Rest easy, fellow humans; robots probably aren’t going to enslave or eliminate humans for at least another decade or so. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last week, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt downplayed the popular doomsday scenario, stating: Everyone immediately then wants to talk about all the...
Vegan wool sounds like an oxymoron. But designer Stella McCartney believes we might soon be wearing sweaters made of the stuff. She’s partnering with PETA and investment firm Stray Dog Capital to launch a biodesign challenge for college students throughout the United States. This year the competition will...
Now that the Barack and Michelle Obama's official portraits have been unveiled, they hang in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. for all to enjoy. While many may have assumed there would be nothing more powerful than seeing the portraits themselves, it turns out seeing a child gaze...
In 2014, Tashfeen Malik's family in Pakistan started to worry about her Facebook posts. It was the religious extremism that concerned them, a family member told the Los Angeles Times. A year later, Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, declared their allegiance to ISIS on social media. Then they killed 14...
Facebook COO Sandberg spoke to Re/code’s Kara Swisher today at the Lesbians Who Tech conference in San Francisco. and surprised some in the audience with her thoughts on #MeToo. “We need a world where women don’t get harassed,” she said. “But that is not enough.” Male...
Shift founder George Arison has hired tech talent from Facebook, Google, and other Silicon Valley giants by sticking to these seven rules. As the founder and co-CEO of an en engineering-driven transportation company, most people wrongly assume I’m a car nut or an engineer. It’s an understandable error....
Geoffroy de Reynal is an engineer who designed waterproof shelters, which are made of polyethylene foam and aluminum foil. His invention intends to tackle the high rates of homelessness in urban centers like Paris and help those who are most vulnerable when temperatures drop drastically. Read more...More about...
The minute hand on the robot apocalypse clock just inched a little closer to midnight. DeepMind, the Google sister-company responsible for the smartest AI on the planet, just taught machines how to figure things out for themselves. Robots aren’t very good at exploring on their own. AI that only exists to parse data,...
The last few decades have witnessed the rise of people who made their fortunes off the internet. Some of these enterprising individuals built companies from an initial idea to global behemoths worth billions, while others became rich by investing in the stocks of internet-driven firms such as Amazon, Google, and...
Jinni is a curious little device that combines the Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri (iPhone only) smart assistants into one small black box, paired to your phone by Bluetooth. When you want to access an assistant, pull Jinni out of your pocket, hold your finger on the appropriate button and off you go. Thanks to the...
Google has added a new tool to its Google Music Labs effort, called Song Maker. As you’ve probably figured out, Song Maker allows you to make songs. Everything happens in the browser. You’re able to define a sequence of notes from a chessboard of sounds, and Song Maker loops over them repeatedly. Think of it as a...
Image files for icons representing unreleased “call” and “video call” features in the app have been uncovered, reports TechCrunch. The icon files were discovered in the APK file of the most recent Instagram Android app. This suggests Instagram is getting ready to launch voice and video...
A startup called Cover is smoothing the process of building backyard homes by helping with the permitting, design, and construction. If you live in Los Angeles, a new digital tool will tell you if you can build a small second house in your backyard, and how much it might cost. It’s a solution that the...
And they just awarded Lockheed Martin $150 million to make their wish a reality, reports Bloomberg. The Navy is becoming increasingly concerned that enemies could use small drones to surveil their ships or even attack them, which is why it wants Lockheed to develop the “directed-energy” (aka laser gun)...
Just a week after the Finnish game maker and animation studio announced its profit warning, the company has now announced that its head of games, Wilhelm Taht, will be leaving effective immediately, reports Reuters. For now, it doesn’t appear that Taht’s departure and Rovio’s profit warning are...
The EU isn’t exactly know for its litheness or its ability to relate to young people, being the massive and cumbersome governmental institution it is. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this tweet the other day: 🇪🇺🇨🇱 #EUtrade transparency at work: We’ve published our negotiating...
TechCrunch reports that Instagram’s Android APK includes icons for an interface that would allow audio and video calls, indicating that the service might soon make those features available. That’s Instagram mimicking Snapchat again, and it seems to me like it’s copying this functionality at the risk of diluting...
Facebook is again under fire over policies meant to curb adult content in ads. The company has recently faced scrutiny for scattershot enforcement of its own rules, seemingly penalizing women for showing skin that men get away with. Several people reported to the New York Times that they’d had pictures taken down or...
One of the largest changes to Facebook’s News Feed in recent years is finally getting the axe it deserves. Last October, The Guardian first reported that Facebook intended to split its algorithmic News Feed into two: one for non-promoted posts from Pages and publishers (called “Explore”), and one for your...
YouTube will likely incur the wrath of people who think diversity is a four-letter word in the wake of a lawsuit that accuses the streaming giant of limiting its hiring of white and Asian men as a way to ensure more diversity. The Wall Street Journal writes that Google-owned YouTube is being sued by former...
Facebook has rolled out yet another update that has users worrying about their privacy: face recognition. Luckily, there's an easy way to turn the feature off for good. Here's how. Read more...More about Facebook, Iphone, Privacy, Security, and Mashable Video
It’s never been easier to find a partner who sucks at picking passwords as bad as you do. Words of Heart is a dating site that will match you to other people who use the same password you do. It’s also not a real thing. I mean, it is. But it’s also not. The site works as intended, and does indeed pair you to...
How might you describe—and measure—the “collective health” of your conversations on Twitter? Jack Dorsey wants to know: We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards...
Facebook has announced that it’s getting rid of its “Explore” feed. What is this “Explore” feed? you may ask. And indeed that question proves why the social network is getting rid of it. Explore was meant to create another feed for all content from publishers and companies. The...
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