Category Archives: Blog

YouTube is making good on its promise to defend its creators from copyright trolls, specifically third parties that claim monetization on users’ videos over seconds of content.

On Thursday, YouTube announced a new policy change that will stop copyright holders from manually claiming monetization of a creator’s entire video over short song clips and unintentional audio. Read more…

More about Video, Youtube, Copyright, Creators, and Tech

A gay penguin couple are trying to hatch an egg together. 

Skipper and Ping, two male king penguins residing at Zoo Berlin in Germany, arrived as a pair from another zoo in Hamburg in April. Zookeepers were able to tell the couple wanted to start a family soon after their arrival, since Skipper and Ping would take turns trying to incubate rocks and pieces of fish between their legs. 

“It is very common that two penguins of the same sex come together,” Zoo Berlin spokesperson Maximilian Jäger said. “I don’t think it is the majority of penguins, but it is not rare either. We are sure they would be good parents because they were so nice to their stone.”  Read more…

More about Lgbtq, Zoo, Penguin, Culture, and Web Culture

The car is framed after a Jeep Wrangler with the same engine of a Dodge Challenger Demon. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Military, Tank, Car, and Suv

The wait isn’t over, but its end is in sight. Netflix confirmed Thursday that the sequel to 2018’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before will premiere on Feb. 12, 2020 – and a third film, completing the trilogy of novels by Jenny Han, is already in production.

P.S. I Still Love You picks up with Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) happily dating, but a complication arrives in the former of their childhood friend John Ambrose McLaren (Jordan Fisher) – another one of the boys Lara Jean once loved. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Movies, Netflix, To All The Boys I Ve Loved Before, and P.S. I Love You

Bioengineers at Rice University created entangled cardiovascular networks similar to the body’s natural passageways. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, 3d Printing, Organ Transplants, Future Blink, and Rice University

CLIP turns any bicycle into an e-bike, taking the effort out of uphill pedaling. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Carbon Footprint, E Bike, Future Blink, and Tech

Instagram is, very slowly, ramping up its tools to fight misinformation.

The photo-sharing app will now let its users report posts that contain “false information.” Reported posts may be sent to one of Instagram’s fact-checkers and the post could eventually be hidden from Instagram’s Explore page and hashtag pages. 

In other words: if you spot fake news or some other type of misinformation in the app, you can now report it, and it might be removed from the more public-facing areas of the app. A small step to be sure, but one that could maybe one day have a more lasting effect.

Instagram previously announced that it would hide posts fact-checkers had deemed “false,” but there was no way for individual users to report posts.  Read more…

More about Tech, Instagram, Social Media Companies, Tech, and Social Media Companies

Raucous applause filled the the large convention room inside Las Vegas’s Paris casino: the government had arrived.

Seated behind a table at the annual DEF CON conference in Las Vegas was Congressman Ted Lieu, and, joined by Rep. James Langevin of Rhode Island, he had come to ask a large crowd of hackers and security professionals for help. The once famously Fed-averse crowd was loving it. 

But don’t get it twisted — DEF CON hadn’t gone soft. The mischievous and lawless side of this assemblage of the hacker community was out in full effect – assuming, that is, you knew where to look.  Read more…

Inviting the Man to your party

More about Hackers, Def Con, Tech, and Cybersecurity

The wholesome, all-American tradition of drunken Texas fraternity parties just got even more American: they’re now part of a corporate marketing ploy!

A new report from The Houston Chronicle lays bare a genius if somewhat troubling user acquisition scheme by dating apps Bumble and Tinder. These companies are entering into exclusive contractual sponsorships with fraternities, giving the frats swag and cash to require their party-goers to download and sign up for the app at the door to get in. 

It’s a strategy that funnels college students, who comprise that crucial 18-24 year old demographic, into becoming new users — that is, if they want to get into the party. Read more…

More about Marketing, Tinder, Bumble, Fraternity, and Tech

Just because you’re in a private Facebook doesn’t mean the company isn’t keeping tabs on what you’re doing.

That’s the not-so-subtle reminder the social network is sending groups. In a lengthy blog post published Wednesday, Facebook’s VP of Engineering Tom Alison outlined some of the steps the company is taking to police bad behavior in groups, even if the groups aren’t visible to the public. 

“Being in a private group doesn’t mean that your actions should go unchecked,” Alison writes.

Those checks include more “proactive detection” by Facebook’s AI-powered tools that can automatically detect some types of rule-breaking content before it’s reported, and tougher rules for groups moderators. If moderators break the rules or approve too many posts from members who do, Facebook will punish the entire group with a “strike.” Read more…

More about Tech, Facebook, Facebook Groups, Social Media Companies, and Tech