Nicole Palmer is a lawyer who graduated from Columbia University. Her profile states that she “specializes in the application and protection of industrial design” and has “been building her career successfully for 30 years.” The only problem is that she doesn’t exist. And she helped me uncover an online scam operation involved in shady activities, including extorting backlinks from bloggers and website owners. I’ve spent a good part of the past week investigating Arthur Davidson, the so-called “
In 2021, an investment firm bought 2,000 acres of real estate for about US$4 million. Normally this would not make headlines, but in this case the land was virtual. It existed only in a metaverse platform called The Sandbox. By buying 792 non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, the firm then owned the equivalent of 1,200 city blocks. But did it? It turns out that legal ownership in the metaverse is not that simple. The prevailing but legally problematic narrative among crypto enthusiasts
New documents have exposed a bizarre and futuristic array of tech explored by a shadowy US government unit. The ideas were investigated by the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP). The unit was funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and reportedly has roots in UFO research. The Pentagon claims the AAWSAP has been shut down, but has provided little detail on its work — until now. The new revelations emerged from almost 1,600 pages of reports, contracts, present
John Deere has been in business for nearly 200 years. For those in the agriculture industry, the company that makes green tractors is as well-known as Santa Claus, McDonald’s, or John Wayne. Heck, even city folk who’ve never seen a tractor that wasn’t on a television screen know John Deere. The company’s so popular even celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and George Clooney have been known to rock a Deere hat. What most outsiders don’t know is that John Deere’s not so much a farming vehicle manuf
This article was originally published by Christopher Carey on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates, follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. At the recent City Leadership Forum organized by the Cities Today Institute in Columbus, transport leaders from across the US discussed their multipronged approaches to driving m
As with any long-term purchase, choosing the right EV requires some serious research.You need to consider what models are available, what kind of performance they offer, and how much you’re willing to pay — which can feel overwhelming. Visual Capitalist, an online media company that publishes data-driven visuals, has put together a super-comprehensive infographic that summarizes the basics you need to know about every available EVs in the US as of February 2022. It’s the most detailed one we’ve
After years of a tumultuous relationship with developers, Twitter’s now trying hard to win them over again. In its latest step, the company wants to promote third-party apps on its platform. The firm’s using Twitter Toolbox, a web page it launched in February, to highlight apps to a select number of users. As reported by TechCrunch, the experiment is starting off by suggesting safety-related apps to users, such as tools to filter out vile comments. Amir Shevat, Twitter’s head of Product for its
In mid-April, Elon Musk made public his desire to acquire Twitter, make it a private company, and overhaul its moderation policies. Citing ideals of free speech, Musk claimed that “Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it’s just really important that people have the, both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.” While making Twitter free for all “within the bounds of the law” seems like a way to ensure free speech in theor
“Becoming a digital consumer goods company is our ambition,” says Atul Bhardwaj, Chief Digital and Technology Officer of The Lego Group, in a not entirely predictable statement statement — coming from the world’s most valuable manufacturer of physical toys. “We’ll always be anchored in the physical — just to be clear — but digital needs to come in and augment that physical build process,” Bhardwaj clarifies. “Our business has scaled a lot in the last two years; we need to make sure that our plat
Even during times of conflict on the ground, space has historically been an arena of collaboration among nations. But trends in the past decade suggest that the nature of cooperation in space is shifting, and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted these changes. I’m an international relations scholar who studies power distributions in space – who the main players are, what capabilities they possess and whom they decide to cooperate with. Some scholars predict a future in which