He may be the most beleaguered and mistrusted CEO of any major tech company, but if an enormous new profile of Mark Zuckerberg makes one thing clear, he’s not as dumb as Twitter’s CEO. | Continue reading
Something strange is happening to the oceans. As coral reefs wither and fisheries collapse, octopuses are multiplying like mad. As soon as they perceive weakness, they will amass an army and invade the land, too. | Continue reading
On Thursday, authorities executed a search warrant at the home of a New Jersey couple who raised $400,000 to help a homeless man last year. | Continue reading
Bernie Sanders introduced a bill today that culminates weeks of feuding between the Vermont senator and Amazon, a company he views as indicative of a “rigged economy” that rewards the rich and harms workers. | Continue reading
Anyone holding out hope that the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules wouldn’t affect their internet better brace for some bad news. New research from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Northeastern suggests that all of the major U.S. tele … | Continue reading
Openly recognizing their companies’ past failures in rare displays of modesty, Facebook and Twitter executives touted new efforts to combat state-sponsored propaganda across their platforms before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, acknowledging that the task is ofte … | Continue reading
A recent research review suggests that white noise, the soothing, fuzzy soundtrack so many of us rely on to sleep or block out distractions, could actually be dangerous. It argues that exposure to the random, unstructured sounds that make up white noise can alter the brain’s neur … | Continue reading
Twitter, the social media site for people who like getting angry at things, has long been a haven for misogynistic harassers, white supremacists, and garden-variety trolls. The site has claimed to be working on this, but its supposed commitment to change has been repeatedly under … | Continue reading
Magic Leap is secretly building a headset that could blend computer graphics with the real world. Recently, we lucked into a treasure trove of illustrations from Magic Leap about what that future might hold. There's just one problem: Magic Leap didn't actually create al … | Continue reading
In a post-capitalistic world that seems very specifically and violently designed to rip off the poor for the benefit of the rich, spending money is complicated. But at least, until recently, you could live without fear that some multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley giant would buy … | Continue reading
In July, Google claimed its 85,000 employees had gone a full year without encountering any security mishaps following a mandatory requirement of using physical security keys for two-factor authentication. Now, its in-house security key is available for sale in the Google store. | Continue reading
Samsung will be announcing its first-ever 8K television for commercial release, the Q900R, at IFA 2018 this week, according to a press release. It’s a QLED device that comes in four big screen sizes (65”, 75”, 82” and 85”). | Continue reading
September 25 will mark five years since Google first launched Shopping Express, the e-commerce offering meant to challenge Amazon’s dominance. But despite Google parent company Alphabet’s staffing brain trust and impressive coffers, Express has done little to reinvent fulfillment … | Continue reading
The research arm of Y Combinator plans to begin a study on universal basic income next year in which it will give unconditional cash payments to 3,000 participants. The test is partially intended to see if receiving routine payments will quell anxieties around losing jobs to auto … | Continue reading
President Trump’s first tweet of the day, sent at 5:24am local time, has accused Google of rigging search results against conservatives. Right-wing media personalities often claim, without evidence, that companies like Twitter and Facebook are conspiring against them, but Google … | Continue reading
John Coster-Mullen was driving his truck to a warehouse in Oshkosh, Wisconsin when he told me that he owns uranium. He’d been talking on the phone for about hour, and I hadn’t been able to ask a single question about the project that has consumed a quarter century of his life—the … | Continue reading
New research into a strange atmospheric effect known as STEVE has failed to associate its enigmatic lights with aurora, pointing to the presence of an entirely new type of atmospheric phenomenon. | Continue reading
As disclosed by the Washington Post this morning, Facebook has been ranking users on their trustworthiness in identifying false information—though in a statement to Gizmodo, the platform distanced itself from implications that trust rank is broadly applicable to all facets of the … | Continue reading
Netflix is reportedly looking to become the latest tech giant to avoid paying out fees to Apple’s App Store. If you find yourself unable to access your account through the app on your Apple device, you may need to re-signup through a browser. For Apple’s cash cow service, this is … | Continue reading
You’ve just booted up a game on a state-of-the-art quantum computer. You’re running 19 superconducting quantum bits on a processor held at near absolute zero. Anticipating its sheer power, you press start and... | Continue reading
When looking up at the sky at night, it's easy to get the impression that the stars go on forever in fairly uniform fashion. We know, of course, that this isn't the case. Stars coalesce into galaxies, and galaxies join together to form clusters. And as for the vast, empt … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, the New York Times profiled the class of noveau riche Bitcoin millionaires who had gotten “hilariously rich” on booming cryptocurrency investments. Now that the market is flatlining (it’s now fluctuating in the low-to-mid $6,000s), another New York Times profil … | Continue reading
When the Essential Phone first came out, I didn’t like it very much. But my main objection wasn’t its build or features—no, it was basically that for $700, its camera simply wasn’t in the same league as the Galaxy S8, the iPhone 7, or any other expensive flagship. | Continue reading
