Devin Coldewey

Bird strikes on aircraft may be rare, but not so rare that airports shouldn’t take precautions against them. But keeping birds away is a difficult proposition: how do you control…

Some numbers published in a report from The Information reveal that very few owners of Alexa-powered devices use them for shopping. Of about 50 million Alexa users, only about 100,000…

As popular as Pokemon GO is, it has always been missing one major feature: pitting your Pokemon directly against another trainer’s. Strange, since that was the entire basis of the…

The FCC has come clean on the fact that a purported hack of its comment system last year never actually took place, after a report from its Inspector General found…

Clear, the biometrics company you’ve probably seen at airports and at a few other prominent queues, is rolling out the capability to simultaneously verify your ID and pay for an…

I love camping, but there’s always an awkward period when you’ve left the tent but haven’t yet created coffee that I hate camping. It’s hard not to watch the pot…

Google will soon allow ads to run on addiction-related keywords and phrases after a nearly year-long ban instituted to crack down on shady providers cashing in on vulnerable patients. A…

Amazon has been granted a patent for an audio system that detects the accent of a speaker and changes it to the accent of the listener, perhaps helping eliminate communication…

Got some spare time this weekend? Why not build yourself a working rover from plans provided by NASA? The spaceniks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have all the plans, code,…

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer since 2015, is leaving the company to take a position at Stanford University. The company has been shedding leadership over the last half a…

Lyft, Uber and Via yesterday made an offer to succor New York City’s beleaguered taxi medallion owners: a $100M relief fund paid over five years to cover the plight of…

Reddit announced today that it suffered a security breach in June that exposed some of its internal systems to the attackers, although what was accessed was not particularly sensitive. Notably…

Among the many things the current administration has been criticized for is its lack of a unified strategy to combat cyber threats, especially in light of ongoing election interference and…

Hot on the heels of the effective legalization of 3D models used to print firearm components, 21 states have filed a joint lawsuit against the federal government, alleging not only…

The sequel to the legendary, and legendarily difficult, indie sleeper hit La-Mulana has finally been released, and all gamers with a penchant for retro-style platforming and a broad masochistic streak…

Gripping something with your hand is one of the first things you learn to do as an infant, but it’s far from a simple task, and only gets more complex…

Why is there traffic? This eternal question haunts civic planners, fluid dynamics professors, and car manufacturers alike. But just counting the cars on the road won’t give you a sufficient…

Broadband providers! They love to make noise about how dedicated they are to improving your service, rolling out new features, and generally adhering to both the law and their own…

A multi-year NASA contest to design a 3D-printable Mars habitat using on-planet materials has just hit another milestone — and a handful of teams have taken home some cold hard…

Nintendo has just announced the latest in its Labo series of whimsical cardboard accessories for the Switch gaming console, and this one looks like a must-have. Called the Vehicle Kit…

Machine learning is everywhere these days, but it’s usually more or less invisible: it sits in the background, optimizing audio or picking out faces in images. But this new system…

Virgin Galactic is celebrating the third successful supersonic test flight of VSS Unity, the passenger spacecraft it intends to make available for space tourism in the near future. This flight…

The trouble with microphones is that they don’t just hear — they have to listen. Powering the mic and its signal processor means using energy, and energy means a battery,…

A pair of Canadian students making a simple, inexpensive prosthetic arm have taken home the grand prize at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, a global startup competition the company holds yearly. SmartArm…

After years of observation and analysis, researchers announced today that they have identified liquid water on Mars — a ton of it. It’s a mile underground and is likely only…

The Defense Department’s research arm, DARPA, is throwing a event around its “Electronics Resurgence Initiative,” an effort to leapfrog existing chip tech by funding powerful but unproven new ideas percolating…

Amazon Prime has been an enormous influence on e-commerce, but this online juggernaut is beginning to show cracks. Now is the time for arch-rival Walmart to swoop in with a…

As part of its ongoing mission to close the barn doors after the cows have got out, Facebook has suspended the accounts of British data analytics firm Crimson Hexagon over…

I’ve been working with an ugly but functional lopsided two-monitor setup for years, and while it has served me well, I can’t say the new generation of ultra-wide monitors hasn’t…