Despite having a domestic workforce of around 200,000 employees, fewer than 300 Samsung employees are part of a union, which seems a little curious. So South Korean regulators decided to dig a little deeper, and after a five-month investigation spurred by officials from South Kor … | Continue reading
Digital security and its discontents—from Hillary Clinton’s emails to ransomware to Tor hacks—is in many ways one of the chief concerns of the contemporary FBI. So it makes sense that the bureau’s director, James Comey, would dip his toe into the digital torrent with a Twitter ac … | Continue reading
Last week, I ran an ad on Facebook that was targeted at a computer science professor named Alan Mislove. Mislove studies how privacy works on social networks and had a theory that Facebook is letting advertisers reach users with contact information collected in surprising ways. I … | Continue reading
Last week, I ran an ad on Facebook targeted at a computer science professor named Alan Mislove. Mislove studies how privacy works on social networks and had a theory that Facebook is letting advertisers reach users with contact information collected in surprising ways. I was help … | Continue reading
Amazon, the country’s second-largest employer, has so far remained immune to any attempts by U.S. workers to form a union. With rumblings of employee organization at Whole Foods—which Amazon bought for $13.7 billion last year—a 45-minute union-busting training video produced by t … | Continue reading
The new and improved macOS 10.14 Mojave is rolling out to compatible Macs everywhere today. Here’s all the cool new stuff you can get busy with once you’ve installed the upgrade on your laptop or desktop. | Continue reading
A federal judge ruled last week that the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission (currently chaired by Donald Trump appointee Ajit Pai) must release records related to millions of fraudulent public comments filed before the agency repealed net neutrality guideline … | Continue reading
When humans take the drug MDMA, versions of which are known as molly or ecstasy, they commonly feel very happy, extraverted, and particularly interested in physical touch. A group of scientists recently wondered whether this drug might have a similar effect on other species—speci … | Continue reading
Chrome OS, itself based on the Linux kernel, can now run Linux apps—the circle is complete. If you’ve got the latest version of Chrome OS, and a fairly new Chromebook, you can now install some of the best applications Linux has to offer. Here’s how to go about it, and why you mig … | Continue reading
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have glimpsed a neutron star unlike any seen before. | Continue reading
Once upon a time, instant messaging was king. Before social media apps and smartphones rose to prominence, these free-to-use services ruled. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Instant Messenger, ICQ, you name it—everyone had their drug of choice. There was just one problem with … | Continue reading
A California court will soon decide sentencing for a man who posted the entirety of Deadpool on his Facebook page. If the U.S. government gets its way, the man will spend half a year in prison. | Continue reading
Ever since the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, was evacuated and visited by the FBI on September 6, the organization that runs the facility has been mum on the “security threat” that led to the closure. | Continue reading
Google’s widely reported search engine prototype for China, which is allegedly code-named Dragonfly, not only blacklists search terms to comply with the wishes of government censors but ties all searches to devices’ phone numbers, according to a report on Friday from the Intercep … | Continue reading
The House of Representatives passed the National Quantum Initiative Act yesterday. When signed into law, the bill will outline a 10-year plan to push forward applications using the counterintuitive science of subatomic particles. | Continue reading
A quiet debate has been brewing in the coding community for years that’s forced programmers to ask if using the terms “master” and “slave” are insensitive. Now, Python, one of the most popular high-level programming languages in the world, has ditched the terminology—and not ever … | Continue reading
Japan’s Hayabusa2 project experienced a (hopefully) minor setback yesterday when the spacecraft failed to complete a practice session during preparations for its much-anticipated touchdown on the Ryugu asteroid. | Continue reading
Deepfakes, ultrarealistic fake videos manipulated using machine learning, are getting pretty convincing. And researchers continue to develop new methods to create these types of videos, for better or, more likely, for worse. The most recent method comes from researchers at Carneg … | Continue reading
Sure, smartphones and smartphone apps can waste our time and bring out the worst in people, but they can most definitely also be a force for good: They can educate, inform, and inspire. With that in mind we’ve put together a list of our favorite apps that can teach you something … | Continue reading
A man is suing a cryonics firm for allegedly not respecting his late father’s wishes—or contract—to have his entire body cryogenically preserved. Instead, the firm severed and stored the man’s head, sending his cremated remains to his son. | Continue reading
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