Tech NewsGadgets

ZTE Dumps All Its Execs to Appease U.S. Regulators

With ZTE currently operating on a lifeline in the form of a temporary reprieve from the company’s seven-year ban on purchasing components made by U.S. companies, there’s absolutely no room for any sort of messing about. So, in the latest rush to comply with U.S. regulators, after dumping its entire C-suite including the company’s CEO, … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Revenge Porn Offenders to Face Harsh Punishment Under New UK Guidelines

The council tasked with ensuring consistency in criminal sentences in England and Wales has provided instruction on how courts should handle revenge porn cases: harshly. The Sentencing Council published on Thursday new guidelines on how courts should handle perpetrators who non-consensually share photos of their ex-partners. It’s the first time the committee has addressed the … Continued

Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence

MIT’s New AI-Powered Software Can Extract Individual Instruments From Videos With a Single Click

An instructor of mine once compared mixing a song to baking a cake. The various tracks are the ingredients, and once everything is mixed and baked, as with a cake, those ingredients can’t be deconstructed. Or can they? AI researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have created an app that can isolate … Continued

Tech NewsNews

California’s Strong Net Neutrality Bill Is Back

It’s been a roller-coaster ride for one California lawmaker over the past month as he’s tried to push a comprehensive net neutrality bill through the state’s legislature. In mid-June, it seemed as if Sen. Scott Wiener’s bill, S.B. 822, would get watered down once it combined with another bill introduced by a colleague. Days later, … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Sydney Airport Kicks Off Test to Replace IDs With Facial Recognition

This week, some passengers traveling through the international airport in Sydney, Australia will be the first guinea pigs in a program that intends to replace the passport with facial scans. The check-in process may surely become less of a headache, but at what price? Select passengers flying with Qantas Airways will have the chance to … Continued

Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence

My 15 Favorite Science and Tech Books for Smart Beach Reading

Summer is finally upon us, which means it’s time to put together a reading list, whether it’s for the beach, your cottage, or the hammock in your backyard. Here are 15 science and technology books that will keep your nerdy brains engaged and titillated. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook Says It’s Sorry for Removing a Part of the Declaration of Independence That Includes a Racial Slur

The Vindicator, a news outlet in Liberty, Texas, wanted to help its followers read the entire U.S. Declaration of Independence before the Fourth of July, so it posted excerpts on its Facebook page. But something in one of the most significant documents in modern history triggered Facebook’s filters. The outlet broke the Declaration up into … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Hacking Firm’s Ex-Employee Made Off With Menacing Spy Tools, Israel Says

Israeli hacking firm NSO Group is mostly known for peddling top-shelf malware capable of remotely cracking into iPhones. But according to Israeli authorities, the company’s invasive mobile spy tools could have wound up in the hands of someone equally, if not far more, devious than its typical government clients. A 38-year-old former NSO employee has … Continued

Tech News

Are You Ready for Even More Expensive Netflix Options? [Update]

Netflix is reportedly testing a new “Ultra” pricing tier that gives potential subscribers access to 4K “Ultra HD” and HDR streaming. Unfortunately, with this new tier Premium subscribers might be getting the short end of the stick, having some of their perks removed in the process, according to Italian smartphone site Tutto Android. Today, Premium-tier … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Threat of Heavy Rains Could Force Emergency Evacuation of Boys Trapped in Thai Cave

As 12 boys and their soccer coach wait to be rescued from a submerged cave in northern Thailand, officials may be forced into action due to expected heavy rains in the coming days. The situation is grave, given a medical assessment claiming the boys and coach are too weak to attempt such a physically demanding … Continued

Tech News

I’m in Awe of This Four-Foot Nerf Bazooka That Fires Pool Noodle Rockets

In recent years, Nerf has added some gigantic blasters to its lineup, at times necessitating the need for a shoulder strap. But they still can’t compare to one of YouTube’s Ryan & David’s recent creations: a four-foot long custom-built bazooka that fires oversized darts made from pool noodles. It’s reminiscent of Mark Rober’s world’s biggest Nerf … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Europe Decides Not to Ruin the Internet

On Thursday, members of European Parliament held a vote on the misguided new copyright reforms that posed a threat to memes, online encyclopedias, news organizations, and pretty much everything that’s good online. Incredibly, lawmakers decided not to do the dumb thing and voted down the bill. It’s not over yet, but there’s plenty of reason … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Apple Rumored to Make iPhones Colorful Again

About a month ago, rumors leaked that Apple was testing green and purple paint jobs for the next batch of iPhones, and while it seemed like a stretch, new info from noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has now added a bit more credibility to the idea that a bunch of brightly color iPhones might be … Continued

Tech News

This Solar Lawnmower Was the Dangerous Future of American Summers in 1959

Robotic lawnmowers are fairly mainstream these days, even if they don’t have much market share yet. But they’ve been a long time coming. We’ve been promised solar-powered semi-autonomous lawnmowers for decades. This Sunday comic strip from 1959 predicted the rise of these machines, but also pointed at the problem with its illustration: Many people are … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

How to Avoid Getting Screwed by a Sneaky Tech Support Scam

Tech support scams, obviously shady though they might seem to some, continueto catch more and more people—Microsoft says the number of reported cases is on the rise, while in March the U.S Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said it logged 11,000 complaints last year, a rise of 86 percent over 2016. The claimed losses amounted … Continued

Tech News

The Best ‘Streaming’ Service of All Is Your Local Library

Faced with a seemingly infinite number of media subscription services, it is sometimes necessary for the modern content consumer to ask which ones are actually worth it and which ones are basically a scam monetizing our collective need for distraction and stimulation. “Do I really need Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Amazon Video and the Basque-language animated … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Kim Dotcom Is Almost Entirely Out of Chances to Avoid Being Extradited to the US

Kim Dotcom, the former founder of defunct file hosting service Megaupload and its successor Mega, just lost another court battle to avoid extradition to the US on charges of copyright infringement and fraud. Per the BBC, Dotcom lost an appeals court decision on Wednesday in New Zealand, where he has lived since 2008 and was … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

Report: Amazon May Prey on Your Toys ‘R’ Us Catalog Nostalgia By Mailing You Its Own

E-commerce giant Amazon, which remains determined to cannibalize what’s left of the brick-and-mortar competitors it helped kill off, may be making a move on the turf formerly occupied by bankrupt retail chain Toys “R” Us with plans to distribute a holiday toy catalog. According to Bloomberg, though people familiar with the plan were light on … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

British Counter-Terrorism Officials Are Investigating Two More Novichok Poisonings

Neil Basu, Britain’s top counter-terrorism official, announced on Wednesday evening that a couple poisoned in the county of Wiltshire appear to have been exposed to Novichok, the Soviet-era nerve agent behind the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury earlier this year. According to the Guardian, authorities first believed … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook Called Itself a ‘Publisher’ in Court After Repeatedly Rejecting the Label in Public

For years, Facebook has insisted that it isn’t a publisher or media company but rather is just a platform. That position appears to have changed in a recent court appearance. The Guardian pointed out the social media giant’s legal defense referred to it as a publisher to bolster its case in a lawsuit. The shift … Continued