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In December of last year, Rolling Stone reported that at a Taylor Swift concert at the 2018 Rose Bowl, there was a mysterious kiosk playing clips of the singer that doubled as a facial recognition system to flag any of Swift’s stalkers. A number of reports covered the alleged kiosk—including Gizmodo—but little was known at…
Between read-it-later services, social media feeds, and the unbelievable speed at which a Google search can find the exact information you’re looking for, browser bookmarks have become a forgotten a relic of a previous internet age. But the basic bookmarking tools built into your browser can still be hugely useful in the modern web era,…
Today, the grocery delivery battle is being waged between companies like Amazon, Walmart, Target, FreshDirect, and Instacart. But there once was a time when the most futuristic thing in food shopping was the car. Specifically, drive-in shopping like these stores from the 1920s. The car was invented in the 1890s, but it wasn’t until the…
Facebook is considering ways it could prevent the spread of dangerous anti-vaccination content on the platform. Last month, the World Health Organization included “vaccine hesitancy” on its annual list of health threats—alongside Ebola, HIV, and climate change. Less than a month later, anti-vaccination activists in Washington state rallied against vaccinations at the capital as a…
Researchers at the non-profit AI research group OpenAI just wanted to train their new text generation software to predict the next word in a sentence. It blew away all of their expectations and was so good at mimicking writing by humans they’ve decided to pump the brakes on the research while they explore the damage…
How do you build the next $1 billion unicorn start-up in the hacking industry? One group of spy technology entrepreneurs says it’s found the answer. Centered in the Middle East and with connections around the world, a largely hidden multibillion-dollar economy focuses on one specific task: Hacking into iPhones, breaking wifi security, as well as…
The Samsung leaks keep coming. This time around, an update to Samsung’s wearable app has revealed its entire lineup of wearables that will probably be announced along with its upcoming Galaxy S10. The update was originally spotted last night by the @SamCentralTech Twitter. Some of the leaked wearables aren’t exactly a surprise. The smartwatch was…
When Samsung released the Galaxy Tab S4, I liked its blend of sleek design, long battery life, and Android-based OS supported by Samsung’s Dex desktop software. But its steep price and outdated specs made it impossible to love. That might change with the new Galaxy Tab S5e. Samsung streamlined its flagship tablet to create a…
Dubai International Airport (DXB) was shut down and all flights were grounded for roughly 30 minutes this morning after a drone was spotted in the area, Dubai Media Office reported on Twitter. It was the latest airport shut down in what’s becoming a troubling pattern of drone sightings around the globe. “Dubai Airports confirms that…
Even Twitter knows there is something fundamentally broken about its platform. But what if users could just, uh, clarify their bad tweets? This was an idea evidently presented by Twitter CEO and witness to goat slaughter Jack Dorsey while speaking at a Goldman Sachs event in San Francisco on Thursday. According to Recode, Dorsey said…
Facebook wields unparalleled power when it comes to the amount of data it collects on its billions of users—this we know. But thanks to all that information it hoovers up across its various services, the company is also able to use said data to track individuals it deems as posing a threat to the company…
For two years, the European Union has been mulling over a serious overhaul of its copyright laws. But last year, it became increasingly clear that key provisions in the looming copyright directive pose a serious threat to the free exchange of information online, the culture of fair use, and the ability of startups to compete.…
Facebook is in active negotiations to resolve the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into the company’s privacy failures, according to a new Washington Post report, talks that could result in a multi-billion dollar fine or a heavyweight court battle. The report didn’t include an exact figure and said that landing on an amount is the focus…
A spending bill expected to pass the House and Senate on Thursday, and then be signed by President Trump before this weekend to avert another disastrous government shutdown, contains at least $100 million earmarked for the development of surveillance technologies such as unmanned aerial drones and facial recognition systems, according to a summary of the…
California Governor Gavin Newsom has asked his aides to create a “digital dividends” proposal for a plan that would allow consumers in the state to get a portion of the money that tech companies make from using their personal data. The new governor announced his intentions in his State of the State delivered on Tuesday:…
It’s imminent. Multiple outlets now report that Apple will announce new video streaming and news subscription services at a celebrity-studded event in Cupertino on March 25. BuzzFeed News cited anonymous sources who said the event would take place at Steve Jobs Theater and focus on the news service. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman corroborated that report and…
In 2015, Ontario high school teacher Ryan Jarvis was caught secretly recording the chests of female students with a spy pen. But Jarvis was acquitted after the Ontario Court of Appeal reasoned that the students didn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy at the public school. Today, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against this…
Tepco, the state-owned operator of the badly damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, has conducted an important test in which a remote-controlled probe managed to grasp several small grains of radioactive debris, AFP reports. The successful operation marked an important achievement for the company as it prepares for a cleanup operation that could take decades. In March…
Coffee Meets Bagel—the worst-named dating app in an extremely competitive field—spent Valentine’s Day performing one of the more intimate acts a company can engage in: informing its users of a data breach. “We recently discovered that some data from your Coffee Meets Bagel account may have been acquired by an unauthorized party,” the email, which…
Walmart has published a wide-ranging report on how the company predicts automation will unfold across the nation. Based on data supplied by the McKinsey Global Institute, the report “examines more than 3,000 counties in the United States with the goal of helping communities plan for their individual situations and develop responses that will position them…
