Twitter bots have been around for almost as long as Twitter itself, and plenty of them are funny, provocative, or downright useful. But just like everything else online, there’s a dark side to the world of Twitter bots, as a recent report from The New York Times made clear.
A typical medication abortion involves two doses of pills. The first, mifepristone, blocks a hormone that the embryo or fetus needs to grow and thrive. The second, misoprostol, triggers the uterus to expel its contents. But there is a growing political movement to get people who have taken the first drug to undergo an…
Hundreds of Surface Pro 4 owners have been complaining about screen flickering issues on their tablets. A thread over at Microsoft’s support forums shows that the problems have been occurring for more than a year, and most devices affected are out of warranty. Dubbed “Flickergate,” a website to report the issues claims at least 1,600 Surface Pro 4 owners have experienced the screen flickering problems.
The flickering appears to be a hardware issue, which occurs after the device heats up during use. “We are aware that some customers have experienced a screen flicker on Surface Pro 4 and are monitoring the situation closely,” says a Microsoft spokesperson, in a statement to The Verge. Customers impacted by this should contact Microsoft...
Nearly two years after being announced, an all-Tesla racing series has been given full approval from the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the association that oversees Formula One and other major motorsports around the world.
The ultimate plan for the Electric Production Car Series (known before as the Electric GT World Series) is to become the venue where manufacturers can pit their best-performing electric cars against each other. Since there is a dearth of performance electric cars at the moment, though, the series is starting with Teslas.
Specifically, the field will be made up of race-modified Tesla P100Ds that have nearly 800 horsepower. The plan is to race on major circuits, like ones where F1 competes, though...
If you were compiling a list of the world’s 100 oddest objects — the weirdest stuff that human civilization has excreted over the millennia — then you’d have to leave room somewhere for the Voynich manuscript. It’s 600 years old, written in a language no one can read, and full of diagrams no one understands. It is a genuine, bonafide, world-class mystery. This is presumably why when newsrooms around the world had a chance this week to publish stories claiming it’d been “decoded by artificial intelligence,” they leapt at the opportunity.
Except, of course, it hasn’t. Not at all. According to experts, the Voynich manuscript remains as inscrutable as ever. But understanding why this new research fails to “decode” the text, and what exactly...
In Hasty Gourmet, The Takeout writers offer reliable recipes that are dinner-party worthy with only a handful of ingredients and a minimum of effort.
The A.V. Club Here, at last, is proof that Tom Hardy got a terrible Leonardo DiCaprio tattoo | Earther How a Team of Volunteers Discovered Canada’s Deepest Cave | The Takeout Tabasco may have to relocate because the Louisiana coastline is disappearing |
I’ve always hated haircuts. In high school and college, when I was going for “a look,” my hair was the easiest part of the look to get right, and the hardest to hide when it looked wrong. When I found a stylist I liked, I was loyal to him, the way Mark Davis is loyal to his dude. Even now that I’m a dried-up old husk…
The Greenco G Pen Elite was already one of the best vaporizers for the money at its usual $150, but for a limited time, you can get it for just $105, or 30% off, with promo code KINJA30.
Everyone who has a child in a competitive hobby knows the types: the boy who disputes every call the referee makes, the parent who hurls invective from the sidelines, the girl who can barely bring herself to shake hands after her team loses. Playing sports and games is hugely valuable for child development: They learn…
Career players in the National Football League aren’t significantly more likely to die over a 30-year period than elite-level replacements who played only a few games, according to new research. Still, though people died for many reasons, seven of the deaths were from neurodegenerative diseases — and that only happened in the career players' brains.
The safety of professional football has been under scrutiny for the past few years, especially with reports about how repeated concussions to the head sustained while playing can cause neurological diseases like dementia. Past studies typically compare the death of NFL players with those of the general public, but that gives us less information about the health risks and benefits of...
A company called Owl is introducing its first product today: the LTE-connected Owl Car Cam. It’s essentially a dash cam that films both the inside and outside a car. You can watch the feed live on the company’s companion iOS / Android app (inside footage records at 1440p and outside footage records at 720p), or save certain 20-second moments to revisit in the future. The device is essentially a home security setup, like Nest or Canary, but for the car.
