Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Will Elon Musk ever learn? Even after being fined $20 million for a single tweet and sued for fraud … he’s back.

Tesla CEO Musk may have settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over that August tweet claiming he had the funds to take his electric car company private, but that hasn’t stopped the eccentric billionaire from tweeting. 

And he isn’t just tweeting silly cat pics. No, he’s going for the jugular with taunting tweets about the very agency that investigated, sued, and then settled with him for fraud. 

A Thursday afternoon tweet (exactly a week after the SEC sued him) sarcastically praised the SEC’s name — changing it to “Shortseller Enrichment Commission.” Hey, the “C” is still the same. Read more…

More about Twitter, Tesla, Elon Musk, Sec, and Tech

Good news everyone, we have a new world leader!

An 8-year-old girl pulled an ancient Viking sword out of a lake during her summer vacation, securing her destiny as savior of the world. 

Saga Vanecek — because of course her name is Saga — unearthed the sword in Tånnö, Sweden while skipping rocks. She told the Local that she found “some kind of stick.”

“I picked it up and was going to drop it back in the water, but it had a handle, and I saw that it was a little bit pointy at the end and all rusty,” she said. Instead of a stick, she pulled out what authorities believe is a thousand-year-old weapon. “I held it up in the air and I said ‘Daddy, I found a sword!'”  Read more…

More about Archaeology, Sword, Culture, and Web Culture

Tired of shooting photos with your phone? Might be time to jump to a DSLR and channel your inner photo-pro. 

The Canon EOS Rebel T6 Double Zoom Kit is currently $499 at Walmart, which is $250 off the listed $749 price.

The Canon Rebel T6 is the ideal camera for anyone just starting out in photography. Canon cameras are typically more user friendly in design, with a straightforward button layout and easy-to-understand programs. And while the specs aren’t in the realm of Canon’s full frame cameras, they’ll satisfy most noobs just fine.

More about Camera, Mashable Shopping, Dslr Camera, Shopping Linkshare, and Tech

People are definitely spending bitcoin, just maybe not the kind of people proponents of cryptocurrency adoption had in mind. 

A lengthy indictment from the Justice Department dropped today, accusing seven Russian intelligence officers of conspiring to hack anti-doping agencies around the world in retaliation for their efforts to expose Russian athletic doping. And, at least according to the US officials, the GRU hacking group mined bitcoin to fund its efforts. 

“The pool of bitcoin generated from the GRU’s mining activity was used, for example, to pay a United States-based company to register the [phishing] domain wada-arna.org through a payment processing company located in the United States,” reads the indictment. “The conspirators used the same funding structure—and in some cases, the very same pool of funds—to purchase key accounts, servers, and domains used in their anti-doping related hacking activity.” Read more…

More about Hackers, Bitcoin, Fancy Bear, Cryptocurrency, and Tech

This post is part of Mashable’s ongoing series The Women Fixing STEM, which highlights trailblazing women in science, tech, engineering, and math, as well as initiatives and organizations working to close the industries’ gender gaps.

Diversifying the white male dominated tech industry is quite the task, especially outside major cities. But there are two kickass Australian women who’ve found neon-lit ways to start working on this, especially in regional areas.

Melbourne-based tech education startup Code Like a Girl has launched a mobile, pop-up classroom with the aim to provide coding workshops to young women, and diversify the tech industry in the long run. Read more…

More about Women, Stem, Coding, Women In Stem, and Women And Girls

Waymo’s self-driving car service is supposed to kick off by the end of this year, but before the robot cars start taking riders around, you can experience or even own some of the cars Waymo’s using in its growing autonomous fleet.

Back in March, Waymo announced that 20,000 of Jaguar’s all-electric I-Pace crossovers would be used for its self-driving taxi service. Now the British car maker’s first electric vehicle is here — deliveries in the U.S. start next month.

The car was on display and available for rides Wednesday just south of San Francisco for the first leg of the Jaguar Electrifies experience. After this week the car goes on to Miami, Los Angeles, and finally New York. Read more…

More about Electric Vehicles, Jaguar, Waymo, I Pace, and Tech

Got an announcement to make? The presidential alert meme is here for you. 

Americans got a text from none other than Donald Trump at 2:18 p.m. ET on Wednesday. Sort of. 

Phones lit up with the Wireless Emergency Alert system’s first nationwide test. The presidential alerts provide direct communication between the White House and Americans in case of a national emergency, like a disaster or a terrorist attack.

And because the internet can’t leave anything alone, the test became a meme. 

From asking the quintessential “u up?” to declaring that his hair is perfectly fine, the meme imagines Trump using the alert system to text his citizens.  Read more…

More about Twitter, Memes, Trump, Culture, and Web Culture

Since it was announced in March that Iron Man director Jon Favreau was developing a live-action Star Wars TV show set after the events of Return of the Jedi, fans have been speculating as to its subject. 

Well, wonder no more. Favreau took to Facebook Wednesday to announce the name of the upcoming series: The Mandalorian. (Unusually for Lucasfilm, the announcement was not immediately posted on StarWars.com — but the fact that Lucasfilm employees are liking the post on Facebook suggests it’s 100% legit.) 

Here’s what that means for the more casual fan: We’re going to get a lot of characters dressed like Boba Fett. The bounty hunter (and his clone father from the prequels, Jango Fett) both wore Mandalorian armor — but, confusingly, according to official Star Wars canon as it stands right now, neither character was a Mandalorian.  Read more…

More about Star Wars, Jon Favreau, Mandalorian, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

The U.S. won’t get its very first “robot brothel” after all.

The Houston City Council amended an ordinance to prevent a company called KinkySdollS from opening a showroom where people could have, um, intimate relations with realistic sex dolls. 

The dolls sell for anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000, with optional “body heat” and AI voice options. (Can’t … unread.) It’s like Westworld, but so, so much sadder. 

The amendment — which doesn’t make it illegal to sell the dolls, only to “test” them (oh god why) at the showroom — was passed unanimously Wednesday by city council members, including Greg Travis, who, reports the AP, called the brothel “weird” and “gross.” Read more…

More about Robot, Sex Robot, Sex Doll, Tech, and Artificial Intelligence

For the first time, astronomers think they’ve found solid evidence of a moon orbiting a planet outside of our solar system. 

And it’s a doozy. 

The exoplanet, named Kepler-1625b, is 8,000 light-years away and thought to be many times more massive than Jupiter, much larger than any world in our own solar system. The moon orbiting it is about the size of Neptune.

If confirmed, this will be the first time a moon has been found outside of the solar system, according to a new study detailing the finding in the journal Science Advances.

“It is an exciting reminder of how little we really know about distant planetary systems and the great spirit of discovery exoplanetary science embodies,” study co-author Alex Teachey said of the discovery in a statement.   Read more…

More about Space, Science, Solar System, Astronomy, and Moons