Chen San-yuan, also known as “Uncle Pokemon,” is a 70-year-old grandfather in Taiwan who equipped his bike with 11 phones to play Pokemon Go. He also rides around with a bag of batteries that allows him to play for up to 20 hours in a row. Read more…

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After weeks of struggling to answer questions about whether or not Alex Jones and InfoWars should be allowed to remain on Facebook, the company caught some onlookers by surprise when it announced early Monday morning that it had “unpublished” pages belonging to Alex Jones and InfoWars.

Nothing had changed in terms of the content posted by the accounts run by Jones and InfoWars. Facebook had previously removed some posts from the accounts, but additional “strikes” hadn’t been publicly reported. 

In a blog post, Facebook said the decision was a result of a review of “more content from the same Pages,” that prompted the action. But what really changed Zuckerberg’s mind on the issue was apparently a separate decision by an entirely different company: Apple. Read more…

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Would you eat this murder pie?

Andrew Fuller is a cake sculptor, horror fan, and “believer that every day is Halloween.” He recently made an especially terrifying pie inspired by serial killer Ed Gein, who was infamous making clothing and furniture out of human skin and bones. Also known as the “Butcher of Plainfield,” Gein had exhumed bodies from local graveyards and murdered two women for his macabre DIY crafting.

“I am relatively new to the world of cake, but those who know me know that my goal is to creep people out,” Fuller said over Facebook Messenger. Read more…

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The home release of Avengers: Infinity War includes a gag reel and this little sneak peek is enough to get us enticed.

The clip makes it very clear that the people on set of this movie were having a lot of fun. You’ve got flubbed lines, fans that are blowing people’s hair in their faces, Chris Hemsworth jumping poorly, and Benedict Wong just having a good time.

Avengers: Infinity War comes out on Blu-ray Aug. 14. Read more…

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It’s 10 a.m. at Caesar’s Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas, and the conference room is packed. 

Scores of hackers, cybersecurity professionals, and press have gathered at the DEF CON hacker conference to hear straight from the horse’s mouth just how bad things are when it comes to securing our elections. And, as Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for the office of cybersecurity and communications Jeanette Manfra explained, it’s bad. 

“I yearn for the days when we were just worried about the electric grid going down,” she told the crowd. Read more…

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Each year, a swathe of new emoji are released into the world, and next year’s batch features more diversity than ever.

The Unicode Consortium, the organisation in charge of selecting what emoji gets to sit on your phone’s keyboard, has released its draft candidates for 2019.

There’s a shift toward diversity among these emoji hopefuls, with potentials including a person who is deaf, an ear with a hearing aid, a sari, a service dog, a motorised and manual wheelchair, and a Hindu temple. 

Also proposed were 55 combinations of gender and skin colour for couples holding hands. This will be achieved with a new emoji called “standing person,” and putting these two together will mean they will merge. Read more…

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In an effort to tackle plastic pollution, New Zealand is committed to banning plastic bags for good.

On Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage announced plans to ban single-use plastic shopping bags, giving retailers a six-month window to phase them out.

With an estimated eight million tonnes of plastic waste entering the global marine environment each year, and New Zealand’s marine Exclusive Economic Zone (a UN-prescribed state sea zone) being 15 times the size of its land mass, the country has a significant part to play in the globe’s plastic pollution cleanup. Read more…

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We regret to inform you that the streets of Hollywood were cursed with multiple replicas of Trump’s star on Thursday. 

The president’s Walk of Fame star was destroyed on last month by a guy wielding a pickaxe, who was later bailed out by the guy who also destroyed Trump’s star with a pickaxe two years earlier. In response, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously voted to recommend getting rid of the star altogether on Tuesday because of Trump’s “disturbing treatment of women and other actions,” though Trump’s star isn’t even located in the city limits of West Hollywood. 

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Don’t start planning for your self-driving commute anytime soon. Human drivers are still very necessary as a recent road test for five cars’ driver-assistance features showed.

The vehicles, 2017 BMW 5-series with “Driving Assistant Plus,” 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class with “Drive Pilot,” 2018 Tesla Model 3 and 2016 Model S with “Autopilot” (software versions 8.1 and 7.1, respectively) and 2018 Volvo S90 with “Pilot Assist,” were put through their paces as part of a Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS, road test.

The results weren’t so grand. In tests for adaptive cruise control, or ACC, in four different scenarios and lane-keeping on three hills and three curves the cars did much better on tracks than out on the road. Only the Tesla Model 3 stayed within the lane on all 18 trials for lane keeping.  Read more…

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It’s 107 degrees outside, and a disturbing number of people charging down the sidewalk are wearing black jeans. 

That seemingly incongruous fashion choice, more than the blinking digital badges swinging from the necks of every mohawk-sporting passerby, clues the confused tourists into the reality that this week in Las Vegas is different. Yes, this week is DEF CON, and the hackers are very much in town.

And you better believe they’re already breaking Vegas. 

Thursday was the official start of the 26th annual DEF CON hacker convention, this year spread out between Caesars Palace and The Flamingo. As typical, the first day of the four-day affair started slowly — the hacking villages where people practice remotely hijacking cars and breaking into voting machines are still getting set up, and the few opening talks cover decidedly non-technical tricks like how to lose your police tail.  Read more…

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