From toilet paper to tomato sauce, Covid-19 has turned normal consumers into high-volume doomsday binge shoppers. So perhaps it’s no surprise that as they filled their pantries and supply closets in the early days of the pandemic, online buyers also stocked up on dark web weed.In an analysis published in the current issue of the…
When students return to school in New Albany, Ohio, in August, they’ll be carefully watched as they wander through red-brick buildings and across well-kept lawns—and not only by teachers. The school district, with five schools and 4,800 students, plans to test a system that would require each student to wear an electronic beacon to track…
Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution is a technothriller that follows the hunt for a terrorist through the streets of a future Washington, DC. More than 300 factual explanations and predictions (with endnotes) are baked into the story, and the research for it ranged from assembling the latest job automation reports to interviews…
Across the world, millions of people have gathered to protest police brutality and systemic racism after an officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man. Amid the outpouring of grief and support, tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Reddit have issued statements backing protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement. But these same…
Joshua Kimbrell, an emergency medical technician in Brooklyn, often works until midnight on a slow night. The first responder began relying on the moped rideshare service Revel to commute during the Covid-19 pandemic. This spring was the busy season to end all busy seasons for the people who answer 911 calls, and Revel’s cheerful blue…
“I do not use voice chat if I’m going in alone,” says Valorant’s executive producer, Anna Donlon. Playing games like the first-person shooter Valorant, Donlon has always received comments about her gender. “It was a huge wake-up call for me when I experienced it in my own game. That sucked.”In early May, when Valorant was…
The silver lining to the pandemic is that shelters across the country are emptying out as people now have enough time to adopt a pet. If you’re considering or in the process of adopting a puppy or a kitten (or you recently welcomed a furry friend), we’ve rounded up some gear you’ll need to transition…
Cyberpunk. That’s the word Elon Musk applied to his ripped, brutalist pickup truck that was, it’s fair to say, nothing like anything anyone expected. The Cybertruck shocked the automotive world last fall and invoked a very different ethos than Tesla’s sleek sedans and SUVs. It also engendered strong emotions. Many thought it looked custom-tailored for…
Google has tweaked the appearance of the compose button in Gmail’s Android app. First spotted by 9to5Google, the old button, a small “floating action button” with a plus in it, is now an oblong button containing a pen icon along with the word “Compose.” It minimizes into its old circle shape when you scroll down…
Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe has lost a court case over its PlayStation Store refund policy and been ordered to pay $3.5 million AUD in penalties.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in May 2019 that it would take Sony to court over allegations it refused to refund customers who bought faulty games through the…