Owl calls its gadget a full security system because it’s always on and detects break-ins and accidents through sound detection and accelerometers. It sends users a push notification when something is going on, so they can watch the incident live or go check on their car. If they’re...
The humble pen isn’t dead — or at least the stylus isn’t. Because styluses remain a big piece of the mobile accessories market, Google and 3M have joined the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), a collective that aims to create an open, non-proprietary active stylus specification. The standard will be designed for manufacturers to create and promote styluses that are compatible with various touchscreen devices, including phones and tablets.
To accomplish this, the standard uses two-way communication instead of just one. Ink color and stroke preferences are stored in the stylus, which can be taken across different devices, while up to six styluses can operate simultaneously on a single device. The USI standard supports 4,096 levels of...
The multipurpose messaging app is becoming the nation’s ID system
I’m not really one for New Years resolutions, but according to my Goodreads challenge, I only read 50 books last year — three short of my intended goal. I’ve been working to balance work, life, and reading time over the last couple of years, and I’ve found that reading time is a time that I really need to carve out if I want to make sure it happens.
So, I’ve started doing that. I’m setting aside an hour in the morning, usually starting around 8AM, to read. I’ll boil up a pot of tea, grab something to eat, and I’ll settle on the couch until I’ve burned through at least 50 pages.
The results are immediate: I’ve read 10 books already this year: JY Yang’s fabulous silkpunk The Red Threads of Fortune, Zoe Quinn’s Crash Override, Maurice...
Discord will now allow users to connect their Spotify accounts on the platform. They’ll be able to share what music they’re listening to on their Discord profiles, or — if they have a Spotify Premium account — simultaneously listen to music within a server.
Spotify has already shown an interest in the gaming side of music, like when it launched a portal dedicated to game music back in 2016. But the platform has done very little to update its, ahem, questionable curation. It supplements tracks from video games with curious playlists that appear to be tailored to the most stereotypical image of people who like video games — the angsty kind who loves bands like Limp Bizkit, Atreyu, or Breaking Benjamin, and little else.
Spotify’s...
Splinter How to Not Die in America | Earther The Real-Life Mermaid Fighting to Save Florida’s Disappearing Springs | Deadspin Kirk Cousins Is About To Get Paid, But By Whom? | The Slot Michelle Obama Recalls Confusion Over the Big-Ass Box Melania Trump Gifted Her | Jezebel Reporters Didn’t Go to a Press Conference on…
Atlanta readers dropped nearly 150 comments on our Hack Your City request this Monday, and we’ve highlighted the best in the original comment thread. Here’s a grab-bag of useful and clever highlights about the city that locals don’t call Hotlanta.
Amazon has been granted a pair of patents for a wristband that can pinpoint the location of warehouse employees and track their hand movements in real time. The patents, first spotted by GeekWire, describe an inventory management system comprised of trackers and receivers used to monitor workers’ performance. The original patents were both filed back in 2016 but were granted on January 30th.
The proposed system includes ultrasonic devices placed around the warehouse, the wristbands themselves, and a management module that oversees everything. The wristbands also feature an ultrasonic unit that’s used to track where the worker is in relation to any particular inventory bin. If their hands are moving to the wrong item, the bracelet will...
The Monster Hunter series has long been known for its detailed, inventive creature designs. The games put you up against terrifying beasts that blend the prehistoric with fantasy: part dragon, part dinosaur, but somehow still plausible. These designs have always been slightly hindered by technology, releasing on comparatively underpowered systems like Nintendo’s Wii or Sony’s PSP.
But that’s changed with Monster Hunter World, which is out now on the PS4 and Xbox One. (A PC version is on the way later this year.) The team at Capcom has made use of the extra horsepower to create its most convincing creatures yet, both in terms of how they behave and how they look. Towering dinosaurs with soft tufts of feathers run through fields, chasing...
After 10 years of epic success selling roughly the same luxury good to the world, last year Apple decided to radically reinvent its iPhone with a totally new design, a never-before-seen Face ID system, and a four-figure price tag. The company could have just released its pair of iPhone 8 models and instantly minted a fresh $100 billion in revenue, but it opted to do more than that. The iPhone X is the biggest risk Apple has yet taken with its most important product — the most influential single product in consumer electronics history — and what’s striking to me is how casually we’ve all accepted its success. Apple fans and detractors alike both seem to have taken it for granted that the iPhone X would be as good and as well received as...
