Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Netflix knows you hate those autoplaying previews. 

The streaming giant finally copped to that fact Thursday morning, acknowledging that the oft-reviled “feature” where a preview — with sound blasting — would start playing the moment you scroll your mouse over a show is not always welcomed. But Netflix did more than just admit reality— it also officially offered up a way to disable the feature. 

“Some people find [autoplay while browsing] helpful,” wrote Netflix in response to a presumed customer’s complaint. “Others not so much.”

More about Tech, Entertainment, Netflix, Autoplay Videos, and Tech

The single has even made it to the platform’s top 10 “most played” list.  Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Elon Musk, Soundcloud, Culture, and Elon Musk

The eWheels V2 is a pushcart that can handle any terrain on the golf course. Read more…

More about Sports, Mashable Video, Golf, Sports Equipment, and Future Blink

Guardian XO is meant to pair human intelligence with machine precision. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Labor, Injury, Manual Worker, and Future Blink

Huawei has yet another legal skirmish on its hands.

The Chinese telecom giant announced in a press release on Thursday that it had filed a lawsuit against Verizon. The suit, filed in U.S. District Courts for Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, accused Verizon of repeatedly using 12 Huawei patents without permission or, more importantly, paying licensing fees.

“Verizon’s products and services have benefited from patented technology that Huawei developed over many years of research and development,” Huawei chief legal officer Dr. Song Liuping said in the statement.

More about Verizon, Lawsuit, Telecommunications, Huawei, and Patent

Forget autonomous cars for human passengers: Nuro just received the first exemption from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to do away with traditional driving tools like steering wheels and side mirrors for an autonomous vehicle.

Back in 2018, the company debuted R1, a vehicle set up to carry Kroger groceries in the Phoenix, Arizona area. 

On Thursday, it showed off R2, the second-generation version of the grocery van with an even bigger focus on its delivery abilities. 

Nuro calls the R2 a zero-occupant vehicle, which is an important detail for the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The two-year exemption is contingent on the R2 only delivering goods, not people. Only up to 5,000 of the vehicles can operate during the exemption period. Read more…

More about Autonomous Vehicles, Nhtsa, Nuro, Tech, and Transportation

Only slightly less famous than Rule 34 is the rule that, if something exists, there is a Funko Pop of it. Funko is known applying its vinyl touch to whatever it can reach, Popifying everything from The Office to Stranger Things to Baby Yoda.

However, in this latest case, the omnipresent purveyor of button-eyed figurines is using its powers of assimilation for good. 

Funko has announced a limited edition Australian firefighter Pop figure, complete with a vinyl koala latched onto their leg. Retailing for $19.99 Australian dollars, all proceeds from the “Bushfire Heroes” figure will go toward the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ National Bushfire Appeal.  Read more…

More about Australia, Firefighters, Bushfires, Funko, and Funko Pop

When it comes to the integrity of our elections, it’s important to remember that things can always get worse.

That painful truth was ground even deeper into our skulls today with the revelation that the busted app responsible in part for the flat out disaster of a Feb. 3 Iowa Caucus also happened to be extremely hackable. That’s right, according to security researchers who analyzed the app’s code, it would have been possible for bad actors to change vote counts. 

So reports ProPublica, which asked the security company Veracode to look over the IowaReporterApp. What Veracode found definitely did not reassure. In addition to potentially being able to change vote tallies, Veracode told ProPublica that passwords could have been intercepted.  Read more…

More about Hackers, Iowa Caucus, Election 2020, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Here we go again. 

As it reckons with its own diversity problems, the literary world attempted a misguided push towards increasing diversity — which was met with indignation, bewilderment, and a canceled event. 

Earlier this week, AM New York reported that Barnes & Noble was partnering with Penguin Random House and TBWA/CHIAT/DAY, a division of the TBWA Worldwide advertising agency, to put together a collection of new “culturally diverse” covers for classic books, which were going to be available for purchase in the bookseller’s Fifth Avenue location in New York. 

Dubbed “Diverse Editions,” the collection was going to include new cover art featuring people of color for the following books:   Read more…

More about Books, Barnes And Noble, Children S Books, Diversity And Inclusion, and Diversity In Publishing

Whether you use the internet to share memes, talk sports, or drive yourself to the brink of madness by following political news, one thing we can all agree on is that internet access isn’t always as easy as it should be. 

Take the United States, for example. Internet quality varies wildly from state to state, seemingly at random. New Jersey and Maine might not look very far away from each other on a map, but download speed in the two northeastern states was dramatically different when we wrote about it last year.

The differences are stark when talking purely about speed, but looking at access paints an even more grim pictureBroadbandNow released its broadband access report for the last quarter of 2019, comparing how easy it is to get usable internet in each state without going bankrupt.  Read more…

More about Internet, Broadband, Internet Access, Broadband Network, and Broadband Internet