Like a real-life version of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a visitor to a Portuguese museum was injured last week when he stepped into an art installation resembling an inky void. Currently on exhibit at the Serralves Museum in Porto, Descent Into Limbo by Anish Kapoor includes an actua … | Continue reading
A teenager in Melbourne, Australia, is facing criminal charges after he reportedly hacked Apple’s secure computer network multiple times. | Continue reading
Tracking down dangerous, hidden materials typically requires either a substantial labor force, costly and specific tools, or both. But a group of researchers is exploring a way in which threatening objects hidden in boxes or bags can be detected using off-the-shelf wifi. | Continue reading
For years, tech bloggers have lamented the boring sameness of cell phones. “They’re all slabs of glass and metal,” we groaned in 2016. “Phone design has plateaued.” These days, the same could be said of many electronic devices, all housed in generic brushed aluminum and dark plas … | Continue reading
319. That’s the number of discrete advertisements, both online and off, served to me over the course of one Tuesday in July. I know because I counted each and every one. | Continue reading
Every once in a while, our planet captures a “mini-moon,” a tiny asteroid that hangs out in our orbit for a bit before venturing back into the depths of space. New research suggests these small, temporary natural satellites carry tremendous scientific and commercial opportunities … | Continue reading
Thousands of security officers in Silicon Valley just ratified their first union contract. The guards, numbering at about 3,000, work at tech giants like Facebook and Google and have been organizing and negotiating for more than five years. | Continue reading
Last month, a sunken Russian warship believed to have been carrying billions of dollars worth of gold was “discovered” by a South Korean company that immediately started making claims of how it was going to distribute its found treasure. Now, police are investigating leaders of t … | Continue reading
The texts would come at all hours of the night, numbering in the thousands. “Have you been with an older guy?” “You’re really hot, so it’s worth the risk of getting in trouble.” “Has your daddy fucked you today?” | Continue reading
When a user chooses to pause Google’s collection of location data with the “Location History” option, the search giant continues to collect and store that information. It’s a sleight of hand that’s enough to make someone shut off everything just to be safe. | Continue reading
High-temperature electricity without resistance could revolutionize electronics. It could take less energy to move electric charge, meaning better-performing, more-efficient electronics that are cheaper to run. It could cut down on energy costs, and might even help researchers re … | Continue reading
Travelers features an icky, insidiously clever form of going undercover: agents from 100 years in the future take up residence in people living in the present’s bodies. It makes things morally complicated. Like when a heroin junkie watches a man die from a heart attack and tearfu … | Continue reading
No one but defense contractors and their accountants knows why America needs a Space Force. But moments after announcing the new U.S. military branch, the Trump campaign gave us a hint at this arguably idiotic idea’s true purpose: Lining the campaign’s pockets. | Continue reading
Many prehistoric mass graves located along coastlines around the world may be linked to ancient tsunamis, new research suggests. | Continue reading
There’s an ongoing debate among archaeologists as to which route the first settlers of North America took to reach the continent. Some say these migrants travelled along an interior passage between two massive ice sheets, while others say they traversed along a coastal route. New … | Continue reading
Anti-government conspiracy theorist turned pro-Trump mouthpiece Alex Jones found his hard-won followings on the web’s biggest platforms stripped away this week. In this day and age, there’s just nowhere left online for a red-blooded patriot to speak his mind. Nowhere, it seems, e … | Continue reading
Given their current popularity, you might assume that probiotics—capsules containing a mix of “good” bacteria that are said to rebalance our gut’s bacterial content—would be perfectly harmless. But a team of gastroenterologists from Augusta University in Georgia is challenging th … | Continue reading
You just can’t trust a little dog. | Continue reading
Last year, we launched an investigation into how Facebook’s People You May Know tool makes its creepily accurate recommendations. By November, we had it mostly figured out: Facebook has nearly limitless access to all the phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, and social … | Continue reading
Amazon may have sold millions of Echoes and other devices equipped with its voice-controlled Alexa smart assistant partially in the hopes that it could nudge users into letting an upbeat voice convince them to buy more crap. But it doesn’t appear to be working, according to a rep … | Continue reading
I’ve always had a frustrating relationship with the Internet thanks to where I lived. Long hallways or brick walls were in the way of a strong connection, requiring me to get inventive with Ethernet cables, antenna extenders, and SSID names. Mesh networks, which use multiple rout … | Continue reading
Buying a robotic vacuum cleaner probably sounds like a great idea. Who the hell likes to vacuum? But if it was marketed as an internet-connected device with a microphone and camera that wanders your house at all hours of the day, you should probably skip out. | Continue reading
Apple is just one little bump away from being the world’s first trillion-dollar public company and following another solid earnings report, it’s announced that it will punish some of the people who helped build its success. Affiliates who’ve promoted apps and taken a small cut of … | Continue reading