YouTube TV is now available on select Roku devices, allowing customers to stream live sports, news, and have access to major broadcast and cable networks. Supported devices include all Roku TVs, Roku Ultra, Roku Streaming Stick Plus, Roku Streaming Stick, Roku Express/Express Plus, Roku Premiere Plus, Roku Premiere, Roku 4, Roku 3, and Roku 2. YouTube TV is currently available in over 80 metro areas across the US.
YouTube TV on Roku will include Cloud DVR with no storage limits, a library tab for easy navigation and access to your recorded shows, personalized recommendations, and background playback so you can still watch your shows while you’re browsing the app. The service allows up to six people per household to share one membership....
Instagram is giving advertisers more leeway and creativity for the spots that run between the Stories you’re actually interested in. Today the company announced that ads will now be able to “publish up to three pieces of content.” (That means multiple segments to tap through, similar to when a friend has updated their story three times in a day.)
Previously those interstitial ads were limited to a single photo or video each, which made for a fairly minor interruption when watching content from the people you follow. But soon you’ll find yourself having to tap through multi-part Stories from brands. There’s still the option of swiping sideways to skip the remaining “pieces” a bit faster, as well.
The benefits for advertisers are pretty...
Logan Paul is continuing his apology tour following the widely criticized video of a dead body he posted on YouTube at the end of 2016. In an interview with Good Morning America today, the 22-year-old vlogger says that he posted Aokigahara forest video with a specific goal: “The idea was to shock and show the harsh realities of suicide and get people talking about something that I don’t think people are talking about much.”
Paul’s video, which he removed from YouTube after swift backlash, featured the vlogger heading into the forest with friends to do another “fun vlog,” he says. They planned to camp for the night and “make an entertaining piece of content in a forest.” Shortly after they entered the forest, he says, roughly 100 feet...
This is my new bag. I did not need a new bag — I own many — but the strap for my main briefcase broke a week before a trip, and I was too impatient to wait for the free replacement to arrive, so I bought a new bag. Also, it was on sale. I’m a sucker for sales.
I’ve had my eye on ONA’s camera bags for years. They are handmade with full-grain leather imported from Italy and have a retro aesthetic that pairs wonderfully with high-end camera gear. Unsurprisingly, they also have a steep price tag that reflects those materials, craftsmanship, and aesthetic (hence, buying one on sale). This is the Brixton, which according to ONA, is designed to hold a 13-inch laptop, a DSLR or mirrorless camera, and up to three lenses or accessories for it.
I...
Apple has removed Telegram’s official app from its iOS App Store. The app disappeared yesterday, shortly after Telegram launched a rewritten Telegram X app for Android. Telegram X is currently in testing on iOS, and it was also removed from the App Store. “We were alerted by Apple that inappropriate content was made available to our users and both apps were taken off the App Store,” says Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. “Once we have protections in place we expect the apps to be back on the App Store.”
It’s not clear when Telegram will return to the App Store, or what inappropriate content was found on the messaging service. TechCrunch reports that Apple’s iOS guidelines make it clear there must be filters for objectionable material, mechanisms...
Anker makes some of our readers’ favorite Bluetooth speakers, and three different models are on sale in today’s Amazon Gold Box.
Ask Siri who’ll win Super Bowl LII and it’ll tell you that the New England Patriots are favored by exactly 4.5 points over the Philadelphia Eagles. Ask Cortana and Google Assistant and they’ll hedge like a weathered politician, refusing to take sides and responding instead with the game’s start time (Cortana) or the importance of being a good sport (Google). Ask Alexa, however, and you’re in for a real treat.
Here, take a look at what Buzzfeed’s Alex Kantrowitz discovered:
In case you were wondering who Jeff Bezos is pulling for in the Super Bowl.... pic.twitter.com/ElVcLG1bBu
— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) January 31, 2018
After more than a decade of dominance the Pats are now routinely ranked as the most hated team in professional...
Apple’s notched screen on the iPhone X has been a polarizing topic of discussion, but no matter where you stand on that debate, you had to know it would be copied to death by Android phone makers. The deluge of knockoff notches got started early with the Leagoo S9 last year, and today we can add the upcoming Noa N10 to the category of wannabe iPhones.
