Snap, the Snapchat parent, closed the day down just 1% Monday after the first phase of the dreaded lockup expiration, which meant that some insiders are now eligible to sell shares. The anticipation of a big selloff had been putting downward pressure on the stock for weeks, but it appears that enough of that fear was already built into the stock price to withstand day one. But while… Read More
Periods are normal, but kids pointing them out in their sketches is something else.
Australian woman Penny Rohleder shared a photo of her son's drawing on the Facebook page of blogger Constance Hall on Jul. 25, which well, says it all.
SEE ALSO: James Corden tests out gymnastics class for his son and is instantly showed up by children
"I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed that my 5 year old son knows this," Rohleder wrote.
"Julian drew a family portrait. I said 'What's that red bit on me?' And he replied, real casual, 'That's your period.'"
Well, at least he knows.
To give further context, Rohleder revealed she had pulmonary embolism in October 2016, and was put on blood thinning treatment which makes her periods "very, very bad," she explained to the Daily Mail. Read more...
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Sometimes at work, you might encounter a snake.
No, not a deceitful coworker. An actual reptile, like the one found in a cameraman's edit suite at the offices of TV station 9 News Darwin in Australia.
A video of its removal was tweeted by the bureau's news director Kate Limon on Monday. A woman attempts to take control of it, and place it in a shopping bag held by a man — although without much luck.
"Geez it's not small," someone can be heard saying off camera.
Limon told the NT News she was about to call a snake catcher, until she realised the station's program manager is a wildlife warrior. Read more...
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The wild world of Bitcoin is about to get a whole lot wilder.
On August 1, 2017, the preeminent cryptocurrency is set to break in two. Two warring factions, fundamentally divided on Bitcoin's future, are coming to a head — and the impending split could either save Bitcoin or doom it.
The split, called a hard fork, will result in two separate and distinct cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core. Oh, and it also has the potential to create billions of dollars worth of new cryptocurrency out of thin air.
But that's not what this is really about. Bitcoin as it currently stands is in trouble, and with so much money on the line opposing parties have naturally come forward with plans to save it. And, surprise, they all don't agree on the solution. Read more...
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Sit down, folks. The Anthony Scaramucci drama just got even crazier — thanks to a self-proclaimed "email prankster."
According to CNN, the prankster posed as former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus from a mail.com account, and reached out to Scaramucci, who resigned Monday from his job as White House communications director.
This exchange came the day after Priebus stepped down, according to emails shared with CNN by the prankster:
Not Reince Priebus: "I had promised myself I would leave my hands mud free, but after reading your tweet today which stated how; 'soon we will learn who in the media who has class, and who hasn't', has pushed me to this. That tweet was breathtakingly hypocritical, even for you. At no stage have you acted in a way that's even remotely classy, yet you believe that's the standard by which everyone should behave towards you? General Kelly will do a fine job. I'll even admit he will do a better job than me. But the way in which that transition has come about has been diabolical. And hurtful. I don't expect a reply." Read more...
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After being ousted from the VR empire he built, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is wasting no time on his next project: building the wall. As CNN reports, Luckey’s newfound interest in defense is evident in the Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology (SMART) Act, proposed by Texas Representative Will Hurd. Hurd partnered with other Republican representatives from border states… Read More
Tesla CEO Elon Musk made headlines last week when he tweeted about his frustrations that Mark Zuckerberg, ever the optimist, doesn't fully understand the potential danger posed by artificial intelligence.
So when media outlets began breathlessly re-reporting a weeks-old story that Facebook's AI-trained chatbots "invented" their own language, it's not surprising the story caught more attention than it did the first time around.
Understandable, perhaps, but it's exactly the wrong thing to be focusing on. The fact that Facebook's bots "invented" a new way to communicate wasn't even the most shocking part of the research to begin with. Read more...
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We’re taking a look at the IPOs of tech’s biggest players. Next up is Google, which went public in 2004. At the time, the firm frankly told investors that it was “not a conventional company,” and it did “not intend to become one.” For Google, the unconventional attitude worked. But before its IPO more than 10 years ago, the company’s future was… Read More
Facebook has gone ahead and purchased Charles Jolley’s conversational AI startup Ozlo. Jolley, formerly Head of Platform for Android at Facebook, will not be returning to the company. The Ozlo team is expected to join Facebook to work on natural language processing challenges. Ozlo launched with a consumer facing app back in October 2016. Jolley told me at the time that the… Read More
NASA has announced the latest beneficiaries of its Small Business Technology Transfer program, which solicits and funds small-scale research projects outside the agency but relevant to its interests. 19 projects in a variety of fields are being awarded a total of $14.3 million. Read More
Noted venture firm Kleiner Perkins is getting a little leaner. General partner Mike Abbott announced Monday that he’s leaving the team for an undetermined startup role. Separately, its early stage “Edge” team is folding. The instances are unrelated, I am told. Abbott, who joined KPCB in 2011 from Twitter, wrote in a post, “my desire to discover and invest in the next… Read More
Clint Gage got the inside scoop on the "Marvel Universe Live! Age of Heroes" touring stunt show, even learning to become a superhero himself, training with the stunt guys, a parkour expert, and even some high-wire stunts from Wasp herself! Read more...
