Meet the Healys, Broadway’s newest dysfunctional family. 

Behind the Healys’ Christmas card-perfect Connecticut exterior lurks some serious darkness — a mashup of just about every hot button issue and buzzword you can think of in 2019. First up is mom Mary Jane (a stellar Elizabeth Stanley), who is battling a secret pill addiction; Dad Steve (Sean Allan Krill) is a workaholic who spends more time watching hardcore pornography than with his children; daughter Frankie (Celia Rose Gooding) is a black teen activist who feels out of place in her all-white family; and brother Nick (Anastasia‘s Derek Klena) is the All-American athlete who has a dark secret. Read more…

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Bring on the crackdown. 

Following a deadly Halloween mass shooting at an Airbnb rental in Orinda, California, the company announced it would issue new guidelines meant to keep both guests and hosts safe. Well, it looks like Airbnb followed through. 

In a lengthy Dec. 5 blog post, the company’s vice president of trust, Margaret Richardson, detailed all the ways the platform is going to change. Perhaps most importantly, as of early 2020 guests will be held to a stricter set of standards. 

Specifically, according to the blog post, the new rules cover “Excessive noise,” “Unauthorized guests,” “Unauthorized parking,” “Unauthorized smoking,” and “Major cleanliness concerns requiring excessive cleaning after checkout.”    Read more…

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Facebook is going to court. 

The social media company most often associated with the abolition of privacy wants you to know that, if nothing else, it truly cares about your ad experience. So much so, in fact, that it’s taking a Hong Kong-based advertising company to court over allegations that for three years it ran an elaborate ad-fraud scheme pushing everything from counterfeit goods to boner pills on unsuspecting users. 

A lawsuit filed Thursday by Facebook in California courts accuses ILikeAd Media International Company Ltd., Chen Xiao Cong, and Huang Tao of a scam starting in 2016 that began with tricking Facebook users into installing malware onto their computers. Then, with the malware ready to go, the defendants allegedly were able to compromise Facebook users’ accounts.  Read more…

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The glasses are aimed to help promote Harmony Korine’s new short film, which used the glasses to create “wearable cinema.” Read more…

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Designed to combat the need to constantly wash your water bottle, LARQ utilizes UV lights to destroy any bacteria in just one minute. Read more…

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Created by Akara Robotics, Stevie works in assisted living and retirement homes with carers so they may focus on patients more. Read more…

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Designed by Diligent Robotics, Moxi performs routine tasks so nurses have more time to interact with their patients. Read more…

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Just balls, and only the balls. 

Eccentric billionaire and owner of stankmemes.com Elon Musk has plenty of appropriately oddball passions. His love of flamethrowers and snails is well known, for example. However, it was only today that his interest in ball-related web domains was revealed to the world.

That was one of the many takeaways from the latest installment of the ongoing “pedo guy” defamation trial involving the Tesla CEO. According to Ryan Mac, BuzzFeed News’s senior tech reporter, it was reveled today in court that back in 2018 Musk wanted to purchase “justballs.com.” 

Yup. 

Apparently Musk had Jared Birchall, who the Los Angeles Times notes is the manager of Musk’s family office, attempt to purchase the domain under a fake name in 2018.  Read more…

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A coalition of 23 gun reform advocacy groups has graded several U.S. businesses on their gun safety policies, and it will come as no surprise to know that most of the class is failing.

The Gun Safety Scorecard was released Wednesday by the Business Must Act Coalition, which includes organisations such as Guns Down, March for Our Lives, and Gays Against Guns. The scorecard gives a letter grade to 29 popular retailers based upon their action — or inaction — in preventing gun violence. 

Disappointingly, 16 retailers scored Fs — over half of the businesses assessed. The retailers were selected to provide a cross-section of American businesses, and weren’t limited to those involved in gun sales. The coalition chose which businesses to evaluate based on popularity and size, which makes for some strange names showing up on the list.  Read more…

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Back before Uber and Lyft ride-sharing (yes, there was a time!), hailing a regular cab didn’t always guarantee a ride. In San Francisco, for instance, drivers would often deny passengers rides to neighborhoods on the far west side of the city, or across the Bay, or Golden Gate Bridge. Then Uber and Lyft came along, and drivers were none the wiser as to where you were headed until they’d already accepted the ride and you were in the backseat. Oakland here we come! 

But changes to the Uber driver app, introduced this week for California drivers, would let drivers officially reject ride requests.  Eventually, all California drivers will see trip information including destination, estimated ride time and mileage, ride type, and potential earnings range. At the moment, only about a third of drivers in the state have the new feature. By mid-January, every driver will be able to see destination information. Riders, however, won’t actually know if a potential ride match was denied because it’ll happen before a driver accepts a ride. But even though that will all happen behind the scenes, riders could still be left waiting for a ride match to an “undesirable” destination, like a faraway place or inconvenient airport drop-off. Read more…

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