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Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have suggested that the pilots of two flights in Ethiopia and Indonesia didn’t follow proper procedures before their 737 Max 8 planes crashed in recent months. However, new reports indicate that the pilots in Ethiopia tried to do the right thing and override the plane’s automation but crashed…
Facebook has been prompting some users registering for the first time to hand over the passwords to their email accounts, the Daily Beast reported on Tuesday—a practice that blares right past questionable and into “beyond sketchy” territory, security consultant Jake Williams told the Beast. A Twitter account using the handle @originalesushi first posted an image…
A neat tool for Twitter got some renewed attention this week, reigniting conversation around the problem of subconscious gender bias and the proclivity of men to follow other men on social media. It is, essentially, one way to help diversify your feed to make it less of an echo chamber and something more like what…
In another example of the increasingly strange stories coming out of Mar-a-Lago, a Chinese woman was arrested at President Trump’s flagship Florida resort after she was discovered to be carrying a laptop, two Chinese passports, four phones, and a USB thumb drive loaded with what officials describe as “malicious malware.” First reported by WPTV, the…
The first thing you notice about rich people in Silicon Valley is the vest. What in god’s name is going on with all these vests? Every city that fancies itself a seat of power has its own brand of fashion that says, look at me, I overpay for everything except taxes. In Washington, it’s an…
Google’s TVC—short for Temps, Vendors, and Contractors—took home a victory today in the form of an increased minimum wage and some basic benefits. Hooray! Unfortunately, the TVCs currently working at Google probably won’t be around to see any of them. As The Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong reported this morning, Google abruptly laid off 30+ members…
STATEN ISLAND, NY— Organized labor took their fight to Amazon’s doorstep this afternoon, where a crowd of around 100 union members and community organizers gathered in Matrix Global Logistics Park, the site of fulfillment center JFK8 and former place of employment for Justin Rashad Long. The heavily roboticized Staten Island fulfillment center has been a…
One of the most-pirated TV shows could also be the most likely to give unauthorized downloaders a nasty case of malware. On Monday security firm Kaspersky released a new report on scammers’ use of popular TV shows to spread malware. The report shows the top pirated shows’ likelihood of infecting computers. Kaspersky’s results show that…
Facing criticism over the videos it recommends to users, YouTube seems to have a new favorite talking point, one that might surprise anyone who has spent time online: Extreme content, the company claims, just doesn’t do that well on the site. The strange assertion came up on Tuesday, when Bloomberg published an investigation alleging that…
If previous years are any indication, we’re still at least four months away from a new crop of iPhones. But that hasn’t stopped leakers and insiders from dropping clues about some of the new features Apple is allegedly working on, which so far, seem to consist of features that the iPhone’s biggest competitors already have.…
Shortly into the launch of the first scooter pilot program in the state of Massachusetts, one woman reportedly met the street in an accident that resulted in an ambulance ride and multiple stitches. According to WBUR, the incident occurred roughly 15 minutes into an event kicking off Brookline’s pilot program, which is bringing roughly 200…
On Tuesday, more than 900 Google workers signed a letter urging the company to respect its contracted labor. As tech workers continue to call out unfair labor practices in the industry, they’re forming a coalition with contractors to acknowledge the rights of about half of Google’s workforce. The letter comes at a time when contractors…
The Apple Watch might have taken a big bite out of The Swatch Group’s market share, which owns luxury timepiece brands like Tissot and Omega. But the Switzerland-based company recently countered with a small victory over Apple when a Swiss court ruled in Swatch’s favor over the use of its “Tick different” slogan; which is…
Have you seen that viral video of an Amazon blimp that deploys delivery drones? Twitter users are calling it “borderline dystopian” and “what the last human alive will see.” In reality, the blimp is totally fake, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. There’s still reason to be unnerved by what you’re seeing. The…
Toshiba laptops seemed to have disappeared from American retailers in recent years, but they’re finally coming back with a new name. From here on out Toshiba’s America computer business will be called Dynabook, and it’s going to be launching a shit ton of laptops. But where the hell has Toshiba been? In 2015 a $1.2…
Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, jumped to a four-month high overnight, briefly breaching $5,000 on the Bitstamp exchange. Bitcoin is up roughly 15% on the day and traders are excited because it really seems like nobody learned their lesson during the last cryptocurrency bubble. As CNBC notes, “The reason for the sudden…
So-called “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli earned the eternal ire of the public when he was the CEO of a company called Turing Pharmaceuticals, which he had buy up the rights to and jack up the price of life-saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill. He then landed himself a seven-year prison sentence in…
Boeing’s 737 Max line of jets won’t be flying passengers again for at least a few weeks as the company continues working on software and hardware updates deemed necessary after two air disasters, CNN reported on Monday, citing an updated timeline issued by the Federal Aviation Administration. Countries the world over grounded 737 Max jets…
Thousands of people have written to the Federal Communications Commission to lambast the agency over its controversial decision to give wireless carriers far more power over text messages sent to large groups. Essentially, the FCC’s decision gives your carrier the ability to block or charge senders more for certain messages. As Gizmodo previously explained following…
In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook’s potential to be a subversive political tool has been all too clear. And several years later, the social network still struggles to deal with the very real dangers its platform creates for political systems. As the social network cracks down on its core product, new…
