Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
“The action of amplifying [Black voices] has been necessary, but what is the next step?” said Brittany Jenkins, the founder of the We Are Tech edtech startup. Jenkins is on the frontlines of working to foster diversity and equity in the tech industry. We Are Tech is not the first organization to address these issues,…
If you happen to be in the market for a new coffee maker, may I recommend a smart assistant-enabled model? Let me be clear that this isn’t something that you absolutely need, but it’s something I’ve found has made my morning routine marginally smoother. I typically wake up very, very early—often before my alarm—and the…
Hey, you, casual internet user. Why not go and update your passwords right now? I’m not trying to boss you around or anything, but semi-frequent password changes are widely considered a great way to avoid getting hacked and having your information spilled all over the web. Yes, bad actors break into more systems than you…
One of the speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the potential coronavirus super-spreader event being thrown by Republicans in Orlando, Florida this week, is a former leader of the political arm of a… we’ll say spiritually innovative faith in Japan. The guru at the center of said group has previously claimed to have…
Those who were able to purchase one of Nvidia’s new RTX 3060 graphics cards yesterday now have access to the company’s long-awaited Resizable BAR support, which is the feature PC users can enable at the BIOS-level to let the CPU and GPU talk directly to one another. This is a big deal, because that instantly…
It’s the first day of the big Republican conference CPAC and a star has already been born. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel has been keeping his Twitter followers up to speed on the comments from the various speakers at the conference today, and it’s mostly been the usual parade of clowns like Tom Cotton and…
Some deeply disturbing robots have made appearances on this site over the years, from alien-like swimming creatures to back-flipping androids. And yet none have been as unsettling as this interactive animatronic piece of roadkill called the Flatcat. What is it exactly? The name Flatcat seems self-explanatory, but at the same time, it raises hundreds of…
In just a few short years, Amazon’s warehouse workers have gone from suffering in silence to jobsite walkouts in Minnesota and more recently a full-blown union vote in Alabama. Now it seems another segment of Amazon’s workforce is taking its first steps towards advocating for better conditions. In an informal driver-led survey shared with Gizmodo,…
Everyone and their mother is supposedly building a pair of smart glasses now, Facebook included. However, a BuzzFeed News report notes that apparently, Facebook is thinking about building facial recognition into its forthcoming pair of AR glasses. Um, no thank you. In an internal meeting, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of augmented and virtual reality,…
The Federal Communications Commission unanimously voted late Thursday to adopt the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program—a $3.2 billion dollar initiative meant to lower the cost of internet services for the tens of millions of families struggling with connectivity during the ongoing pandemic. The Commission will offer eligible households of up to $50 dollars per month for…
One of the PS5’s few shortcomings compared to the Xbox Series X is its smaller built-in storage. However, based on a new report, it seems Sony is working to address that by adding support for the PS5’s SSD expansion bay later this summer. According to a source who spoke to Bloomberg, support for the use…
Deep Nostalgia is meant to bring still shots, even those not captured on a modern smartphone, to life.
TikTok has agreed to fork over $92 million to settle a class-action complaint regarding alleged privacy violations, including claims that the app and its predecessor, Musical.ly, collected personal data without users’ consent for tracking and ad targeting purposes. The proposed settlement, which lawyers in the case estimated to be one of the largest privacy-related payouts…
It appears AT&T has found a buyer for its beleaguered DirecTV business. AT&T announced today that it will establish a new company with private equity firm TPG called New DirecTV that will oversee AT&T’s video business DirecTV, U-verse, and AT&T TV, the latter of which recently absorbed the company’s AT&T TV Now service. The deal,…
If you’ve been struggling to get into your Xbox Live account, you’re not alone. Microsoft’s online gaming service has been down for hours this Thursday afternoon, with widespread reports of Xbox players being unable to log in at all. Users started noticing issues shortly after 3 p.m. ET, according to DownDetector and the Xbox Status…
Time and time again, tech companies have promised a future where commuters will be able to zip around in the flying cars from The Jetsons. And time and time again, that just hasn’t happened. That’s because the practical engineering challenges are immense—building small, electrically powered vertical take-off and landing, or VTOL, aircraft would require a…
Why has something that’s become synonymous with streaming seemingly so controversial? I’m talking, of course, about the maligned “+” in service names, most recently the subject of discussion at the New York Times. Sure, we’ve reached an absurd number of services that have affixed “+” to the titles of their content streaming services. We now…
As disinformation and misinformation have increasingly been blamed for rising political extremism and polarization in the U.S., lawmakers have naturally sought to cobble together some sort of legislative response. The problem is that Congress is, themselves, so polarized that they can’t seem to agree on how to do that. Case in point: a congressional hearing…
Chances are you’re probably familiar with using a command like, “OK Google,” “Hey Siri,” or “Alexa” to summon a voice assistant. But now, the company that brought you pokes and likes—and who could forget fake news?— is trying to add, “Hey Facebook” to your rotation. Facebook’s new vocal command officially rolled out today with the…
Twitter is finally rolling out a way to get paid for tweeting that doesn’t involve putting a Venmo link in your bio, promoting a Patreon, or using the app to hunt for a rich spouse. On Thursday, the company announced a new feature that could change the way the app functions entirely: Super Follows, which…
