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Twitter, a social network known for its perpetual feed of virulence and targeted harassment, is turning to academia to answer the decade-old question: Why is it so bad? The social network announced on Monday that it has chosen two partners to help it “measure the health of public conversation on Twitter.” The company noted in…
Instead of repeatedly standing in front of a camera and waving an LED bulb to create long-exposure light paintings, Josh Sheldon automated the process with an impressive photography rig that takes orders directly from 3D animation software. The resulting animations, made with precise camera moves and robot-controlled lights, are like nothing you’ve ever seen. But…
While a lot of the stuff you do with your phone will involve wifi, the essential functions of a phone—the calling and the texting—still rely on a connection to a cell tower. If that link breaks, you can miss important messages or be out of reach to family and friends. Here’s what you can do…
At the peak of summer, when just walking to and from the corner store necessitates a shower and a change of clothes, air-conditioning can seem almost too good to be true. It is one of the few staples of modernity without severe and readily apparent downsides: all it does, or all it seems to do,…
Do you remember Facebook’s terrible TV ad back in April that tried to “apologize” for abusing your data? It was disingenuous bullshit. But with Facebook back in the news after the company lost $120 billion in value last week, John Oliver has revived the ad. Only this time the TV spot has a little more…
July 2018 is nearly out the door, and it’s certainly been a long one, ladies and gentlemen. In this era of the 24-hour news cycle, here are some things you may not have remembered happened just weeks ago: Gizmodo’s IRL Week. Scandal boy and EPA chief Scott Pruitt resigned. They found that Thai soccer team…
Amazon is ending its policy of letting viewers vote on which TV pilot episodes they would like to become full-length series, announcing at the Television Critics Association’s press tour on Saturday that it was ending the crowdsourcing portion of its original content program. “I’d never say ‘never’ but that version is not something we’re doing,”…
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose status as an unwanted guest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London has been growing ever more tenuous for months, could reportedly be booted at any time, according to reports in CNN and the Times of London. Assange has hidden in the embassy since 2012, officially first on the grounds of…
Texas Senator Ted Cruz took some time out of his busy schedule of being generally hated by everyone on Saturday to defend conspiracy theorist and Infowars grifter Alex Jones against a temporary suspension on Facebook. For once, Cruz struck a centrist position, albeit one between him and Infowars: He disapproves of what Jones says, but…
UK legislators are accusing social media giant Facebook of providing “disingenuous answers” during testimony on alleged Russian infiltration of the site in 2016 while avoiding other questions “to the point of obstruction,” the New York Times reported on Saturday. The House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee strongly criticized Facebook, writing that the…
It might come as no surprise to you that Google has launched something that isn’t really finished: YouTube Music is available now in the U.S. and several other countries, but it barely qualifies as a music streaming service today. After using the platform for several days, here are the biggest problems we want fixing. Maybe…
To anyone whose YouTube pages started to look strange today, you’re not alone: with little fanfare, the site pushed a change that now adapts its video player to match the aspect ratio of your content. Until now YouTube forced all videos into a 16:9 ratio by windowboxing them, meaning surround them with black vertical or…
LinkedIn, a social network for people who enjoy soul-crushing banality, knows you get more than a few emails from randos wanting to add you to their “professional network.” Sick of reading messages from these random acquaintances looking to discuss synergy-based solutions and B2B services? Well, now you can listen to them instead, thanks to voice…
Days after the ACLU released a damning report on Amazon’s face recognition product Rekognition, Amazon’s general manager of AI, Dr. Matt Wood, countered its findings in a blog post. The ACLU used Rekognition to scan the faces of all 535 members of Congress, finding the software mistook 28 of them for suspected criminals. Dr. Wood…
Magic Leap has promised it’ll start shipping its mixed-reality headset by the end of the summer, and it’s going to need developers to get cranking on content. New additions to developer guide show us what its operating system will look like. The verdict: It looks pretty nice. It’s impossible to say whether the Magic Leap…
The FCC’s chronic refusal to answer a few simple questions about an alleged security incident that supposedly wrecked its comment system has reached its final form. Despite being pressed for a straightforward response by a half-dozen lawmakers over the past year, the agency’s Republican chairman, like a malingering chicken, always finds a way to dodge…
Shoppers at the Chinook Centre, a mall in Calgary, Canada, have been unwittingly scanned by face recognition software. Canadian outlet CBC reports that the mall’s parent company, Cadillac Fairview, has admitted to using the software without shopper consent, but the company claims they only collect limited data. The software has been in use since June.…
In 2016, Charter, the U.S.’s second largest cable provider bought out Time Warner Cable and rebranded the company as Spectrum. However, in order for the deal to get approved, the company promised New York State officials that it would increase broadband speeds to 100 Mbps by the end of 2018 while also extending cable coverage…
Scientists have just defined a new shape called the scutoid (SCOO-toid) while studying epithelial cells, the building blocks of embryos that eventually end up forming our skin and lining our organs and blood vessels. They think the scutoid shape is extremely efficient at keeping cells tightly-packed and organized in the literal twists and turns of…
Hundreds of inmates in Idaho prison facilities reportedly exploited a “hack” that allowed them to illegitimately add nearly a quarter-million-dollars worth of credits from prison-issued tablets into their accounts. JPay tablets, explains the Associated Press, have email functionality, games, and a music player. Inmates can use the JPay system to purchase music and games using…
