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Tech NewsSeeing One of the Rarest Apple Devices In Action Will Make You Really Appreciate Your iPhone
For every device that a company reveals and releases, there are probably 10 that never escape the R&D lab. Sonny Dickson, who has a solid track record of leaking things Apple doesn’t want the world to see, managed to get his hands on a working prototype of the Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone (or WALT, for … Continued
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Tech NewsTech PolicySenators Introduce Bill to Stop ‘Dark Patterns’ Huge Platforms Use to Trick Users
Senators Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) have introduced legislation to ban so-called “dark patterns” tactics designed to trick users into handing over access to their data, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Dark patterns, a term first popularized by the website darkpatterns.org, describe everything from UI elements to technical tricks designed to lure users into … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsYouTube Has Plans for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Shows—But Don’t Expect Bandersnatch
Well, folks, it appears the inevitable choose-your-own-adventure-style YouTube programming may soon be coming to a channel near you. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that YouTube will designate a new team to the interactive programming. This is, as you might have guessed, a money-making initiative that Bloomberg said is intended to boost views and ad revenue for the … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsMicrosoft Claims Nearly Half of People in the U.S. Don’t Use the Internet at Broadband Speeds
Tomorrow the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to better examine the state of broadband maps in the U.S. These maps currently suggest just 25 million Americans are without access to broadband internet, which is defined as speeds of 25Mbps. But according to numbers released by Microsoft today, 162.8 million people don’t use broadband … Continued
By Alex Cranz -
Tech NewsThe First Machine-Generated Book by a Scholarly Publisher Is a Boring Read
Amazon’s online book store is plagued with thousands of auto-generated ebooks crudely hacked together from other texts by shady authors” looking to make a quick buck. Most are unreadable, but it’s not always going to be that way. Springer Nature, a publisher serving the research community, just published its first book that was generated by … Continued
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Tech NewsYou Can Soon Create and Edit Google Files in Dropbox
Dropbox has finally delivered on a long-awaited partnership with G Suite for native editing tools, and it definitely seems like it was worth the wait. Dropbox Group Product Manager Josh Kaplan said in a blog post on Tuesday that the open beta—for now available only to Dropbox Business teams—allows a whole host of functions, including … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsThat Viral Story About Selfie-Takers on a Thai Beach ‘Facing the Death Penalty’ Is Totally Fake
Recently, you may have seen news stories claiming that tourists could “face the death penalty” for taking selfies on a certain beach in Thailand—which we can all agree is a little bit extreme. Thankfully, those claims are totally fake. This week, a flurry of fear-mongering reports came out warning that taking a photo on Mai Khao … Continued
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Tech NewsApple Music Censors Songs in China Referencing 1989 Tiananmen Massacre and Democracy, Watchdog Says
Apple needs China. But it comes at a cost. More than just the place where much of the company’s hardware is built, China is the biggest market in the world, and it’s the third-largest market for Apple. While other big American tech firms have limited their operations in China at least in part to avoid … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityHacker Gets Six Years in Jail for Blackmailing Porn Site Visitors
A former computer science student who used the moniker K!NG and made more than $900,000 scamming visitors to legal porn sites using ransomware has been sentenced to six years in jail, the BBC reports. Zain Qaiser is now 24, but authorities say most of his hacking activity took place when he was 17 through 19, … Continued
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Tech NewsYouTube Shuts Down Chats After Streams of House Hearing on White Nationalism Are Flooded by White Nationalists
YouTube shut down numerous chat rooms being flooded for over an hour by racist comments when thousands of people tuned into YouTube on Tuesday to watch a House Judiciary Committee congressional hearing on the rise of white nationalism. The hearings featured officials from Facebook and YouTube, two platforms that have been under fire for their … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsQualcomm’s New Mobile Chip Promises to Cut Back on Annoying Gaming Hiccups
If you’ve dabbled in mobile gaming, particularly more resource intensive titles like one of the many battle royale games out there, you know jank. It’s the slight hiccup, frame skip, or graphics lag that can sometimes mean the difference between an early exit and a chicken dinner (or perhaps a victory royale). But on the … Continued
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Tech NewsEven Random Paint Splatters Can Be Valid Computer Code (If You’re Using Perl)
As technology becomes more central to our lives, kids are increasingly being steered towards careers in programming with things like toys that promote coding. Is there still room for the arts in a world run by apps, AI, and computers? It turns out there might be a closer connection between the two than you’d think, … Continued
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Tech NewsWill Apple Just Kill iTunes Already?
People have been complaining about iTunes for ages. The bloated and confusingly arcane piece of software has been updated and repurposed and jerry-rigged to handle new tasks for the past 18 years, and one developer says it won’t live to see its 19th birthday. It looks like Apple is finally about to kill iTunes and … Continued
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Tech NewsLaw and Order Are the Only Things Standing Between Us and NCAA Fans With Flaming Lime Scooters
I don’t consider myself anything close to a sports fan, but even I understand that the Lord of the Flies-level chaos that transpired following Texas Tech’s victory over Michigan State on Saturday is remarkable if for no other reason than the bonfire of flaming Lime scooters. Video shared to Facebook and Twitter following Saturday’s NCAA … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsAlphabet’s Wing Lands ‘World-First’ Approval for Drone Deliveries of Food and Medicine in Australia
Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has approved Project Wing’s plans for drone delivery of food and medicine in suburbs around the capital city of Canberra, a “world-first,” according to a new report by the Guardian. Project Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, has been testing self-flying delivery drones in Australia for over … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsTwitter Limits Number of Accounts You Can Follow in a Day to Still Nightmarish 400
Spammers on Twitter are annoying. That’s why Twitter is thwarting one their most obnoxious tactics by further slashing the number of people you can follow per day from 1,000 to… 400. Basically, the site says it’s trying to limit a practice called “follower churn,” or when an account will follow and then unfollow a large … Continued
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Tech NewsPoliticsDevin Nunes’ Lawyers Falsely Claim Reporter Bolded ‘Cocaine’ and ‘Woman’ in Tweet to Be Extra Mean
California Representative Devin Nunes, one of the president’s biggest yes-men in Congress and recent filer of a lawsuit against Twitter and several of its users, including the account @DevinCow and Republican strategist Liz Mair, over mean things said about him has launched yet another lawsuit. This one again targets Mair, as well as the McClatchy Company, … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityUSB Drive Found on Jailed Mar-a-Lago Party-Crasher Contained Self-Executing Code
New details are starting to trickle in about the Chinese woman arrested while carrying a suspicious number of electronic devices and trying to get inside President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club—among them that a USB drive in her possession began to auto-install files on a Secret Service agent’s computer the minute they plugged it in. … Continued
By Dell Cameron -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityChelsea Manning’s FBI Files Are Central to Ongoing Criminal Proceedings, Bureau Claims
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is refusing to make public any records it has amassed on whistleblower Chelsea Manning, even though the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst waived her rights under the Privacy Act and requested in a letter that her more-than-8,000 page file be released. In response to a Freedom of Information/Privacy Act request, … Continued
By Dell Cameron -
Tech NewsCommerceEven Greed Can’t Excuse Amazon’s Atrocious Prime Member Shopping Horoscopes
It appears not even our goddamn horoscopes are free from the targeted marketing of Jeff Bezos and his e-commerce monstrosity Amazon. According to Fast Company, the company has been shipping monthly horoscopes to its Prime members in its Insider newsletter. Its horoscopes program—let’s just call it what it is, shall we?—has evidently been live for … Continued
By Catie Keck