Day: December 26, 2019

Queen Elizabeth gave her annual Christmas Day queen’s speech yesterday, preaching a message of reconciliation and unity in the wake of the UK’s years-long debate over Brexit — and possibly hinting at her own views about Brexit with her fashion choices, if internet sleuths are to be believed.

The annual Christmas speech is a traditional address delivered by the monarch. In this year’s edition, prerecorded at Buckingham Palace and broadcast nationwide, Queen Elizabeth summarized 2019 as “quite bumpy.” She highlighted the birth of her eighth grandchild and also talked about her husband, 98-year-old Prince Phillip, who earlier this week …

Lawmakers want to press pause on deploying facial recognition and other biometric technology in public housing. Though it’s not clear the extent to which the technology is already being used in public housing (or other categories of government-supported and -regulated housing), lawmakers say facial recognition raises privacy concerns, and point to its known inaccuracies, especially when applied to people of color and women (among other minority groups).

There’s no law regulating facial recognition at the federal level yet. But complementary legislation introduced in the House and the Senate — the “No Biometric Barriers to Housing Act” — would put a …

Today, visitors to Amazon Go cashierless stores need to scan an app to get in. In the future, Amazon may instead ask to just scan their hands instead.

The US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Amazon on Thursday for a touchless scanning system that would identify people not by their faces but by characteristics associated with the palms of their hands, including wrinkles and veins.

The application filing does not mean the company is definitely developing such technology, but the New York Post reported in September that Amazon was testing technology that would allow Whole Foods …

As its Christmas gift to America, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign created a “Snowflake Victory” website that provides honest God-fearing Americans with the arguments they need to demolish any young leftist relatives they may encounter over the holidays.

The site is a series of video clips with accompanying text coaching you through various pro-Trump talking points about the strength of the American economy, the need for a wall, and how there was “no quid pro quo” with the Ukrainian government. As is typical for Trump’s official communications, it relies pretty heavily on the strategy of saying things that aren’t true. …

There was so much news in 2019. Too much, probably! Now, at the end of the year, all that remains is a series of blurry mental images — a man at a congressional hearing there, a clip from another superhero movie there. The same stuff as last year, for the most part.

In between all these blurry images are a few that have stood out, and many of them have been items of clothing. So much of 2019 happened via T-shirt, or via coat, or via accessory that somehow made a comeback despite being the butt of every lazy joke …