“We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During this test, only the person who share a post will see the total number of likes it gets.” That’s how Instagram describes a seemingly small design change test with massive potential impact on users’ well-being. Hiding Like […]

A single paragraph in the Mueller report out Thursday offers an interesting look into how the Special Counsel’s investigation came head-to-head with associates of President Trump who used encrypted and ephemeral messaging to hide their activities. From the report: Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated-including […]

If you want to build a robot that can fall hundreds of feet and be no worse the wear, legs are pretty much out of the question. The obvious answer, then, is a complex web of cable-actuated rods. Obvious to Squishy Robotics, anyway, whose robots look delicate but are in fact among the most durable […]

Amazon today announced the launch of a free, ad-supported music service in the U.S. that will be available to anyone who wants to play free music on their Echo speaker. Until today, Echo owners who wanted to stream music from Amazon could either pay for an annual Prime membership for access to Prime Music, or […]

Is reading the news feeling a little stressful today? Can’t imagine why. Don’t worry: you’re not alone. A Pew Research study found that seven of 10 Americans today suffer from “news fatigue” — meaning they feel worn out and like they can’t keep up. Meanwhile, an APA survey found that 56 percent of Americans want […]

On Thursday, Attorney General William Barr released the long-anticipated Mueller report. With it comes a useful overview of how Russia leveraged U.S.-based social media platforms to achieve its political ends. While we’ve yet to find too much in the heavily redacted text that we didn’t already know, Mueller’s report provides a useful recap of operations […]

In one of the weirder revelations to come out of the Mueller report released this morning, it seems that Craigslist was yet another tech platform used in Russia’s election influence campaign. Facebook? Sure. Instagram? Yup, that too. YouTube? Twitter? Oh my, yes. Even Tumblr makes an appearance (LOL. Tumblr). But Craigslist? Apparently the Russians used […]

Uber and Lyft instituted new safety features and policies this week. The move follows the death of Samantha Josephson, a student at the University of South Carolina, who was kidnapped and murdered in late March. She was found dead after getting into a vehicle that she believed to be her Uber ride. The murder, which […]