Tech News

Gizmodo: Big Tech is automating the climate crisis.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all struck lucrative arrangements—collectively worth billions of dollars—to provide automation, cloud, and AI services to some of the world’s biggest oil companies, and they are actively pursuing more.

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Geek: Hot Abe Lincoln statue goes viral.

Someone recently discovered a shirtless Abraham Lincoln statue in California, and the Twitter community can’t handle it.
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Zack Stentz posted a picture of the steamy statue on his Twitter account. “Reminder that the Los Angeles Federal Courthouse has a statue of Abraham Lincoln where he’s a shirtless young stud"[.]

 "Hot" Abe Lincoln statue; Photo Credit: Zack Stentz/Twitter

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Technocracy: Pepsi massive layoffs sparked by automation.

By PepsiCo’s own estimates, the company’s layoffs are expected to be a multimillion-dollar project in 2019.

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Tech Dirt: Google fesses up to hidden microphone in Nest.

The problem: more privacy-conscious Nest owners weren't aware that the Nest home security base stations had a microphone in the first place, raising questions about whether Google was using the microphone for data collection and monetization in some capacity.

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Extreme Tech: Audi cars tell you what speed to drive to hit all green lights.

Audi is revving up its slick Traffic Light Information (TLI) system. Now Audi TLI can tell you the best speed to drive in order to hit a string of green traffic lights, without having to suddenly speed up to make a light on yellow, or brake hard if you can’t speed up enough.

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19 Years Ago...Win2000 updates appear. Beta News:

Microsoft has announced a slew of updates for Windows 2000, just one day after their next flagship operating system hit store shelves.

And...MS has been releasing endless series of patches ever since then.
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Gizmodo: Once thought extinct, world's giant bee found ALIVE.

[Since 1981], no one had documented any encounters with the huge bee.

That all changed when a search team visiting the North Moluccas last month laid eyes on the bee for the first time in 38 years.

More - C|Net: HUGE BEE alert.

The report describes the bee as being about the size of an adult thumb, with a wingspan of about 2.5 inches (6.35 centimeters). That means it's four times larger than the European honey bee.

BFB; Photo: Clay Bolt

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Gizmodo: Ong's Hat got too real.

Ong’s Hat was once home to secret experiments led by the Dobbs Twins, a pair of Princeton scientists who’d been forced to build a secret lab out in the Pine Barrens after their work in “Chaos Studies” got them booted from the academy.
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...Ong’s Hat has become a site of pilgrimage for fans of the supernatural.

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Tech News World: JP Morgan-Chase issues dollar backed digital token.

JPMorgan Chase on Thursday announced that it has created and successfully tested a digital coin. Each JPM Coin represents US$1 in funds held in designated accounts at JPMorgan Chase N.A.