Nathan Ord

Most people don’t realize it, but older technology powers much of our current infrastructure. Whether it is due to a lack of acceptable alternatives, costs, or just plain bureaucratic indifference, ancient technology like floppy disks are still being used in some niche applications, like at Chuck E. Cheese locations for example. Another one of these niche applications came to light recently regarding the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) train system, which also relies on 5-inch

Artificial intelligence-based image generation and manipulation have become a hot topic lately, with the advent of tools like OpenAI’s Sora generating surrealistic images and video. Now, AI has made its way into the courtroom through an evidence submission of AI-enhanced video footage in a triple-murder case. However, in what could be a groundbreaking precedent, a Washington state judge has blocked the evidence due to a number of issues with it. Earlier this week, Superior Court

When a platform introduces new advertisements, those ads can often be somewhat intrusive and drive users away. Discord is looking to avoid that, though, with its new advertising scheme, that will help boost the platform’s revenue. Rolling out in stages over the coming weeks, Discord Quests are a novel idea and are actually a pretty clever means of serving game-oriented sponsored media, while also rewarding those who engage with the advertisement. Traditionally, Discord has had an anti-advertisement

Twenty years ago today, Google launched a new product that was initially thought to be an April Fools’ Day prank. However, that was quite the opposite, creating Gmail, which would eventually come to have over a billion users with an unfathomable quantity of emails in their accounts. While the history of how Gmail came to be, Google is still going strong and adding features to the platform to support the initial mission that spawned this

Over the past few days, the security world has been abuzz with the discovery of a backdoor snuck into a compression utility called xz-utils. While this backdoor was effectively a near miss, getting caught before it became pervasive, it goes to show that with a bit of social engineering and laying low for a while, you can get away with almost anything. Thankfully, due to one Microsoft engineer locking in on a minute detail, this

The Amazon Big Spring Sale is underway, bringing deep discounts on a plethora of tech across Amazon’s various categories. This makes for a great opportunity to upgrade your home theater or living room space with a new display, as you can get savings of up to 52% off, bringing TVs down to incredibly low prices. First up in the lineup, we have our strongest deal with the TCL 98-inch Class S5 4K LED Smart TV