Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting face recognition data without their consent. The scandal started when a student using the alias SquidKid47 posted an image on Reddit showing a campus vending machine error message, “Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe,” displayed after the … Read more
For the first time in more than half a century, a US-built spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon. There was high drama and plenty of intrigue on Thursday evening as Intuitive Machines attempted to land its Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not all that far from the south pole of the … Read more
Florida health officials on Sunday announced an investigation into a cluster of measles cases at an elementary school in the Fort Lauderdale area with a low vaccination rate, a scenario health experts fear will become more and more common amid slipping vaccination rates nationwide. On Friday, Broward County Public School reported a confirmed case of … Read more
After months of resisting, Air Canada was forced to give a partial refund to a grieving passenger who was misled by an airline chatbot inaccurately explaining the airline’s bereavement travel policy. On the day Jake Moffatt’s grandmother died, Moffat immediately visited Air Canada’s website to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Unsure of how … Read more
Two prototype satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and four missile-tracking satellites for the US Space Force rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Wednesday from Florida’s Space Coast. These satellites are part of a new generation of spacecraft designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia and perhaps emerging missile threats … Read more
A watchdog group’s investigation found that terrorist group Hezbollah and other US-sanctioned entities have accounts with paid check marks on X, the Elon Musk–owned social network that still resides at the Twitter.com domain. The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit that is critical of Big Tech companies, said in a report on Wednesday that “X, … Read more
Photo: Rokas Tenys (Shutterstock) Amazon allegedly tricked users into buying more expensive products through the use of its “Buy Box,” according to a class action lawsuit filed last week. The Buy Box, which features a “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” button next to eligible items, funnels users into terrible deals through the ease of … Read more
How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away. Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers’ digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming … Read more
Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission’s loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft. The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected … Read more
According to AT&T’s application, the company has to complete the Section 214 discontinuance process run by the Federal Communications Commission in order to fully discontinue service in any given area. CPUC says in a summary of the situation that “AT&T is the designated COLR in many parts of the state and is the largest COLR … Read more