In the wake of one of the most tumultuous election cycles in recent memory, many people are criticizing social media outlets – namely Facebook – for not doing enough to weed out obviously fake news articles that could have potentially impacted people’s votes. This is a claim that Facebook founder…

What do the Amish lobby , gay wedding vans and the ban of the national anthem have in common? For starters, they’re all make-believe — and invented by the same man. Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years .…

That's all folks. The Federal Communications Commission has deleted every important item from Thursday's monthly meeting after Republicans in Congress warned the agency not to move forward on any major issues before Donald Trump's inauguration as president. Over the last 24 hours, influential…

Professor Stephen Hawking has warned humanity will not survive another 1,000 years on Earth unless the human race finds another planet to live on. The celebrated theoretical physicist and cosmologist painted a grave picture of the future while delivering a lecture on the universe and the origins of…

T he classrooms and hallways of Farmingdale High in Long Island were deserted on the morning of Saturday 19 August 2001, when a van pulled into the school’s parking lot. Turning off the engine, the driver – a tall man in his late 30s – stepped out into the warm summer sun. He cast a sweeping gaze…

Microsoft has updated Skype with a much-needed feature: A Web-based guest interface that lets you make and receive calls without the need to download the desktop app or register for an account. To make a call, all you need to do is point your browser to skype.com and enter a handle. You’ll receive a…

"Made in Japan." It's seen as a badge of quality inside and outside the country, as well as an indicator that you're probably paying a bit more. But what does it actually mean? When Fujifilm, a company that proudly etches "Made in Japan" onto almost all of its mirrorless cameras, invited me to its…

When a nonprofit developer applied to build 150 apartments for low-income seniors in the affluent Forest Hill neighborhood of San Francisco west of Twin Peaks, city housing officials were thrilled. Here at last was an affordable project proposed not for the usual precincts of the Tenderloin or SoMa,…

T hey called it Project X. It was an unusually audacious, highly sensitive assignment: to build a massive skyscraper, capable of withstanding an atomic blast, in the middle of New York City. It would have no windows, 29 floors with three basement levels, and enough food to last 1,500 people two…

Why we are not going to stay under the covers, despite all temptation. By Steven Levy If there are two Americas — and why bother saying “if”? — the staff of Backchannel clearly belongs to the country now in shock — and frankly, terrified — at what this other country has thrust upon us. How can it be…

Raytheon’s Phaser weapon can destroy whole swarms of drones with a single burst of microwave energy. Dwight D. Eisenhower has once said that “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog”. This quote pretty much resonates with how powerful…

By Mike Shields Updated Nov. 16, 2016 10:03 a.m. ET Facebook Inc. FB 0.41% said it has uncovered several more flawed measurements related to how consumers interact with content, raising more questions about the metrics marketers lean on to decide whether to buy ads on the social media network. The…

The first time archaeologist John Shea looked at what might be the oldest stone tools ever found, he almost blew them off. “Are you kidding me?” he remembers asking Sonia Harmand, his colleague at Stony Brook University who found the tools in 2011 along the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana, at a site…

The Voorhes O n the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her. Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed…

I f the government ends up approving the $85 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger, credit won’t necessarily belong to the executives, bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists pushing for the deal. More likely, it will be due to the professors. A serial acquirer, AT&T must persuade the government to allow every…

Former Microsoft CEO might have labeled Linux "a cancer" 15 years ago, but things couldn't be any different this week. Microsoft, the software giant that has built its empire on closed-source proprietary software, is joining the Linux Foundation. 10 years ago that would have seemed unimaginable, but…

T he election of Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through the souls of compassionate, humane people across the country and the world. Horror that a candidate who ran on a platform of open bigotry, threats against immigrants and Muslims, and blatant misogyny will soon be president is now sinking in.…

Bjarni Benediktsson, the Independence party leader, has been unable to pull together a governing coalition after Iceland’s election.Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP Iceland moved closer to the anti-establishment Pirate party gaining a place in government after the Independence party failed to pull…

This is a game built with machine learning. You draw, and a neural network tries to guess what you’re drawing. Of course, it doesn’t always work. But the more you play with it, the more it will learn. So far we have trained it on a few hundred concepts, and we hope to add more over time. We made…

Tobias van Schneider Nov 7, 2016 by Tobias van Schneider first appeared ✍🏼 on my personal blog I haven’t read much about this topic yet, and honestly I’m still trying to understand it myself. In the last few months I spent more time in Virtual Reality. Not only developing for it, but also playing…

