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Until the Super Soaker came along in 1990, water guns hadn’t changed much in over a century. But the Super Soaker was 28 years ago, and a group of German engineers and designers think it’s finally time for water guns to evolve again. They’ve created the self-filling Spyra One that fires quick bursts of water…
Samsung proudly announced today that its “unbreakable smartphone panel” has been certified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL). This means this ultra durable display is much closer to very profitable things like military and automotive contracts. But let’s be serious. Somebody’s gonna find a way to break this thing, and I hope it’s me. The new display…
Amazon’s controversial face recognition software, called Rekognition, misidentified more than two dozen members of Congress as people arrested for crimes. The false identifications were made when the ACLU of Northern California tasked Rekognition with matching photos of all 535 members of Congress against 25,000 publicly available mugshot photos. The test cost the ACLU just $12.33…
Chip manufacturer Qualcomm confirmed in a conference call on Wednesday that it does not believe Apple, with whom it has been locked in a vicious, escalating court battle over royalties and patents since 2017, will use its modems in its next generation of iPhones. Per CNN Money, Qualcomm Chief Financial Officer George Davis told analysts…
While at a conference alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin at a high-profile conference in Helsinki this month, Donald Trump took some time out of relentlessly praising his counterpart—a former KGB foreign intelligence officer and currently suspected U.S. election-meddler—to accept a gift of one Adidas AG soccer ball. Turns out that model of soccer ball has…
Windows 10, Microsoft’s current version of its operating has long tormented users with a hard-to-bypass policy of forced updates. It will soon try to take the edge off by using machine learning to determine whether a user is actually using a computer when it updates. In 2017, Microsoft introduced a snooze option in which it…
Investors are fleeing Facebook’s stock in after-hours trading after the company’s first real post-scandal earnings report missed expectations. Investors are maniacs. Facebook is massive, it’s making massive amounts of money, and it’s practically gobbled up every user it could potentially have. When we say that Facebook has brought “everyone” on the internet under its umbrella,…
For most people, resigning from your job doesn’t necessitate the invention of any new computer characters, just a new Twitter bio. But as The Guardian reports, when Emperor Akihito, Japan’s current ruler, abdicates the Chrysanthemum Throne next year, that’s exactly what the country will need. Currently, there’s no computer character available to represent the next…
Smart clothes are fine. When Levi’s teamed up with Google to make a denim jacket with smart sleeves, Gizmodo gave it a test wear and realized it showed there was potential for clothing that makes your life easier—say, by letting you waving your arm to change a song or answer a call. But the smart…
As companies race to employ facial recognition everywhere from major league ballparks to your local school and summer camp, we face tough questions about the technology’s potential to intensify racial bias; Commercial face recognition software has repeatedly been shown to be less accurate on people with darker skin, and civil rights advocates worry about the…
Google really, really wants you to use physical security keys to protect yourself from hackers. After announcing that its 85,000 employees have managed to go more than a year without getting phished because of mandated security devices, Google now has its own physical security key to sell you. On Wednesday, the company announced its new…
If you already rely on ridesharing services to run errands or grab groceries, a self-driving car that shuttles you to pick up your pre-bagged tailgate party snacks may sound like a no-brainer. And that’s essentially what Waymo is up to: In Phoenix, Arizona, Waymo is expanding its self-driving car program by targeting the customers of…
In what was essentially a foregone conclusion after this teaser video popped up yesterday, earlier this morning Nikon confirmed it is working on a new, full-frame mirrorless camera. Nikon’s official statement on the news is incredibly vague and throws around a lot of hype with phrases saying the new camera will “enable a new dimension…
In what appears to be a sweeping new campaign to enforce its policy prohibiting impersonation, Twitter now auto-locks any non-verified account that attempts to change its display name to “Elon Musk.” But the Tesla founder isn’t the only one whose name is off limits. Say you’re scrolling through what you believe to be Musk’s tweets,…
If you’re in the northern hemisphere then summer is already underway, which means your various gadgets and gizmos are going to be lying on beach towels, sitting in hot cars, sweating on the subway and generally getting hotter than they normally would. Here’s why that’s dangerous—and what you can do to keep them protected. Heat…
We all know you shouldn’t leave pets, infants, or the elderly in your car on a sunny summer day. But giant parabolic mirrors also deserve a spot on that list, a lesson a teacher in residence at a San Francisco science museum learned the hard way last week when he accidentally melted his Subaru Outback’s…
Facebook has signed an agreement with Washington state to retool its advertising platform after a Pro Publica investigation found it could be used to abet housing discrimination. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson led a year-long investigation into Facebook’s targeted advertising feature, which lets advertisers include or exclude users from seeing certain ads. “Facebook’s advertising platform…
The mainland Chinese government has demanded U.S. airlines change their websites “to reflect China’s claim on the island territory” of Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, and they pretty much plan on doing that rather than risk any kind of retaliation. Bloomberg wrote that a source said a number of US airlines plan to comply, changing…
Facebook’s departing chief information security officer Alex Stamos, whose upcoming exit has been known for months, wrote a note to staff in March amid the Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal urging them to reconsider the site’s approach to privacy, BuzzFeed News reported on Tuesday. In his note titled “A Difficult Week,” Stamos wrote that the scandal—in…
Over the past 10 months, software firm Rapid7 has conducted hundreds of penetration tests: simulated cyberattacks that test how a network holds up against actual threats. The results were compiled in a study called “Under the Hoodie 2018,” which not only perpetuates the stereotype of darkly cowled hackers but makes for some pretty interesting reading.…
