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Facebook is reportedly dumping resources into developing nifty new augmented reality hardware—but don’t put money on seeing its products anytime super soon. Business Insider’s Rob Price has revealed in a report published Thursday that Facebook shifted hundreds of its employees from its research outfit Facebook Reality Labs over to a team—led by Michael Abrash and…
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California against the federal government on Thursday over its social media surveillance practices, specifically relating to the Trump administration’s controversial immigration policy known as “extreme vetting.” The lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act accuses seven federal agencies—including the Justice…
Shutdown or no, the consolidated lawsuits facing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its 2017 rules that wiped out net neutrality protections nationwide will go forward on Feb. 1, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit ruled Thursday. Earlier this week, the FCC sought to postpone oral arguments in the case, which are set to…
News of this week’s so-called “mega breach” might deeply trouble you. If so, that means it’s a perfect time to take control of your personal security. Yes, every company should be held responsible for practicing sloppy security, allowing your sensitive data to get into the wrong hands. But at this point, there’s really no reason…
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey thinks the company’s “protocol” for politicians who seem to violate the site’s rules is clear. So clear, in fact, that he refused to say if Twitter would ban the president should he explicitly ask his followers to do a bunch of murders. In a new interview, Huffington Post reporter (and former…
Google announced plans today to acquire a portion of Fossil’s smartwatch technology for $40 million. As part of the deal, Google will also get a portion of Fossil Group’s research and development team. It’s not exactly clear at this moment what specific tech Google is shelling out for—but the acquisition paradoxically both makes a lot…
Twitter shared some unsettling news for Android users today. For more than four years, a bug affecting Twitter’s Android app made some users’ private tweets public. Twitter says the bug was triggered when users turned on the “Protect your Tweets” setting and made seemingly unrelated changes to their accounts, like updating their email addresses. The…
Jeffrey Bigham and his family were about a day into their holiday stay at an Airbnb when he noticed the white security camera that blended in with the corner where the wall met the ceiling. Then he found another camera. As he wrote in a blog post about the experience, he was “shocked” thinking that…
Just in case you weren’t already aware of this, Apple is super duper serious about privacy. In a new Time opinion piece, Tim Cook reiterated the company’s old talking points about how other companies (read: Facebook and Google) turn people’s personal data into a product that they can sell, sometimes without the user knowing it’s…
The Stylophone started life as a kitschy electronic toy instrument—the digital version of the kazoo, if you will—but over the years has slowly developed new sounds and features making it more than just a novelty. The new Stylophone Gen R-8 is an evolutionary leap compared to previous versions of the instrument, and one that might…
It was a cool day in Dallas last November, when a small quadcopter lifted itself off the ground of an American Airlines hangar and buzzed towards a Boeing 737. The drone, a DJI Mavic Enterprise, had been outfitted with a spotlight, but otherwise looked a lot like what you might see your neighbor flying in…
It seems Google has a real problem with secrets, because after a Russian blog shared info about the upcoming Pixel 3 Lite late last year, now there’s a complete review of what appears to be a pre-production Pixel 3 Lite on YouTube. In accordance with previous leaks, Andro News claims the Pixel 3 Lite shown…
There’s no shortage of data breaches these days, but this one should make you sit up and pay attention. The newly discovered “Collection #1″ is the largest public data breach by volume, with 772,904,991 unique emails and 21,222,975 unique passwords exposed. https://gizmodo.com/how-to-stop-worrying-about-every-mega-password-breach-t-1831849881 The breach was first reported by Troy Hunt, the security researcher who runs…
If you think that 2019 is already too weird to be real, strap in. It’s getting weirder by the day. According to a strange new report in the Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, hired a small tech company called RedFinch Solutions to rig online polls in favor of Trump. And…
Facebook has deleted hundreds of pages linked to the Kremlin-backed propaganda network known as Sputnik. The pages, allegedly operated by Sputnik employees, were made to look like they were coming from outside of Russia. The Facebook pages helped spread propaganda about NATO and European politics, among many other topics. The announcement by Facebook came early…
T-Mobile is still cruising towards a $26 billion merger with Sprint, a deal that would combine the third- and fourth-biggest wireless carriers in the U.S. into one massive company. And after the deal was announced in April 2018, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, T-Mobile executives quickly grew fond of a D.C. hotel run by…
It has not been an especially great week for Netflix or its polarizing monster flick Bird Box, which has spawned one of the most idiotic so-called “challenges” to surface in this cursed timeline we’re trapped in. In yet another public relations headache for the company, Netflix is now looking into whether actual footage of a…
Federal prosecutors “are pursuing a criminal investigation” of Chinese tech giant Huawei for allegedly stealing the trade secrets of U.S. firms, with the case in part based on allegations raised in civil lawsuits, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Investigators are particularly interested in a 2014 legal dispute between Huawei and T-Mobile—which resulted in…
There are plenty of very good reasons Facebook users should be extremely skeptical of the information the social media platform collects about them following years of data and privacy scandals. But even as the company continues to push its “transparency” narrative, many of its users still do not understand how their information is being used…
The two main agencies that are supposed to be helping monitor robocalls—the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—halted operation 25 days ago because of the government shutdown. So how is that affecting the robocall plague? The first noticeable change, as the Washington Post reported, was when the FTC stopped running the…
