In this age of technological advancement, it seems like one of the most coveted life goals among the masses is being a proud owner of a fully connected home, chock-full of smart devices that work together like a beautiful symphony. 

The less dramatic way of putting it would be to say that everyone wants a smart home. 

Why? Well first of all, it’s just cool, and second of all, being surrounded by smart devices makes life infinitely easier. The only downside is that once you reach a certain number, these devices can be hard to keep track of and control — and that’s why you need a central hub.

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If you have a guitar, chuck it in the garbage right now. Take a sledgehammer to that old grand piano. The only instrument you’ll ever need is an electric toothbrush. 

Device Orchestra is a YouTube channel that’s taken on the impossible (yet entertaining) task of turning everyday appliances and inanimate objects into his own personal orchestra. 

Just like frogs taught to sing in Meet the Robinsons, Device Orchestra is tapping into the hidden musical potential of everything from credit card machines, to toasters, and now, electric toothbrushes.

He uses five brushes to create a flawless rendition of the “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls, including the rap parts. This sort of stripped down, whimsically hilarious energy is also reminiscent of a lot of YouTube otamatone covers.  Read more…

More about Youtube, Viral Video, Spice Girls, Cover Song, and Culture

Back in the day, there were distinct tiers of photography. Your cellphone camera was good for a few photos. Point-and-shoots were a great stopgap, and DSLRs were mostly for professionals.  Read more…

More about Sony, Review, Camera, Digital Camera, and Sony A6400

A security researcher has uncovered a flaw in Slack that could’ve been exploited to steal files over the business messaging app and potentially spread malware.

The flaw involves Slack’s Windows desktop app, and how it can automatically send downloaded files to a certain destination—whether it be on your PC or to an online storage server. You can set a download location in the app’s preferences section. However, David Wells, a researcher at the security firm Tenable, noticed there’s another way to configure the option: Via a special link.

“Crafting a link like ‘slack://settings/?update={‘PrefSSBFileDownloadPath’:‘}’ would change the default download location if clicked,” Wells wrote in a blog post on the vulnerability. Read more…

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It was early on Saturday morning when I crossed the threshold into a quarantined community. I was entering r/TheRedPill, a subreddit dedicated to radical misogyny. This breeding ground of anti-women invective and conspiracy theories is so brazenly hostile, it’s literally cordoned off like a health hazard. It was here that I hoped to trace the source of a term that is currently flooding the online forums devoted to male separatism and men’s rights activism.

That term is “female privilege”, and though it’s not one you’d likely hear in everyday conversation, it’s one that’s reverberating loudly through the corridors of the Manosphere — a constellation of anti-women, anti-feminist subcultures. Read more…

More about Subreddit, Toxic Masculinity, Social Good, and Web Culture

Google knows what you bought, and when you bought it. 

This fact is made painfully clear by the Google purchases page — a detailed list, pulled from your Gmail inbox, of everything you’ve purchased over the years that came with a confirmation email. The level of detail is staggering. 

Those books you bought in 2013 when you were fascinated by the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis? The same pair of shoes that you ordered, over and over again, for years? (Yes, these are personal examples.) They’re all there, in a neat little helpfully compiled list. 

More about Google, Privacy, Gmail, Email, and Tech

Figures comes from a new survey by “The Hollywood Reporter” and Morning Consult. Just over 2,200 adults were polled earlier this month. Read more…

More about Netflix, Disney, Mashable Video, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

Gomez made her opinion known during a Cannes Film Festival press conference for her film, The Dead Don’t Die. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Social Media, Selena Gomez, Entertainment, and Social Media Companies

Several states, including Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri have recently passed laws that effectively ban abortion. They prohibit the procedure just weeks into pregnancy and, in some cases, make providing abortion care punishable by a years-long prison sentence. 

While these bills have yet to go into effect, and will likely be stalled by lawsuits challenging their constitutionality, the bans have prompted outrage and panic. 

As legal battles play out in courts around the country, it’s important to remember that state-based grassroots groups and clinics will need even more support to serve patients who continue to seek abortion care.  Read more…

More about Women, Abortion Rights, How To Help, Abortion Access, and Social Good

Say hello to Joe Rogan: podcaster, entertainer of problematic views, and man who believes that feeding his all chimp hockey team a diet of bone broth and elk meat will give them the power to rip your balls off. 

Or, at least that’s what the unaware listener might believe after listening to an entirely AI-generated clip of the popular podcaster. Unlike Rogan’s typical totally coherent rants, this one is a total fabrication. 

“The replica of Rogan’s voice the team created was produced using a text-to-speech deep learning system they developed called RealTalk,” explained the researchers behind the clip in a blog post, “which generates life-like speech using only text inputs.” Read more…

More about Artificial Intelligence, Ai, Deep Fakes, Tech, and Artificial Intelligence