Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Yesterday, Peloton got a nasty surprise in the form of a $150 million lawsuit from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). The suit alleges that for years, the high-end fitness tech company has neglected to pay royalties to songwriters behind more than 1,000 songs for the music heavily featured in its classes. The suit, filed…
At Gizmodo, there are few things more rewarding than eating your own words. So here I am. It’s been six months since I reviewed the apparently boring new Google Chromecast, a gadget I said “falls short” and called “a bummer.” Now Google has effectively turned the Chromecast into the video game console of the future.…
The second generation of AirPods just appeared in the Apple Store, and they sure look a lot like the first generation, save for some key upgrades. The new $160 AirPods have a new H1 chip made by Apple specifically for wireless headphones that’s supposed to give you more talk time, better connectivity, and the ability…
European regulators fined Google €1.49 billion (or $1.7 billion) on Wednesday for abusing its dominance in the online advertising business by imposing restrictive and anticompetitive contracts on its European customers. As American politicians continue to debate and weigh different regulatory and antitrust approaches to Silicon Valley’s titan tech companies, Europe’s regulators are setting a global…
Federal prosecutors have charged an 80-year-old California man named John Pierre Dupont with bilking donors out of more than $250,000 by setting up fake websites and political action committees (PACs) falsely purporting to raise money for Texas politician Beto O’Rourke, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Tallahassee, Florida mayor Andrew Gillum, and other progressive causes, NBC…
Tim Armstrong, onetime Google executive and former CEO of AOL and its successor, Verizon’s troubled, digital media-focused Oath group, departed Verizon in 2018 just months before the corporation took a $4.5 billion accounting charge on Oath. According to a Tuesday report in the Wall Street Journal, he’s walking away with a staggering $60 million-plus payout.…
Russian cybersecurity firm Kapersky Labs has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in Russia, claiming that latter firm used its monopoly over the App Store to force the company to remove app control and Safari browser blocking from the iOS version of its Kapersky Safe Kids app, ZDnet reported on Tuesday. Kapersky wrote in a…
Today was the big coming out party for Stadia, Google’s upcoming game streaming platform that promises to let you play games over the internet on practically any device, and hopefully lag-free. However, despite shedding light on how it works and what kind of server infrastructure Google is using, there were a couple of key details…
The FCC’s public comment system is a bloody mess. Over the past two years, it’s become apparent that political lobbyists, usually acting on behalf of the telecom industry itself, are prepared to manipulate the agency’s rulemaking process and impersonate everyday Americans just to create the illusion of public support where, in reality, none exists. Last…
Why did it take a lawsuit, multiple investigations, and three years of promises for Facebook to change its ways? After an 18-month court battle and years of fierce criticism, Facebook says it will stop allowing housing, jobs, and credit advertisers to show ads to only users of specific races, genders, or age groups, the company…
Scientists with the New Horizons mission gathered together in Texas yesterday to discuss the latest findings about MU69. This distant Kuiper Belt object—which bears a striking resemblance to a flattened snowman—is turning out to be even weirder than we imagined. After NASA’s New Horizons zipped past Pluto on July 14, 2015, mission planners sent the…
Employees at Kickstarter, the decade-old crowdfunding platform, are planning to unionize—potentially making them the first organized labor force among major tech firms. The move comes less than a week after Gimlet Media—the podcasting company soon to be acquired by tech giant Spotify—announced its own plans to unionize with the Writers Guild of America East. It…
Apple just announced that its iMac lineup will get a meaningful update thanks to 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processors and a Vega graphics option. This is a big deal for iMac power users, but for me, an almost iMac power user, I’m feeling sheepish. Is Apple just going to keep stuffing new chips into its…
Last year, an English child protection worker was assigned a case where a mother was deemed a high risk to her baby’s safety. It’s the worker’s job to protect the child and, if necessary, separate the mother from her kid. To do that, the worker hunts for information: What is the mother doing with her…
30 years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee penned his original proposal for what would become the World Wide Web. At the time, he was working at CERN, the high-energy physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland best known these days for operating the Large Hadron Collider. In many histories of the web, this fact is treated as…
So, Google’s Stadia game streaming service is here. Along with it comes the all-new Stadia-specific controllers. And on that nifty controller is a button that allows you to launch Google Assistant. What? “Pressing this button allows players to immediately access the controller’s built-in microphone so they can get help from the Assistant for special in-game…
Today, Google announced its new Stadia game streaming platform that lets gamers play games on pretty much anything with an internet connection. Laptops, desktops, phones, and even TV’s with a Chromecast Ultra attached are all supported. That means there’s no need to go out and buy a new console to get access to Stadia, but…
For years now, scientists have sounded the alarm about a potential nightmare for astronauts on the International Space Station: antibiotic-resistant superbugs that could be even more dangerous in space than they are on Earth. This week, research say they’ve found a way to better prevent such hardy bacteria from growing on surfaces of the ISS.…
Google is taking on the big guys. In a keynote at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today Google announced a new service, Stadia, that will allow gamers to play the biggest games on any Android or Chrome-based device (including any device with a Chrome browser). It could be extraordinary. I mean…the name isn’t. The…
There’s no perfect way to manage massive quantities of emails, but everybody has their preferences. Some people are Gmail purists, who might be sad to know that the Google’s free supercharged email management app Inbox will stop working on April 2. Others are Outlook devotees, who probably get the app free through work. Me, I’m…
