Angela Chen, Author at Gizmodo

Uber Makes Riders Take a Moment of Silence for Gun Violence

Uber wants its riders to reflect on gun violence, and it’s not being subtle about it at all. After the shootings at a police protest in Dallas, Uber on Friday decked out the app with reminders to think about the incident. It changed the UberX icons to peace signs and enforced a “moment of silence”…

Tech News Angela Chen

Facebook Will Keep Violent Videos If they ‘Raise Awareness’

There’s been a lot of discussion over the ethics of posting violent livestreams on Facebook, and the social media site has decided to release subjective guidelines: if a person posts violent content to “raise awareness,” the video can stay. If someone shared the same video to mock the victim, it will be removed. This means…

Tech News Angela Chen

Snapchat Sued For Showing Kids Sexually Explicit Content Against Their Will

Snapchat is advertised as for ages 12 and up, but are 14-year-olds ready to see content like “10 Things He Thinks When He Can’t Make You Orgasm”? Not if you’re the anonymous 14-year-old (and his mother) who filed a class-action lawsuit claiming the material in Snapchat’s Discover section is too sexual. Unlike personal snaps sent…

Tech News Angela Chen

Spotify Wants You to Discover Music From People’s Out-Of-Office Emails

Do you remember those birthday cards that played a song when you opened them? Do you remember how they were sort of cool, but everyone closed the card immediately out of embarrassment? That is how I feel about Spotify’s new feature, which lets you create a personalized playlist to go with your out-of-office email. The…

Tech News Angela Chen

Charity Finally Discovers Venmo Loophole That Lets Everyone Spam Us

It was only a matter of time before spam came to Venmo and, frankly, it’s astonishing that it took so long to figure out the marketing secret: You can message anyone on Venmo, so long as you send them as little as one cent. Or, perhaps other companies figured it out much earlier and decided…

Tech News Angela Chen

Report: Police, Not ‘Technical Glitch’ to Blame for Removal of Philando Castile Video from Facebook

Though Facebook blamed the removal of a video showing the shooting of Philando Castile on a “technical glitch,” a new report suggests the “glitch” may have been deliberate police intervention. On Wednesday, Diamond Reynolds posted live footage of the shooting of the 32-year-old Castile, her boyfriend, to Facebook, where it quickly went viral before disappearing.…

Social Media Angela Chen

This Building Looks Different Every Hour

This is the “Kiefer Technic Showroom” in Austria and the changing panels are meant to help the people inside regulate the internal temperature. Given China’s “weird architecture” ban, it’s good to see there are still weird buildings around the world.

Tech News Angela Chen

New Data Analysis Suggests Only Six Book Plots Exist

Everyone who secretly thought that all novels have the same plot can feel vindicated by new research supporting that suspicion. Sort of. Researchers from the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont in Burlington used sentiment analysis—or analysis of emotion in a string of words—to map the plot of over 1,700 works of fiction.…

Books & Comics Angela Chen

Churches Offer Free Wi-Fi to Lure Back Young People

It’s been over a quarter-century since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but God has not returned to east Germany. Protestant churches, getting worried about the declining popularity of Christianity, have come up with a plan. Spiritual advising couldn’t bring people back, but maybe free Wi-Fi will. In honor of the 500th anniversary of Martin…

Tech News Angela Chen

Guy Spends Four Years, $50K Building Giant Computer to Play Tetris

We’ve all got hobbies that we probably spend too much time and money on. But only one of us has spent four years and $53,000 building a giant computer that can play Tetris. James Newman’s “Megaprocessor” is 33 feet wide, 6 feet high, and weighs half a ton. It’s really, really big. It has 10,000…

Tech News Angela Chen

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Can Recognize Cyclist Hand Signals

Last month, Google focused on teaching its self-driving cars to honk appropriately. Now, it’s taking safety into its own hands and learning how to deal with all those cyclists on the road. According to Google’s latest self-driving car report, the autonomous cars can now detect a cyclist’s hand signals, and use machine learning to remember…

Tech News Angela Chen

Now Scientists Are Teaching a Robot to Hunt Prey

Some scientists are hard at work making a “kill switch” to overpower a too-strong AI and protect us, if needed. Others are specifically teaching robots how to hunt prey, also to help us. What a world. Researchers at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Neuroinformatics are teaching a small, truck-shaped robot to see, track, and…

Artificial Intelligence Angela Chen

Snapchat Is About to Be Overrun With Olds

First they came for Facebook and Facebook became a graveyard of baby photos. Now the olds are coming for Snapchat and we’re about to see how long it’ll take before it, too, becomes majorly uncool. The Wall Street Journal reports that 14 percent of US smartphone users over the geriatric age of 35 are on…

