Tag: Science

Reality has had a tough year. When the president of the United States is denying that thousands of Americans died in a hurricane, journalists face an uphill battle. That battle has been particularly fraught on social networks, where malicious actors have spent the past several years peddling hoaxes and sowing division.

But today I bring you at least one reason for optimism. “Trends in the Diffusion of Misinformation on Social Media,” a new study from authors at Stanford University and New York University, analyzed the performance of stories posted on fake news sites from January 2015 to July 2018. Here’s what they found (emphasis mine):

Interactions with these sites on both Facebook and Twitter rose steadily through the end of 2016. I…

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The former Beatle talks about clickers, click tracks, and more in this video interview.

The tech giant sent out an invite promising “4x the fun.” We’ve got a month to figure out what it is.

Since news broke last month that Google is working on a censored search engine for the Chinese market, the company has faced unrelenting criticism from lawmakers. In the latest demand, a bipartisan group of 16 House representatives is looking for answers on the still-secretive plan.

To launch the project, reportedly called Dragonfly, Google would have to cooperate with the Chinese government’s strict surveillance and censorship measures, a prospect that has ignited controversy inside and outside the company. Last month, a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai about the project, but his response was blasted as insufficient.

Criticism of the company has only accelerated since….

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Not much changes for 2019, but then again, the price doesn’t move much, either.

It adds Bluetooth to your car stereo, provides two USB charging ports and more. Plus: Calling all moviemakers! This handheld 3-axis gimbal is just $72.

Samsung is releasing three wireless AKG headphones today, a selection of neckbuds, on-ear, and over-the-ear headphones named the Y100, Y500, and N700NC respectively. Samsung is focusing on balancing environmental noise with this series. The Y100s and Y500s both feature “Ambient Aware” technology that lets users hear surrounding sound, while the NC700NCs have adaptive noise canceling that lets listeners control the amount of surrounding sound they want to hear.

Prices range from $99.95 for the Y100 neckbuds to $149.95 for the Y500 on-ear headphones to $349.95 for the more premium noise-canceling over-the-ear N700NCs. Although the N700NC headphones are the most expensive of the bunch, besides the adaptive noise canceling, the Y500…

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DC’s new streaming service launches Saturday with lots of Batman for Batman Day.

Pump and go.

This year’s iPhone event is done and dusted, and now we’re all sitting in the interregnum between the announcements and the reviews. I’ve been lucky enough to live blog these events for years, but the process of creating a live blog is weird. I was taking photos for the site during the keynote, and since I’m a “spray and pray” kind of photographer, I took upwards of 1,600 photos in just a couple of hours.

I point that out just to say that my attention was more focused on what Apple was doing than the reaction to it. I only had so much bandwidth, and most of it was taken up by the camera. So when I had a chance later to look at all the coverage (and Twitter jokes), it didn’t come as a huge surprise to see that there was a lot of shrugging…

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