Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Imagine this: One night, after coming home and falling asleep, you are violently awakened by your significant other stabbing you with a sword and at least two other knives. How would you react? Well, this exact scenario happened to Alex Lovell from Camas, Washington, a self-described “Ethelete” who often logged 12 to 13 hours a…
As Congress scrambles to agree on a spending bill, a dangerous piece of legislation that would redefine how law enforcement collects data is being snuck in at the last minute. Through convoluted provisions, the CLOUD Act would give the Executive Branch broad power in deciding how data is exchanged between countries and could severely compromise…
Apple would really like you to know that its products are the gateway to a happy family. On Thursday, the company launched a new page on its website dedicated to families. “You want to do what’s best for your family,” the page reads. “So do we,” it affirms. Apple’s new page is a breakdown of…
Genetic analysis suggests two populations of Denisovans—an extinct group of hominids closely related to Neanderthals—existed outside of Africa during the Pleistocene, and that both of these populations interacted and interbred with anatomically modern humans. Virtually everyone knows about Neanderthals, but very few of us know about their distant cousins, the Denisovans. These extinct hominids were…
Wheelchair ramps are the kind of thing most people don’t care about until they actually need them. But for anyone who has been knocked off their feet, or simply had to push a baby stroller around, these helpful little slopes and a well-placed elevator or two have the power to turn an impossible journey into…
Under a plea agreement, a YouTuber who shot her boyfriend in the chest during a filmed stunt last June will serve 90 days in jail. Monalisa Perez, 20, killed her boyfriend, Pedro Ruiz III, 22, in their home in Halstad, Minnesota. After the couple set up two cameras to film the stunt, Ruiz held an…
Amazon Japan was raided Thursday by business watchdog agency the Japan Fair Trade Commission on suspicions of anti-competitive practices. Multiple outlets—citing local subscription news service Kyodo—say the raid was a response to Amazon Japan allegedly demanding a “collaboration fee” from suppliers, as well as asking those suppliers to incur some of the financial burden when…
We’ve covered a few of Massdrop’s unorthodox keyboard upgrades over the years, but none as lovely as this officially-licensed Hasbro Scrabble keyboard that puts every letter of the alphabet at your disposal, instead of just seven you randomly grab at the start of a game. The custom keys feature the same muted color palette as…
One of the most high-profile neo-Nazi groups in the country, the Traditionalist Worker Party, is completely disintegrating in the wake of a truly humiliating, somewhat incestuous sex scandal involving its founder and Charlottesville rally organizer Matthew Heimbach and his spokesperson and web administrator, David Parrott. On Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center shed some light…
John McAfee, the creator of the security software that bears his name, has gotten pretty weird over the many years of his ongoing “lunacy binge.” Just a handful of the times McAfee’s name has popped up in the news in the past few years include allegations of rape, torture, and assassinations during his time as an…
United Airlines did a very sad, regrettable thing this week when its attendants insisted a passenger store their 10-month-old French bulldog in the overhead bin on a flight from Houston to New York, resulting in said puppy’s untimely death of probable suffocation. In the second story casting doubt on the airline’s canine safety record this…
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) spent $138,093 at eight businesses owned by President Donald Trump during his first six months in office, according to records obtained via lawsuit citing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Property of the People, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit transparency group, obtained the records after suing the DoD, which…
Elon Musk, who already operates businesses in the aerospace, automotive, renewable energy, neural implantation, and tunnel-digging industries, has apparently decided to try his hand at media with a website called Thud! As reported earlier this week by the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Musk considered buying satirical news staple the Onion back in 2014, only to…
Augmented reality experiences are oftentimes a dud, and the really mind-melting ones require hardware that costs a shit-ton of money. But Abhishek Singh seems to have figured out a way to make AR both accessible and really fucking cool. His latest project brings the classic arcade game Street Fighter II to life as a multiplayer…
On Tuesday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the company had a new strategy to deal with conspiracy theories on the platform: dropping a handy Wikipedia link beneath videos on highly contested topics. And it looks like Wikipedia learned about this curious strategy at the same time as everyone else. In a Twitter thread asking…
It wasn’t scientists who discovered the thin, purple, east-to-west traveling glow in the northern night sky. It was people with cameras and a nerdy passion for auroras. Researchers today gave an official proposal to name this structure first observed by citizen scientists: a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE), along with an idea behind STEVE’s…
Last Summer, Equifax experienced one of the most devastating data breaches in history. In an incredible stroke of luck, several executives had dumped their stock in the company prior to the news going public. They were cleared of wrongdoing, but on Wednesday, the SEC filed insider trading charges against a different executive for his own…
You might love Wolfenstein, but I’m not one who can stomach much violence, even when it’s in service of destroying Nazis in all their forms. As a result, I’ve never played more than a few minutes of any Wolfenstein game. That’s why Return to Castle Woofenstein (aka Woof3d), a mod that turns every enemy Nazi…
CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani of the disgraced blood-testing startup Theranos have been charged with “massive” fraud, according to the Securities Exchange Commission, and have agreed to resolve the charges. Complaints cited by the SEC allege that Theranos and its principals raised over $700 million “through an elaborate, years-long fraud in…
Have you seen this photo of Stephen Hawking protesting the Vietnam War in 1968? It’s a powerful image, but it’s not actually Hawking. Gizmodo has confirmed with the National Portrait Gallery in London that it doesn’t actually know who the bespectacled man with canes might be. “The National Portrait Gallery apologizes that a sitter in…
