Category Archives: Blog

Twitter wants you to know that it’s listening. 

The social media company announced Tuesday that, after an infuriating few days, it has finally fixed an iOS app bug that was driving its users bonkers. For the blissfully unaware, the bug would randomly scroll Twitter feeds — causing people to lose their place while right in the middle of staring into the digital abyss. 

Thankfully, no more. According to a tweet from the Twitter Support account, the brief torture of having our precious feed toyed with before our very eyes has come to an end. 

“A fix for the auto-scrolling bug is rolling out now,” wrote whoever is behind the account. “Thanks for your patience while we worked on this. Please update your iOS app to version 8.1.5 when it becomes available for you.” Read more…

More about Twitter, Jack Dorsey, Tech, and Social Media Companies

As many as 100 developers may have had improper access to Facebook user data due to an oversight in the way permissions were revoked, according to a post on the company’s developer blog on Tuesday.

The names and profile pictures of people in certain Groups on the platform, linked with their activity in those Groups, were still accessible to some software developers — despite the company changing access parameters back in April 2018, Facebook’s director of platform’s partnerships Konstantinos Papamiltiadis wrote.

Of the “roughly 100 partners” who had retained user data access through the Groups API over the past 18 months, “at least 11 partners accessed group members’ information in the last 60 days,” the post said. Read more…

More about Facebook, User Data, Tech, Social Media Companies, and Big Tech Companies

More than a year and a half ago, Elaine Herzberg was struck and killed while walking her bicycle across a Tempe, Arizona road. A self-driving Uber with a safety operator sitting in the driver seat struck her. On Tuesday, a federal agency published detailed findings about the crash, clearly spelling out Uber’s deadly shortcomings.

In the documents, reports include what led up to the crash in the hours before the safety driver got into the vehicle as well as Uber’s testing policies, how the self-driving car system worked, and what happened in the moments before impact. The report also delved into how Uber has changed its autonomous testing program since the first-ever autonomous car fatality in the U.S. Read more…

More about Uber, Self Driving Cars, Tech, and Transportation

Twitter is due for a major shakeup. 

So appears to be the thinking of the company’s vice president of design and research, Dantley Davis, who on Monday announced a series of changes that could come to the platform as early as next year. Well, maybe. 

Davis laid out his ideas on, of course, Twitter — prefacing them all with the disclaimer that they are merely “features that [he’s] looking forward to in 2020.” Still, they represent a possible sweeping change to how users interact with the platform. 

The proposed new features are: “Remove me from this conversation,” “Don’t allow RT of this tweet,” “Don’t allow people to @mention me without my permission,” “Remove this @mention from this conversation,” and “Tweet this only to: hashtag, interest, or these friends.” Read more…

More about Twitter, Tech, and Social Media Companies

A member of New Zealand’s Parliament beautifully dropped “OK, Boomer” during a speech on the climate crisis. 

Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year-old MP, delivered a speech on the Zero Carbon Bill, a proposal that would set the target for New Zealand completely eliminate the nation’s carbon emissions by 2050.  

“In the year 2050, I will be 56 years old,” she said in her speech. “Right now, the average age of this 52nd Parliament is 49 years old.” 

That call out garnered some disgruntled reactions from (presumably older) members of Parliament. Without missing a beat, she flawlessly shut down a National MP heckling her with, “OK, Boomer” before continuing with her speech. Read more…

More about Memes, Climate Change, Culture, and Web Culture

Any beauty enthusiast who’s had a crush, seen A Star Is Born, or listened to a Phoebe Bridgers song knows that truly good makeup holds up through a monsoon of violent tears. They’ll also appreciate this dataset created by programmer, artist, and student Connie Ye, which identifies references to crying in Sephora reviews to point you to the weep-proof products you want. 

The dataset lives on one of Ye’s websites, where users can refresh repeatedly to see dozens of makeup reviews that mention crying, sobbing, or tears. Reading them is a frequently funny and occasionally poignant experience: Some share an affecting amount of personal detail, making them read more like digital-age flash fiction than opinions about products. In fact, product names and usernames aren’t visible on Ye’s site, so that’s pretty much what they are. Read more…

More about Lifestyle, Beauty, Sephora, Skincare, and Online Reviews

After today, the U.S. will only have three major mobile providers.

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the T-Mobile-Sprint merger despite antitrust concerns and an ongoing multi-state lawsuit to block it.

The 3-2 vote giving the merger the ‘OK’ was along party lines, with both Democrats against it. 

The FCC, or at least Chairman Ajit Pai and the two other Republican commissioners, say that the merger will enable the companies to close the digital divide between rural and urban areas and help deploy a 5G network. 

T-Mobile and Sprint agreed to offer coverage to 97 percent of Americans with its 5G network within three years and 99 percent of Americans within six years of the close of the merger. The companies also committed to provide mobile broadband with speeds of at least 100 Mbps to 90 percent of Americans and speeds of at least 50 Mbps to 99 percent.  Read more…

More about T Mobile, Fcc, Sprint, Merger, and Tech

Some current and former AT&T customers will get a little bit of money from the company soon thanks to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. AT&T will distribute the $60 million settlement to anyone who fell victim to the company’s claim of “unlimited” mobile data throughout this decade.

Per the FTC’s press release, AT&T’s mistake was selling an unlimited data plan that was, well, pretty limited. The carrier would never shut off your access to mobile data, per se, but if you hit an invisible limit, your data would be throttled to the point of uselessness. According to the FTC, AT&T started doing this in 2011 and would throttle data for customers after they used 2GB of data, which is a minuscule amount. Read more…

More about Data, At T, Ftc, Unlimited Data, and Unlimited Data Plans

Created by Stanislav Shults, greensens is a sensor designed to monitor your flowers’ and houseplants’ health. Read more…

More about Tech, Mashable Video, Flowers, Houseplant, and Greensens

After questioning the “good” of Twitter, the CEO left the site. However, he has now returned to discuss the latest works at his space company, SpaceX. Read more…

More about Tech, Twitter, Mashable Video, Elon Musk, and Spacex