There is growing criticism of Philadelphia officials’ decision to install sonic devices called the Mosquito that constantly emit extremely loud, high-frequency noise from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. every night designed to be audible only to persons aged 13 to 25, according to a Frid … | Continue reading
Scientists in Florida have detected the largest seaweed bloom in the world. Extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the African coast, the unusually large bloom is threatening marine life and coastal regions, with the researchers warning it’s likely a sign of things to come. | Continue reading
UK telecoms aren’t taking warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that telecommunications gear produced by Chinese tech giant Huawei could pose a security risk incredibly seriously, at least according to a report from the Observer, which reported on Saturday that all four major … | Continue reading
Today I found out that during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes … | Continue reading
Anyone who bought ebooks through the Microsoft Store is in for a rude shock in the coming days. The good news? You can get a refund. The bad news? All of your books are going to be deleted this month. | Continue reading
You may have heard of the famous P versus NP problem. If you can prove or disprove its cryptically short equation, you’d be a million dollars richer—and maybe even billions of dollars richer, depending on your scruples. | Continue reading
The European Union is making a major safety push to add fake noises to electric vehicles, but some may sound goofier than others and that’s causing disagreement in the UK. | Continue reading
You probably have not heard of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), but by its name could likely guess, correctly, that it’s a trade group representing the likes of Walmart, Target, Dollar General, Coca Cola and other world-swallowing corporations, most of which have d … | Continue reading
NASA reached an important stepping stone to a crewed mission to the Moon today, with a successful demonstration of the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system. | Continue reading
Lake City, Florida paid out a bitcoin ransom worth $460,000 to hackers who disabled the city’s computer systems with sophisticated ransomware last month, hot on the heels of a $600,000 ransom paid out in similar circumstances by Riviera Beach, Florida just weeks later. Now, as fl … | Continue reading
Anyone who bought ebooks through the Microsoft Store is in for a rude shock in the coming days. The good news? You can get a refund. The bad news? All of your books are going to be deleted this month. | Continue reading
If you notice the ads being served to you are eerily similar to stuff you were just browsing online, it’s not all in your head, and it’s the insidious truth of existing online without installing a bunch of browser extensions. But there’s now a tool that, while comically absurd in … | Continue reading
The latest chapter of a largely behind-the-scenes encryption fight unfolded on Wednesday when Trump administration officials held a National Security Council meeting focused on the challenges and benefits of encryption, according to a report in Politico. | Continue reading
A fascinating competition to devise an efficient way of colonizing the galaxy has resulted in this beautiful—and provocative—visualization. | Continue reading
China’s mission exploring the lunar far side has now entered into its seventh lunar day, with the Chang’3 lander and Yutu 2 rover resuming activities despite a recent communication problem with a relay satellite. | Continue reading
JoAnna Wendel is a science cartoonist and writer in Washington, DC. She loves space, planets, rocks, and her cat, Pancake. You can find her work at joannawendelcomics.com and follow her on Twitter at @JoAnnaScience. | Continue reading
The Federal Communication Commission’s investigation into the unauthorized sale of Americans’ location data is now in its second year and still, no one outside of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s office knows a thing about it. On Capitol Hill, faith in his ability to properly handle these … | Continue reading
France just scored what it’s characterizing as a major victory in the battle to curb online hate speech—one that potentially carries significant implications for privacy and free speech online. | Continue reading
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station caught the spectacular eruption of the Raikoke volcano off of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula over the weekend. | Continue reading
At a preliminary Senate hearing today on the subject of potentially putting legislative limits on the persuasiveness of technology—a diplomatic way of saying the addiction model the internet uses to keep people engaged and clicking—Tristan Harris, the executive director of the Ce … | Continue reading
The most disappointing thing about the miniature Commodore 64 released last year was that its tiny keyboard didn’t actually work—it was just for show. Those cryptically labeled dirt-brown keys were one of the most iconic features of the C64 back in the ‘80s. But come December, th … | Continue reading
Researchers figured out a way to exploit the system that sends presidential emergency alerts to our phones, simulating their method on a 50,000 seat football stadium in Colorado with a 90 percent success rate. | Continue reading
The late founder of catastrophically failed Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX (QCX) “took most of the money entrusted to him by clients and spent much of it on himself and his wife,” the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report released last week by court-ordered m … | Continue reading
It’s rare to come across a bespoke gadget or a cleverly hacked device that doesn’t have a tiny Raspberry Pi inside it. It’s long been one of the easiest and cheapest ways to power a custom creation, but the new Raspberry Pi, announced earlier today, packs significant upgrades tha … | Continue reading
