pixelbook Go is incredible. Compared to other Google-made Chrome OS devices, the Pixelbook Go is a fantastic … | Continue reading
Two weeks ago, on a sparkling spring morning, we went trawling along Florida’s coastal waterway. But not for fish. | Continue reading
In the 1,006 days since Donald Trump became president, his administration has shown little vigilance when it comes to its own security, and a new internal memo suggests the White House is working to weaken its own cybersecurity safeguards. | Continue reading
Between the mountainous and coastal vistas of Goleta, California, sits an unassuming office on the side of a building next to the freeway. It could belong to any Southern California company; workers sit in gray cubicles beneath fluorescent lights, and there’s a rack to hold emplo … | Continue reading
Staff at Google are wary that the company may be building “an internal surveillance tool” with the purpose of crushing employee dissent, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. | Continue reading
This morning, Google scientists confirmed in a blog post that their quantum computer had needed just 200 seconds to solve a problem that they claim would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. | Continue reading
Lime, the company whose business model is buying thousands of electric scooters and just sort of leaving them there in the hopes people will ride them, is on track to lose $300 million this year. | Continue reading
WeWork, the company that is either a transformative way of life or a dangerously overleveraged real estate company posing as a cultish tech firm, is planning on laying off thousands of employees. | Continue reading
To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA)—the UFO research organization founded by former Blink 182 star Tom DeLonge—has struck a research deal with the U.S. Army filled with eye-popping references to exotic technologies. | Continue reading
Synthetic meat products might come even closer to the texture of slaughtered meats with the help of what are essentially modified cotton candy machines. | Continue reading
Last year, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk went on YouTube host Joe Rogan’s show and smoked some weed. That was unfortunate, because SpaceX happens to be a U.S. military contractor with security clearances, and the U.S. government does not like marijuana—and in this instance, it d … | Continue reading
Like electronic music pioneers Robert Moog and Don Buchla, who came before him, Joseph Paradiso seemed destined to become a synth wizard. As a child, he was fascinated with music; soldering his own creations and experimenting with tape looping. | Continue reading
We’ve seen plenty of leaks of Google’s latest Pixelbook, but the company finally showed off the actual thing today, a reasonably small Chromebook with a reasonably small price tag for a Google-made product. | Continue reading
In a somewhat unconventional spectacle that included a fireside chat about the company’s environmental initiatives and photographer Annie Leibovitz dropping by to talk about smartphones, Google’s Pixel 4 event in New York today included few surprises, and at times, even fewer det … | Continue reading
The Voyagers 1 and 2 spacecraft measured the Sun sending a pulse like a “tsunami” into the interstellar medium, according to a new paper. | Continue reading
ABC News aired a video on Sunday that host Tom Llamas said depicted a Turkish attack in northern Syria against Kurdish civilians. Turkey is indeed pushing into Syria and slaughtering Kurds along the way, but the video ABC News played last night is from a military gun demonstratio … | Continue reading
What actually happens to workers when a company deploys automation? The common assumption seems to be that the employee simply disappears wholesale, replaced one-for-one with an AI interface or an array of mechanized arms. | Continue reading
Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates had a much closer relationship with late financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein than Gates has previously stated, the New York Times reported on Saturday, including multiple visits to Epstein’s now-infamous New York townhouse. | Continue reading
Some 500 years after his death, researchers are still discovering just how talented and brilliant Leonardo da Vinci was. Architects and civil engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a 3D printer to create a replica of a bridge da Vinci designed, but never buil … | Continue reading
A supposedly rare genetic quirk might be more common than we think, according to new research out Thursday. The study, based largely on 23andMe data, suggests that one in every 2,000 people are born with two copies of a gene from only a single parent, often with no serious health … | Continue reading
American Airlines said on Wednesday that it expects its fleet of Boeing 737 Max jets to return to passenger service later than expected on Jan. 16, 2020, after the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation sign off on revisions intended to remedy flaws that … | Continue reading
Scientists have discovered a phenomenon that looks a whole lot like a dark matter particle in a laboratory system, according to new research. | Continue reading
As anxieties mount over Facebook’s plan to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, Capitol Hill lawmakers are facing increasing pressure to intercede. This week, that intervention has taken the form of ominous letters by Democratic members of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, … | Continue reading
Late last night, an email leaked to advocacy group Fight For The Future detailed how Github—the code repository Microsoft bought last year for $7.5 billion—would be renewing its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency at the forefront of carrying out th … | Continue reading
Following hints about a potential Apple AR headset found in iOS 13 earlier this fall, a new report from a well respected Apple analyst suggests that Apple’s AR glasses could arrive as early as the first half of 2020. | Continue reading