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In the run-up to Friday’s launch of the new GDPR privacy protections, most of the focus has been on how it will affect huge data-mining tech giants like Google and Facebook. But as many people are finding out today, GDPR applies to any site that collects user data or, in the case of publishers like…
For more than a week, PGP developers have been rapidly working to patch critical flaws in the legacy encryption protocol used for sending and receiving secure emails; a tool that’s widely relied upon by lawyers, journalists, dissidents, and human rights advocates, many of whom operate at the highest levels of risk in shadows cast by…
This patent battle between Apple and Samsung is the lawsuit that just won’t go away. Since 2011, the two smartphone giants have been fighting over five patents due to the claim that Samsung infringed on Apple’s intellectual property when it made a handful of devices including the original Galaxy S 4G, the Galaxy S2, and…
I will admit I spent a very long time staring at this Motherboard story about a new sex toy created in celebration of National Masturbation Day. Partly because it was 9 in the morning, and contemplating a variety of sex toys bolted to a Bop It-style frame before I have finished my coffee is enough…
After a meteoric rise in popularity in China, the SeekingArrangement dating app was removed from the country’s most popular social network, WeChat. SeekingArrangements is marketed as an app that helps “sugar daddies or mommas” and “sugar babies” connect for “mutually beneficial relationships.” The site says that for the former, “Money isn’t an issue, thus they…
US Marine Corps stationed in Hawaii are now on standby to help with evacuations should lava flows cut off the only remaining escape route from the beleaguered Puna neighborhood. The latest threat comes as the Big Island enters its fourth week of eruptions, and as a third lava flow reaches the ocean. At a base…
Valve’s anticipated app designed to let you stream games and movies from the Steam platform to your iPhone or iPad has been rejected by Apple, despite the company approving it earlier in the month. As with Valve’s Steam Link box, the app would have allowed you to stream games from your PC directly to your…
Two weeks ago, a woman in Portland learned that her Amazon Echo device had recorded and sent a private conversation between her and her husband to one of his employees in Seattle without their knowledge. “Unplug your Alexa devices right now,” she says the employee told them, “You’re being hacked.” But the couple in Portland…
When Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of members of the European Parliament on Tuesday, he insisted that Facebook was ready for Friday, the day when the European Unions’s strict new data privacy law went into effect. But users in Europe have already filed complaints against Facebook and others today, saying the tech companies are in…
There’s a new news aggregator in town (well, an old one, revamped). The updated, refreshed, and smarter version of Google News is out now on Android, iOS, and the web, so how does this reimagining of the news stack up against the other ways we usually get our headlines—Facebook, Twitter, and RSS? We’ve been diving…
The European Union’s digital privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), officially went into effect today. But some websites in the U.S. have decided to block their services entirely rather than adhere to the new regulations. Dozens of American newspapers are currently blocked in Europe and web services like Instapaper have suspended…
A California man who allegedly placed a hoax emergency call that resulted in the death of a Kansas man is also believed to be responsible for the fake bomb threat that disrupted the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to repeal net neutrality protections last December. The US Department of Justice announced Thursday that Tyler Barriss, a…
Facebook already has more data on most people than it knows what to do with but the company announced Thursday that it will need a few more vital pieces of personal information from anyone hoping to place political ads on its platform, including a government-issued ID and social security number. In a blog post, Facebook…
Just over one year into its endeavor to “inject passion back into smartphones,” Essential appears to be on its last legs. Bloomberg reported the smartphone manufacturer founded by Android creator Andy Rubin is exploring a sale and has scrapped plans to develop a second smartphone. According to the report, Essential already has one unnamed suitor…
A bug on a T-Mobile website meant for employees let anyone with a T-Mobile customer’s phone number access sensitive information, according to a ZDNet report. While T-Mobile has since fixed the issue, the bug sounds similar to one found by researchers in October 2017, bringing into question the security practices of T-Mobile, a company in…
Imagine an unbroken chronological record, dating back a million years, of temperature and atmospheric conditions on Earth. Such a thing could indeed exist in the form of an ancient and undisturbed Antarctic ice core, according to a recent survey. Ice cores are like a window to the past, allowing scientists to observe and document climatic…
Vevo, the major label-owned music video service, is pulling back from the spotlight. On Thursday, the company announced that it will be shutting down its website and mobile apps over the next few weeks. Don’t sweat if you forgot all about the existence of Vevo. The video service was created in 2009 by a handful…
The Nintendo Switch is already the hottest console on the block, so how do you go about making it even better? By building a wildly expensive custom gaming desktop with a built-in Switch dock, so you can enjoy the best of the console and PC world, of course. Created as part of Intel’s 2018 Extreme…
Gizmodo is launching its first investigative podcast next week, on May 30. The Gateway is a six-part series about Teal Swan, a new brand of spiritual guru, who draws in followers with her hypnotic self-help YouTube videos aimed at people who are struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. Some followers move to Teal’s healing center—a…
A group of shareholders and several Google employees are teaming up to back a proposal that would tie executive compensation to the company’s ability to meet certain diversity goals. But Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is opposing the proposal, saying that linking executive pay to diversity metrics isn’t in the best interest of the company or…
