Author Archives: Carol Edwards

We’ve officially made it to August, which means it’s time to get cracking on those looming back-to-school supplies lists. Whether yours includes mostly basics like pens and notebooks or you require more advanced stuff like a laptop or tablet, you definitely don’t need to be paying full price.

We’re here to help you ease into the new school year with some extra cash in your pocket. We’ve scoured online retailers to find the best sales on back-to-school supplies, tech, and dorm essentials.

Check back weekly as we update these deals every Monday. Read more…

More about Tablets, Education, Laptops, Back To School, and Mashable Shopping

Around 15 years ago, Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science, observed that many reporters repeatedly covered climate change in a puzzling way.

The popular media wrote about the topic as if there was still “a great debate” about whether human-caused climate change was occurring, said Oreskes, now a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. But among the atmospheric scientists, geologists, and oceanographers actively researching and publishing peer-reviewed research on the topic, there was no debate. 

“None of the scientists I knew, working in the area, thought there was any doubt that man-made climate change was underway,” Oreskes recalled. Read more…

More about Science, Global Warming, Climate Change, Science, and Climate Environment

TL;DR: Score this Microsoft Surface Pro 6/Surface Type Cover bundle for just $875 on Amazon. It’s normally $1,299, so you’ll save about $425.

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Many tablets are marketed as 2-in-1 or hybrid/convertible laptops, yet they don’t come with keyboards. Unless we’re missing something, that would make them merely powerful tablets… right?

The Microsoft Surface Pro 6 — a Mashable’s Choice Award-winning device, mind you — is one such culprit. It’s got the quad-core performance you want in a laptop, but since it doesn’t come with a keyboard, you technically can’t use it as one right out of the box.

Fortunately, Microsoft has caught on to this little conundrum and put together a Surface Pro 6 bundle that includes one of its Surface Type Covers. You can actually snag it on sale for under $900 on Amazon right now — a savings of $424. Read more…

More about Microsoft, Type Cover, Mashable Shopping, Microsoft Surface Pro 6, and 2 In 1 Laptops

Alaska’s exceptional summer continues. 

The most rapidly changing state in the U.S. has no sea ice within some 150 miles of its shores, according to high-resolution sea ice analysis from the National Weather Service. The big picture is clear: After an Arctic summer with well above-average temperatures, warmer seas, and a historic July heat wave, sea ice has vanished in Alaskan waters.

“Alaska waters are ice free,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.

“This is definitely an extreme year — even by more recent standards in a changed Arctic,” noted Walt Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  Read more…

More about Science, Arctic, Global Warming, Climate Change, and Alaska

Cloudflare has announced that it will terminate its protection of 8chan after the forum site was linked to another mass shooting over the weekend, tying the site’s “lawlessness” directly to “multiple tragic deaths”.

Pressure had mounted on the company to cease its service to 8chan, arguing that it enabled the spread of violent white supremacist rhetoric and the celebration of perpetrators of massacres. Manifestos or open letters by shooters including those responsible for the Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso shootings, all of which occurred in 2019, have been hosted on the mostly-unmoderated forums. Read more…

More about White Supremacy, 8chan, Cloudflare, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Apple’s credit card is launching soon, and it looks like the highly anticipated card will come with a few unusual rules.

Goldman Sachs, which partnered with Apple on the card, published the customer agreement, revealing a few new details about the iPhone maker’s new offering. 

Though many of the rules are what you’d expect to find in the fine print of any credit card, there are some notable parts of the agreement. 

For one, the terms explicitly forbid credit card users from jailbreaking their iPhones. From the agreement (emphasis added):

In other words: don’t jailbreak your phone unless you want to risk having your account closed abruptly.  Read more…

More about Tech, Apple, Apple Card, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

Amazon’s plans to launch a drone delivery service in the United States are slowly inching forward.

The Federal Aviation Administration just announced an important milestone in drone flight that has significant implications for Amazon and other companies hoping to launch commercial drone operations. 

The University of Alaska completed the first FAA-approved “beyond line of sight” drone flight this week, Reuters reported.

Up until now, the agency has had a strictly-enforced “line of sight” rules that requires drone operators to be able to see their drone at all times. And even one-time waivers granted by the FAA have required a person on the ground to watch the drone, according to Irish Automation, a company that makes the collision avoidance software that was used in the Alaska flight. This has been a major hurdle for Amazon and other companies that want to use autonomous drones for delivery services and other uses.  Read more…

More about Tech, Amazon, Transportation, Drones, and Faa

There is no reasonable argument in 2019 for 8chan’s continued existence on the internet.

Just look at the recent history. QAnon, an alarming and deeply absurd conspiracy theory, blew up there. When reports surfaced in 2018 that Louisiana police possessed a “full list of antifa” doc — actually just the names of anti-Trumpers scraped from petitions and Facebook events — 8chan was found to be hosting the same list.

Then there are the mass shootings. The angry, hateful men allegedly behind the 2019 shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand; Poway, California; and, most recently, El Paso, Texas all used the site to promote their activities. The El Paso suspect apparently shared an entire, twisted manifesto. Read more…

More about Racism, Shooting, 8chan, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Forget snakes on a plane. We have bats to worry about, now. 

On Wednesday morning, passengers on a 6:00 a.m. flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Newark, New Jersey received quite the scare after a loose bat that somehow made it aboard a Spirt Airlines flight decided to dart through the cabin.

An absolute nightmare.

Two passengers shared footage of the terrifying scene on Twitter. In the first video, shown above, people can be heard screaming, and seen crouching down in their seats and attempting to hide behind the bathroom door. Read more…

More about Twitter, Bats, Spirit Airlines, Culture, and Animals

If you’ve been thinking about buying a new Tesla, now might be a good time to make a move.

Tesla is offering prospective buyers some extra incentive: free supercharging when you buy a new Model X or Model S. New purchases of the two cars will come with”free unlimited” supercharging, Tesla announced in a tweet. 

The company didn’t post further details on the offer, but a spokesperson confirmed there is currently no set timeframe on the deal.

For Tesla, the free supercharging is likely meant to draw more customers to its older, higher-priced cars rather than the more affordable Model 3. On a recent earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the Model 3 is likely cannibalizing sales of the older Model X and Model S. And analysts have expressed concerns over slowing interest in the older models. Even Musk noted that demand for the vehicles “should be higher.” Read more…

More about Tech, Transportation, Tesla, Model S, and Tesla Model X