Author Archives: Carol Edwards

When life gives you lemons, make sure to squeeze all that lemon juice straight into your eyes and then rage about it on Twitter.

That seems to be the thinking of scores of TikTok users who, on Feb. 27, found themselves suddenly locked out of the looping video app following the company’s FTC-inspired effort to temporarily suspend accounts belonging to people under the age of 13. 

What no one appears to have first considered, however, is the fact that some now-exiled users entered fake birthdays when creating their accounts — meaning many of those suspended accounts belong to actual adults. 

Or, if not adults, at least not kids.  Read more…

More about Tiktok, Tech, and Social Media Companies

Bad news, Amazon Prime addicts: the company is no longer selling its Dash buttons.

As of today, the company will no longer sell the magical plastic buttons that let you summon refills of laundry detergent, paper towels, and Trojan condoms at will. The company will, however, continue to support existing buttons.

If you’re bummed about that, it appears that Alexa may be largely to blame for Amazon’s decision. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said “we’ve seen customers increasingly using programs like Alexa Shopping, which provides a hands free shopping experience, and Subscribe & Save, which lets customers automatically receive their favorite items every month. Read more…

More about Tech, Gadgets, Amazon, Dash Buttons, and Tech

Whether it’s Lil Debbie shilling out relationship advice or Sunny D igniting a conversation about depression, contemporary brand Twitter can be a depressing and dark place. 

Nothing feels more cynical than when a brand appropriates the standardized millennial voice — ironic, detached, dejected — and uses it to hock their emulsified meat products and drinkable corn syrups. There’s no commitment to justice here, there’s just marketing. So I’d love to call for a mass ban of corporations from Twitter, with one exception: Dr. Bronner’s, one of the country’s most popular organic, fair trade soap producers. Read more…

More about Brands, Culture, Brand Twitter, Dr. Bronner S, and Culture

The “budget-friendly” Tesla Model 3 promised by Elon Musk for years is finally here. 

The Tesla CEO teased the announcement Wednesday in a cryptic tweet. Now we finally know the big news: Tesla just made a for-real $35,000 Tesla Model 3 available. On its website, Tesla is pushing the car as $24,450 after tax and gas savings. Before the new $35,000 model was announced, the cheapest Tesla was $42,000. 

The $35,000 car has 220-mile range and will include an all-glass roof. The standard version previously came with a metal roof. Read more…

More about Tesla, Model 3, Electric Vehicles, Tech, and Elon Musk

It’s tough out there for an e-scooter.

The battery-powered vehicles used by most scooter-sharing companies weren’t intended for such heavy use. The first generation of shared scooters were mainly from Xioami, and not made with the type of usage scooter rental companies like Bird put the vehicle through. 

Alison Griswold in her Overshare newsletter about the sharing economy crunched the numbers this week from Louisville, Kentucky’s scooter-share program. It’s based mostly on Bird rides and found between August and December the average lifespan of a scooter there was 28 days.

More about Bird, Scooters, Lifespan, Lime, and E Scooters

In this special edition of MashTalk, Mashable sits down with Dario Gil, COO of Research at IBM, at CES 2019.

Gil details IBM’s latest announcement of IBM Q System One, the world’s first commercial quantum computer, and explains why widespread use and teaching of quantum computing is a lot closer than we think. Read more…

More about Technology, Mashable Video, Future, Mashtalk, and Ibm

Some memes are born to die. Others, like the “Thanks, I hate it” meme, can live eternally.

“Thanks, I hate it” — unlike many memes which fade as quickly as they appear — has real life force and patrons supporting its art. And thankfully there’s a whole new subreddit, r/TIHI (Thanks, I hate it), dedicated to keeping this meme alive. 

At its core, “Thanks, I hate it” is a meme that celebrates what I like to call “Internet Gothic.” Similar to Southern Gothic, Internet Gothic is composed of the grotesque: hellish images, perverse Photoshops, photos suggestive of late capitalism, disturbing GIFs, shitposts, nihilist memes, and all the dumb shit we try and forget we saw on the internet. Read more…

More about Memes, Reddit, Culture, Culture, and Web Culture

The Denver International Airport is elaborately trolling travelers once again — this time with an animated gargoyle statue.

Over the years, the airport, which many people know of because of all the wild conspiracy theories surrounding it, has done a truly impressive job of embracing the chaos. 

For its latest prank, the airport installed a talking gargoyle statue right in the middle of “Illuminati Headquarters” to throw shade, tell jokes, and confuse the hell out of travelers. 

According to the airport, the statue is there to “clear the air on all the conspiracies at DEN,” and travelers seem to love it. Read more…

More about Travel, Pranks, Culture, Conspiracy Theories, and Denver International Airport

Hacking a smartphone just got a whole lot cheaper. 

A tool once favored by law enforcement for pulling data off locked phones is now available to the general public. We can’t imagine the Israel-based company behind the Cellebrite hacking device is all that pleased with its newly expanded customer base, but here we are. There’s not much it can do about it at the moment, as the sales are taking place on eBay — where a quick search shows numerous used models listed for prices as low as $50. 

According to Forbes, which first reported the news, a brand new Cellebrite device will set law enforcement back around $6,000. Things are quite a bit cheaper on the online auction site, where one seller has what appear to be 10 used models for sale ranging in price between $50 to $70.  Read more…

More about Iphone, Smartphones, Hacking, Cellebrite, and Tech

Shows get renewed all the time, but it’s not often we get to see the news delivered to their hardworking cast and crew.

On Wednesday, NBC renewed Brooklyn Nine-Nine for a seventh season, and the news was broken during a table read with the show’s cast and crew.

Needless to say, they were ecstatic.

Dirk Blocker, who stars as Detective Hitchcock on the series, posted a video of the cast celebrating, including Terry Crews, Stephanie Beatriz, and Andy Samberg.

More about Entertainment, Tv, Television, Nbc, and Brooklyn Nine Nine