Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

A Detroit body broker was sentenced to nine years in federal prison on Tuesday for hustling diseased organs. Arthur Rathburn, 64, was convicted of leading a scheme that involved selling and renting body parts with HIV and Hepatitis B and C to dental and medical schools that were unaware the body parts they were acquiring were infected. According to federal prosecutors, Rathburn’s cadavers were used for at least 120 training classes from 1997 to 2013.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re trying to organize the destruction of a major metropolitan area and the overthrow of a system you view as irredeemably corrupt, but you keep having to step out of the office to take a call. That problem is no more thanks to Bloxvox, the voice muffling muzzle that lets you plot to fulfill Ra’s al Ghul’s destiny from the comfort of your desk.

Molten lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has entered the grounds of Puna Geothermal Venture, a geothermal power plant that provides about 25 percent of the Big Island’s power. The 38 Megawatt Puna Geothermal Venture (PGV) power plant, which is located in the east rift zone of the Kilauea volcano, was shut down soon after the eruptions began on May 3.

The U.S. State Department issued a health warning this morning to U.S. citizens in China after an American government worker was diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury. The unnamed worker reported “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure.” The U.S. government employee was assigned to the American consulate in Guangzhou, China and started experiencing the symptoms from late 2017 until April of 2018, according to the U.S. State Department.

Escaping the isolated and oppressive regime of Kim Jong Un’s North Korea requires a harrowing effort, but even getting out of the country may not be enough to escape its reach. New research from McAfee suggests hackers in North Korea are targeting defectors with malware-infected Android apps. The cybersecurity firm reported this week that it found a number of apps in the Google Play Store infected with what it dubbed RedDawn malware.

If you’ve been holding off on joining Tinder because it carries the stigma of being an app for hookups, have no fear: a new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found no one on Tinder is actually having sex. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) surveyed more than 600 students on their social media activity and sexual behavior.

Depending on where you’re eating and who you’re eating it with, the rules around food can be stunningly complex. The core concept, however, is that food is inserted into the mouth, and once it’s there, if you find it impossible to masticate with human teeth or discover the object to be a source of pain/bleeding, an error in judgement has been made. Spit it out and try a new approach. Not food.

I’m sorry, but Pluto sucks and I’m glad it’s not a planet anymore. It’s smaller than our Moon, and it’s about the same size as several other distant, rocky solar system objects. Have you ever seen the way it orbits alongside its partner, Charon? Classifying it as a planet in the first place was a mistake.

Several news outletshave claimed that scientists have created a “cloaking device” like those seen on Star Trek, but that’s not quite what happened. The cloaking devices on Star Trek bend light to render an object invisible, and the new device merely deflects sound. The technology also isn’t so new, as others are working on devices like these. It’s still cool, though.

As Ernest Hemingway might’ve said: Good dogs, for adoption, minor radiation. Ukrainian state officials have announced that about 200 dogs from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are planned to be put up for adoption in the U.S., with the first 12 flying out in June. Chernobyl, about an hour north of Kiev, was the site of the world’s most notorious nuclear accident in April of 1986, creating an area where humans aren’t allowed to travel.