Month: March 2014

Random

Oral history: the sexual misadventures of the dental dam

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As reported on The Verge. By Arielle Duhaime-Ross How the surgical tool tried (and failed) to become the face of oral intimacy Were it not for the three queer women who accosted him at a sexual health conference in Canberra, Australia, Clive Woodworth likely wouldn’t remember the 1993 conference at all. As the founder and CEO of Glyde Health, Woodworth attended these events to promote the company’s safe-sex products; because this conference was geared toward empowering women,…

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Legal Microsoft

Microsoft Will Now Deploy Two Legal Teams, Outside Former Federal Judge To Approve User-Data Searches

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As reported on TechCrunch. by Alex Wilhelm Following a court document revealing that Microsoft read the email of a third-party bloggerto uncover an internal leak, the company this evening announced a policy change, effective immediately, regarding how it searches user data that is part of its own network of services. Noting that it couldn’t, in its view, get a court order to search itself as none is needed, it will instead add layers of protection between it…

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Apple Application Culture

GarageBand on Mac now lets you export songs as MP3s… again

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As reported on Engadget. BY EDGAR ALVAREZ As meaningful as GarageBand’s mobile life is to Apple, the tune-making app is still considered a valuable piece of real estate on the desktop. However, last yearGarageBand for Mac lost MP3 exporting as a feature, something which unsettled some of its users. The good news: today’s release brings that back, once again allowing you to export those music creations as MP3 files. Additionally, Apple’s thrown in a few Drummers and drum packs from various genres, including songwriter,…

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Business Mobile

Sprint is shuttering stores and laying off repair techs to help cut its losses

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As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA Sprint isn’t content to keep writing its financial statements in red ink. To that end, the company is shuttering 150 service and repair centers, 55 of its lowest performing retail stores and laying off some 330 repair techs. A handful of call centers have been closed, too. While these might seem troubling, the outfit’s Mark Bonavia tells CNETthat the pre-planned cuts were made with the idea of “minimal disturbance” to the customer in mind. What does that even mean?…

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Culture Security

Leaked documents detail how and why NSA targets network admins

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As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA With the amount of NSA-related information that’s been leaked to the press, one may wonder if the feds will have anything new to share whenever the agency’s firsttransparency report releases. The latest info is that the NSA was targeting foreign network administrators to gain access to the networks they control, as late as 2012.Edward Snowden gave The Intercept a handful of screengrabs from an internal agency message board that, among other things, detail how…

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Automotive Business

Auto dealers fire back at Tesla CEO: ‘This Musk guy, he wants all the profits for himself’

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As reported on The Verge. By Ben Popper The war of words heats up between the tech billionaire and defiant local salesmen Last week, New Jersey announced that it would begin enforcing a ban on the direct sale of automobiles by manufacturers, a change that will cripple electric-vehicle maker Tesla’s business in that state. The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, responded with a fiery blog post accusing state legislators of cutting a backroom deal with traditional franchised auto retailers…

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Art

DARK ARTS

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As reported on The Verge. By Molly Osberg Meet the architects of Tumblr’s cyberpunk renaissance We’re in a weird time for the way the future looks; somehow House of Cardscan slyly introduce a floating text-message interface to their present-day political drama without so much as blinking, but most of our iconic near- and far-future worlds run on tracks laid down well before the ’90s. And it’s not just the recycling of every franchise from Star Trek to RoboCop: Avatar’s and Prometheus’ huge…

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Android Culture

Everything We Know About The Moto 360 Android Wear Smartwatch

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As reported on TechCrunch. by Darrell Etherington Motorola hosted a live Hangout with Jim Wicks, the lead designer of the Moto 360 Android Wear-based smartwatch, and the discussion started with the inspiration for the product and moved to its specifics. Motorola wasn’t yet sharing that much about specs and details for the hardware, but the smartwatch actually works as Wicks used it on camera, proving this isn’t just an ambitious render, and that’s a big load of the…

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Google Microsoft

Google and Microsoft are using the cloud to track climate change

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As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA Data.gov is getting a whole lot greener thanks to its new section dedicated to climate information. The new channel is the product of President Obama’s Climate Data Initiative (PDF), and pulls information that can help predict the effects of climate change and prevent any damage that may result. The raw data comes from the likes of the Department of Defense, NASA and the US Geological Society, but probably isn’t easy to grok for…

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Automotive

Volvo’s connected cars could make winter driving safer for everyone

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As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA With its latest research project, Volvo is hoping to make driving in inclement weather a bit less dicey. The Swedish automaker is testing a safety system that uses mobile data networks to relay icy road conditions from vehicle to vehicle. Once you hit a slick spot, the location data uploads to Volvo’s database and then an instant notification is sent to other cars nearing that area. As the outfit tells it, the…

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