Dimitry O. Photo Nov 15, 2016 ICQ is turning 20 (and that is no small potatoes). A whole generation has already grown up with the forerunner of all messengers. For this occasion, we have decided to take a retrospective look at how our technology developed over the past two decades. After so many…

Over-the-counter and prescription drugs that control inflammation, like Advil, Aleve and Motrin, are among the most popular drugs people take. Without a prescription, they can relieve short-term pain from backaches and headaches, and at higher doses can reduce the inflammation behind chronic…

Send email Mail Ask any Iraq War veteran about Jersey, Alaska, Texas, and Colorado and you will be surprised to get stories not about states, but about concrete barriers. Many soldiers deployed to Iraq became experts in concrete during their combat tours. Concrete is as symbolic to their deployments…

Futurology is doomed to failure, and a lot can happen in 60 years. But there are ways to make informed guesses about what is over the horizon Technology 16 November 2016 The future’s this way…. Vincent Fournier/Gallerystock By Sumit Paul-Choudhury JOURNALISM has famously been described as “the first…

Twitter has suspended the accounts of several members of the American alt-right movement, including the leader of a white nationalist think tank. The social network has not given an explanation for its actions. But they come the same week it announced new ways for users to complain about hateful…

John Scott-Railton | Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto Note: This is a slightly modified version of a paper of the same name submitted to IEEE Security & Privacy, and published in Spring 2016[1]. Since I wrote it, more evidence has emerged showing attacks against…

When discussing consensus mechanisms for different cryptocurrencies, one issue that often causes arguments is a lack of understanding (and definition) of the security model that they provide for the historical data in the ledger. While each consensus model aims to prevent various theoretical…

Small businesses with weak cyber defense could give hackers a way into larger organizations, a new report suggests. The National Institute of Standards and Technology published a report this week aimed at helping small businesses beef up their cybersecurity, with recommendations such as installing…

Imperva and Rapid7 have built scanners to discover IoT devices vulnerable or infected with Mirai malware. Imperva is the latest security company to offer a free scanner to detect Internet of Things devices infected with or vulnerable to Mirai malware, the malicious code behind the massive…

MajorGeeks.com - If your computer could ask you for it, it would. All In One Tweaks Android Anti-Malware Antivirus Appearance Back Up Browsers CD\DVD\Blu-Ray Covert Ops Drive Utilities (HDD, USB, DVD) Drivers Games Graphics Internet Tools Multimedia Networking Office and Finance Programming System…

When the Devil Enters A town plagued by mysterious fires turns to science, the church, and the law in a search for answers. In the middle of dinner, Antonino Pezzino discovered that his house was on fire. It was late December 2003, and Pezzino was at his home in Canneto di Caronia, a one-street town…

Environmentalists who were hoping that somehow a Donald Trump presidency wouldn’t be as catastrophic as they feared had those hopes dashed on Friday, when the president-elect announced Myron Ebell as his choice to oversee the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell, head of both the…

SEATTLE – Washington state-based Alaska Airlines today made history flying the first commercial flight using the world’s first renewable, alternative jet fuel made from forest residuals, the limbs and branches that remain after the harvesting of managed forests. The alternative jet fuel was produced…

Technology 2 min read Russians announce installing the Pole-21 missile defense system onto existing civilian cellular network towers in preparation for potential missile attacks. John N Nov 15 Everett Historical | Shutterstock.com The Russian government has reported that it plans to install the…

Enlarge Kelly Michals David Charles Hahn, who gained some notoriety in 1994 for attempting to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor for a Boy Scout project in his mom's Michigan backyard shed, has died at the age of 39 . He passed away on September 27, but his death did not draw much media…

The end of the line – the final fort on the eastern end, near Kaser-e Pishkamar, hugs the foothills of the eastern Alborz. All Photos: Stuart Denison In northwestern Iran, running for almost 200 kilometers from the southeastern shores of the Caspian Sea to the mountains of Bilikuh in the east, lies…

An interview with the wisest, smartest scifi writer there is Avi Solomon Jan 29, 2014 Ted Chiang is the author of Stories of Your Life and Others . I interviewed Ted in 2010 and his words are still vibrant as freshly burnished copper . Avi: Could you introduce yourself? Ted: My name is Ted Chiang .…