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Today the CIA released close to 470,000 files recovered from the compound in Pakistan where US forces killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. The files include Bin Laden’s journal as well as audio and video files from devices seized throughout the Abbottabad compound. Much of the entertainment recovered doesn’t exactly square with the image of…
As the folks at Razer would tell it, the plan was always to make a phone. No one at Razer was quite sure what that phone would look like, or precisely how it would be a “gamer” phone—Razer’s peripherals and laptops are built primarily for gamers—but the phone was a distant dream. Now it’s a…
As part of its ongoing probe into Russian election meddling, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have released a “representative sampling” of Facebook and Instagram ads allegedly purchased by Russian trolls during presidential campaign season. The ads were obtained by Gizmodo as attorneys for Facebook, Twitter, and Google testified before the committee on Wednesday. In…
Doppler Labs emerged four years ago as a rare breed in the startup world. It had an original idea—putting a computer in everyone’s ear and allowing them to control the sound of their world—and it was ambitious without forcing snake oil down people’s throats. On Tuesday, the company announced that it was going out of…
If and when the nuclear holocaust begins to bring down society as we know it, it’s not the initial blasts you should be worrying about. Carl Sagan and other scientists once hypothesized that dust blocking out the Sun could bring a nuclear winter. It probably happened before—to the dinosaurs. A team of scientists have dug…
Today, the CIA released a trove of files obtained from Osama bin Laden’s compound when he was killed by US forces in 2011. We knew that bin Laden had some unexpected things on his computer, but we now have a better look at some of the files. “Today’s release of recovered al-Qa‘ida letters, videos, audio…
Representatives for Twitter, Facebook, and Google testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee today about Russian interference on their platforms. Here’s what we learned: Russian ads had a real-world impact We’ve known for a while that Russian trolls spent $100,000 to promote ads on Facebook during the 2016 election, and we learned this week that posts…
In a grisly tale, The New York Times reports Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, was arrested in Zama prefecture, Japan, 30 miles outside of Tokyo, after police found nine severed heads in coolers in his apartment. Shiraishi reportedly used Twitter to find women who’d expressed suicidal thoughts over the service, murdering and decapitating them. Shiraishi has also…
With the Pixel 2, Google joined Apple in the race to kill the headphone jack. But you can’t kill the jack if you don’t have a solid wireless solution to fall back on. Which is why, on Tuesday, Google announced that its doing a riff on one of the Apple’s coolest features, the seamless pairing…
Richard Branson could play a part in our upcoming star wars. The billionaire’s satellite-launch company Virgin Orbit has started a new venture, Vox Space, aimed at wooing government clients. The Vox Space website states that the Manhattan Beach, California-based company “provides the national security community of the USA and allied nations with responsive, dedicated, and…
Food webs might seem clear to you—grass grows in the sun, cows eat the grass, you eat the cow, you play on the computer. But it doesn’t always work that way in the animal kingdom. Today’s word of the day is kleptopredation, a new way of eating that was recently discovered in a species of…
First released back in 1999, Sony’s robotic dog Aibo was so lifelike and animated that devoted owners are still doing everything they can to keep their aging pets alive, after Sony discontinued repair service on earlier models. But 18 years later, it might finally be time for them to say goodbye now that Sony has…
This year’s Tuesday-night Halloween means that most of the nation’s serial killers, monsters, and various stabby creatures have to turn in early for a bright and early hump day. But in lieu of being chased around by a low-budget demon, it’s not too late to wrap up your night by dimming the lights and reading…
Once-struggling tech giant Sony has had a very good 2017, buoyed in large part by the continued success of the Playstation 4, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. In its most recent quarterly filings, the company reported profits were up approximately 346 percent relative to the same period last year. According to the Post, the…
With the cryptocurrency market cap now estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars and a sort of familiar frenzy kicking into overdrive, here’s another reminder that widespread adoption by the U.S. public has not yet materialized. A September poll conducted by student loan refinancing market LendEDU found that 78.6 percent of Americans…
I’ve now had the iPhone X for just 24 hours—the majority of which have been spent trying to break Face ID. For the most part, Face ID has worked as described—opening my phone when I’m sitting in the dark, or wearing a variety of glasses. It works whether my hair is up, down, or in…
Remember earlier this year when we told you a bunch of new emoji were on the way? Well, they’ve finally arrived for the iPhone in the iOS 11.1 update. Just go to Settings > General > Software Update. The new emoji first showed up on Android Oreo back in August, but they looked less like…
Attorneys for Facebook, Google, and Twitter on Tuesday appeared on Capitol Hill to testify as part of the ongoing investigations into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election. The companies—all of which were initially slow to acknowledge their role in the information war that took root as early as 2015—have as of this month…
You don’t want to spend $100 more to pay upfront for the latest iPhone models? Fine, we wont sell you the iPhone. How about them apples? That’s essentially the stance Best Buy has taken in the wake of consumer backlash from news that the company was charging consumers more to buy the phone upfront instead…
Two US senators on Tuesday introduced a bipartisan bill that seeks to enhance security around state election systems in an attempt to stave off foreign interference. The Securing America’s Voting Equipment (SAVE) Act would, among other provisions, authorize the Director of National Intelligence to share classified information with state officials related to threats facing the…
