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Earlier this year, Cloudflare launched it’s 1.1.1.1 DNS service, and now it’s available for free on iOS and Android. And if that reads like gobbledygook, the TL;DR is: faster, more private internet on your phone. Basically, a DNS service translates IP addresses from mystifying numbers into more easily recognizable names like Google.com. Internet Service Providers…
If you miss the Sega Dreamcast’s visual memory unit, a recently published patent from Sony brings potentially good news. The next iteration of the Playstation’s DualShock controller may come with a built-in touchscreen. The patent was published in October and noticed over the weekend by the folks at DualShockers. Initially filed in 2017, the paperwork…
Artist Henning M. Lederer has once again brought to life a collection of vintage book covers from the ‘60s and ‘70s by transforming their abstract designs into funky animations. This is the actually the third collection of book covers Lederer has animated, and the results are reminiscent of the moving photos and paintings in the Harry…
Douglas Rain, voice of the computer HAL 9000 in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, died on Sunday morning. He was 90 years old. Born in Canada, Rain started on the stage and was known in both the Canadian and British theater communities for his roles in William Shakespeare’s classics like Othello and Twelfth Night.…
It’s been one hell of a week. From the 2018 midterms—in which races in Florida, Arizona, and Georgia are still being contested—to raging wildfires in California that are wiping entire communities off the map and continuing to rage, the news cycle has verged on impossible for any one person to process in its entirety. Still,…
Just weeks after Lime said it pulled some of its electric scooters from the streets of major cities over their alleged potential to catch fire, it has now issued a global recall of some of its scooters over claims that they can break apart during use. A spokesperson for the company told Gizmodo in a…
Imagine, if you will, a world without Fox News. That’s largely been the case on Twitter since Thursday, when many of the network’s official Twitter channels went silent. Apparently, this is all part of a silent protest against the social media network over an angry demonstration at host Tucker Carlson’s house last week. Carlson and…
A chemical that bills itself as a well cleaner, but hasn’t been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to treat drinking water, has reportedly been used for that purpose for 10 years in Denmark, South Carolina, CNN reported Sunday. Citing a yearlong investigation and an FOIA request, CNN’s report raised concerns over whether the chemical…
Continuing her post-truth crusade of alternative facts, Kellyanne Conway is now claiming that the misleading video edit shared by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week of an interaction between CNN reporter Jim Acosta and a White House aide was “not altered,” just “sped up.” Responding to a question from Chris Wallace during an appearance…
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have put an “undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights” across the country, according to federal procurement documents obtained by Quartz. It’s unclear how many cameras the agencies purchased or where, exactly, the “video recording and reproducing equipment” has been placed. But the…
Payment processing giant PayPal terminated accounts belonging to the far-right Proud Boys organization and its founder, Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, this week in what seemed to be a response to their involvement in a street brawl in New York and well-documented history of violence elsewhere. But it also banned a number of anti-fascist groups…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he has provided recordings of the alleged murder of Saudi journalist in self-imposed exile Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. Khashoggi, a frequent critic of Saudi Arabia’s ruling monarchy and the…
Paramount Ranch has been the location of countless movies and TV shows over the past 90 years, including the HBO sci-fi western Westworld. But that history has sadly turned to ash over the past 24 hours, engulfed by the flames of the Woolsey wildfire that’s devastating Southern California right now. Paramount Ranch and its fake…
With seemingly little fanfare, Facebook has launched its new app Lasso, a standalone short-form video platform that’s been billed as a competitor to TikTok. According to TechCrunch, the app is Facebook’s attempt at winning over its dwindling demographic of teens. “Lasso is a new standalone app for short-form, entertaining videos — from comedy to beauty…
It’s been a long week. There was an election and all the anxiety and malfunctions that come along with a moment of civic engagement of that magnitude. There was an awful storm. There was that terribly racist ad about Central American refugees. There were four critically endangered black rhinos that died after being relocated. There…
With employee action creating creating pressure in the tech industry, Facebook has finally opted to end forced arbitration for employees seeking to file claims of sexual harassment. Where those cases would previously have been handled behind closed doors, allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Facebook workers can now be filed in open court.…
New details have surfaced about a data breach first reported on October 19 involving a healthcare.gov portal, which is currently said to affect as many as 75,000 consumers. In a letter to affected parties this week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stated the sensitive data exposed may have included Social Security numbers…
Pocket and Instapaper ain’t cutting it anymore. Being in news means I probably save more articles than the average user. I’m always throwing something into my Pocket app for future reference or a follow-up. But I’d be willing to bet I don’t save much more than a typical web hoarder. Apps that allow you to…
Just in time for the holidays, Apple and Amazon have teamed up to stick it to the little guys. Namely, in exchange for a direct line to Apple’s goods, Amazon has agreed to cut out unauthorized third-party resellers. At the moment, most Apple products aren’t available on Amazon unless you’re going through its marketplace. Wading…
A multi-university study released this week concluded that Sprint has been throttling the bandwidth of customers using Skype, Microsoft’s popular internet-based video chat service. The study was produced by researchers at the Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts using Wehe, a phone app designed to monitor the behavior of mobile network providers when users…
