Technology news

The Israel Defense Force says that it stopped an attempted cyber attack launched by Hamas over the weekend, and retaliated with an airstrike against the building where it says the attack originated from in Gaza. It’s believed to be the first time that a military has retaliated with physical violence in real time against a cyberattack.Violence erupted this weekend as Hamas and the IDF launched attacks against one another in the last three days. Hamas fired more than 600 rockets into Israel

With Europe’s Parliamentary elections approaching later this month, Facebook has set up an operations room to monitor for misinformation, fake accounts, and election interference that violates the site’s rules, reports The New York Times and The Guardian. The effort is designed to prevent the types of wide-scale campaigns that could influence elections.The Times says that the room is similar to the room that Facebook set up back in October 2018 ahead of the 2018 midterm elections in

Last week, the Petersen Automotive Museum of Los Angeles opened a massive new exhibit: Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which includes more than 50 vehicles from throughout science fiction movie history, along with other props and memorabilia.Petersen Automotive Museum’s executive director Terry L. Kargestells Gizmodo the exhibit is the museum’s largest in its 25 year history, and is “is an ode to the industry that Los Angeles was built upon.&

The University of South Carolina received an unusual donation recently: the entire collection of a comic book collector from Ohio, totaling more than 180,000 comics, books, magazines, and other items, estimated to be worth around $2.5 million.Some of the collection’s comics will go on display at the Thomas Cooper Library on August 29th. The debut of the collection will also be accompanied by a series of events at the school, such as talks by comic book authors and artists.Thecollection in

Smartwatches are tough. Not only does the technology have to be functional on the inside, but it needs to work as a fashion statement, too, since it’s something that you wear all the time. You could go and compare products, or you could do what product designer Samson March did, and just build your own entirely from scratch, via Engadget.And better yet, March has provided an incredibly detailed look at his process and all his filesfor the build, meaning that with a little (okay, fine, a l

Avengers: Endgame has crossed another huge box office milestone: it’s become the fastest film ever to earn more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office, and has become the second-biggest film release ever, according to Deadline.The film earned a jaw-dropping $1.2 billion on its opening weekend across the world, and has broken a ton of records since its release: it became the highest-grossing Thursday release ever, the biggest opening weekend ever (in the US and globally), biggest open

There are a ton of podcasts out there, but finding the right one can be difficult. In our column Pod Hunters, we cover what we’ve been listening to that we can’t stop thinking about.
In the first moments of Blackout, a new podcast from Endeavor Audio, we ride along with the pilot of a fighter jet who is flying over the White Mountains of New Hampshire, when suddenly he notices something off, and abruptly loses power and crashes.The episode jumps to a recording made by a DJ named Sim

The US Air Force announced that it has successfully used a laser weapons system to shoot down multiple missiles while in flight. The system is designed to eventually be mounted on aircraft to be used to protect the vehicle from attacks.The Air Force Research Laboratory conducted the test at the US Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in April. The system, called the Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD), was used from the ground, and was used to shoot down “

Since its debut in 2015, one of Nintendo’s best series has been a little black-and-white puzzler called Boxboy. Unfortunately, it never quite caught on in a major way. Maybe that’s due to the fact that all three games were released as downloads on the 3DS, or maybe the spartan visuals made it seem boring. Whatever the reason, there’s a good chance you haven’t experienced the joy of boxes, and now is the perfect time to fix that. This week, Nintendo released Boxboy + Boxg

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Walmart planned to jump into the original streaming video marketplace with its streaming service Vudu in the coming year, with a number of “shoppable” original shows. Variety reports that the service has revealed its initial slate of original shows, which will be ad-supported and free to watch.Vudu announced last October that it was resurrecting the 1983 movie Mr. Mom for an original series, and announced some additional projects at a digital marke

The British government is now accepting Apple and Google Pay for some services (via iTV and Apple Insider). Citizens can use their phones to pay for four services at present, with more to receive the capability later this year.The effort is part of a trial service from the ministry. UK citizens can use their phone’s payment systems to pay for fees with a fingerprint or via facial recognition related to the Global Entry Service (for expedited entry to the US), the Registered Traveller Serv

A judge has sentenced (via Buzzfeed News) former YouTuber Austin Jones to ten years in prison after he pled guilty to one count of “receipt of child pornography”.YouTube removed Jones’ channel back in February after his guilty plea. Jones’ career as a musician began in 2007, and he rose to fame on YouTube with his a capella covers of popular songs. In 2015, reports surfaced that he had contacted underage girls to send him videos. Jones admitted to the accusations in a vi

It’s been nearly fifteen years since Skype introduced video calling, and nearly nine years since FaceTime popularized the mobile version — so it’s as good a time as any to revisit one of the most well-known modern predictions about video calling, and pin down exactly what it got wrong.
The prediction comes from David Foster Wallace’s 1996 epic Infinite Jest, which imagines a future in which information glut and corporatization have ravaged human consciousness. There are