Tom McKay

Google Yanks Seven Stalkerware Apps Discovered by Security Researchers From the Play Store

Google has yanked several apps from its Play Store after cybersecurity firm Avast identified them as “all likely designed by a Russian developer to allow people to stalk employees, romantic partners, or kids,” CNET reported on Wednesday. The seven apps—listed as Track Employees Check Work Phone Online Spy Free, Spy Kids Tracker, Phone Cell Tracker,…

Report: Amazon Facing Antitrust Probe in the EU Over Its Use of Marketplace Merchant Data

The European Union is planning an antitrust investigation into e-commerce giant Amazon over its treatment of third-party merchants that rely on the company’s marketplace to sell goods, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. According to the Journal, the EU investigation follows a settlement between Amazon and authorities in Germany on third-party merchants that resulted…

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Says It’s Created Brain-Reading ‘Threads,’ Surgical Robot That Inserts Them

On Tuesday evening in San Francisco, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally shed some light on what Neuralink, his company that has raised $158 million to develop “ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers,” has been up to since its launch in 2017. In the livestreamed announcement, Musk expressed his long-held…

Google Exec Tells Senate That Project Dragonfly Has Been “Terminated”

On Tuesday, Google vice president of public policy Karan Bhatia told members of the Senate Judiciary that the company’s Project Dragonfly—a search engine for the Chinese market that was widely reported to involve huge concessions to state censors and protested by its own staff—has been “terminated” and employees working on it have been reassigned, per…

How to Infiltrate Area 51 Like a Pro

Amid renewed interest in UFOs following a series of articles detailing strange sightings by U.S. military pilots—and recognitions of those concerns by the Navy—over 1.2 million have signed up for a “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” Facebook event slated for Sept. 20, 2019. Attendees are asked to breach security at the…

Judge Slashes Payout in Roundup Lawsuit, But Calls Monsanto’s Conduct ‘Reprehensible’

A federal judge in one of the lawsuits between pharmaceutical giant AG Bayer, which bought agrochemical giant Monsanto in 2018, and plaintiffs who claim its Roundup herbicide caused their cancer has slashed an $80 million payout, Reuters reported on Monday. According to Reuters, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco found that while evidence…

Italian Police Seize Air-to-Air Missile, Dozens of Firearms in Raids on Neo-Nazis

The Italian General Investigations and Special Operations Division (DIGOS) seized an arsenal of weaponry ranging from bolt-action rifles and automatic weapons to a “combat-ready” air-to-air missile from a neo-Nazi group in a series of raids supported by police in Milan, Varese, Forli and Novara, the BBC reported on Monday. In a statement to the BBC,…

Yes, Richard Spencer is now temporarily in charge of the Pentagon. No, not that Richard Spencer, though you could be forgiven for being momentarily confused given how things are going. Per Chris Geidner, the acting SecDef is Wall Street banker Richard Spencer, “not the white supremacist neo-Nazi who got punched on Inauguration Day.”

Poker Bots, Earthquake Scars, and What to See at SDCC 2019: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

2019 Comic-Con International: San Diego is coming this week, which means our team will be on the ground, providing you with on-the-scene coverage of pop culture and fandom as well as hoping our fellow attendees please, please exercise some acceptable minimum degree of basic thoughtfulness. But in the meantime, our reporters and editors have been…

French Inventor Totes Rifle While Flying Turbine-Powered Flyboard at Bastille Day Celebrations

European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron were treated to a demonstration of the Flyboard Air, a sort of gas turbine-powered jetpack/hoverboard/flying platform originally invented by jetski champ Franky Zapata, during Bastille Day festivities in Paris on Sunday. Zapata carried what certainly appeared to be an unloaded rifle (or a replica of such) as he…

Now-Tropical Depression Barry Mostly Spares New Orleans, But Flood Risk Remains High

Tropical Depression Barry has been downgraded to its current status after smashing into Louisiana as the first hurricane of the season on Saturday, and it mostly spared the city of New Orleans from a potentially devastating direct hit. But torrential downpour has put 11 million people at risk of “epic flooding” as it crawls across…

Huawei, Still on Commerce Department Blacklist, Reportedly Planning U.S. Layoffs

Chinese tech firm Huawei is planning on laying off hundreds of U.S. workers after landing on a Commerce Department blacklist that has savaged its ability to do business stateside, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The layoffs are expected to hit Futurewei Technologies, a Huawei research and development unit with divisions in California, Texas,…

Huge Power Outage Hits NYC on Anniversary of Infamous 1977 Blackout

Saturday is the 42nd anniversary of the July 13-14, 1977 New York City blackout, which took out power to most of the city, resulted in widespread civil disturbances and looting, and helped usher in an era of noxious “tough on crime” politics. Another blackout struck NYC today, though this one appears to be restricted to…

Army to Test New Helluva Way to Die: Robotic Combat Vehicles

The U.S. Army—which has already been testing robotic squad vehicles like the Multi-Utility Tactical Transport (MUTT) and semi-autonomous targeting systems like the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS)—says it will conduct live-fire testing of a new Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) built on M113 armored personnel carrier chassis next year. As first flagged by the…

Report: Election Systems Across Country Still Rely on Windows 7, Which Loses Free Support Next Year

Amid growing concern about the vulnerability of the U.S. election system to hackers, Pennsylvania told election officials they had to upgrade their machines last year. But according to a Saturday report in the Associated Press, though some 60 percent of those systems have been upgraded—at a cost of $14.15 million—many of them are reliant on…

Anti-Vaxxers Fail to Block New York Law Eliminating Religious Exemptions to Vaccine Requirements

A New York State Supreme Court Justice on Friday rejected a suit brought by 55 families attempting to block the state’s recently passed law “eliminating exemptions to school vaccination requirements on the basis of religious beliefs,” Ars Technica reported. New York is the state hardest hit this year by outbreaks of measles, which the Centers…

NASA Abruptly Reassigns Top Human Exploration Program Officials as Trump Moon Mandate Looms

NASA’s longtime associate administrator for its human exploration program, William Gerstenmaier, has been re-assigned to be a special adviser to NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard in what seems like a fairly clear demotion, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Gerstenmaier, who has worked for NASA since 1977, had overseen “some of NASA’s most high-profile programs…

Facebook’s Libra Project Is Getting Hammered From All Sides, With Fed Chair Raising ‘Serious Concerns’

Facebook’s already-troubled Libra cryptocurrency project, which has already run into significant opposition among the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services and the Senate Banking Committee, is running headlong into further resistance from regulators. On Wednesday, Wired reported, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the House committee that he has “many serious concerns” about Facebook’s pivot…

Virgin Orbit Carries Out Its First Successful Rocket Drop Test From Modified Boeing 747

Virgin Orbit, the sister company of spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, nailed its first-ever drop test on Wednesday using a dummy LauncherOne rocket deployed from a Boeing 747 carrier named Cosmic Girl, Space.com reported. The test didn’t involve an actual rocket launch—the Boeing 747 carrier just dropped its 70-foot (21-meter) rocket some 35,000 feet (about 10,670…

YouTube Announces Some Changes to Its Infamously Awful Copyright Infringement System

The number of issues plaguing YouTube at any one time boggles the mind, and range from accusations it promotes extremist content to reports its nightmare algorithm recommended home videos of children to the pedophiles infesting its comments sections. One of the less overtly alarming but still widespread issues has been the shoddy state of its…