David Lidsky's Blog, page 2936
July 22, 2015
Microsoft Will Remove Revenge Porn From Search Results
The tech firm is the latest to advocate for victims of revenge porn.
Microsoft is keeping up with the Joneses: In a blog post Wednesday, the company declared it would start honoring requests to remove nude photos and videos shared online without the subject's permission—known as revenge porn—from Bing search results, following in the footsteps of a number of tech giants that recently announced similar policies.
Google Wants You To Wear The New Google Glass At Work
And maybe in the shower, too.
The upcoming iteration of Google Glass is all business: The tech giant is ditching its fashion aspirations this time around, focusing on a wearable suited for the workplace.
Why Deleting Personal Information On The Internet Is A Fool's Errand
In the wake of the Ashley Madison hack, we're continuing to learn that there's no such thing as 100% security on the Internet.
The hack of the "dating" site AshleyMadison.com, which threatens to expose the personal information of millions of people who may be cheating on their spouses, was initially met with snark. So what if some alleged cheaters are going to be exposed, right? But the hackers' reasons for holding the information hostage were not actually about the sanctity of marriage vows—in fact, they point to a much deeper and more widespread issue. In short, can any data you hand over to a faceless online company ever truly be removed?
YouTube Offers A Solution To The Vertical Video Problem
The YouTube for Android app will now expand vertically shot videos to fill the phone's screen. Rejoice!
You've seen it before: A video, filmed by an upright smartphone, is squished between two black rectangles to make it fit into YouTube's horizontal video player. On a laptop or desktop computer, this compromise is merely annoying; on a mobile device, vertically shot videos can be unbearable to watch.
4 Freaky Plane Designs That Reimagine The Golden Age Of Air Travel
Powered by sonic booms and nuclear reactors, Tim Clark imagines aircraft from an alt-history of aviation without fossil fuels.
For all their convenience, airplanes are one of the dirtiest modes of transportation out there. A fully loaded A380's CO2 output is equivalent to each passenger driving six cars an equivalent distance. But what if airplane designers in the 1940s and 1950s had worked to embrace energy sources besides petroleum? How might the history of aviation have played out?
The Ultimate Map Of Literature's Great American Road Trips
From Mark Twain to Bill Bryson, there are enough literary road trips here to get you through the next 10 summers.
It's late July, and if you haven't already planned your summer vacation, might we suggest taking a cross-country road-trip? The sort of classic American holiday immortalized in novels ranging from Jack Kerouac's On The Road and Ken Kesey's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to Mark Twain's Roughing It and Cheryl Strayed's Wild?
Meet The World's Tiniest Electric Bike
Take it out of your backpack, hop on, and ride even the steepest hills—all without breaking a sweat.
Folded up, a new electric bike is small enough to fit inside a large backpack. At 26 pounds, it's also one of the lightest e-bikes in the world (another new design, if produced, would be a pound lighter even though it has a full-size frame).
From Harvard Innovation Lab, A Startup To Help Take Tiny Houses Mainstream
Don't want to ditch everything for a tiny house? With Getaway, rustic small-space living can be yours for a night.
Tiny houses occupy a curious position in our cultural consciousness. They're a cottage industry, but are also a full-fledged lifestyle movement with devotees and fans spanning the entire globe. But even though they command a freak fascination that's borderline obsessive for some, most people still think of them as curios, not viable living situations. A startup called Getaway wants to make that lifestyle less of an aspiration and more of a reality.
July 21, 2015
Audi, BMW, Mercedes To Buy Nokia's Mapping Software
The German automakers beat out companies like Uber and Facebook.
Nokia Here, a mapping system that has emerged as a serious rival to Google Maps, is reportedly close to being acquired. The Wall Street Journal reports that Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler are planning to jointly purchase Nokia Here for $2.7 billion.
Apple Stays Mum On Apple Watch Sales In Third-Quarter Earnings Report
Apple's disappointing third-quarter figures are more about the iPhone and less about the Apple Watch.
Today's a big day for Apple. The tech giant announced its third-quarter earnings, fulfilling industry expectations about low sales for the Apple Watch. Apple reported third-quarter revenue of $49.6 billion, up 33% over the same period last year.
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