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Sen. Ron Wyden called on the FCC chairman to recuse himself from an investigation involving a prison phone company that’s been accused of helping police circumvent warrants in obtaining cellphone location data. The Federal Communications Commission referred the phone-tracking matter, which involves Securus, an inmate calling service, to its enforcement bureau on Friday. The FCC…
Snap’s stock price is now hovering around its lowest point ever since the company went public last year. Yet, its whiz-kid founder, Evan Spiegel, was 2017’s highest-paid CEO, taking home $504 million. And according to a new report, Spiegel is almost single-handedly responsible for Snapchat’s biggest mistake. When Snap’s IPO launched last Spring, it positioned…
What do you get the person who has it all? A little self-awareness, especially when it comes to their outfit of choice. But Silicon Valley’s ultra-rich have recently abandoned the premise of “uniforms boost my brain power” for a more reasonable “I’m rich, so maybe I should own an actual jacket.” Sometimes even the style-deficient…
The Post Office is an unusual agency. For starters, it has a legal monopoly (weird!), is explicitly enshrined in the Constitution, and despite being part of the federal government, it’s operated more like a corporation. All an average person needs to know is that mail goes in a mailbox, and, with relative expedience, it shows…
Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show. “Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate…
Astronomers and space fans may have set up lawn chairs outside to watch the eclipse, but Nathaniel Frissell set up his ham radio. As the sky dimmed and daylight turned into an uncanny dusk, the reports started coming in: Communication was dying off over the 20 meter (14 MHz) radio band. Frissell (call sign W2NAF)…
Thirteen states have withdrawn a total of nearly $88 million from an election security fund established by Congress in March, but more than 75 percent of the funding has yet to be dispersed. The $380 million fund, established as part of Congress’ omnibus appropriations bill, is meant to aid state officials in securing and improving…
Since Elon Musk launched his tunneling project, The Boring Company, in late 2016, he has often said that his goal is for his boring machines to outpace his pet snail, Gary, in a race. “We want to beat Gary,” Musk announced last year. “Victory will be beating the snail.” But here at Gizmodo, we have…
At least one school in China is trying out face recognition software that scans students’ faces to check if they’re paying attention in class, Epoch Times reports. Called “smart eyes,” the tech reportedly provides teachers with real-time data on students, whose “moods” are categorized as surprised, sad, antipathy, angry, happy, afraid, or neutral. Hangzhou Number…
When you think about knitting, you might picture grandmas clicking big wooden needles or something wintery, like a snow-covered lodge. But knitting is everywhere, producing just about everything you put against your skin each day, from socks and t-shirts to hoodies and beanies. And thousands of years after it was first invented, new kinds of…
With Sprint and T-Mobile having agreed to a $26.5 billion merger (assuming the deal gets approved by federal regulators), 126 million people are looking at significant change to their wireless coverage. How do competitors AT&T and Verizon feel about their potential rival? It seems both companies are totally chill. When asked about the impending merger…
A troubling flaw in phone tracking company LocationSmart’s demo tool, used to advertise its services, let anyone take advantage of an easily exploited flaw to track phones from America’s top four carriers without the user’s consent or knowledge, according to KrebsOnSecurity. The demo site was reportedly taken down yesterday after Krebs contacted LocationSmart. LocationSmart is…
There’s a new challenger in the music streaming space. On Thursday, Google announced YouTube Music, its latest attempt to get music fans to pay for unlimited streaming. The new service launches on May 22, but how will it compare to Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services, like SoundCloud and Tidal? Here’s everything we know…
I have some bad news if you’ve created a perfume that has a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough. That’s exactly how Hasbro describes the scent of Play-Doh, a smell that many of us associate with out childhoods, and a smell that…
Elon Musk has finally revealed the literal rocks he wants to sell people. On Thursday night Elon Musk’s tunnel-digging endeavor The Boring Company livestreamed a company event on YouTube, in which Musk discussed plans for the hole it’s burrowing under Los Angeles. In the presentation Musk said the tunnel will be used for a 150-mph…
The California Attorney General announced criminal charges against four men it claims are the owners and operators of Mugshots.com. The website has been under fire for years over its practice of scraping law enforcement websites to publish mugshots and often incomplete criminal records. It then demands large fees through a sister site for removing the…
If you’re not already familiar with the works of illustrator Maurits Cornelis Escher (better known as M.C. Escher) through jigsaw puzzles or poster sales at your local college, now’s the time to experience the artist’s reality-bending pieces. The Boston Public Library has digitized and shared its entire collection of 88 Escher prints, including many of…
Scoring a color’s sexiness calls for a sketchy rubric at best: Although someone appointed it the color of romance and passion, red is also the color of blood and chaos (see: panic buttons, fire trucks). Sleek, sophisticated black does double duty as the uniform of death. Purple can communicate richness, royalty, sensuality, what have you;…
Cambridge Analytica, the shady data firm accused of misusing the data of millions of Facebook users, filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. late Thursday. The news is hardly shocking—the firm announced that it had filed for insolvency in the UK earlier this month with bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. to soon follow. The voluntary petition…
Gizmodo went behind the scenes at the “Disney Morgue” to see how Walt Disney’s animation history is being preserved for future generations. The morgue has everything from the earliest drawings for short cartoons like Mickey Mouse’s Steamboat Willie (1928) to animation cels from movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) to stunning reference…