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Google’s brand of VR is, at last, beginning to arrive on Samsung devices. Reports emerged last week that certain Verizon Galaxy S8 and S8+ devices were getting the Daydream update, but today Google confirmed the rollout. The Daydream-ready update is rolling out now to @SamsungMobile Galaxy S8 and S8+. Explore new worlds with #Daydream. http://ift.tt/2tSKgCO; Read More
Snap Inc has joined the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which sees consumer internet companies cooperating to stop the spread of terrorism and extremism online. Facebook, Google and YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter formed the GIFCT last month, and tomorrow it will host its first workshop with fellow tech companies plus government and non-governmental organizations. The GIFCT started… Read More
Over on Earth 2, that mythical place where Hillary Clinton's popular vote victory was enough to propel her to the White House, I like to think alternate universe me is having a fine old time watching and theorizing about season 7 of Game of Thrones.
After all, in that parallel reality, politics likely has nothing to offer save a GOP Congress at loggerheads with a President Clinton on every damn issue. I spent most of the 1990s watching that show and have no desire to see it again. Bring on the giant dragons!
SEE ALSO: How 'Game of Thrones' ends according to diplomacy, warfare, and economics experts Read more...
The dominance of Spotify in the streaming music space continues to grow, as the company revealed new subscriber numbers on Monday: 60 million.
That figure is up 10 million from March, the last time Spotify released subscriber numbers.
That massive jump in just a few months couldn't have come at a better time for Spotify, as rumors have been swirling that the company is about go public, possibly by the end of the year.
The growth of Spotify really stands out when you consider the state of its competitors, namely SoundCloud. In recent weeks, the fate of SoundCloud has been up in the air in the wake of office closings, massive layoffs, and a general sense that the company may be on its last legs as it works to monetize its services versus the competition. Read more...
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The Research and Development Corporation (RAND) has helped the U.S. think through some of the toughest scientific and regulatory challenges since the 1940s. This year, the think tank is opening its first office in the SF Bay Area. It’s positioning itself to weigh in on some of Silicon Valley’s largest research projects, like autonomous vehicles, drones, AI, cybersecurity and… Read More
Arcade Fire, the band everyone was mad at last week for an obnoxious (and quickly abandoned) concert dress code, released a $109 fidget spinner Monday in conjunction with its new album, Everything Now.
What's more, the USB spinner, which comes with a download of the album, sold out in what seemed like moments. This begs the following question: Who did this?
It's finally here! But VERY LIMITED QUANTITIES! https://t.co/Pjsjl7dq9n http://pic.twitter.com/srPRUKRJ3z
— Arcade Fire (@arcadefire) July 31, 2017
Truly, this is not a drill. If you spent $109 on an Arcade Fire fidget spinner, please contact me. It's not just that I'm curious, either — I am currently trying to justify buying these Lisa Frank pajamas, and I feel like you can help me get there. Thanks. Read more...
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J.K. Rowling knows how to tweet up a storm, especially regarding Donald Trump. But she made a mistake Friday and now she’s apologized for it.
She initially retweeted and criticized the president over a video of what appeared to be Trump ignoring a child in a wheelchair—only the complete video shows a different story.
"Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition," Rowling initially wrote in now-deleted tweets, referring to the footage that shows Trump ignoring the outstretched hand of a child in a wheelchair. A different clip that circulated online in response to Rowling's tweets shows Trump speaking with the child. Read more...
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As they say, when it rains it pours, and Anthony Scaramucci seems to be stuck outside in the middle of a monsoon without an umbrella.
The former White House communications director blew up the internet with an explosive (and expletive-filled) New Yorker interview, had his wife file for divorce, and lost his job in President Donald Trump's administration all within 10 short days. What's more, he's also been incorrectly listed as dead by his alma mater.
As fate would have it, the newest addition of the Harvard Law School alumni directory arrived this week, during Scaramucci's Shakespearean rise and fall, and he had an asterisk printed next to his name. This indicated he was reported dead since the directory was last published in 2011. Read more...
More about Donald Trump, Harvard, Trump Administration, Scaramucci, and The Mooch
If you've been wondering what the hell is going on with Littlefinger, you're not alone.
Viewers have been scratching their heads at his inexplicably useless presence in every single scene he's disgraced in Season 7. Meanwhile, theorists have been hard at work trying to figure out why showrunners who are happy to cut the throats of characters with dwindling relevance are bothering to keep Baelish around.
Until last season, Littlefinger was characterized as a scheming puppet master. But over the past two seasons, he's become more like the Westerosi version of Lolita's Humbert Humbert.
There's ample evidence that Petyr's days are numbered, and we already smell blood in the water (or snow, rather). Read more...
More about Reddit, Sansa Stark, A Song Of Ice And Fire, Littlefinger, and Game Of Thrones Season 7
It's the last day of July which means, thanks to a pesky thing called inequality, that black women are only now catching up to their male counterparts earnings from 2016.
That's right—according to the Economic Policy Institute, it takes seven months of additional work "in order to be paid the same wages as her white male counterpart was paid last year."
Because of this, July 31 is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. Serena Williams is one of the many drawing attention to the dramatic wage gap. The tennis legend shared posts on social media and penned an essay for Fortune where she explained her thoughts on what it would take for the pay gap to close once and for all. Read more...
More about Gender Equality, Viola Davis, Tracee Ellis Ross, Pay Gap, and Serena Williams
The FCC has provided a few — very few — details of the steps it has taken to prevent attacks like the one that briefly took down its comment system in May. The agency has faced criticism over its secrecy regarding the event, and shows no sign of opening up; citing “the ongoing nature of the threats,” to reveal its countermeasures would “undermine our… Read More
The long-awaited meeting of the two young "Targaryen" power players finally happened.
While it wasn't all peaches and cream, the internet was quick to point out a few ironies. Read more...
More about Entertainment, Mashable Video, Game Of Thrones, Jon Snow, and Daenerys Targaryen