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Less than a day after Lemonade tweeted about its facial recognition-powered fraud-detection systems, the insurance startup has fully backtracked. On Wednesday, the company put out a formal apology about what it’s saying were “poorly worded” claims, and took down what it’s now calling an “awful thread.” For those that have never filed a claim using…
Beginning Wednesday, Twitter’s Spaces will be available to peruse via desktop and mobile browsers, in addition to the iOS and Android apps that the audio-only chat rooms were previously exclusive to. Twitter announced the news in a tweet on Wednesday, noting that for now, the engineering team will be carefully monitoring the implementation of several…
“Fuck snitches, fuck Citizen, fuck Andrew Frame and remember, kids: Cops are not your friends,” someone on the dark web recently wrote. That same person claims to have scraped and leaked data from the aforementioned crime reporting app—including information about some 1.7 million public safety “incidents” recorded and cataloged by the company, Motherboard first reported.…
WhatsApp is taking India’s government to court over a new mandate that it claims will lead to mass surveillance of users in the company’s biggest market. Reuters was first to report on the suit filed in Dehli’s high court, which WhatsApp confirmed to Gizmodo on Wednesday. The suit is WhatsApp’s attempt to push back against…
Today Amazon is rolling out a firmware update for the Eero 6 that finally adds compatibility with Apple’s smart home standard. Eero 6 and Eero 6 Pro users can add devices to the HomeKit app and control them through the Home app on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Amazon has already put up a support…
For people who can’t stand proprietary power cables, USB Power Delivery just got a big upgrade that raises the limit on the max power transfer from 100 watts all the way up to 240 watts. The latest update to USB’s capabilities comes from USB-IF, which recently released revision 2.1 of the USB Type-C Cable and…
Dyson’s already made a name for itself with gadgets designed to clean a home, but the company has been slowly expanding into personal care devices too, and according to recent patent filings, a Dyson toothbrush might be in the works, with a design that both brushes and flosses. The Dyson brand is synonymous with vacuum…
I’m confident that machine intelligence will be our final undoing. Its potential to wipe out humanity is something I’ve been thinking and writing about for the better part of 20 years. I take a lot of flak for this, but the prospect of human civilization getting extinguished by its own tools is not to be…
Last week, Twitch addressed a minor community revolt with an urgent memo. It is titled: “Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams.” And the streams were unleashed. The controversy began when streamers found their channels banned or demonetized after streaming “hot tub meta.” Streamers complained that Twitch was unclear about the reasons; the same territorial band…
While the history of wearables is littered with countless failures, here are some that are worth remembering.
It’s official folks—Jeff Bezos will now own James Bond (pending regulatory approval lol). After murmurs earlier this week, Amazon announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire MGM in an $8.45 billion deal that will bolster the e-commerce giant’s Hollywood ambitions. To be clear, this deal isn’t so much about Amazon competing with…
By the time I was born in 1987, the filmstrip projector was already vintage: a musty, overheating box with a brittle lightbulb glowing yellow out of the vent. For the Soviet Union public, the once widely popular tech could not compete with VHS, but I was not interested in VHS. I preferred to hole up…
Electric car company Tesla will open a data center in Shanghai, China in order to store data collected from its customers’ cars in the country and stay on the right side of Beijing’s cybersecurity laws, according to a new report from the South China Morning Post. All data that foreign companies collect in China about…
A few years ago, intelligence personnel with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington D.C. spent some unknown amount of time and money monitoring the online accounts of people dressed like clowns. A recent data breach involving the MPD has revealed a 14-page internal report titled “SOCIAL MEDIA CLOWN THREATS.” Dated October 2016, the doc shows…
Roku isn’t exactly a little-known brand, but when it comes to market share and platform dominance, it’s still a David amongst Goliaths like Amazon and Google. However, the streaming company has made some strategic moves lately that indicate it’s attempting a more significant play for space in your home—outside of the living room, where it’s…
Rudy Giuliani, gin-pickled simulacrum of a lawyer and former personal attorney to Donald Trump, is in even deeper shit than was previously known. And the shit he was in was already known to be very deep. Last month, federal agents raided Giuliani’s New York home and offices. For prosecutors to execute a search warrant on…
After the runaway success of the Nintendo Switch, rival gadget makers are keen to make their own handheld consoles. According to a new report, Valve is the latest to jump on the portable gaming bandwagon. According to multiple sources who spoke to Ars Technica, it seems Valve has plans to create its own PC-based Switch…
The Sonos One SL is getting a small upgrade in the form of a power-efficient wireless radio and more sustainable materials. There is, however, a slight catch for Sonos users with older devices. An FCC filing for the new One SL speaker popped up on Monday. That said, it doesn’t come with any new features…
Last week, neighborhood snitch app Citizen was reported by Motherboard to be testing an on-demand private security force that would respond to user-submitted “incidents.” The plans are a considerable escalation of the app’s existing business model, which relies on police scanners and user reports to create live maps of rumored criminal activity. One of Citizen’s…
Hot on the heels of recent Apple Watch app overhauls from Spotify and Deezer, Tidal announced today that it’s finally bringing its app to the most popular smartwatch. And yes, you can download offline playlists for untethered playback. Tidal has instructions on how to get started on its website, but the process is simple. All…
