There’s a new Echo in town. The Echo Show 5 is a smart display with a 5.5-inch screen scheduled for a June 26 release, and it’s the first Echo device with a physical shutter to cover the onboard camera. With this release, Amazon is also making some changes to how all Echos treat … | Continue reading
Physicists have confirmed predictions of Stephen Hawking’s namesake theory of black holes using a black hole they constructed in their lab, according to a new paper. | Continue reading
There’s a certain patience required for studying sticky tape. Sure, sometimes experiments require peeling, but other times, researchers must simply sit around and wait for the adhesive to fail. These experiments are bringing scientists closer to something that doesn’t yet exist: … | Continue reading
A used Samsung NC10 costs less than $200. But a used Samsung NC10 with six of the most dangerous types of malware is apparently worth $1.345 million—so long as it’s art. | Continue reading
One man’s hot tea habit turned out to be much less relaxing than he hoped, according to his doctors. An 84-year-old Canadian ended up in the emergency department with a serious case of high blood pressure, headache, and chest pain, with the only likely cause of his symptoms being … | Continue reading
It certainly seems like the world of streaming video entered a new epoch recently. Last week, Comcast finally handed the reigns of Hulu over to Disney, which means the company will have not only the impending Disney+ streaming service but also a live TV service that competes with … | Continue reading
A satellite tracker in the Netherlands has captured stunning video of dozens of SpaceX Starlink satellites passing overhead. Launched together late last week, the chain of satellites looked like a giant, brightly lit train chugging away in the night sky—a rare sight that understa … | Continue reading
Several million records said to include bank account details, Social Security digits, wire transactions, and other mortgage paperwork, were found publicly accessible on the server of a major U.S. financial service company. | Continue reading
Apple is on the verge of perfecting the low profile keyboard, and so far, it’s only taken them three tries and an endless repair program to get here. The fourth attempt can be seen in the latest version of the MacBook Pro, which our friends at iFixit recently tore down. The key d … | Continue reading
Nancy Pelosi, the 79-year-old speaker of the House of Representatives, has been a frequent target for President Donald Trump and his political allies. This week, she became the subject of an unusual viral video intentionally slowed down to create the impression of slurred speech, … | Continue reading
Using ground-penetrating radar, scientists detected a massive reservoir of frozen water sandwiched by layers of sand beneath the northern polar ice cap on Mars. This reservoir contains so much ice that, if melted and brought to the surface, it would submerge the entire planet. | Continue reading
The Food and Drug Administration is going after food waste with a new effort to make sure we don’t throw out groceries until they’re absolutely inedible. | Continue reading
Two years ago exactly, someone began hacking Equifax. Today, it’s starting to feel some pain. | Continue reading
With conventional medicines in short supply during the Civil War, the Confederacy turned to plant-based alternatives in desperation. New research suggests some of these remedies were actually quite good at fighting off infections—a finding that could lead to effective new drugs. | Continue reading
The not-quite human voice that emanates from your phone or GPS or other device is, more often than not, female. It's an obvious pattern, and one that many have claimed has a simple technical explanation: Female voices are easier to understand. The only problem is that it' … | Continue reading
If you’ve always dreamed of having a low-maintenance, vaguely dog-shaped companion, well, you’re in luck. A group of undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford University have just unveiled Doggo, a relatively cheap, light, four-legged robot with the bouncing ability of a ty … | Continue reading
In January 2019, when China Central Television, the largest broadcast network in the most populous nation in the world, aired a special to celebrate the Lunar New Year, the hosts welcomed four life-sized “personal artificial intelligences” to share the stage with them. Called PAI … | Continue reading
Despite policies that prohibit the manipulation of rideshare apps, drivers for Uber and Lyft are reportedly working together to coordinate price surges at Reagan National Airport to earn a higher fare. | Continue reading
A good chunk of regular coffee drinkers know that coffee isn’t just great at getting them awake in the morning—it also makes them get up and go poop. But while coffee’s laxative powers are well-known, it’s not clear why exactly this happens. To get to the bottom of this mystery, … | Continue reading
Organized crime is famously good at exploiting time-sensitive industries like construction, fishing, and—of course—garbage removal. But revelations about millions of tons of toxic waste buried haphazardly and illegally by the mob are causing an uproar in southern Italy, where can … | Continue reading
A university in the United Kingdom is backpedaling after publishing an article claiming that one of their scientists helped crack the famously indecipherable Voynich manuscript, according to a statement. | Continue reading
A U.S. government-led trial may confirm the worst fears of anyone whose diet starts and ends in the frozen food aisle. It suggests that people who mostly eat ultra-processed foods will take in more calories and gain more weight than those who stick to mostly unprocessed foods—eve … | Continue reading
Outpacing the New York Stock Exchange’s losses on another rocky day of trading, Uber’s disappointing IPO is becoming disastrous, falling an additional 10.8 percent in its second day as a public company. | Continue reading
Elon Musk is a busy guy, and the latest project on his plate involves launching 60 satellites into space tomorrow. The launch is part of his company SpaceX’s Starlink plan—an ambitious attempt to bring high-speed, low-latency internet to anyone in the world. | Continue reading
Symantec and Trend Micro are two of the three top U.S. antivirus companies that a group of Russian-speaking hackers claim to have compromised, Gizmodo has confirmed. | Continue reading
