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Tech Archive

Archives for December 2024

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
Apple and Google’s app stores have a child sexual abuse app problem.

While investigating apps that let livestream viewers pay to watch child abuse, The New York Times reports that it found “more than 80 apps that advertised children” on the Apple and Google app stores.

The livestream apps downloaded from Apple and Google illustrate an even darker aspect of the social media technology boom, particularly for children living in poverty in developing countries. There, with the ease of a smartphone, parents and other adults can connect with pedophiles in the United States and elsewhere who pay to watch — and direct — criminal behavior.

Trigger warning: This Times story includes descriptions of child sexual abuse.

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
The Apple FlatMac concept, realized.

Frog Design’s Hartmut Esslinger once created a slick, but unrealistic-for-the-time handheld Mac concept using Frog’s Snow White design language.

One 3D-printed chassis, a Raspberry Pi 4, and a 3rd-generation iPad display later, YouTuber Kevin Noki shows a functional version they made, using measurements apparently provided by Esslinger himself — with a floppy drive, a full complement of ports, and a pleasingly clicky keyboard, to boot.

The end of the ISS will usher in a more commercialized future in space

Can privately owned space stations replace the ISS? And what becomes of the research?

Georgina Torbet
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
NYPD found a backpack they believe was worn by the suspect in the Brian Thompson shooting.

Two days after someone shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, police located the “distinctive” backpack the attacker was wearing. They removed it from Central Park, unopened, using an excavator.

As many people, including Peak Design CEO Pete Dering, noticed, it appears to be the company’s Everyday V1 backpack, as shown in a photo obtained by ABC News.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
It’s still Bandcamp Friday.

Whether it’s during Bandcamp Friday or not, buying music sends more money to musicians than playing a subscription stream. So, it might be worth celebrating this event where Bandcamp waives its cut of the money you spend one last time for 2024 as it continues for the next seven hours or so.

Bandcamp has changed hands twice and had significant layoffs since the pandemic tradition started; we’ll see if it continues in 2025.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
TikTok may actually get banned.

TikTok is running out of time and legal recourse to avoid a US ban unless its China-based parent company ByteDance sells it. Here’s the tl;dr on why a three-judge panel unanimously ruled to uphold the law that could expel TikTok, and what comes next.