Big announcement from DART: In addition to the ways in which riders can now pay their fares (cash on the bus, DART’s mobile GoPass app and cash or card at light rail station ticket vending machines) DART riders will have a new option early in 2017 — a reloadable card…
Defense industry money is a lot like military aircraft. Sometimes it arrives loudly, like a cargo plane rumbling down a runway. Other times it slides into a local economy like a stealth bomber — quietly but effectively. This clumsy analogy brings us to last week’s announcement that the Pentagon is spending…
Plane spotters and aviation workers around Dallas Love Field Airport are always on the lookout for new aircraft. Last week SevenMikeCharlie took to Reddit to note a unique military arrival. “I created this post because I recently saw a new P-8 Poseidon arrive at Love Field,” he wrote, sparking a…
Opinions about the F-35 Lightning II are ubiquitous, and they are usually focused on its staggering $200 million-per-airplane cost. Other coverage details the engineering struggles of the airplane as the Pentagon program advances, concentrating on evaluations from the Government Accountability Office and internal Pentagon program evaluators. The Texas factory outside…
Since Texas lawmakers considered, but failed to pass, a measure requiring warrants for obtaining cell-phone location data in 2013, has been a major shift has occurred in public discourse over electronic privacy, thanks to disclosures, by Edward Snowden and others, of widespread government surveillance. The bill, by Representative Bryan Hughes,…
Spencer Noon thinks bitcoin is going to change the world. The cryptocurrency — currently worth about $575 per unit — was created as an anonymous, digital means to provide verifiable online transactions outside the realms of governments and regulations. Despite high profile setbacks like the Mt. Gox disaster, in which…
Anthony Granville didn’t set out to strike a blow for privacy rights on the fateful day in November 2010 when he snapped a cell-phone photo in a boy’s restroom at Huntsville High School. Quite the opposite, in fact. According to prosecutors, Granville’s photo, taken without the subject’s permission, showed another…
A year ago, CBS 11 brought the world the tragic but ultimately hopeful story of Whitney Mitchell. The Dallas woman, 21 at the time, had been an aspiring dancer until sepsis took all four limbs when she was 18. She was learning to walk again with prosthetics and dreamed of…
Because you can never have too many reasons to feel inadequate about your teenage years, we’d like to introduce you to 16-year-old Graham Smith. By day, he’s your typical Episcopal School of Dallas sophomore. By night, he’s a white-hat hacker who’s recently gained notoriety by exposing security flaws in Snapchat…
Think of it as the intersection between origami and semiconductor manufacturing. Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have invented a nickel-alloy windmill so tiny that 10 of them could be comfortably anchored to a grain of rice. Smitha Rao and J.-C Chiao successfully tested the device, composed entirely…
It started as a Icemageddon mystery. Sometime between 6 and 9 p.m. on Friday night, a 10-month-old Greater Swiss Mountain Dog named Heidi went missing from her Fort Worth back yard. Her owners canvassed the neighborhood and put up fliers but to no avail. Finally, on day three, they turned…
If you’re planning a weekend getaway to University Park and hope to capture the authentic Park Cities experience of living in an overpriced home on an absurdly expensive postage stamp of land, you’d better act fast. The City Council there is mulling a crackdown on short-term leases of single-family homes…
Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourself and grab a tissue. No, make that the whole box. We bring you a tale of technological woe, a David and Goliath story in which, alas, the Philistine wins, that will set even the stoniest heart ableed. Chase Giunta is a 25-year-old graphic designer in…
Four months ago, Ladar Levison was just another dude running a small business and really enjoying beach volleyball. Then, in May, the FBI left a business card on his doorstep. He, and eventually the rest of the world, would soon find out why. Levison, an SMU grad, runs Lavabit LLC,…
It should probably go without saying. If you get a random text message saying you’ve won a cruise, or telling you your debit card has been compromised, or offering discount Viagra, you should probably ignore it, unless, of course, you happen to be in the market for some under-the-table boner…
In simpler times, video games and all that they had to offer were fully contained within a gray plastic cartridge. As a result, buying a used game required very little due diligence beyond a quick glance at the visible circuitry and making sure the game wasn’t terrible. The used gaming…
Aereo, an online television streaming service backed by Fox television network creator Barry Diller, launched in New York City on Valentine’s Day 2012. Two weeks later, the major networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW, Univision, and, yes, PBS — banded together and asked a federal judge to shut down…
It’s hard to put your finger on what makes Google Glass so vaguely creepy. Technologically speaking, aside from a few extra tricks like the one that transmits sound not by making noise but by sending subtle vibrations through the skull, its basically like having a smartphone strapped to your head…
The Federal Aviation Administration has unveiled its official stance on Americans shooting at drones: You shouldn’t do that. According to the Associated Press, the FAA announced today that anyone discharging a weapon at a drone runs the risk of causing it to crash, thus injuring people or property, thus risking…
Erich Spangenberg, like others in his trade, would prefer that you refer to his stable of companies as “patent assertion entities.” But he has a thick skin; you’re more than welcome to call him a troll, so long as you point out that he is, in fact, the world’s biggest…
Two years ago, after their cameras were denied entry to a secretive government immigration camps on Christmas Island, the Australian version of 60 Minutes piloted a small, unmanned aircraft above the island detention center. A few months later, activists in Poland dispatched a drone to document the abuses of riot…
In late 2010, the social gaming company Zynga was on a buying spree. Riding high on the success of FarmVille, the San Francisco-based startup was snatching up smaller rivals across the country, including Dallas’ Bonfire Studios some three months after the firm released the not-at-all derivative We Farm. But there’s…
