A Washington state politician says video game “loot boxes” could be classed as gambling. Kevin Ranker wants to force the state’s gambling commission to investigate the issue. Ranker has introduced a bill in the state Senate that wouldn’t affect loot boxes themselves but rather would force the commission to carry out a formal study and […]
Google is to let users block specific ads for 90 days. It does have some restrictions however. The new feature is designed to cover “reminder ads”, which is where websites can track visitors and then use Google Ads to serve the same ad or a series of follow-up ads (on other sites) to that visitor […]
Facebook has created its own unit of time dubbed “a flick.” It’s a tiny fraction of a second and, surprisingly enough, might be genuinely useful. The flick is 1/705600000 of a second. It will take the spot of the shortest unit of time that’s still longer than a nanosecond, but that’s not the point. Instead […]
A newly published study suggests today’s teens are less happy than some of their predecessors and blames it on social media and the use of smartphones. But the correlation appears much stronger than the causation. The details come from the Monitoring the Future Study, which surveyed more than a million teens in the 8th, 10th […]
A Florida woman says she plans to marry a Tetris cartridge. Fractal Tetris Huracan says she was previously in love with a graphical calculator. Huracan appeared on British television today to discuss how she identifies as objectum sexual, meaning she is attracted to objects rather than people. Despite the name, she says the condition is […]
Researchers say a blood test combining two different types of clue could make it easier to detect cancers in early stages. The ‘CancerSEEK’ test combines both DNA mutation and released proteins to spot the cancer. To date, blood tests have just concentrated on one of the two approaches. The former takes advantage of the way […]
Apple says users will soon be able to block slowdowns on older iPhones. However, it’s still warning against the move. The announcement came from Tim Cook in an interview with ABC. Among other issues he discussed Apple’s acknowledgement late last year that it was indeed slowing down some older models but not – as was […]
A new virtual reality headset technology might stop you tripping over furniture, without the need for external hardware. Occipital says its approach includes live tracking of the surrounding room to cut down on embarrassing tumbles. To date virtual reality systems fall into two category. Some, like the Oculus Rift and Vive, use separate devices to […]
Efforts to restore net neutrality rules in Congress are close to passing the first hurdle, though it seems virtually impossible they’ll have any effect. The Federal Communications Commission recently decided by a 3-2 vote to drop its previous rules upholding the principles of net neutrality. A resolution against that decision now has the backing of […]
A badly written and designed drop-down menu was responsible for a mistaken alert that Hawaii was under missile attack according to reports. Local officials will redesign both the menu and the system to reduce the chances of a repeat incident. The message came from the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency and appeared on phone screens reading […]