This device is such an obviously hurried ripoff that the one video the company provides to illustrate that it works also happens to show its user interface has zero accommodations for the notch. You can see the N10’s notch oversteps the Android interface’s icons, and on the top right, the clock isn’t entirely visible because of the curved corner of the screen. And if that wasn’t enough, the...
We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker’s weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and a guide to using its waters to reflect on and improve your life.
On the second Tuesday in June, I start to feel fluish. If this is 2016 and I’m still a freelance writer, I’m losing money immediately on the assignments I can’t complete because my vision is blurry and my thoughts are erratic. If this is 2013, I am soon taken off the roster at the cafe where I work.
Ready for the next chapter of the Lifehacker Fitness Challenge? In January we worked on pull-ups at whatever level worked for each of us. In February, we’re sticking with upper body exercises but flipping the script: every day, try to do at least one push-up.
In addition to really smart car chargers, Nonda makes premium charging cables for your devices too, and they’re on sale today just for our readers. Each cable is wrapped in nylon, reinforced on the inside with aramid fiber, and comes with a lifetime warranty, so if you do manage to break it, you can get a new one.
If you are an enjoyer of martinis or Manhattans, you probably have a couple of bottles of vermouth on your bar cart. If you’re a lover of a fancy aperitif, you probably have more. These fortified wines are a lot of fun but, due to their lower ABV, they don’t last forever.
When it comes to the overall cost of a vehicle, the sale price is only part of the equation. You need to factor in resale, and how much value your car will lose. Some drop slower than others, and according to Kelly Blue Book, these 2018 trucks, SUVs, and an all-wheel-drive sedan will be your best bets to minimize…
Funerals are a time to remember loved ones and say a heartfelt goodbye, not draw attention to yourself. Still, some people do exactly that. Just because you’re all dressed up doesn’t mean a #funeralselfie is warranted.
If you’re in the market for a car or home loan, chances are you ran a free credit report to see how good (or bad) your score is. Maybe you’re feeling good about yourself, and then all of a sudden you’re denied outright.
In our series Getting It, we’ll give you all you need to know to get started with and excel at a wide range of technology, both on and offline. Here, we’re walking you through the process of creating your own app by examining five software tools to get the job done.
Can you pick up a piece of paper from the floor? With your teeth? While standing on one leg? Don’t just guess—you have to try it.
Our readers listed these Crabby Wallets as one of their favorite front pocket wallets and today, you can save $5 off a whole bunch of different colors when you clip the on-page coupon. These wallets can hold up to 10 cards, include a ring for your keys, and are crazy thin. We saw a similar coupon earlier in the month,…
Some writers would start this post by stating that there are no rules when it comes to which dips you like with which chips. But those writers would be wrong. Of course there are rules.
The definition of “late capitalism,” as far as I can tell, is all around us. It’s in the trees (which produce the fruits that wind up in your monthly-issued Juicero packs), in the water (pods, that is, which you pop into a different machine on your countertop), and even in the music (that pauses dramatically as Kendall Jenner solves police brutality with a Pepsi). But if you were hoping to get your own taste of it in the form of a flamethrower sold by a billionaire CEO with ambitions of turning humans into a multi-planetary species, I’m sorry to say that you, dear reader, are too late.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which currently more closely resembles Supreme than it does a transportation infrastructure outfit, sold its 20,000th (and...
Mario, meet Minions. Today Nintendo confirmed reports that it’s working on an animated Super Mario movie with Illumination, the animation studio behind movies like Despicable Me and Minions. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the deal back in November. There’s little in the way of details about the film, but it’s being co-produced by Shigeru Miyamoto — the creator of Mario and many other iconic Nintendo characters — and Chris Meledandri, best-known for his work on the Despicable Me franchise.
There’s no word on when the movie will hit theaters, but Super Mario fever is at a high following the successful launch of Super Mario Odyssey on the Nintendo Switch, which the company says has sold more than 9 million copies since its...
Nintendo has announced the latest of its IPs to make the leap to smartphones, and it’s a big one: Mario Kart. An app called Mario Kart Tour is set to be released in the next financial year, meaning anywhere between April 2018 and March 2019.
