Influencer planned violent domain-name heist to elevate his brand

Influencer planned violent domain-name heist to elevate his brand

Rossi Lorathio Adams II brought a gun to a domain name fight. 

The 27-year-old social media influencer was sentenced to 168 months in jail on Monday for a 2017 plot involving viral videos, a pantyhose-sporting henchman, a gun, and the rather asinine catchphrase “Do It For State.” 

Needless to say, things didn’t exactly work out the way the aspiring digital-media mogul hoped. 

The plot is detailed in a Dec. 9 press release from the Department of Justice. Adams, it seems, fancied himself an entrepreneur — he ran the social media company “State Snaps,” which he founded in 2015 while attending Iowa State University.  Read more…

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Away CEO resigns after luggage startup’s internal messages were published

Away CEO resigns after luggage startup’s internal messages were published

The CEO and co-founder of popular luggage startup Away is resigning just days after her internal Slack messages were made public.

Steph Korey, who co-founded the suitcase company in 2015, is stepping down from her CEO role and will be replaced by Lululemon Athletica’s chief operating officer, Stuart Haselden, the company announced. The former CEO will remain on Away’s board and will act as executive chairman of the company.

Korey’s departure comes days after The Verge published a damning account of the now former CEO’s management style. Employees quoted in the article accused Korey of creating a toxic work environment where workers were publicly shamed by executives in company Slack channels and customer service representatives were routinely overworked. Read more…

More about Tech, Startups, Away, Tech, and Startups

20 great Green Monday sales on cool gadgets, tech, and fun toys

20 great Green Monday sales on cool gadgets, tech, and fun toys

If you somehow managed to miss out on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday and thought those were your only chances to score sweet deals before the holidays, you are mistaken. There’s no need to panic: you’ve still got another day of discounts awaiting on Green Monday. 

Falling on the second Monday of December, Green Monday is the biggest online shopping day after Cyber Monday. It’s also when you come to the realization that you only have 10 shipping days left before Christmas arrives.

Below, we’ve rounded up some of the top Green Monday deals we could find in the Mashable Shop on a variety of different products, suitable for all budgets. Just be sure to enter the code GREENMONDAY20 at checkout to score the best deal. Read more…

More about Gift Guide, Mashable Shopping, Green Monday, Culture, and Consumer Tech

Nearly 800,000 applications for birth certificate copies exposed online for anyone to access

Nearly 800,000 applications for birth certificate copies exposed online for anyone to access

At this point, it’s getting harder to determine which pieces of your personal data haven’t been exposed online.

According Fidus Information Security, the company that discovered the data, nearly 800,000 applications for birth certificate copies are currently sitting completely unsecured online. 

And the number keeps growing.

First reported by TechCrunch, the exposed records were compiled by a company that allows people in the U.S. to request copies of their birth certificates. Sitting on the company’s Amazon Web Services bucket is private information including names, birthdays, past and present addresses, emails, phone numbers, family members’ names, and the stated reason people are trying to get the copy.  Read more…

More about Data Breach, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Google Maps finally goes ‘Incognito’ for iPhone users

Google Maps finally goes 'Incognito' for iPhone users

The secretive incognito mode from the Chrome browser app is here for more privacy-conscious Google Maps users.

Starting Monday, Google’s navigation app will let iPhone users use the same incognito mode from Chrome web browsing to turn off activity tracking on Google Maps. The feature launched back in October  for Android users. 

Now that iOS is all caught up, users will be able to choose how much information about places they’ve searched for or navigated to is saved and stored. To turn on incognito mode, simply click on your profile photo in the top right corner of the app to toggle the mode on and off.  Read more…

More about Ios, Google Maps, Incognito Mode, Navigation Apps, and Tech

Want to read more in 2020? This app will train your brain to do it faster.

Want to read more in 2020? This app will train your brain to do it faster.

TL;DR: Become a better reader with the ZapReader Speed-Reading: Lifetime Subscription for $39.99, a 91% savings. 


When there’s so much to do, yet so little time to do it, being a speedy reader sure can make a difference. The thing is, when we learn to read as children, we often pick up bad habits – like speaking words in our head or re-reading the same sentence multiple times – that prevent us from processing words as quickly as we could. Luckily, we’re not stuck with those bad reading habits forever, though. With this lifetime subscription to ZapReader Speed-Reading, you can ditch those habits and boost your productivity with ease. Read more…

More about Reading, Apps And Software, Online Learning, Mashable Shopping, and Tech

Watch all the Golden Globes nominees with $1,000 off Samsung’s ‘The Frame’

Watch all the Golden Globes nominees with $1,000 off Samsung's 'The Frame'

Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning. Cue the “Oh shit, I haven’t seen any of these,” scramble.

Luckily, a good handful of them are available on the streaming services you probably already have: The Irishman, Marriage Story, and The Crown are all Netflix originals, HBO gets you Big Little Lies and Succession, Fleabag and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are on Amazon Prime, and Rocketman can be rented for $4.99 on YouTube. Finding them is the easy part — the only other thing you need is a 4K TV to experience these award-worthy films in the way the directors intended.

Just when remnants of Cyber Week TV deals were dying down, we’re met with a new wave of Green Monday TV deals in time for the holidays, award season, and winter sports. Some quick highlights: Save $800 on a 2019 65-inch Q60R TV from Samsung (that’s its Black Friday price) plus get a 65-inch TCL TV for $500. Read more…

More about Streaming, 4k Tv, Vizio, Mashable Shopping, and Tech

Visiting an explosive volcano, like White Island, is always dicey

Visiting an explosive volcano, like White Island, is always dicey

Volcanologist Erik Klemetti has turned down opportunities to visit White Island, the New Zealand volcano that erupted Monday afternoon and killed at least five tourists.

That’s because White Island, also known as Whakaari, is the top of an explosive volcano, and Klemetti didn’t like the risk. (The rest of the volcano is submerged under the sea.) Whakaari is similar to the imposing Cascade volcanoes on the western coast of the U.S., which are liable to erupt violently, sometimes with relatively little notice.

“You need to be conscious that there could be an unexpected explosion,” said Klemetti, who is an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at Denison University. “And if you’re caught near it, you could be out of luck.” Read more…

More about Science, Nature, New Zealand, Volcanoes, and Science