Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Your dumb privacy tricks aren’t working. They still know what kind of porn you’re watching. 

So concludes a not-so-surprising study, which determined that online pornography sites are loaded with various trackers that leak private details about their users to third parties. And no, the study authors take pains to insist, Google’s Incognito mode won’t keep your secrets. 

This latter point highlights broad confusion among the general public about what the Google Chrome feature actually does. Many people believe it renders their online browsing private, when in reality it just prevents Chrome from “[saving] your browsing history, cookies and site data, or information entered in forms.”  Read more…

More about Privacy, Porn, Tor, Incognito Mode, and Tech

New York City really is going through it.

An innocent commuter was nearly swept off a platform and into train tracks when he got caught in a rapidly flooding subway station. 

The heavy rain pouring down on Court Square in Long Island City was so intense on Wednesday that it forced a wall to collapse, causing a rush of water that knocked a commuter off his feet. In a video posted by the Instagram account @subwaycreatures, the commuter was nearly pushed into an incoming train car as he struggled to stand up. 

More about Nyc, Subway, Mta, Culture, and Web Culture

It’s here, it’s real, and it’s kitty-riffic! Cat-tacular! Meow-gnificent! It’s the first trailer for the live-action movie adaptation of Cats!

Starring Taylor Swift, James Corden, Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson, Idris Elba, Jason Derulo, Jennifer Hudson, and many more stars as, and I cannot stress this enough, a bunch of literal cats, Cats the movie has one of the most stacked Broadway-to-movie casts of all time. 

Cats arrives in theaters December 20, 2019. Read more…

More about Taylor Swift, Cats Movie, Cats Musical, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

Welcome to Small Humans, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2019 and we have the entire internet to contend with.

If you thought that the big-headed babies from YouTube were done with eating sugar and telling lies, then you’d be dead wrong. 

From the depths of cursed children’s videos on YouTube, Billion Surprise Toys, the production company who produced the bizarre viral smash “Johny Johny Yes Papa,” has another mind-boggling animation that has been making the rounds on Twitter. Read more…

More about Twitter, Youtube, Johny Johny Yes Papa, Small Humans, and Culture

Peep this $1500 investment in burning stuff. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Drones, Flamethrower, Future Blink, and Tech

What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?

For some, it might be “president.” But in today’s troubling news cycle, others — like Brooklyn-based artist Adam Ellis — find themselves struggling to choose between “rapist” and “racist.”

Since the 1970s, more than 20 women have accused the president of sexual misconduct — including one who claims Trump raped her when she was 13-years-old at a party hosted by registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now that Epstein’s back in the news facing charges for child sex-trafficking, discussions of Trump’s past accusers have reignited. Read more…

More about Art, Donald Trump, Social Media, Culture, and Politics

In the dramatic first trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, an austere Ed Harris tells Tom Cruise that he “can’t get a promotion, won’t retire, and despite your best efforts you refuse to die.” He could be talking about Cruise’s iconic Top Gun character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, or about Tom Cruise himself, whose superstardom launched with the release of the original Top Gun in 1986. 

The trailer doesn’t say much about the plot or other characters in the movie, but it does also feature Cruise riding a motorcycle very fast, piloting fighter jets, and donning his iconic Ray Ban sunglasses for old times’ sake. Looks like he’s about to do an incredibly brave thing. Again.  Read more…

More about Tom Cruise, Top Gun Maverick, Top Gun Sequel, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

Instagram is taking steps to block users from posting horrific photos of a teen’s body after her brutal murder, but the platform’s filters seem to have blind spots: profile pictures and videos.

Days after heavy backlash for not taking down gruesome photos of Bianca Devins’ body quickly enough, Instagram still struggles to get a handle on content moderation. The upsetting situation is another example of social media companies being ill-prepared to keep up with widespread platform abuse.

Known on Instagram as @escty, Devins was a 17-year-old e-girl who was popular on 4chan and ran a server on Discord with people she had met through the anonymous site. She was murdered on Sunday morning. Photos of her dead body have been heartlessly posted and reposted on social media after her alleged murderer Brandon Andrew Clark, who she’d met online, shared them on his Instagram story and Discord moments after slitting her throat.  Read more…

More about Instagram, Bianca Devins, Culture, and Web Culture

There’s never been a better time to develop apps that can transform your lame selfies into senior citizen glamour shots. 

The popularity of the viral FaceApp, and perhaps the ensuing backlash against it, has boosted a number of other, lesser-known apps into the top ranks of the App Store and Google Play.

Three of Apple’s top ten free apps are face-changing apps, as well as its number one paid app. In Google’s Play Store, where FaceApp also holds the top spot, face-aging apps have also broken into the top ranks.

The sudden popularity of these apps shows how one app’s success can boost similar versions, even if they’re outdated or of questionable quality.  Read more…

More about Tech, Apps And Software, Faceapp, Tech, and Consumer Tech

Congressman Warren Davidson really wants to talk about shitcoins.

The representative from Ohio took pains Wednesday to make that clear during a congressional hearing examining the potential ramifications of Facebook’s proposed Libra digital currency. Over the course of the hearing, Davidson highlighted all the perceived benefits of bitcoin and laid out how “shitcoin” — like, he implied, Libra — fundamentally differ.

In questioning Meltem Demirors, CoinShares’ chief strategy officer, Davidson first introduced his likely befuddled colleagues to the crypto term of art. 

“A lot of people in this space will use a phrase that you may be familiar with: ‘there’s bitcoin, and then there’s shitcoin,'” noted the congressman around the 2:49:40 mark in the below video. “Are you familiar with that phrase, and what people might mean by that?” Read more…

More about Facebook, Bitcoin, Libra, Cryptocurrency, and Tech