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Rivers and streams cover much more of the planet than geologists previously estimated, according to a new study published in Science. In total, this new estimate shows that, excluding land with glaciers, Earth is covered by just under 300,000 square miles (773,000 square kilometers) of rivers and streams. That’s more square footage than the state…
For nearly 30 years, Masafumi Nagasaki lived a life many of us extremely logged-on folks can only dream of. A life completely void of commuting, the internet, and screens. He had the entire island of Sotobanari to himself—foraging, raking debris from the shore, and watching baby turtles hatch from their eggs and scurry to the…
Facebook’s race to prove it’s a good and trustworthy company over the last few months kicked off when it was revealed that a quiz app sold user data to a political firm. Now, a different quiz app is getting some heat. A researcher discovered that a third-party app called NameTests left the data of 120…
A Los Angeles superior court jury has ordered Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Andre “Dr. Dre” Young to pay former business partner Steve Lamar just over $25 million over royalties on the sales of Beats headphones, Billboard reports. The ruling expands a 2007 settlement granting Lamar royalties for only one pair of headphones, the Beats…
Amazon has a new side hustle. The company confirmed on Thursday that it’s buying its way into the pharmacy industry by snapping up PillPack, a service that sells prescription drugs online. Simple over-the-counter drugs are already available on Amazon.com, but this will mark Amazon’s first big foray into the pharmaceutical industry. PillPack describes itself as…
I struggle with phone cases. On one hand, I’d like to protect my expensive handheld computer. But at the same time, I can’t stand ruining the look and feel of a phone with big, bulky hunks of plastic, which means my phones tend to be naked. But at long last, I think I’ve found a…
On October 17th, recreational use of marijuana will be legal in Canada. But some people are worried that there won’t be enough federally licensed weed shops to meet demand on opening day. The government says not to worry. There will be plenty of weed to go around on October 17th. When weed becomes legal in…
Earlier this week, news broke that hundreds of employees at Salesforce had signed an open letter to CEO Marc Benioff protesting the company’s relationship to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, one of the government agencies enforcing President Donald Trump’s much-maligned “zero tolerance” immigration policy that resulted in authorities cruelly separating thousands of children from their…
Pornhub, the internet’s favorite smut factory, announced Wednesday that it is introducing a new feature to its massive collection of adult videos. The streaming service is adding closed captions to some of its videos to extend its offerings to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. According to the company, it will start its…
Right-wingers have long been obsessed with the notion Silicon Valley liberals are conspiring to censor them on social media. But it’s reached a fever pitch recently, with Republicans decrying Google’s fact-checking modules and its firing of workplace sexist James Damore, pretty much anything Facebook does to slow down right-leaning hoaxes and propaganda, and purges of…
A little-known, Florida-based marketing firm called Exactis may be responsible for a significant amount of personal data being exposed. According to a report from Wired, the firm left 340 million individual records on a publicly accessible server that any person could have gotten ahold of. The leak was discovered earlier this month by security researcher…
At this point when a new person joins the Trump administration as a regulator, the question isn’t if they are a corporate shill, it’s how big of one are they? In the case of Andrew Smith, the new head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, he is truly a shill’s…
Ticketmaster on Wednesday disclosed a data breach reportedly caused by malware infecting a customer support system outsourced to an external company. In a statement, Ticketmaster said some of its customer data may have been accessed by an unknown intruder. Email notifications were sent to customers who purchased tickets between February and June 23, 2018, the…
Reading The Ringer’s recent review of Hereditary’s Wikipedia page, I thought I’d found another opportunity to do my favorite thing. Everyone’s favorite thing. The activity that the internet seems to have been designed for: acting self-righteous. “I have read the Wikipedia plot summary for Hereditary multiple times, which is the only way I will ever…
Earlier this week, former employees called out AT&T for unethical business practices that pushed customers to sign up for various streaming TV packages, sometimes without their knowledge or explicit consent. But now, it seems things may have gotten even worse thanks to a sneaky tactic that could allow AT&T to rake in an extra $800…
You may have seen the ads that Facebook has been running on TV in a full-court press to apologize for abusing users privacy. They’re embarrassing. And, it turns out, they may be a sign of things to come. Based on a recently published patent application, Facebook could one day use ads on television to further…
The arrival of Samsung’s next flagship phablet was inevitable, but now at least we have a date for when the Galaxy Note 9 will make its official debut: August 9. If we’re just looking at Samsung’s invite pic and 20-second teaser vid, there’s not much to go on. In the video, there are a couple…
Google rolled out new workplace policies and guidelines for internal communication last week, a response to employees who have pressed the company for months to address their concerns over workplace harassment. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the changes in a company-wide email that stressed the company’s effort to maintain its open culture while enforcing respectful…
Google Home and Chromecast are both experiencing outages, leaving owners of Google smart speakers unable to order hands-free pizza delivery, play Tic Tac Toe alone, or find out what the weather is like without going outside. Google confirmed to Gizmodo the issues, which are ongoing at time of writing: “We’re aware of an issue affecting…
For those of you who still routinely scroll through your Facebook feed, the social network may have already given you more power over what topics you might stumble upon. On Wednesday, News Feed Product Manager Shruthi Muraleedharan announced in a post that Facebook is starting to test a snooze feature for keywords. The feature—Keyword Snooze—lets…