A study published today in Science Advances comparing pre- and post-rideshare boom traffic in San Fransisco found that the presence of Uber, Lyft, and similar companies has been an overall detriment for people who like getting where they’re going quickly. | Continue reading
This glorious Monday comes with two interesting tidbits for gadget lovers. First off, Amazon reportedly hasn’t ruled out launching another smartphone despite the debacle of its first attempt, the Fire Phone. Second, a CNET interview with Google’s Pixel team lead Mario Queiroz rev … | Continue reading
Have you dreamed about this man comforting or befriending you over the past five years? Then you are one of thousands across the world who have dreamed "this man." And they have a website to describe their experiences. | Continue reading
Tech activists continue to organize and win across many of the industry’s biggest firms—and increasingly the online spaces tech workers gather are becoming battlegrounds in their own right. Take Palantir’s Github page this morning, for example: Starting around 10am ET, concerned … | Continue reading
Rideshare unicorn Uber doesn’t do anything small. When it was in the game of raising money, it raised close to $25 billion. When it loses that money—and it does every single quarter—it loses it at astronomical burn rates. It finally debuted on the New York Stock Exchange today, i … | Continue reading
Helium is an essential chemical element used in MRI scanners, rocket fuel tanks, and floating party balloons. It’s also a finite natural resource, and a global shortage has made it harder to sell balloons at Party City, which is now closing 45 stores. | Continue reading
Over the last few months, we’ve spoken with laptop makers, gamers, and historians to get a better understanding of the gamer aesthetic. You know what I’m talking about: Blinking lights and sharp angles. Computers that look like they fell off an alien spaceship. Crucially, we want … | Continue reading
Humans evolved from a group of ape-like hominins known as Australopithecine, but scientists aren’t such which species is our direct ancestor. A new statistical analysis has found it highly unlikely that one particular candidate, Australopithecus sediba, is ancestral to humans—a f … | Continue reading
There’s more bad news for all you bleeding edge early adopters hoping to have one of the first folding smartphones to show off to friends. The Galaxy Fold has not only missed its original ship date, in a recent letter to those who pre-ordered the $1,980 device, Samsung now seems … | Continue reading
If your Firefox add-ons were borked over the weekend, you’re not alone. Late on Friday, many Firefox users found that many extensions were suddenly useless or impossible to install after Mozilla pushed out an update to version 66.0.4 of its browser. Effectively, it left many user … | Continue reading
When Adobe switched from a flat price for its software products and updates to a subscription model a few years ago, many worried it could be used to discreetly introduce dramatic price increases down the road. Adobe claimed this wouldn’t be the case, but this week some users dis … | Continue reading
After weeks of speculation, SpaceX has finally admitted that a Crew Dragon capsule was destroyed during a test of system’s abort thrusters on April 20. No cause was given for the anomaly, nor were any new details disclosed about possible delays to NASA’s languishing Commercial Cr … | Continue reading
Police from around the world shut down the biggest active black market on the dark web this month, according to announcements from law enforcement agencies in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands released on Friday. | Continue reading
Amazon recently came under fire when the Verge revealed it used a system that automatically determines the productivity levels of its warehouse workforce, and terminates laggards if they’re too slow to move packages. It was yet another sign that automation was taking over at the … | Continue reading
You’ve heard it before: In space, no one can hear you scream. That’s because sound doesn’t move through a vacuum, and everyone knows that space is a vacuum. The thing is, that’s not completely true. | Continue reading
Norwegian fishermen discovered a beluga whale wearing a harness off the country’s northern coast last week. The fishermen were fascinated with how tame it was, but there might be a good reason that it was comfortable around humans. Scientists from Norway’s Institute of Marine Res … | Continue reading
Facebook’s F8 conference is currently underway, which means that Mark Zuckerberg’s company will attempt to rebrand itself as new and improved following its absolute shitshow of a year in 2018. Also: privacy, I guess. | Continue reading
Robotics company Anki, the manufacturer of an adorable line of tiny home robots like Cozmo and its bigger brother, the $250 Vector, has unexpectedly and abruptly folded, Recode reported on Monday. | Continue reading
Scientists have good reason to believe that so-called water worlds—exoplanets with surfaces covered entirely by a single gigantic ocean—are common in the galaxy. But a new computer simulation suggests that not only are water worlds prevalent, they’re also teeming with water—and a … | Continue reading
You may not know it, but your iPhone—if an iPhone 8 or later—is capable of much faster charging. The only problem is, Apple doesn’t give you the stuff necessary for it. But a new rumor claims that could be changing, and it should. | Continue reading
This week, I read through a history of everything I’ve said to Alexa, and it felt a little bit like reading an old diary. Until I remembered that the things I’ve told Alexa in private are stored on an Amazon server and have possibly been read by an Amazon employee. This is all to … | Continue reading
It’s unclear if there is one mysterious Hamburglar hacker or multiple scammers, but for months, users of the Canadian McDonald’s app, “My McD’s,” have been complaining about someone gaining access to their accounts to fuel their feeding frenzies. | Continue reading
Apple poached Intel’s lead developer for 5G phone modems, Umashankar Thyagarajan, in February—just weeks before it buried the hatchet with rival chip supplier Qualcomm this April, according to a report in the Telegraph on Sunday. | Continue reading