Author Archives: Carol Edwards

YouTube wants its creators to know that the company hears them loud and clear.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki published her latest letter to creators on Monday, discussing the company’s priorities for the rest of the year. While the bulk of the letter covered the threat Article 13 in the EU poses on the YouTube community, Wojcicki also snuck in a slew of major updates for its content creators.

Going forward, YouTube will be improving its communications with creators, according to Wojcicki. YouTube has a bit of a reputation for not always being transparent, often leaving many in the dark when it comes to platform upgrades. The company says it will provide regular updates through its Twitter account and Creator Insider YouTube channel, as well as through the new YouTube Studio.  Read more…

More about Youtube, Education, Youtube Creators, Transparency, and Tech

The crooks definitely haven’t forgotten. 

Despite a rash of publicity last year warning Tesla owners of the risk, yet another unlucky individual appears to have fallen victim to a so-called relay attack — losing his pricey electric car in the process. In surveillance video published to YouTube (embedded below), it seems thieves can be seen amplifying the signal from the car owner’s key fob (located inside his home) in order to trick the vehicle into thinking the fob was present. 

And, after initially struggling but finally succeeding to unplug the charging vehicle, the two car thieves manage to drive away.  Read more…

More about Tesla, Model S, Tech, and Cybersecurity

YouTube is sounding the alarms at the highest level over new controversial copyright legislation in the EU.

In a new blog post updating YouTube creators on the company’s priorities for the remainder of the year, CEO Susan Wojcicki focused on Article 13 of the European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. 

While there are a number of problematic parts to this new legislation, such as Article 11 — which the EFF described as akin to a “link tax,” requiring internet platforms “to obtain a license before linking to news stories” — YouTube is putting the spotlight on Article 13, which has been widely referred to as a “meme ban.” Read more…

More about Video, Youtube, Memes, Copyright, and Web Culture

In the deep, dark Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica lies a creature so bewildering and elusive, it hasn’t been filmed for a year. 

Behold, the ‘headless chicken monster,’ which has been filmed casually swimming near East Antarctica, the first time it’s been filmed in the region. 

Except that it’s not headless, a chicken, or a monster. It’s a sea cucumber.

Deep-sea resident Enypniastes eximia, also known as the ‘headless chicken monster’ to undeniably hilarious scientists, has been filmed in the Southern Ocean. Read more…

More about Oceans, Marine, Fishing, Science, and Climate Environment

Hollywood has a long history of straight actors playing LGBTQ roles, and it’s something Cate Blanchett has defended.

The Australian actress played a lesbian woman in 2015 film Carol, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, she had never been asked about her sexuality until she played an LGBTQ character. 

Blanchett disagrees with the notion that an actor should have lived the experience of the character they play, saying that it defies the whole point of acting.

“It also speaks to something that I’m quite passionate about in storytelling generally, but in film specifically, is that film can be quite a literal medium,” she said at the Rome Film Festival. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Lgbtq, Cate Blanchett, Lgbtq Rights, and Lgbtq Representation

The Super Nintendo really was far ahead of its time.

Bertrand Fan, a senior engineer for the messaging and chat application Slack, recently came across an interesting find. During the mid-’90s in Japan, Nintendo released a satellite modem peripheral for its SNES game console (called the Super Famicom over there).

Known as the Satellaview, Nintendo would beam daily broadcasts to gamers’ consoles. According to Fan, Nintendo actually did this for years, broadcasting content over Satellaview every day from April 1995 to June 2000. 

This gave Fan an idea. “If you can beam satellite signals to a SNES, you can probably run Slack on it,” the engineer said in a post. So, that’s what Fan set out to do. Read more…

More about Tech, Entertainment, Gaming, Nintendo, and Slack

Sometimes social media is a good thing.

The anger over a Trump administration plan to curtail the rights of transgender citizens is still palpable. But the Sunday morning eruption that followed the revelations aired in a New York Times report came with a hefty side of advice from the people who knows these issues best.

Trans activists spent the morning and afternoon flooding social media with helpful tips. Charities to support. Activist organizations to connect with. Meaningful, tangible suggestions that any ally can act on immediately if they want to help. Read more…

More about Social Good, Transgender, Donald Trump, Activism, and Transgender Rights

The New York Police Department is pulling thousands of body cameras from the field after one of them caught on fire while a police officer was wearing it.

The Daily Beast reports that a Vievu model LE-5 body camera “burst into flames” early Sunday morning while an officer was wearing it right outside a Staten Island police precinctAccording to the NYPD, “an officer retrieved a body-cam for deployment on a midnight tour and noticed there was smoke exiting from the bottom portal and immediately removed it. After it was safely removed, the device exploded.”

The officer wearing the faulty body camera was not injured. Read more…

More about Police, Nypd, Body Camera, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

The Star-Spangled Banner has stayed the same, with the same words and the same tune for 87 years, but a Hawai’ian musician reinvented the song while performing the song at a football game in Hawai’i and left quite an impression. 

The singer, who goes by Willie K., reinterpreted the national anthem by accompanying himself on the ukulele and singing the tune in an original melody of his own creation. 

Isn’t it nice to hear a new spin on an old creation?

More about Football, National Anthem, Star Spangled Banner, National Anthem Protests, and Willie K

For years, Elon Musk has been touting the promise of a self-driving car. Well, it looks like that promise is a little further off than Musk previously thought, if it materializes at all.

On Thursday, Elon Musk unveiled a new “lower cost, mid-range” Tesla Model 3 car coming in at around $45,000. At the same time, one eagle-eyed Twitter user noticed another update over at Tesla: the optional add-on “Full Self-Driving” feature was gone.

According to Musk’s reply tweet, the option is still available for Tesla customers who’d like it, but the company won’t be advertising it as it “was causing too much confusion.” Read more…

More about Advertising, Tesla, Elon Musk, Autonomous Cars, and Self Driving Cars