Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Eight hundred years ago, teenager Laurentius Loricatus accidentally killed a man in Italy. He then headed to a cave where he lived for 34 years, whipping himself to atone for his sins. Today, his story lives in the Vatican Secret Archives, on a piece of parchment covered in purple spots. This kind of damage is…
“That looks… very shopped,” one Gizmodo writer said, when he saw the viral image of three chill dudes golfing as a mountain burned behind them. On the left side of the frame, there are two other people gazing at the blaze. The whole scene does indeed look very fake, another fine Photoshop forgery. But it’s…
One of America’s most famous internet-grown white supremacists, Baked Alaska, has threatened to sue news outlet AJ Plus over a photo of him holding a gun. He says the image was photoshopped by the news organization. The only problem? Baked Alaska tweeted the photo less than a month ago. Baked Alaska, whose real name is…
Employees at Uber, which has survived at long last a back-breaking search for a new CEO after its former chief Travis Kalanick resigned earlier this year, are trying to raise other staffers’ spirits with a positive newsletter. According to Recode, the employees involved have launched a site called Good People + Good Things, which is…
Google’s self-driving car company Waymo sued Uber in February, claiming that Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo engineer, stole 14,000 documents detailing Waymo’s lidar systems before accepting a job with Uber’s self-driving car program. But emails between a hardware engineer at Google and Google’s attorneys made public today show that the files downloaded by Levandowski might…
A libel claim on the part of Shiva Ayyadurai, the self-identified “inventor of email,” was tossed out by a Massachusetts judge today, concluding a baseless suit filed against Techdirt back in January. According to the site, the judge also “rejected Ayyadurai’s request to file an amended complaint.” Ayyadurai—a Trump booster and Senate hopeful running with…
Facebook announced today that it sold $100,000 worth of ads to a sketchy network of fake Russian accounts between June 2015 to May 2017, a period spanning the 2016 election cycle. The ads often mentioned particular political issues, like LGBT rights or gun control, but rarely mentioned a specific political candidate or the US presidential…
Citing census data, an equity research analyst claims Facebook is once again inflating one of its key metrics, this time grossly over-reporting its ability to sell ads and effectively inventing millions more young Americans than actually exist. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-admits-to-more-false-metrics-1789039593 Facebook told advertisers that the platform can potentially “reach” 41 million young adults between 18 and 24 in…
Tech and auto companies developing self-driving cars will have their eyes on Washington this month, as the White House and Congress are working on action that could steer the industry for years. Today, the House of Representatives passed the “Self Drive Act,” which prevents states from creating any laws that regulate the development and performance…
Let’s talk about a few facts. Billionaire party enthusiast Richard Branson owns a private isle in the Virgin Islands. Branson’s island sits squarely in the path of Hurricane Irma, one the strongest storms the Atlantic has ever seen. Rather than retreat to a safer location, Branson has collected a mysterious group of “young people” for…
Facebook’s new platform for original programming, Watch, is now available for everyone in the US. Is it going to have the likes of YouTube or Hulu shaking in its boots? As it stands, nope. Extremely nope. Facebook’s Watch platform is really just a tab on Facebook. It only features video content created exclusively for Facebook…
Correction: The original headline on this story indicated that Office Depot used the vulnerable plugin. An Office Depot spokesperson said that, although the company does use Struts framework, it is using an older version that does not support the REST plugin. The spokesperson disputed the researchers’ characterization that Office Depot could be affected. A newly-discovered…
The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian election hacking has been a bad joke from day one. But now it’s just getting sad. Chairman Devin Nunes recused himself from the investigation in March after admitting to a secret, late-night rendezvous with White House staffers (though, not before he was caught lying about it to a…
Hacking the power grid is one of the holy grails of hacker prowess. The first real power outage caused by hackers occurred near Kiev in 2015. Now researchers say that a malicious group has gained unprecedented operational access to American power company systems, and experts worry that the ability to cause a blackout at will…
Unnamed sources are telling The Hollywood Reporter that the fight for distribution rights to the James Bond films just got two new contenders: Apple and Amazon. Up until now Warner Bros. have been in the lead with the best bid, but let’s be honest. Apple and Amazon have deeper pockets. Two of the world’s biggest…
Meteorologists were at a loss for words yesterday as Hurricane Irma intensified into a enormous, record-smashing Category 5. Packing “catastrophic” and “life-threatening” winds of 185 miles per hour (300 km/h), the storm now bearing down on Puerto Rico and the US Virgin islands is officially the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded north of the Caribbean…
President Trump never properly separated himself from his businesses, giving anyone with enough money an opportunity to influence the US government. And a new investigation by USA Today pulls back the curtain on who’s buying their way into Trump’s golf courses using some clever investigative techniques: Reporters at the paper used social media and public…
Senate Democrats are resisting the Federal Communications Commission and its Donald Trump-appointed chief Ajit Pai’s proposals to radically change national standards governing access to and the quality of home broadband, Ars Technica reported, but it’s unclear whether they will be able to do more than stall him. Pai’s proposal would change Barack Obama-era standards implemented…
On Monday, reporters were allowed to hear Peter Madsen’s version of the events that led to the death of the journalist Kim Wall aboard crowdfunded submarine, the UC3 Nautilus. At a court hearing in Copenhagen, Madsen claimed that Wall was accidentally struck on the head by a heavy hatch and he maintains that he is…
Smartwatches have long felt like a gadget in search of a purpose. However, it seems the Boston Red Sox have finally discovered one thing they are actually good at: cheating. According to complaint filed by New York Yankees’ general manager Brian Cashman and later corroborated by Major League Baseball, it seems the Boston Red Sox…