No details about Mario Kart Tour have been made available other than its existence, but the Mario Kart franchise is one of Nintendo’s biggest. Yesterday the company announced that 14.86 million Switch consoles have been sold, along with about half as many copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — a straight port of a game that managed to sell a further eight million copies even on the Wii U.
Nintendo is likely to have more mobile titles in the works. The company originally planned to have released five...
After being pushed back from 2017, today Nintendo has revealed that its upcoming subscription service for the Switch is coming in September. The online service is expected to be Nintendo’s version of the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, offering online multiplayer for a fee. The service will cost $3.99 a month, or $19.99 per year. (Since the Switch’s launch, online multiplayer has been free, but that’s expected to change once the new service rolls out.)
Outside of online play, subscribers will also get access to classic games from the company’s back catalogue, which will be updated with new features like leaderboards and multiplayer. The company plans to reveal more details about its subscription service later in the year.
The news...
This afternoon, SpaceX launched its second Falcon 9 rocket of the year from Florida, but the company chose not to land the booster after takeoff and instead dispensed it in the ocean. In a weird twist, the Falcon 9 still managed to survive its fall into the deep sea waters and is bobbing intact in the Atlantic. Now, the company will try to salvage the floating rocket by towing it back to shore somehow, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
This rocket was meant to test very high retrothrust landing in water so it didn’t hurt the droneship, but amazingly it has survived. We will try to tow it back to shore. pic.twitter.com/hipmgdnq16
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2018
This afternoon’s launch sent a heavy satellite into a high orbit...
Gucci became the first fashion house to release custom Animoji today, made specially for Lunar New Year. Unlike standard Apple-made Animoji, Gucci’s can be accessed within its mobile app, which also houses all the Gucci content, from fashion show footage and wallpapers to a photo booth that lets you stick chic stickers onto your photos.
The pair of Animoji dogs are based on Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele’s own Boston terriers, Bosco and Orso. The app explains that the Animoji are inspired by artworks by Unskilled Worker, a Gucci collaborator.
Last summer, LG faced a class action lawsuit over bootloop issues with its G4, V10, V20, Nexus 5X, and G5 smartphones. The lawsuit reached a settlement today, with LG offering afflicted device owners in the suit either $425 in cash or a $700 rebate toward a future LG device, according to Android Police. The issue, related to manufacturing defects on LG’s end, meant some owners of those devices were left with inoperable phones or phones that were stuck in a never-ending reboot cycle, hence the bootloop name.
If you’re a class member, you’ve either been contacted by the firm representing the class action suit or will be in the next couple of days to file a claim before February 12th. If you didn’t join the class already, unfortunately...
Over the course of the last several years, every major social platform has been plagued by fake news. Now Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has a fake news problem of its own.
Because of how the search engine’s autofill feature works, people who visit Bing looking for news videos may be redirected to a flood of fake news videos, all generated by a single source. You can see how it works for yourself: click on the “News” tab from Bing’s homepage. The page autofills the search bar with “Top stories.” Now travel to any other search tab, including “Maps” or “Images” and you’ll see that the search bar retains the “Top stories” query. Autofilling “Top stories” into the search bar appears to be an innocuous design decision — until you hit the...
Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
In spite of all the focus on gender inequity in the film and TV industry over the past few years, the discrepancies are still dire. The visibility of the #MeToo movement and the sexual-abuse scandals that have rocked Hollywood may give the impression that women are making gains in the industry, but statistics still show them sliding backward in terms of representation: recent numbers show that half the students at the major film schools are women, but 91 percent of studio movies are still directed by men. And every study on the subject suggests widespread...
Google has updated its Flights app with a pair of new features that should help weary (and wary) travelers get to grips with the next trip to the airport. The first uses machine learning to predict upcoming flight delays, and the second breaks down exactly what different airlines mean by “basic economy” — explaining what amenities are and are not included in so-called last class.
Predicting flight delays is probably the most interesting of these two. According to reports from VentureBeat and TechCrunch, Google combs through historical data of flight delays to look for common patterns in late departures. These include factors like location, weather, and aircraft arriving late. Once the algorithms are 80 percent sure there’ll be a delay,...