Canon versus Nikon. Dell versus HP. Microsoft versus Apple. Tech companies have been battling over their piece of the pie for years, that ain’t new. But recently, tech and non-tech companies alike have started changing up their business models so that instead of simply selling yo … | Continue reading
PC giant Microsoft has informed its staff not to use popular chat app and competitor Slack, adding it to a list of “prohibited and discouraged technology” comprised of software and services that it does not want employees using outside of specific circumstances, Geekwire reported … | Continue reading
The Oregon Department of Corrections [DOC] has barred inmates from reading dozens of books about technology and programming—many of which teach basic skills for many entry-level jobs. | Continue reading
The former CEO of an Anchorage-based telecom was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison after pleading guilty to defrauding New York investors of more than $270 million. | Continue reading
NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered “startlingly high amounts of methane in the Martian air” on Wednesday in what could potentially be a sign of life on the Red Planet, the New York Times reported on Saturday. | Continue reading
Even as Homeland Security officials attempted to downplay the impact of a security intrusion that reached deep into the network of a federal surveillance contractor, secret documents, handbooks, and slides concerning the nation’s border control operations are beginning to be wid … | Continue reading
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes sure is an interesting person to talk to about Facebook. | Continue reading
There are few activities that can turn the polite and civil discourse of a family gathering into a shouting match faster than a game of Monopoly. The latest edition replaces the designated banker with an intelligent, voice-activated top hat that handles all of the game’s financia … | Continue reading
A massive fire rocked an oil refinery in South Philadelphia early Friday morning, causing explosions that could be felt as far away as New Jersey, according to early news reports. No evacuations have been issued for the area, but those in neighborhoods near the blaze were ordered … | Continue reading
Plenty of people around the world, it turns out, are willing to return a stranger’s lost wallet—especially if it’s filled with cash, according to a counterintuitive study. | Continue reading
Democratic commissioners at the FCC are still in the dark when it comes the agency’s ongoing investigation into the unauthorized sale of Americans’ geolocation data, Gizmodo has learned. | Continue reading
No, it’s not you. Google Calendar really does appear to be down. Navigating to google.calendar.com will present you with a 404 error. | Continue reading
A fresh Martian crater has been detected in a stunning new image taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. | Continue reading
Every day, the Earth rotates. The Sun appears on the horizon in the morning, and then some time later, it sets. We’ve built our lives and societies around this periodicity, with days that are divided into hours, minutes, and seconds, all kept track of by clocks. But in some place … | Continue reading
Experts say it’s not a matter of if, but when a global scale pandemic will wipe out millions of people. And we are grossly unprepared for the next major outbreak. But in the event of a devastating pandemic—whether it be triggered by a mutated strain of an existing virus or a bioe … | Continue reading
The way we interact with our devices is to an increasing extent an extension of our innermost selves. It’s no wonder startups view the data gleaned from these behaviors as a window into our mental health—and the foundation for their business model. | Continue reading
Roughly 553,000 Americans are currently experiencing homelessness, according to the latest figures available from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But that doesn’t mean those people should be judged for owning technology like laptops and smartphones, no matter wha … | Continue reading
It doesn’t matter if it’s 2019 or 1319, we’re always afraid of the dangers of “technologee.” This comedy video imagines Black Mirror in ye olden times—when it was less about the dangers of smartphones or virtual reality, and more about “holy shite, puteth down thine book!” | Continue reading
Amazon has rapidly expanded its internal shipping services as the company shifts toward one-day delivery shipping from its default two-day shipping service. The company is pledging to spend $800 million this quarter to achieve one-day delivery as the default shipping option for a … | Continue reading
AMD has been leading Intel into a friendly rivalry based on the number of cores one can pack into a CPU, and it’s been all fun and games for the last two years as each has fought to overwhelm the other with the sheer number of cores. Yet Wccftech claims that AMD is planning a mon … | Continue reading
LinkedIn might be where you go to find jobs, but it’s also apparently where spies lurk. Experts are now saying they’ve found an instance where a spy used an AI-generated face to connect with targets, according to a report from the Associated Press. | Continue reading
People like to fuck with Uber self-driving cars, according to an executive leading the autonomous program. | Continue reading
Spain’s data protection agency has fined La Liga, the nation’s top professional soccer league, 250,000 euros ($283,000 USD) for using the league’s phone app to spy on its fans. With millions of downloads, the app was reportedly being used to surveil bars in an effort to catch est … | Continue reading
It won’t be long before smartphones ditch every last physical button, but is that necessarily a good thing? Fewer components in a device means more profit for manufacturers, but users are left having to learn awkward touchscreen gestures to compensate. Researchers at Columbia Uni … | Continue reading