Category Archives: Blog

As if we needed more reasons to be freaked out by increasingly powerful digital assistants, there’s a new nightmare scenario: The music you listen to or conversations you hear on TV could hijack your digital assistant with commands undetectable to human ears. 

This is known as a “Dolphin Attack” (because dolphins can hear what humans can’t), and researchers have been aware of the possibility for years. The basic idea is that commands could be hidden in high-frequency sounds that our assistant-enabled gadgets can detect, but we are unable to hear.

More about Tech, Gadgets, Siri, Artificial Intelligence, and Alexa

The subscription fervor that’s grown from Netflix to MoviePass is making its way to the road.

Invites through the Lyft app started going out this week to high-frequency “insiders” who want a chance to sign up for a $200 per month plan. (Note: That will set riders back more each month than Amazon Prime’s new annual rate.)

Once on the waitlist for the all-access pass — an upfront subscription for a certain number of rides each month — users can opt into a Lyft ride pass the company is testing out. The plan includes 30 standard Lyft rides. At $6.67 per ride, that could save a few bucks on longer, more expensive routes. Read more…

More about Lyft, Ride Hailing Apps, Subscription Services, Tech, and Transportation

It was possibly the most mind-blowing tech demo in years: During the opening keynote of the Google I/O developers conference, CEO Sundar Pichai showed the company’s AI-driven Assistant making a phone call to a business and carrying out a verbal conversation with the person who answered.

What made the demo of the feature, called Duplex, so amazing was the Assistant’s command of natural language – saying “um,” “mm-hmm,” and “ah” at various times – was so masterful that it was apparent the person on the other end had no idea he or she was talking to a machine. It was a very specific situation, but Google Assistant had effectively passed the Turing test. Read more…

More about Google, Podcast, Ai, Mashtalk, and Google Assistant

One of the best things about sitting through long graduation ceremonies is spotting the cool graduation cap designs. While plenty opt-out of decorating (or use one of the many overdone phrases), many are inspired to be creative and unique when decorating.

Check out some of the coolest, funniest, and most unique designs of 2018. Movie, television, and video game references were hot, but these grads made the designs their own. 

More about Crafts, Graduation, Graduation Caps, Culture, and Web Culture

Elon Musk and Grimes made their debut as a couple at this year’s Met Gala, and many people believe that this is further proof that we live in a simulation. They met on Twitter while musing on Roko’s Basilisk, so people may not be wrong?

Join us as we cover the breaking memes rocking the Internet each week. Let us know below what are some of your favorite memes are this week and we’ll see you next week with All the Memes! Read more…

More about Celebrities, Mashable Video, Artificial Intelligence, Elon Musk, and Met Gala

This is bad. This is very, very bad.

After five seasons, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been canceled by Fox, The Hollywood Reporter reported Thursday. Fans of the show are distraught, to say the least, and immediately began voicing their sadness on Twitter.

More about Reactions, Fox, Tv Shows, Brooklyn Nine Nine, and Canceled

Uncle Chuck Schumer always goes for the joke — and sometimes, despite all odds, lands one.

The senate majority leader had a particularly good burn today, after the president launched one of his extended, demanded rants about the Iran deal. In response, Schumer tweeted the hashtag from the First Lady’s anti-bullying campaign.

“Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fought hard against the Bad Iran Deal, even going at it with President Obama, & then Voted AGAINST it!” President Trump wrote, continuing his long-standing tradition of erratic capitalization. “Now he says I should not have terminated the deal – but he doesn’t really believe that! Same with Comey. Thought he was terrible until I fired him!” Read more…

More about Watercooler, Trolls, Twitter Burn, President Trump, and Chuck Schumer

Proving that robots even exercise better than you, Boston Dynamics released a new video today demonstrating its Atlas bot going for what looks to be an afternoon jog. 

Not to be confused with the robodogs likely plotting something nefarious at this very moment, Atlas is the same biped that seriously freaked out the internet when it did a backflip in November of last year.

So, to recap: Boston Dynamics robots are opening doors, doing flips, and running across an uneven terrain. 

I guess there’s no need to violently overthrow the humans when you can just embarrass us into going back to the gym.  Read more…

More about Robots, Boston Dynamics, Tech, and Other

Even Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is hesitant about the ride-hailing company’s goals to have a flying taxi service airborne in five years.

At the second day of the Uber Elevate Summit, Khosrowshahi spoke about UberAir, the company’s electric vertical take-off and landing (e-VTOLs) aircraft flight-sharing network, or flying taxis.

While optimistic that electric four-seater crafts flown by a pilot will soon be possible, and that UberAir will certainly hit its 2020 goal for demo flights in Los Angeles and the Dallas area, Khosrowshahi said he had to be convinced that the cost would come down, and that the service would be accessible to the masses or even residents of those two cities by 2023. Read more…

More about Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, Flying Taxi, Uberair, and Tech

For those who have been with Outlander’s Claire and Jamie since the first season aired in 2014, it’s hard to even imagine an end to their epic time-hopping journey.

Luckily, we won’t have to imagine it for quite some time. Starz and Sony Pictures Television have announced the wildly popular show’s renewal for at least two more seasons, running 12 episodes each. 

For those keeping track, that means we’ll get the upcoming fourth season currently in production  slated for release in November 2018 — and then have two additional seasons (if not more) to look forward to in the future.

More about Entertainment, Starz, Outlander, Outlander Season 3, and Outlander Season 4