When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos dropped a bombshell blog post saying the National Enquirer was attempting to blackmail him with nude photos, it immediately set the internet ablaze.

The lengthy post is full of scandalous details: not only does the National Enquirer have Bezos’ nudes (which are described in excruciatingly vivid detail), but the company allegedly used said photos to blackmail him into ending a Washington Post investigation into the tabloid. Bezos’ post also notes the connections between Enquirer-publisher David Pecker, Donald Trump, and the Saudi government.

It’s enough to make anyone’s head explode. Read more…

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It’s probably best that you’re sitting down for this.

The National Enquirer threatened to publish Jeff Bezos’ dick pics if he didn’t rein in his personal investigator, and in response the Amazon CEO posted about it on Medium. 

Taking a page out of Alexander Hamilton’s revenge book, he published a lengthy post about the incident and owned up to the nudes he sent, “rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail.” 

Once Bezos tweeted a link to the post, it was only a matter of time before the dick pic commentary began.

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In a personal blog post, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos claimed the National Enquirer is threatening to publish his “intimate photos.”

Bezos said he’s revealing the details rather than “capitulate to extortion and blackmail,” adding the publication believed the photos were newsworthy because it’s “necessary to show Amazon shareholders that my business judgment is terrible.”

American Media Inc (AMI) was upset over coverage of its ties with Saudi Arabia by the Washington Post, a newspaper Bezos has owned since 2013. Read more…

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Republican and democratic senators are reaching across the aisle to demand answers from three U.S. tech behemoths.

U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have sent three separate letters to Facebook, Google, and Apple looking for answers to their questions regarding the now-banned “research” apps.

In the letter to Facebook, the bipartisan group of senators demand information regarding the Project Atlas market research program. The program reportedly paid $20 a month to users as young as 13 to install the app. The app gave Facebook complete access to a user’s iOS or Android device in order to monitor their phone and internet usage. Read more…

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Just three days after it launched, Apex Legends has already hit 10 million players, with a peak concurrent player count of more than 1 million, developer Respawn Entertainment announced Thursday.

The battle royale game launched on Monday at the same time as it was revealed by Respawn Entertainment, the developers behind Titanfall. The game is free to play and is available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, which surely helped it reach a high number of players in such a short time — why not try a free game?

Apex Legends was inspired by other wildly popular battle royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds where players drop down onto an island where the playable area gets smaller and smaller as people fight to be the last survivors. Read more…

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This obituary is truly something else. 

A woman in Ontario, Canada, wrote her own obituary, because … why not? At least she had a sense of humor about it. 

“It hurts me to admit it,” Sybil Marie Hicks wrote in her pre-written memorial to herself, which ran in the Spec after she died on Feb 2. “But I, Mrs. Ron Hicks from Baysville, have passed away.” 

In the obituary, she affectionately wrote about her husband, Ron, whom she called a “Horse’s Ass,” and her children, clearly labeling which ones she liked best.  Read more…

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Apple moves quickly and wields a big stick. Well, at least when it’s pushed. 

On Thursday, the company confirmed to TechCrunch that it has instructed makers of smartphone apps that are capable of surreptitiously recording a user’s screen activity to either remove that feature from their code or properly disclose to users that their actions may be recorded. 

If they don’t, the apps risk being booted from the App Store. This follows on the news that a selection of popular apps, including those for Expedia and Hotels.com, can record what you do on your phone without your knowledge. 

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If a baguette was alive and could move around, how would it move?

This is the vital question posed by a comedian and animator named Dave (@sheepfilms on Twitter), who gave the internet its latest thing to debate on Thursday. According to Dave, there are four possible ways a baguette could move: worm, gallop, robot rotate, and caterpillar.

Please observe: 

A poll tweeted shortly after the video reveals number 3 (robot rotate) as the clear frontrunner. I agree, as this is the only scenario in which the baguette’s crusty exterior would not be compromised. You know what they say: A floppy baguette is no baguette at all. (No one says that.) Read more…

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Seth Meyers is a renowned king of late night comedy. But is he the king of surviving scorchingly spicy hot wings? 

On the third episode of Hot Ones, a YouTube series in which celebrities answer big life questions while eating increasingly spicier chicken wings, Meyers did not disappoint. 

During the first six wings, Meyers is surprisingly coherent on topics such as politics and eSports. But by the seventh wing, he begins to break down. The schadenfreude is deliciously good when he’s asked to perform impersonations of Boston accents as he laughs through the intense pain. 

There’s just something so satisfying about watching a grown man, tears streaming, say “Da Bomb is too hot. It’s wicked hot.”  Read more…

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Watch out, Tesla. One of your rivals, Aurora, just got serious money from retail behemoth Amazon. 

Aurora isn’t just another self-driving tech company. Co-founder Sterling Anderson was the head of Tesla’s Autopilot program and was sued by his former employer back in 2017 for allegedly taking information and engineers with him to his new company. The case eventually settled and Aurora paid Tesla $100,000.

Now, Amazon is one of several backers in a $530 million funding round announced Thursday for Aurora, which is based in Palo Alto but maintains a big presence in Pittsburgh.

Aurora doesn’t build self-driving cars. It provides software for partners, including Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Chinese carmaker Byton — which promises vehicles capable of Level 4 autonomy by 2021. Last year Aurora secured the first state permit to test its vehicles throughout Pennsylvania, beating out Uber. Read more…

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