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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet is well-known on the platform. Published nearly 15 years ago, the tweet reads, “just setting up my twttr.” While there’s no doubt that it’s meaningful in popular culture, Dorsey apparently also seems to believe it’s got monetary value. And it appears he’s right. Dorsey posted a link to the…
Facebook’s hiring practices and promotions are under federal scrutiny following reports of widespread racial bias, according to Reuters. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has launched a “systemic” investigation into the social media giant, indicating that it suspects internal policies may be contributing to a top-down culture of discrimination. In July, Facebook operations program manager Oscar…
Crushing a starry-eyed startup’s hopes and dreams can be a pain, but now you can outsource that emotional labor to a heartless AI instead. Because rejection doesn’t have to hurt…err, not you at least, I mean. That’s the idea behind Unfortunately.io, an online tool that uses artificial intelligence to generate rejection emails. It’s the latest…
Microsoft announced this week that another one of its email products, Exchange, had been compromised by a hacking campaign. This recent hack is actually totally unrelated to the “SolarWinds” one, in which Microsoft has also played an outsized role. A state-sponsored threat actor from China dubbed “HAFNIUM” is said to be exploiting a number of…
Pour one out for all the horny folks in Utah, y’all. The state’s legislature has passed its baffling “porn filter” bill, which would mandate a default filter for “material that is harmful to minors” on all tablets and smartphones sold in the state beginning in 2022. House Bill 72—its official title—passed the state Senate this…
SITA, a data firm that works with some of the world’s largest airlines, announced Thursday that it had been the victim of a “highly sophisticated cyberattack,” the likes of which compromised information on hundreds of thousands of airline passengers all over the world. The attack, which occurred in February, targeted data stored on SITA’s Passenger Service…
After spending more than a decade building up massive profits off targeted advertising, Google announced on Wednesday that it’s planning to do away with any sort of individual tracking and targeting once the cookie is out of the picture. In a lot of ways, this announcement is just Google’s way of doubling down on its…
You whined and you complained and you moaned. And no, you’re not getting your “Edit Tweet” button, but Twitter is testing something nearly as good. Will it make you happy? Users have long demanded, and Twitter has repeatedly refused to implement, a tool that would let them modify the contents of tweets already sent. Yet…
The reign of telecoms shills meddling in internet regulations seems to be coming to a close, at least for now. The New York Times reports that Joe Biden has chosen Tim Wu, who’s credited with defining foundational concepts like net neutrality, to serve on the National Economic Council in a new role as a special…
John McAfee, founder of the well-known antivirus and cybersecurity firm that bears his name, has been indicted in federal court in Manhattan for charges related to securities fraud and money laundering, the Department of Justice announced Friday. McAfee and his former bodyguard and “executive adviser,” Jimmy Gale Watson Jr., are accused of engaging in a…
I know big and shouty gaming phones aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you still have to appreciate it when a company goes all-in on performance. That’s precisely what Nubia has done with the new Red Magic 6. The Red Magic’s base model includes a huge, 6.8-inch AMOLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate and…
Here’s something that you’d normally see in a post-apocalyptic, zombie TV show, only instead of a mysterious radio message luring Rick and the gang to a group of cannibals, it’s a road closure notice from Obama’s second presidential inauguration. According to The Drive, the same AM radio station in Washington, D.C. has been broadcasting the…
Nick Weaver has a dog in the 5G fight. Weaver’s company, Eero, went from making niche home-networking software to being bought out by Amazon in February 2019. Along the way, his startup became part of Amazon’s constellation of unwired home accessories that depend on wifi to connect to Amazon services and the Internet. Eero, which…
Deepfakes are getting better and better, but instead of wearing Tom Cruise’s face on a golf course, we decided to commemorate some amazing scientists (and one science fiction writer) by bringing them back to fleeting life using DeepNostaglia, a tool created by MyHeritage that breathes movement into old photos.
A year into the pandemic most of us have honed our daily routines into a regular pattern of YouTube bingeing and snacking. But munching on crunchy snacks often makes it impossible to hear a video. The solution isn’t to turn off our computers and attempt to re-enter society, but to install a new Chrome extension…
I know, I know. Another pair of open-ear audio smart glasses? Were the Bose Frames, Echo Frames, and JLab JBuds not enough? Nope. Not according to Razer, which just announced its Razer Anzu Smart Glasses. Well, at least the company chose a more interesting name than Frames. The Anzu are basically like every other audio…
LiquidVPN is now facing a lawsuit from pissed-off movie copyright holders
What appeared to be one of the most exciting features of iOS 14.5 turns out to work a little differently than it originally seemed. Last month, Redditors discovered that the iOS 14.5 beta presented a new menu when a user asked Siri to play music. That menu offered app alternatives for music playback, including Spotify,…
China’s ByteDance, is planning on launching its own version of audio chat app Clubhouse for the Chinese market, Reuters reported on Thursday. Clubhouse allows users to set up audio chat rooms, and is popular among Silicon Valley types (and a few far-right trolls who have taken advantage of its loose approach to moderation and hang…
In the latest in a string of “hits” on Russian dark web forums, the prominent crime site Maza appears to have been hacked by someone earlier this week. This is kind of big news since Maza (previously called “Mazafaka”) has long been a destination forall assortment of criminal activity, including malware distribution, money laundering, carding…
