Author Archives: Carol Edwards

It was late Saturday night at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and an extremely stoned man was trying to bribe his way into the city’s hottest cryptocurrency party — and it wasn’t working. 

To get to that point, he’d have already waited in a line for 30 minutes just to ride the elevator up to room 6116 in the hotel’s Forum Tower. It was clear he was past ready to start celebrating — this was Saturday night at the DEF CON hacker convention, after all — and someone else was footing the bill. 

That would be Monero, the popular privacy-focused cryptocurrency that’s been on a wild ride since it was released in 2014. It had skyrocketed in value from around $1 in the summer of 2016 to a high of almost $500 in January of this year, before falling back to about $80 today — making a host of early adopters incredibly wealthy in the process.   Read more…

More about Blockchain, Def Con, Cryptocurrency, Monero, and Tech

Someone please give the person who thought of this a raise.

Reddit user u/Limit760 posted a picture of his local Dunkin’ Donuts doing the absolute best it could in an unfortunate situation. As the post claims, a broken drive-thru speaker left the franchise with no other choice than to temporarily replace it with a baby monitor placed inside a traffic cone.

To be fair, this janky alternative is undeniably creative. The way they taped one cone to the other is peak innovation. And using a traffic cone to amplify the sound? Genius.   Read more…

More about Food, Reddit, Culture, Dunkin Donuts, and Culture

We’re well into the second season of Trump: The Presidency, and Omarosa — who was supposed to have left after season one — keeps worming her way back into every episode.

This week brings us Omarosa’s book Unhinged, a “juicy” tell-all about her brief tenure in the White House and her relationship with President Trump. To be fair, there isn’t that much, thematically, that will surprise the reader. We’re all too aware of the chaos in the White House.

What is (sort of) novel about Unhinged is the grotesque specificity of its detail. Omarosa seems to take real pleasure in exposing each and every one of the Trump administration’s weaknesses — as well as every single of one of her mighty strengths. Read more…

More about Watercooler, Omarosa, Omarosa Manigault, Culture, and Politics

It’s a common superstition that bad things come in threes. There’s no scientific evidence that suggests this is true, but one Redditor’s story may make a believer out of you.

Redditor u/JaMollyAdams shared a their very unfortunate run in with a bird today on r/pics, and wow do we feel for them.

“A bird flew in my window, sh*t on my laptop, and decided to die right in front of me,” JaMollyAdams wrote. “How’s your day going?”

Woof. What an unfortunate series of events.

The Redditor also shared a picture of the crappy incident to prove that a bird did actually defecate and then die on their laptop. And it appears it did, either that or this is truly the worst way to get fake internet points we have ever encountered.  Read more…

More about Bird, Laptop, Death, Poop, and Culture

Mild spoiler alert for Avengers: Infinity War ahead.

It’s the question on everyone’s mind after Thanos and “The Snap”: What the hell happened to Thor’s roommate Darryl? 

Was he spared? Did he make the cut? Guys, relax. Darryl’s alright, but he’s working weekends now, and he has a birthday message for your favourite god of thunder. 

Played by Emmy-winning Australian writer and producer Daley Pearson, Darryl posted a birthday message for his immortal buddy on Twitter — it was actually Thor’s mortal counterpart Chris Hemsworth’s 35th birthday over the weekend. Read more…

More about Marvel, Avengers, Thor, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Avengers Infinity War

Krista, an Instagram user with more than 4,500 followers on her fitness account, noticed something strange on Saturday evening: she had been logged out of her account. 

When she tried to log back in, she got a message that her username didn’t exist. She soon realized her handle and photo had both been changed, as had the email address and phone number associated with her account. She tried to request a password reset, only to see the new email linked to her account was now a .ru email: she had been hacked. 

More about Facebook, Instagram, Security, Social Media Companies, and Tech

This is You Won’t Regret It, a new weekly column featuring recommendations, tips, and unsolicited advice from the Mashable culture team.

Making playlists is a lot like journaling.

I used to journal religiously — every night for almost ten years, I’d pick up a pen and fill dozens of notebooks with a recap of my day. I burned through almost 20 notebooks and countless rainbow gel pens over the years, meticulously documenting what I did, what I wore, and what annoyed me during my journaling phase. 

But once I got to college, my daily journaling fell apart because maintaining a routine was nearly impossible. Between classes, homework, papers, extracurriculars, and a social life, it was difficult to find time to eat a real meal, let alone recap my day at night.  Read more…

More about Music, Travel, You Won T Regret It, Culture, and Web Culture

The pressure of being on TV coupled with the possibility of winning a ton of money is part of what makes game shows so entertaining. People will inevitably embarrass themselves for the viewers’ enjoyment. 

But sometimes a blunder will happen that’s so egregious, it feels impossible to blame entirely on TV jitters.

On Sunday’s episode of ABC’s The $100,000 Pyramid, a contestant named Evan was feeding hints to his celebrity partner Tim Meadows in hopes Meadows would guess the hidden phrase. 

Evan starts off with an easy one. The subject is “People Whose Last Name is Obama.” Read more…

More about Funny, Barack Obama, Game Shows, Osama Bin Alden, and 100k Pyramid

Peter Parker may be all about MJ, but Spider-Man’s a superhero married to the city of New York.

By now it’s cliche to call a city – particular New York – the real protagonist of a movie, show, or game. But in the case of Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man, it’s true. We’ve played forty-five minutes of the demo, and it is clear that the team went to painstaking lengths to capture both the personality and verticality of the city that is so core to this hero’s story.

In the newest gameplay trailer for the upcoming title, you get a hint at just how friggin’ rad it feels to swing across the gorgeous cityscape, only to seamlessly drop to the ground and get to know its character. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Marvel, Video Games, Spider Man, and Entertainment

Welcome to another day living under the Trump administration.

According to a Politico report published on Monday, during a 2017 briefing to prep for a meeting with the prime minister of India, President Donald Trump called the country of Nepal “nipple” and laughed when he referred to the country of Bhutan as “button.” 

Trump’s cultural gaffe was confirmed by two sources with “knowledge of the meeting,” per Politico. A White House representative told Politico that people present at the 2017 meeting “don’t remember” the president’s “nipple” remark.  Read more…

More about Politics, Trump, Trump Administration, Culture, and Politics