Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

Tyler Barris is being held by police on charges of involuntary manslaughter after he allegedly placed a phony emergency call that resulted in the death of another man. But Barris reportedly managed to get access to the internet and proceeded to hop on Twitter threatening to “swat” again and proclaiming himself an “eGod.” The Wichita Eagle first noticed tweets coming from an account linked to Barris on Friday.

Trump Tower, President Donald Trump’s midtown Manhattan skyscraper, caught on fire on Saturday. It is, as of yet, unclear how or why flames are engulfing the side of the 58-story building. But video posted to Twitter shows New Yorkers gathered to see flame shoot out one end of the tower, which just as quickly drew a strong New York Fire Department response. At one point, flaming debris appeared to explode out of windows and fall to the ground.

Netflix raised eyebrows with the $140 million budget it handed over to Martin Scorsese recently, but according to a Reuters report, it’s looking to pay out a lot more for some billboard real estate. The move could be seen as an escalation of its cold war with Hollywood. Take one look at Regency Outdoor Advertising’s website; it’s more than clear that this is an old-school company.

If you’ve shirked your societal responsibility by not getting vaccinated against influenza and managed to avoid getting sick, congrats! You’re probably out of the woods now. The latest surveillance report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates this especially severe flu season is finally winding down. For the week ending March 31, the CDC reported, only 2.4 percent of visits to a doctor were prompted by flu-like symptoms. That’s a drop from the rate of 2.

To date, Apple’s mostly useless Touch Bar is the closest the company has ever come to selling a touchscreen Mac. But if you’ve got a spare dollar in your wallet, you could upgrade your MacBook with touchscreen-like functionality all by yourself using this wonderfully clever hack. Even better, Project Sistine (as Anish Athalye and its creators have called it) doesn’t require you to know anything about electronics or soldering to make it work.

Just a couple days ago, rumors leaked out that Apple might try to reimagine forgotten tech like air gestures and curvy concave screens for use in a future iPhone. But now, another company is taking a different page out of history, and this time its purpose is to help fight off the incoming notch apocalypse. That’s right, Doogee—a largely unknown Chinese smartphone maker (at least here in the states)—has brought back the slider phone.

On April 16, NASA is planning to launch its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. TESS is an Earth-orbiting instrument meant to spot faraway planets circling some 200,000 stars within 300 light-years of Earth. Astronomers hopes that TESS will help them learn whether or not there are other habitable planets, or even life beyond the Solar System. TESS can’t do this alone, however.

The future is here, and it’s cool as shit if you love heist movies. In the most incredible gang operation gone wrong of 2018, smartphone smugglers in China were busted by customs officers in Shenzhen, but not before moving 500 million yuan ($79.8 million) worth of stolen smartphones, and using drones to pull it off, the Legal Daily reported on Friday. It gets better.

On Monday, US Marshals arrested Schlitterbahn waterslide designer John Timothy Schooley for charges that include second-degree murder and reckless endangerment of a child. Schooley designed the Verrückt waterslide, the world’s tallest and fastest waterslide, which decapitated a 10-year-old boy in 2016. The agents apprehended Schooley at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as he was arriving on a flight from China.

Grizzly bears, dogs, and even cockroaches fart. Do sea anemones? Nope. As for spiders, no one knows. Daniella Rabaiotti and Nick Caruso’s new book,Does It Fart?, is illustrated by Ethan Kocak anddebuts tomorrow in the United States. The book lists a number of animals, answers the titular question, and offers some insight into animal digestions.