Tech News Angela Chen

Scientist Wants to Engineer Locusts Into Remote-Controlled Bomb Detectors

Locusts contain multitudes. Though traditionally associated with Biblical plagues that destroy crops, it turns out they could have a second career as remote-controlled cyborgs that sniff out explosives. This possibility is only slightly less terrifying. Most animals have a better sense of smell than human, and dogs (and sometimes rats) have long been used to…

Tech News Angela Chen

Google’s Neural Network Is Now Being Used to Fight Blindness

DeepMind made a name for itself by building a computer that beat the world champion at Go (and freaked everyone out) but now it’s moving on to a project more likely to help the common man: diagnosing blindness. DeepMind has teamed up to work with the National Health Service, England’s publicly funded healthcare system, to…

Health Angela Chen

Watch This Video of Microorganisms in a Pac-Man Maze

Scientists at the University of Southeast Norway have released microorganisms into a Pac-Man-style maze made out of fluid to observe how the single-celled euglena (in this case, Pac-Man) avoid their predators, the multi-celled rotifers. In addition to looking cool, these “micromazes” make it easier to view and study microorganisms, which are usually bunched together in…

Tech News Angela Chen

Israeli Minister Calls Facebook a “Monster”

Israel’s minister for public security Gilad Erdan has called Facebook a “monster” for “sabotaging” police investigations and called on Israelis to “flood” Mark Zuckerberg and make him change the site’s policy. In a television interview, Erdan said that the recent increase in street attacks by Palestinians was encouraged on Facebook, and the company has not…

Social Media Angela Chen

Redditor Made Working Pokemon Game Inside Minecraft

In a deliciously meta update, Redditor Requag built a working version of Pokemon Fire Red for Gameboy Advance within the world of Minecraft. It’s not fully functional, but it’s still pretty cool. [Reddit via Engadget]

Tech News Angela Chen

China Finished Building Its Alien-Hunting Telescope

Good ol’ ‘Murica may be ahead of China in development, GDP, and political clout, but China just finished building the world’s largest radio telescope and is now better-equipped at searching for aliens. According to Xinhua, about 300 “builders, experts, science fiction enthusiasts and reporters” watched the installation of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST,…

Space & Spaceflight Angela Chen

Plants Can Make Some Decisions Better Than Humans

Plants, they’re just like us. Or at least enough like us that they can still judge risk and make good decisions even though they happen to have a few handicaps that we don’t. We’ve long known that plants are smarter than we think. After all, they probably have memories, even though they don’t have neurons.…

Tech News Angela Chen

Angela Chen

Uber Makes Riders Take a Moment of Silence for Gun Violence

Facebook Will Keep Violent Videos If they ‘Raise Awareness’

Snapchat Sued For Showing Kids Sexually Explicit Content Against Their Will

Spotify Wants You to Discover Music From People’s Out-Of-Office Emails

Charity Finally Discovers Venmo Loophole That Lets Everyone Spam Us

Report: Police, Not ‘Technical Glitch’ to Blame for Removal of Philando Castile Video from Facebook

This Building Looks Different Every Hour

New Data Analysis Suggests Only Six Book Plots Exist

Churches Offer Free Wi-Fi to Lure Back Young People

Guy Spends Four Years, $50K Building Giant Computer to Play Tetris

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Can Recognize Cyclist Hand Signals

Now Scientists Are Teaching a Robot to Hunt Prey

Snapchat Is About to Be Overrun With Olds

Scientist Wants to Engineer Locusts Into Remote-Controlled Bomb Detectors

Google’s Neural Network Is Now Being Used to Fight Blindness

Watch This Video of Microorganisms in a Pac-Man Maze

Israeli Minister Calls Facebook a “Monster”

Redditor Made Working Pokemon Game Inside Minecraft

China Finished Building Its Alien-Hunting Telescope

Plants Can Make Some Decisions Better Than Humans

Roku’s 2025 Streaming Stick HD Is 40% Off to Compete With Amazon Fire TV Stick During Spring Sale

Epstein Victims Sue Google, Claim AI Mode Exposed Personal Information

‘Wicked Spot’ Is a Fun, Sapphic Rom-Com That Yeets a Witch Into the Magical World of Influencer Culture

Anthropic and OpenAI Just Gave Us a Glimpse Into the Future of Model Pricing

Amazon Slashes 63% Off Acer Aspire Desktop for a Limited-Time Spring Sale, With Keyboard and Mouse Included

Smart Glasses Now Have One of the Vision Pro’s Best Features

Marvel Just Put ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2 in a Very Weird Place in the MCU Timeline

Trump Drops $1B to Kill 2 Wind Farms, Then Watches a Bigger One Go Online

Scientists Found a Weird New Way to Wash Fruits and Vegetables

White House’s Mysterious ‘Covfefe Moment’ Was Stupider Than We Imagined

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

Apple Studio Display XDR Review: It Looks So Good, I Wish It Were an iMac

RayNeo Air 4 Pro Review: My Eyes Love These Video Glasses, but My Nose Disagrees