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Tech NewsGadgets
You Can Upgrade This Star Wars Death Star PC Case With a Superlaser Video Projector
If there’s not a fancy, over-tuned car in your driveway, there’s a good chance there’s a fancy, over-tuned gaming PC sitting on your desk. The beige PC boxes of the ‘80s are long gone, now replaced with cases adorned with blinking lights, LCD screens, and exotic shapes—including one now shaped like the ultimate power that … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Slack Resetting Thousands of User Passwords After Learning 2015 Breach Was Worse Than Previously Known
Slack is resetting roughly 100,000 user passwords for accounts that were active in 2015. The company has only recently learned that an old security breach from four years ago was perhaps worse than previously thought. The news, first reported by ZD Net and confirmed by Slack in an announcement on its website, will only affect … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Senator Finally Demands FBI Probe of Faceboo… Er, FaceApp?
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has officially joined the chorus of people concerned about what FaceApp is really up to. The app has been offering creepy selfie-altering filters for two and a half years. It’s gone viral before, mostly when the public catches light of its offensive features—like the “ethnicity change” filter and a skin-lightening … Continued
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Tech NewsNews
Amazon Prime Day Glitch Let People Buy $13,000 Camera Gear for $94
If you’ve been bragging to your friends about the excellent deal you scored during Amazon’s Prime Day stunt, don’t. There’s little chance you did as well as many members of the Slickdeals forum did. Thanks to an error on Amazon’s website, several of them were able to score some very expensive photography gear—including lenses and … Continued
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Tech News
What’s the Best Airplane Snack?
Flying is objectively horrible. We let the magic of heavier-than-air transport cloud the fact that we pay hundreds of dollars to be squeezed into spaces too small for comfort so we can be treated like shit and spew greenhouse gas into the sky. Unless we’re rich or flying across the world, we usually don’t even … Continued
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Tech NewsNews
Top Searches on Merriam-Webster Include ‘Fascism’ and ‘Racism’ After President Trump’s Latest Rally
Donald Trump held another neo-fascist rally yesterday in North Carolina, where the crowd chanted things like “treason,” “traitor,” and “send her back,” while the president talked about Democratic members of Congress, including Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Online dictionary searches in the U.S. from last night show just how bad things have gotten. Merriam-Webster reports … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Google Yanks Seven Stalkerware Apps Discovered by Security Researchers From the Play Store
Google has yanked several apps from its Play Store after cybersecurity firm Avast identified them as “all likely designed by a Russian developer to allow people to stalk employees, romantic partners, or kids,” CNET reported on Wednesday. The seven apps—listed as Track Employees Check Work Phone Online Spy Free, Spy Kids Tracker, Phone Cell Tracker, … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsAmazon
Report: Amazon Facing Antitrust Probe in the EU Over Its Use of Marketplace Merchant Data
The European Union is planning an antitrust investigation into e-commerce giant Amazon over its treatment of third-party merchants that rely on the company’s marketplace to sell goods, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. According to the Journal, the EU investigation follows a settlement between Amazon and authorities in Germany on third-party merchants that resulted … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsNews
Netflix Is Bleeding Customers for the First Time In Years
Netflix, our collective trash heap of mostly unwatched or unwanted content, would like you to know that despite a tidal wave of speculation that it’s not going to start serving you up ads. The stock market darling is suddenly losing subscribers and executives appear to be a little touchy about it. Halfway through its disastrous … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsNews
Ebola Outbreak Declared a Public Health Emergency by World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced this week that it has elected to declare the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern,” a decision that comes nearly a year after the outbreak was first declared and after the infection of thousands of people. The declaration was made … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsTech Policy
Congress Is One Step Closer to Sticking It to Robocallers
A comprehensive robocall-fighting piece of legislation—that would help stop the robocall scourge and prevent American consumers from paying for blocking tools—is finally slated for a U.S. House of Representatives vote On Wednesday morning the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously to report the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, as amended, to the full House. The … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Oakland Becomes Third U.S. City to Ban Government Use of Face Recognition Tech
On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to ban the use of facial recognition technology by the city, including its police force. It’s the third ban of the tech by a U.S. city since May. San Francisco was the first to ban city use of facial recognition tech, followed by Somerville, Massachusetts. Now, Oakland … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Mozilla’s Tweaking Firefox’s Password Manager to Tell You When Saved Logins Have Been Stolen
You can’t spend hours combing through archives of breached data to see if your login credentials were leaked, so Mozilla’s rebranded in-browser password manager, Lockwise, will soon notify users if their saved usernames or passwords were exposed in a data breach, and recommend that they change them. Mozilla’s feature, pointed out by TechDow based on … Continued
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Tech News
Just When I Thought Twitter Did Something Good
Like approximately 126 million other people, I willingly plunge my brain into the sewer that is Twitter every morning, expecting varying levels of awfulness until I surface around 6 or 7 pm from a platform that’s unwilling or unable to improve its user experience in any meaningful way. Call it an occupational hazard. Imagine my … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
FaceApp Probably Won’t Destroy Society, But the Privacy Trade-Off Is Still Shady as Hell
As our lives are increasingly lived online, what seems like an innocuous (or even silly) digital act can end up having serious privacy consequences. It’s a bleak reality that many are confronting once again thanks to a face-morphing app that ages the photos of users—who probably don’t know they have signed away the rights to … Continued
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Tech NewsFacebook
Congressman to Facebook: Your Digital Currency Could Be Worse Than 9-11
Facebook’s new digital currency, Libra, has the potential to be worse than the September 11th attacks. At least that’s what Democratic Congressman Dril (sorry, Congressman Brad Sherman) of California said today at a House Committee on Financial Services Hearing in Washington, D.C. Sherman tore into Facebook executive David Marcus and didn’t even bother asking him … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsNews
The Flame-Throwing Drone Attachment of Your Nightmares Is Real (And for Sale)
There was a time in our not-too-distant past when the idea of a personally piloted object that spits fire would seem totally batshit insane—in fact, it still seems batshit insane. But makeshift flame-throwing drones have been around for a minute, and now, you can purchase one of your very own. Capitalizing on this unique opportunity … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
Data of Nearly Every Adult in Bulgaria Likely Stolen in Cyberattack
Someone stole the personal and financial information of millions of Bulgarian taxpayers—likely the majority of the adult population. Bulgaria police head of cybersecurity Yavor Kolev said on Wednesday an unidentified 20-year-old cybersecurity worker was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of involvement in a hack that took taxpayer sensitive data, according to a Reuters report. The … Continued
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Tech News
This 1960s Comic Strip Claimed Nuclear Explosions Were the Future of Road Construction
Nuclear weapons can wipe out an entire city in the blink of an eye, but what about all the good they can do? That was the pitch from this 1965 comic strip that extolled the virtues of nuclear bombs to build everything from highways to a “second Panama canal.” Americans of the 1950s and ‘60s … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Ford Secretly Created the New Pickup Truck Emoji Because Nothing Is Sacred
July 17 is World Emoji Day, a fake but harmless holiday created by the founder of Emojipedia. To celebrate this year, Ford slyly revealed that it has succeeded in surreptitiously creating the pickup emoji. The company hired a marketing firm and a technology agency to pitch the Unicode Consortium of the pickup truck emoji concept. Unicode … Continued