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Russia’s Ministry of Defense has drafted a law to ban soldiers from posting something as seemingly trivial as a selfie. The law would restrict contractors from posting photos, videos, and geolocation information online as well as anything related to the activities of their military department and other service members. The ban will reportedly be implemented…
Every once in a while, the internet remembers that conchs have eyes, wild looking colored things sitting at the ends of stalks like a creature watching you on behalf of Jareth the Goblin King as you navigate The Labyrinth. The internet remembered this fact again this week. Wanted to share this conch’s little eyeballs byu/buterbetterbater…
Last week, initial reports of some users in Asia experiencing screen-popping battery swelling in their iPhone 8 Plus began to trickle out. Since then, other incidents in Greece, Canada, and China have surfaced, and it seems the story has reached a tipping point. Apple has confirmed to Gizmodo that it is “looking into” the matter.…
Today is another sad day, a Friday like so many others save for one tear-jerking bit of news: AOL announced its Instant Messenger will die on December 15th. It was 20 years old. This isn’t the first time that AIM has passed away. Gizmodo first reported on its death in 2012, when AOL sacked almost…
Time to install those updates! Last week, we warned you that a bug in High Sierra made it possible for an attacker to extract passwords from Apple’s Keychain in plaintext. The bug was discovered and reported by Synack head researcher Patrick Wardle in early September, and now Apple has issued a patch for the issue.…
The White House has found that its chief of staff, John Kelly, used a breached phone for months, according to a report from Politico. The suspected hack was discovered after Kelly gave his phone to White House tech support because it wasn’t updating or functioning normally. He reportedly told IT the phone had been having…
In what has become a numbing succession of severe storms, tropical storm Nate has emerged in the southwest Caribbean. The storm, which has already produced deadly flash flooding and mudslides in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras, is expected to intensify into a Category 1 Hurricane and reach the US Gulf Coast early Sunday morning. At…
Windows fans can build their own computers when they can’t find one in stores to match their needs, but custom-made Macs are much harder to put together, as Apple doesn’t like having its software and hardware separated. But if you’ve got the time, and really need your beefy computer running macOS, than you should build…
The FEMA website has been an important tool for keeping Americans up to date on disaster recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. But yesterday, the agency deleted statistics about how many people have access to electricity and clean water on the island. The FEMA website now only displays information that casts the recovery…
Neural networks have important purposes that people are excited about. But that’s not really what I’m interested in, and probably not how you’re familiar with the technology anyway. When I think of neural networks, I think of horrible drawings of cats, trippy visuals, and guinea pig names. That list now also includes beer names. The Brewers…
In awarding a $7.25 million contract to Equifax to help verify US taxpayers’ identities, the Internal Revenue Service set itself up for a massive backlash. But in a letter obtained by Gizmodo on Thursday, IRS chief John Koskinen argues that the circumstance was unavoidable. Not awarding the contract, he writes, would have prevented thousands of…
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, highly classified material from the NSA was stolen by hackers working for the Russian government in 2015. It’s being called “one of the most significant security breaches in recent years,” and multiple sources reportedly said that it was made possible because Kaspersky Lab’s anti-virus software identified…
Take a moment and wander over to the online Google Store. You’ll see beautiful photos of every product announced yesterday, and if you click on the links you can buy any of the items made by Google (including last year’s Google Home) or made for Google (a whole lot of headphones and phone cases). But…
A international team of researchers has completed one of the most detailed analyses of a Neanderthal genome to date. Among the many new findings, the researchers learned that Neanderthals first mated with modern humans a surprisingly long time ago, and that humans living today have more Neanderthal DNA than we assumed. Before this new study,…
Google introduced a tiny lifelogging camera on Wednesday at its Pixel 2 event. Called Clips, the little device can be held, clipped, or set down while it uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition to “capture beautiful, spontaneous images” of your life. As with most cameras intended to constantly record you, a lot of people’s first…
If you’ve spent any time in front of C-SPAN this week, you’ve probably seen Congress repeatedly taking Equifax’s former CEO out to the woodshed. It’s been quite the shellacking. And it almost seemed as if we’d finally reached a breaking point. America wasn’t going to put up with companies recklessly handling our private data, losing…
To improve functionality between Uber’s app and the Apple Watch, Apple allowed Uber to use a powerful tool that could record a user’s iPhone screen, even if Uber’s app was only running in the background, security researchers told Gizmodo. After the researchers discovered the tool, Uber said it is no longer in use and will…
If you’ve ever had to deal with an infestation of lice, you know that these parasites really like to get in there. A horrifying new video reveals the mad acrobatic chops that enable lice to make your hair their home, flinging themselves from strand to strand with the greatest of ease. A new case study…
Internet of Things devices are notoriously insecure and webcams are among the creepiest targets for hacks. A woman in the Netherlands recently learned just how disturbing these vulnerabilities can be, capturing footage of a home webcam that started tracking her movements and speaking to her in a sinister, unfamiliar voice. In a Facebook post, Rilana…
Many Netflix subscribers in the US will soon have to pay a little more each month for streaming. The video service is raising its prices for standard and premium plans. New members will start seeing the increased prices today, but current subscribers will be notified of the increase starting October 19. The middle tier that…
