Author Archives: Carol Edwards

TL;DR: Get this quirky, flask-shaped Bluetooth speaker for $24.99. Usually priced at $69.99, you’ll be saving $45. 

With the influx of Bluetooth speakers on the market, consumers are faced with an embarrassment of riches. But think of it as a delightful dilemma. You’re no longer relegated to only a handful of options that you most likely don’t even want; you quite literally have hundreds and thousands of options to choose from.

Need to procure speakers with excellent sound quality? All it takes is one Google search. Want one that you can carry on a hiking trip? There’s a speaker designed for that. If your motive for buying new speakers is purely for recreational purposes, though, we have the perfect suggestion: the iHome flask-shaped Bluetooth speaker — a speaker that screams F-U-N. Read more…

More about Funny, Bluetooth, Speaker, Mashable Shopping, and Tech

Everyone hates parking tickets. Not everyone, however, is an information security researcher with a mischievous side and a freshly minted vanity license plate reading “NULL.”

That would be Droogie (his handle, if that’s not obvious), a presenter at this year’s DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas and man with a very specific problem: He’s on the receiving end of thousands of dollars worth of tickets that aren’t his. But don’t tell that to the DMV.

It wasn’t, of course, supposed to end up this way. In fact, exactly the opposite. Droogie registered a vanity California license plate consisting solely of the word “NULL” — which in programming is a term for a value of zero — for fun. And, he admitted to laughs, on the off chance it would confuse automatic license plate readers and the DMV’s ticketing system.  Read more…

More about Hackers, Def Con, Dmv, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Nina Kollars just wanted a cheaper cup of coffee. Stumbling across an online credit card fraud ring was simply an added bonus. 

As she explained to a crowd at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, the associate professor at the Naval War College didn’t set out to become an unwitting money mule accidentally helping to defraud senior citizens, but hey, not everything goes the way you think it will. 

Kollars, a fan of Nespresso coffee pods, had found what seemed to be an amazing deal on eBay: 200 of the pods listed at half price. So she placed her order, and, soon after paying via PayPal, her order arrived — along with a brand-new $280 Nespresso espresso maker that she hadn’t ordered or paid for. Read more…

More about Ebay, Def Con, Nespresso, Tech, and Cybersecurity

We don’t know what jade vagina eggs are supposed to do, but helping memory clearly isn’t one of them. Goop founder and Marvel star Gwyneth Paltrow has a reputation for forgetting her fellow stars in some of the biggest blockbusters of movie history — including, most recently, Nick Fury himself.

First it was Sebastian Stan, the Winter Soldier, who starred alongside Paltrow in several Avengers movies and had to reintroduce himself to her three times (and counting). Then it was the entirety of the Spider-Man: Homecoming cast, when Paltrow completely forgot she was in the movie while doing an episode of The Chef Show inspired by her role in said movie. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marvel Studios, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kevin Feige

A man in a hotdog suit repeatedly smashes a computer with a sledgehammer as raucous cheers fill the room.  

No, you did not just wander into a David Lynch dreamscape, but rather the d(struction)20 CTF at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas. The competition, which pits a group of hackers and researchers against each other in random security and cryptography challenges, comes with a very DEF CON-esque twist: Participants are subject to the roll of a 20-sided die, and the resulting number corresponds to physical damage inflicted upon their computer. Then they have to complete the next challenge.  Read more…

More about Hackers, Def Con, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Look, I get it. Temperatures are rising, leaders are getting dumber, and it seems like an apocalypse is nigh. We’re all freaked — including at least one member of the social media team at Charleston, S.C.’s paper, The Post and Courier.

How do I know? Just look at this tweet posted on Friday, linking to a story about Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.’s Charleston location closing.

More about Climate Change, Culture, and Web Culture

Your luck can change on the dime in New York City — and rain will likely have something to do with it.

The Big Apple has been dealing with the torrential effects of bad storms over the past several months. Up until now we’ve only seen endless, hellish Twitter videos of subway flooding. But now, in a time-lapse video captured on an iPhone XR, we can get a different perspective on the city’s weather problems. The video comes courtesy of Reddit user allsp49, who shot it from a vantage point in Jersey City, right across the water from Manhattan.

More about Reddit, Weather, Culture, New York City, and Culture

Robocalls are a menace to modern society. So you resort to a third-party app to block them and all’s well, right? Actually, no.

As it turns out, many popular robocall-blocking apps such as TrapCall and Truecaller don’t have your best interests in mind.

According to TechCrunch and Dan Hastings, a security researcher at NCC Group, many top robocall-blocking apps share your phone number with analytics firms and uploading device information such as device type and software version to companies like Facebook without your explicit consent,

Yikes!

And while some these apps released “fixes” after getting caught red-handed, the damage is already done. How can you even trust any of them anymore? You could go and read their lengthy privacy policies to see exactly what data they collect, or you can find another way to block and reduce robocalls without using third-party apps. Here’s how you can do that. Read more…

More about Iphone, Android, How To, Spam, and Robocalls

The Hunt won’t be making its planned Sept. 27 release, and there’s no timeline for when it will hit theaters. 

Universal officially shelved the upcoming Blumhouse thriller on Saturday, confirming the decision in a statement provided to Mashable. The story of rich elites capturing “deplorables” and hunting them in some unnamed foreign location is just a bit too raw for the present moment.

“While Universal Pictures had already paused the marketing campaign for The Hunt, after thoughtful consideration, the studio has decided to cancel our plans to release the film, ” the statement reads. “We stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with this satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film.” Read more…

More about Universal Pictures, The Hunt, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

We don’t know what a double-double dismount from the beam is, but Simone Biles just pulled it off, so we know it’s a miracle already.

She’s won four gold medals for the United States already, but Biles couldn’t wait for the 2020 Olympics to make headlines for her unmatched talents. At the U.S. Gymnastics Championships on Friday, she achieved a double-twisting somersault dismount off the balance beam, which as the announcer points out, had never been attempted before in a competition.

And your girl nailed it. The 22-year-old gave a knowing, beaming smile — before sauntering away like it was no big deal to make history (again). Read more…

More about Culture, Gymnastics, Simone Biles, Olympics 2020, and Culture