Category Archives: Blog

It looks like Verizon is feeling some buyer’s remorse with Tumblr.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the telecom giant is looking to offload the social blogging site a little less than two years after acquiring it. It doesn’t sound like there’s a buyer yet and Verizon may not find one, according to the Journal, but the company is at least looking.

Tumblr was founded in 2007 and purchased by Yahoo for a whopping $1.1 billion in 2013. It was a landmark acquisition during former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s tenure, but it didn’t really work out the way Yahoo planned. Read more…

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Electric scooter riders, protect your head! 

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report out this week that nearly half of all e-scooter injuries involve head trauma. Maybe worse, most of the incidents could have been prevented by simply wearing a helmet or other safety equipment.

The CDC published the study in collaboration with the Austin Public Transportation Department (APTD) and Austin Public Health (APH). It examined electric scooter trends in the Texas capital from September through November 2018.

The researchers identified 271 people with potential e-scooter-related injuries during the study. Further analysis of the report combined the number of confirmed injuries (160) with other probable injuries (32). Of those 190 injured riders, 48 percent experienced injuries to the head. Read more…

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An aluminum scam lasting over 19 years by Sapa Profiles has been found to be behind two failed missions by NASA. Read more…

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Facebook may be facing more than just a $3 to $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission.

According to a report in Politico, the FTC may require Facebook to create a privacy oversight committee as well as appoint a “federally approved privacy official” at the company. The committee would be “independent” but could consist of Facebook board members. 

The FTC could also designate Mark Zuckerberg as the company’s “designated compliance officer,” in which he would assume personal accountability for Facebook’s privacy failures.  Read more…

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Facebook has stepped up the enforcement of its own rules, announcing the Facebook and Instagram bans of a host of controversial public figures including Alex Jones, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, and others. 

It has taken action against these figures and others because Facebook considers them “dangerous,” per a definition in Facebook’s Community Guidelines. It is banning the individuals and affiliated pages from both Facebook and Instagram.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.” Read more…

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The video-sharing website will show 13 pro baseball matchups this current season. It is not yet known when the games will be or which teams will be playing. Read more…

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Sleep can make or break your day. If you wake up feeling energized and refreshed, concentrating and functioning will be a breeze. On the other hand, if you spend most of your nights tossing and turning, the whole day can feel like a challenge. You’ll be fatigued, irritable, and reaching for the nearest caffeine source. 

According to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, sleep deprivation might lead to serious health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity. So it’s something to take seriously. If you need to improve your quality of sleep, it might be time for you to buy a new mattress.  Read more…

More about Home, Sleep, Mattress, Mashable Shopping, and Lifestyle

With Tesla test drives scaled back, your options to check out a Model 3 or Model S sedan are limited enough that you may need to turn to virtual reality to see the car before you buy it. 

Oculus’s new VR headset could become the next best way to check out cars without going to a dealership or car lot — or in Tesla’s case, without buying the car sight unseen.

The Oculus Quest was officially announced this week at Facebook’s F8 conference and when it arrives on May 21 for $399 most of the attention will be on how it performs for gaming apps. For the non-gamers out there, however, the headset can give you a glimpse at what thousands of cars look like. It’s one of the many non-gaming uses for VR that’s getting a boost with the new device. Read more…

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“The future is private,” Mark Zuckerberg declared, as he awkward-laughed his way through his annual keynote at Facebook’s F8 conference. For Zuckerberg, the event was his chance to sell the world on his vision to turn Facebook into a a “privacy-focused” social network.

To make that happen he plans to rebuild many of the company’s core services, including:

• A redesigned Facebook that emphasizes groups and Stories more than News Feed

• A redesigned Messenger app that also allows you to chat with friends on WhatsApp and Instagram (details on how are still sketchy). It will also have a new social tab for interacting with small groups of friends.

• A redesigned Instagram camera that makes it easier to use Stories like you might have once used News Feed Read more…

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Volvo’s performance brand brought its new all-electric sedan, the Polestar 2, to North America on Wednesday. This marked the first time this side of the world got a peek at the first car to use Google to natively power the infotainment system. 

An 11-inch center console screen and a 12.3-inch driver seat screen display an Android Automotive operating system with voice-activated Google Assistant, Google Maps, the Google Play Store, and all its Android Automotive apps. 

With the $63,000 car’s arrival in San Francisco, Google opened up app development for the Polestar 2 and other cars planning to use Google for its infotainment system for everything from mapping to sending texts to listening to audio books.  Read more…

More about Google, Google Maps, Electric Vehicles, Google Assistant, and Polestar