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The styrofoam cooler you remember your parents dragging to the beach as a kid is still kicking around a garbage dump somewhere, refusing to break down or disappear. That’s why the industry has switched to reusable products, but if you don’t want to shell out $300+ for a Yeti cooler, Igloo has created a disposable…
After a somewhat down year in 2018, between three new S10 models (including one that’s 5G-ready), its long-awaited foldable phone, and a new pair of truely wireless earbuds, rumors suggest Samsung is setting the stage for a monstrous year in 2019. And just last night, a bunch of leaks came out shedding new light on…
If the robots are indeed taking our jobs, shouldn’t we all probably be working less? A movement is picking up momentum in the United Kingdom based on that very reasonable logic. On Thursday, a proposal backed by eminent British progressives like John McDonnell, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor (the party’s chief economic spokesperson), is making the call…
You probably spend a lot of your computing time traveling across the web in your browser of choice, which means any ways of speeding up that browser time is going to add a serious boost to your productivity. Install these extensions to supercharge your browsing and get everything done on the web that little bit…
It’s official. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just announced that the U.S. will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, a landmark agreement first signed in 1987 that helped protect the world from nuclear war. “Russia has jeopardized the United States’ security interests. And we can no longer be restricted by the…
Twitter and Facebook both announced on Thursday that they’ve recently removed hundreds of accounts tied to misinformation campaigns with apparent links to Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said in a call with reporters that the companies were able to identify bad actors on their respective platforms through ongoing information-swapping,…
Google’s internal iOS apps are now borked just like Facebook’s were yesterday. That’s all thanks to Apple, which revoked Google’s enterprise certificate today after the search company broke its developer rules. A report revealed on Wednesday that Google had violated Apple’s policies by distributing a research app to users through Apple’s enterprise system, thus going…
Faced with two independent studies that found its facial recognition software returns inaccurate or biased results, Amazon has repeatedly claimed that the researchers failed to use the software, called Rekognition, in the way the company has instructed police to use it. However, the only law enforcement agency Amazon has acknowledged as a client says it…
An organization run by a former Trump campaign statewide director is being investigated by the New York attorney general’s office for its role in the submission of potentially hundreds of thousands of fraudulent comments to the Federal Communications Commission during the agency’s 2017 efforts to rollback Obama-era net neutrality rules. Research by Gizmodo reveals the…
A full quarter of all U.S. employment is highly vulnerable to automation, a new report from the Brookings Institute finds. That’s the equivalent of 36 million jobs. Meanwhile, some 36 percent of U.S. employment—52 million jobs—will “experience medium exposure to automation in coming decades.” While the remainder of U.S. jobs are likely to experience only…
For weeks, customers of a grocery store in the small town of Carstairs, Alberta, have been plagued by a mysterious something that has hindered them from driving their cars. CBC News reports that several people who have used the parking lot of the town’s Westview Co-op have reported their key fobs stopped working or their…
Week 4: Microsoft When I initially planned to block all the tech giants from my life, I hadn’t thought to include Microsoft, mostly because Microsoft is—these days, at least—rarely on the receiving end of criticism for destroying civilization as we know it. Microsoft’s days as a tech supervillain are a distant memory, dating back to…
It’s a heartbreaking photo. But it doesn’t show what you think it does. The viral photo, which shows a person sleeping on the sidewalk and covered in snow, has been making the rounds on politically conservative social media this week in an attempt at commentary on immigration. It’s been tweeted by actor James Woods, retweeted…
If there’s one thing consistent in this world, it’s how companies are always finding new and creative ways to shove ads in your face. Hulu’s latest experiment involves a less abrasive strategy than the usual video ad break—it’s going to place static banner ads on the screen when you pause your video starting in the…
In early January, Google systems reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones announced she was leaving the company after 11 years, leaving behind, by her account, a half million dollars in stock, to work at the startup Honeycomb.io. An outspoken advocate for inclusion and diversity, Fong-Jones quit citing dissatisfaction with leadership around ethics of products and working conditions.…
The Department of Energy shipped half a ton of weapons-grade plutonium across the country from South Carolina to Nevada, despite concerns raised by state officials in Nevada about safety and worries that the state would become a dumping ground for nuclear waste. News of the shipment, first reported by the Nevada Independent, was revealed on…
In a somewhat unbelievable feat considering Facebook’s absolute shitshow of a year in 2018, the social media company—freshly off of a new scandal involving a teen-targeting “research” app—reported record profit in its Wednesday earnings call. CNBC reported that Facebook surpassed estimates by analysts on earnings and revenue, with the company reporting a net income of…
On Tuesday, news broke via TechCrunch that Facebook ran a sketchy “Research” program involving paid participants who downloaded an app onto their phones that was capable of monitoring virtually everything that they did—including in some cases teens as young as 13, who were recruited via social media ads that appeared designed to keep Facebook’s involvement…
The New York Attorney General’s office has announced a settlement with Devumi LLC, a social media-marketing firm whose tactics were exposed by the New York Times last year, in what the office wrote is “the first finding by a law enforcement agency that selling fake social media engagement and using stolen identities to engage in online…
As phishing scams become increasingly sophisticated, Google’s engineers have been exploring ways to help users better identify potentially nefarious URLs. Google Chrome is currently testing a new warning to flag these types of domains, CNET reported Tuesday. The feature was highlighted this week by Emily Stark, an engineer on Google Chrome’s security team, who spoke…
