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One warehouse associate at JFK8—Amazon’s massive fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York—has died of the novel coronavirus, in what is at least the third such death among the company’s ranks. JFK8 has one of the most visible facilities in the network of late, when workers walked off the job at the end of March,…
When I first saw an image of the Asian giant hornet, now famously referred to as the “Murder Hornet,” my first thought was “I’d probably eat that.” My second thought was, “wait, I probably have.” Asian giant hornets are exactly what they sound like: big hornets that are native to East, South, and Southeast Asia.…
Federal lawmakers say that in response to the pandemic, the FBI and other executive agencies may have placed unnecessary restrictions on Americans’ ability to file public records requests. They are now asking the Justice Department to explain what steps are being taken to ensure the law is being followed, to the extent it’s possible, amid…
Adam Neumann, the controversial co-founder and former chief executive of spectacular startup failure WeWork, is suing Softbank over that failed multibillion-dollar bailout deal and claims that the company breached the terms of their agreement in doing so. The suit, which was filed this week in Delaware’s Chancery Court, argues that Softbank broke the terms of…
If you have a domain through GoDaddy, you might want to take a minute to reset your password and PIN and enable two-factor authentication if you haven’t already. The domain registrar and web hosting company has been hacked, says Threat Post. According to the California Attorney General, GoDaddy submitted the breach report on May 3—just…
Maybe one of the greatest ironies of Google’s Nest security cameras—and the Nest line of products in general—is just how dang insecure they are. In the past, we’ve seen these devices hijacked to spout North Korean propaganda, spy on sleeping toddlers, and harass families in their homes—leading the company to start beefing up Nest’s internal…
In March, the spread of covid-19 forced Apple to convert WWDC 2020 into an online-only event. But back then, Apple never set a date for its annual developers conference. Well now we know: WWDC 20 starts on June 22. In a press release issued today, Apple announced that its 31st Worldwide Developers Conference will be…
Other than motion sickness, the uncomfortable bulkiness of VR headsets has always stopped me from dropping hundreds of dollars on one. If only they were more like Geordi LaForge’s visor. That’s some fashionable VR design I could get behind. But it seems like Facebook’s Oculus division is trying to change that, according to Bloomberg. Nothing…
The dubiously legal work model Uber and Lyft take advantage of has been under fire for years, but in the U.S., the epicenter of that fight has been California. Now, with the pandemic as a catalyst, that long-simmering battle has apparently spilled over in a lawsuit filed today by the state’s Attorney General, alleging widespread…
We’ve seen phones with punch-hole selfie cams, pop-up selfie cams, and even 360-degree rotating cameras. But now, new leaks suggest that Lenovo’s upcoming gaming phone might get the wildest front-facing cam of them all thanks to a side-mounted motorized selfie shooter. The latest info about Lenovo’s upcoming gaming phone comes from XDA-Developers, who recently received…
It’s absolutely primitive by today’s standards, but when Pong arrived in 1972, it was a technological marvel. So how did Tomy create a handheld knock-off of the game in 1977 when the electronics needed to miniaturize it didn’t exist yet? It created this mechanical alternative that might be one of the most bizarre portable gaming…
It’s in the new iPad Pro tablets, it’s rumored to be coming to the iPhone 12, and a form of it has been appearing in Android phones for the last few years. What exactly is LiDAR, and why would you want it in a mobile device? Here we’ll take you through what the tech does,…
Hong Kong’s government announced a plan to give every family at least 10 free face masks as it prepares to reopen large parts of society later this week. The region of 7 million people has experienced 14 full days without any community transmission of the new coronavirus, setting the stage for local politicians to roll…
Even in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, rollerblading isn’t very cool. See, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking out my window (as one tends to do during The Quarantine), watching as the occasional jogger or delivery person with a pizza strapped to the back of their bike rides by. This got me…
Apple and Google aren’t developing coronavirus-tracking apps, but on Monday they shared examples of what those apps could look like. Most notably, the tech giants detailed what the public health authorities who can use their contact-tracing APIs to create those apps can’t do: namely, they can’t track your location and they can’t use your data…
You may remember the great Donkey Kong controversy of 2018, which stripped divisive arcade gamer Billy Mitchell of a years-long reign as Donkey King, of Guinness World records, and of his name from the leaderboards. Now, as Ars Technica first reported, Mitchell has filed a defamation suit against the gaming organization Twin Galaxies, the highest…
In the spring of 2015, Apple made one of the most significant changes to its laptop line ever when it switched from scissor switch keyboards to its homegrown butterfly keyboard. But now, after five years, the butterfly keyboard is finally going away for good. In a press release issued today, alongside an updated MacBook Pro…
The tracking fobs used by bounty hunters in The Mandalorian to find their targets make the dangerous profession seem kind of easy. So the engineers at design studio MVRK wondered if the mythical technology could be recreated using Earth technology to make finding a missing smartphone just as painless. It turns out it can, and…
Mozilla is currently testing a feature that can generate an email alias with just a single click to help protect users from hackers as well as keep their actual email address off those dreaded spam lists. Gizmodo confirmed that the feature, called Private Relay, is currently in an experimental phase. According to a landing page…
One of Amazon’s top cloud engineers has left his $1 million dollar-per-year job in protest over the company’s handling of worker concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a blog post, he cited Amazon’s “chickenshit” response to employee protests of the company’s less-than-ideal conditions for the tens of thousands of workers on warehouse floors. Tim Bray,…
