Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Brace yourselves New Yorkers: You’re getting an Amazon Go store.

Amazon confirmed to CNN that it plans to open one of its checkout-free grocery stores of the future in New York after several job listings for positions such as a store manager were posted online.

Amazon opened the first Go store in Seattle in January of this year. Hailed as the store of the future, customers use their phones to scan their Amazon Go app at the turnstiles located at the entrance.

Then, the rest is like magic.

You simply take what you want to purchase from off the shelves and put it in your bag. Amazon uses its “Walk Out” technology which consists of a whole bunch of cameras and sensors located within the shelves and installed in the ceilings to track each item you’ve picked up. Read more…

More about Tech, Amazon, Amazon Go, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

An all-electric rickshaw or three-wheeled vehicle may soon be more of the norm on streets in India — a country with a massive 1.3 billion population and a dependency on carbon energy sources to match. 

At this week’s Global Mobility Summit in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made comments that could change the car industry and energy consumption in the country. He spoke about a countrywide policy to support more electric and non-oil-dependent vehicles and indicated it will launch soon, according to Reuters.

Car companies are chomping at the bit to tap into the Indian market. Toyota is already working to bring electric vehicles to India in the next few years and more recently Suzuki announced 50 electric prototypes to test in the country. If the country commits to electric incentive and credit programs to move drivers away from fossil fuels, it could attract an electric vehicle market like China’s. Read more…

More about India, Electric Vehicles, Zero Emissions, Tech, and Energy

If you have the Adware Doctor app installed on your Mac, you should uninstall it ASAP.

Despite ranking as the top paid utility app in the Mac App Store, Adware Doctor is actually spyware that secretly collects data and sends it to servers in China, as security researcher Patrick Wardle recently discovered.

In a post on his site Objective-See, Wardle explains in great detail how the app collects a user’s browsing history from Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, stores this data within an encrypted file, and then sends it to servers in China. Read more…

More about Apple, Apps, China, Mac, and Spyware

This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.

Burt Reynolds died, people lit their Nike shoes on fire because they were unhappy with an ad, and Colton Underwood was named the next Bachelor. Clearly, this was a shit week.

But, before we get too overwhelmed, let us meditate on the one good thing the internet has given us: this GIF of a dog patiently sitting with a hot dog in his mouth while his owner takes his picture at a baseball game.

The baseball cap-sporting pup resists the urge to gobble up the stadium hot dog, only taking the most polite nibble, while his owner takes multiple photos of him. The restraint and obedience this dog has is astounding. He is truly a prince among dogs. Read more…

More about Baseball, Photo, Dog, One Good Thing, and Culture

Major spoilers for Ozark: Season 2 lie ahead. 

From Narcos to Breaking Bad, crime dramas have gained a reputation for using shallow female characters as little more than emotional fodder for male stories. Frequently minimized as damsels in distress and exasperating nags, women within the genre exist almost exclusively to portray girlfriends, wives, mothers, and victims.  

Season 2 of Netflix’s Ozark, however, champions female stories through all 10 of its episodes with an array of women that rivals the ensemble complexity of HBO’s The Sopranos.

More about Netflix, Women, Female, Season 2, and Representation

Going viral and becoming a meme is pretty easy in the age of Trump: Just stand behind The Orange One at his rallies and — this part’s key — make silly faces during his speech.

Doing so will turn all eyeballs from The Donald to you. It’ll also get your removed from the rally courtesy of the Secret Service. But, worth it!

This is exactly what happened when Tyler Linfesty attended a Trump rally in Montana on Sept. 6. He quickly became immortalized on the internet as “Plaid Shirt Guy” after he was spotted visibly reacting to the president’s words just behind his right shoulder. Read more…

More about Funny, Memes, Viral, Trump, and Culture

Alex Jones took another major blow this week.

Following bans from Twitter and Periscope, Apple has permanently banned Jones’ InfoWars app from its App Store.

Apple confirmed the InfoWars app’s removal to Buzzfeed News after users noticed it was missing on Friday evening and no longer showed up in the App Store’s search results. 

The App Store removal shouldn’t surprise anyone. In early August, Apple removed five InfoWars podcasts, including War Room and The Alex Jones Show, from iTunes and the Podcasts app.

An Apple spokesperson told Mashable at the time the company “does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users.” Read more…

More about Apple, App Store, Infowars, Alex Jones, and Tech

There are a few reasons to recommend Outlaw King, David Mackenzie’s medieval movie starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce.

For one, it’s pretty. Like, really pretty. Mackenzie never misses an opportunity to showcase the pristine beauty of the Scottish countryside, with its rolling hills and soft mists. There’s one particular shot of a rainbow that nearly made me gasp. 

It’s also got plenty of fighting, if you’re into that sort of thing. The film rarely goes longer than 20 minutes without a battle scene, some more doomed or more epic or more violent than others, but all convincingly choreographed to look difficult and exhausting and flat-out brutal. Do you wish Game of Thrones had way less talking and way more action? Outlaw King might be for you. Read more…

More about Movies, Chris Pine, Outlaw King, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

Twitter’s website is about to get a big makeover.

The company’s currently testing a redesigned version of its website, which will bring bookmarks, the explore tab, and a new “data-saver” mode to its desktop website. It’s also really, really, white.

Officially, the redesign won’t roll out to everyone for some time, though the company showed off a brief preview in a tweet Thursday. But Twitter’s already already testing the new look with a “small number” of its users who are able to opt in to the new look. 

My account was apparently in that group because I received a pop-up Thursday asking if I wanted to try out the “new Twitter.” After using it for just over 24 hours now, I’m here to report that, yes, it’s very, very, white. But, despite the new minimalist look, Twitter has made a few nice additions as well. Read more…

More about Tech, Twitter, Social Media Companies, Tech, and Social Media Companies

Another “wake word” has entered the lexicon. Instead of “OK, Google” or “Hey, Alexa,” this time it’s “Hey, BMW.”

With BMW’s new virtual assistant, coming to the German car maker in 2019, voice commands are front and center in the car. It’s a new way to interact with your vehicle.

The assistant was revealed Thursday at a TechCrunch Disrupt main stage event. BMW senior vice president of digital products, Dieter May, showed it off, extolling its skills beyond “just voice commands.” He said the assistant would “live side by side with you” — which is either super helpful or super creepy. Read more…

More about Bmw, Voice Controls, Voice Assistants, Tech, and Transportation