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Airbnb just reversed a decision to remove home rentals of properties of Israeli settlements in the disputed West Bank region. It says all profits will go to charity. The move comes five months after the Silicon Valley startup originally declared it would remove 200 listings of West Bank settlement homes “at the core of the…
There are few things as assuredly miserable as filing taxes, in part because filing taxes is unnecessarily complicated and also because the Internal Revenue Service’s customer service, you know, sucks. This week, the House passed a bill to revamp the IRS and drag it into the modern era after the House Ways and Means Committee…
We live in the glorious future that technophiles have long dreamed of. Almost everything can now connect to the internet: cameras, coffee pots, televisions, vacuums, toilets, children’s toys, sex toys. If you build it, a wireless connection will come for it. These smart devices are always on, always connected, and often up to more than…
Two-thirds of hotel websites leak guests’ booking information, according to a new security report. Last November, Marriott International revealed it had experienced one of the biggest breaches in history, exposing data from 500 million guest records. But a study from the cybersecurity firm Symantec released on Thursday shows it’s not just Marriott guests that need…
When his son asked for a Harry Potter themed birthday, Adam Thole decided to borrow an idea from Universal Studios’ The Wizarding World of Harry Potter which lets visitors cast spells using interactive wands. The results are quite possibly the most magical smart home upgrade you’ve ever seen, and one that’s not terribly difficult to…
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives made good on a campaign promise on Wednesday by passing legislation that would effectively reinstate, in its entirety, the 2015 Open Internet Order—rules that, for a brief time, ensured that net neutrality was the law of the land. The bill passed in a 232-190 vote, with only one…
The U.S. Department of Defense under Patrick M. Shanahan has quietly pulled funding for an independent organization called the Jason Group under the Pentagon’s latest budget proposal. And it’s just one more way that the Trump regime is chipping away at independent scientific voices in the U.S. government. The Jasons, as they’re sometimes called, are…
On Tuesday afternoon, police in Oregon received a 911 call claiming someone had locked themselves in the bathroom, according to a Facebook post from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. According to the law enforcement department, several police officers responded to the call, surrounded the house, commanded the suspect to come out, and drew their guns.…
Some of the fastest storage tech around is soon going to be available to people buying just any old laptop. Intel’s Optane technology, based on 3D Xpoint is really fast, but unless you’re building your own computer or manage a server farm it’s been out of reach. Which is a shame because Optane offers blazing…
At long last, Sony announced it will let you change your online ID on PSN beginning on Wednesday. That said, before you rush to your PlayStation 4 to change that embarrassing handle you’ve had since middle school, there are just a few teensy weensy caveats to keep in mind. While Sony says you can change…
Amazon’s cashless convenience stores may be undergoing a significant conceptual overhaul. Specifically, an Amazon spokesperson told Gizmodo, “We are working to accept cash at Amazon Go.” The first Amazon Go location—which allows shoppers to grab snacks, premade meals, and other assorted sundries without interacting with a cashier—opened just over a year ago, and the brand…
Today, scientists revealed the first-ever image of a black hole at a press conference in Washington, D.C. This is a huge deal, as Harvard & Smithsonian astrophysicist Center for Astrophysics physicist Grant Tremblay told Gizmodo’s Ryan Mandelbaum, “The image marks the start of a new epoch.” https://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-first-photo-of-a-black-hole-1833923659 But here’s my question for science: Isn’t this…
For every device that a company reveals and releases, there are probably 10 that never escape the R&D lab. Sonny Dickson, who has a solid track record of leaking things Apple doesn’t want the world to see, managed to get his hands on a working prototype of the Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone (or WALT, for…
Senators Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) have introduced legislation to ban so-called “dark patterns” tactics designed to trick users into handing over access to their data, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Dark patterns, a term first popularized by the website darkpatterns.org, describe everything from UI elements to technical tricks designed to lure users into…
Well, folks, it appears the inevitable choose-your-own-adventure-style YouTube programming may soon be coming to a channel near you. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that YouTube will designate a new team to the interactive programming. This is, as you might have guessed, a money-making initiative that Bloomberg said is intended to boost views and ad revenue for the…
Tomorrow the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to better examine the state of broadband maps in the U.S. These maps currently suggest just 25 million Americans are without access to broadband internet, which is defined as speeds of 25Mbps. But according to numbers released by Microsoft today, 162.8 million people don’t use broadband…
Amazon’s online book store is plagued with thousands of auto-generated ebooks crudely hacked together from other texts by shady authors” looking to make a quick buck. Most are unreadable, but it’s not always going to be that way. Springer Nature, a publisher serving the research community, just published its first book that was generated by…
Dropbox has finally delivered on a long-awaited partnership with G Suite for native editing tools, and it definitely seems like it was worth the wait. Dropbox Group Product Manager Josh Kaplan said in a blog post on Tuesday that the open beta—for now available only to Dropbox Business teams—allows a whole host of functions, including…
Recently, you may have seen news stories claiming that tourists could “face the death penalty” for taking selfies on a certain beach in Thailand—which we can all agree is a little bit extreme. Thankfully, those claims are totally fake. This week, a flurry of fear-mongering reports came out warning that taking a photo on Mai Khao…
Apple needs China. But it comes at a cost. More than just the place where much of the company’s hardware is built, China is the biggest market in the world, and it’s the third-largest market for Apple. While other big American tech firms have limited their operations in China at least in part to avoid…
