Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
California regulators slapped Uber with a $59 million fine on Monday after they determined that the company had failed to adequately respond to questions about a report detailing thousands of sexual assaults that occurred during trips taken with the company’s ride-hailing platform. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the order stipulates that Uber will have…
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday asked a Sacramento County Superior Court judge to intervene in what he claims is now six months of Amazon failing to comply with investigative subpoenas over how its warehouse workers were treated during the covid-19 pandemic. Last spring, Becerra’s office launched a probe to investigate whether Amazon had…
Voting systems manufacturer Smartmatic has sent legal letters to conservative news network Fox News, as well as its ultra-right cousins Newsmax and One America News Network, demanding they retract coverage spinning baseless conspiracy theories about the company’s role in the 2020 elections or face legal action. Donald Trump, his campaign legal team including Rudy Giuliani,…
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced it was issuing orders to nine of the most popular social media and streaming platforms in the U.S., requiring them to offer up intel on business practices ranging from data collection to advertising, to the way that user engagement gets tracked overtime. The orders issued to Amazon, Discord,…
To a certain degree, using smartwatches and fitness trackers to quantify the body’s response to external factors makes a lot of sense. For instance, researchers are studying to see if wearables can identify infectious diseases, and on a more personal level, you can measure the effects of your own fitness routine. But, uh, we don’t…
Many of the things we see on TV or movies can often only be explained with the word “magic” (or, your know, visual effects.) What would it be like if the magical inventions we see on our screens existed in real life? Now, at least one does, and you apparently don’t have to be a…
Collab—the jam-session app that’s also the latest project from Facebook’s experimental New Product Experimentation (NPE) team—is finally out of its beta. The gist of Collab is this: folks can record and upload a fifteen-second clip of them, say, singing, or riffing on a keyboard. Other users can either accompany them with their own musical stylings,…
In an attempt to push one more iPhone and iPad update out before the end of the year, todayApple released iOS and iPad OS 14.3. Fitness+ is now live. While the general interface and performance of iOS and iPadOS aren’t getting any major changes, the new update does contain a couple of notable additions such…
Reddit is buying up TikTok’s biggest competitor in the U.S., Dubsmash, in a deal with undisclosed terms, the company announced on Monday. In the announcement, Reddit wrote that Dubsmash has a “beautiful and fun product that enables their users to create unique, dynamic, interactive content” and “is aligned with Reddit’s own mission of bringing community…
Surprising absolutely no one, Tim Cook is not a fan of now-dead Gawker Media, of which Gizmodo was a part. And though Gawker has been dead since 2016, it appears that Cook also decided to kill a fictional Gawker by pulling the plug on a proposed Apple TV+ show about the site’s glory days. It’s…
Pornhub announced today that it’s removing all videos uploaded to the site by unverified users, purging millions of uploads in the process. Per a report by Motherboard, Pornhub originally hosted close to 13.5 million videos. As of this morning the number dipped to 4.7 million, then rebounded to 7.2 million a couple hours later. Some…
While everyone might not be on board yet, one of the things I like most about flexible display tech is the way it allows phone makers to get really creative with new designs. Thanks to a partnership with Japanese design firm Nendo, Oppo’s new triple-hinged slider phone might be one of the most interesting concepts…
It takes years of practice and tutelage under a master to become a chef worthy of your own restaurant—or reality TV show—but as with everything in life, there are shortcuts. Assuming your kitchen is as large as one of Amazon’s warehouses, there’s a gadget or machine that can take care of every culinary skill you…
It’s not just you. YouTube, Gmail, and just about every conceivable Google-based service, from Google Docs to Google Play Movies to Google Calendar, is down right now across several parts of the globe, including the U.S., UK, Japan, India, and Australia, among a host of other countries. Other services that appear to be impacted by…
State-sponsored hackers have reportedly tapped into internal email systems at several U.S. federal agencies, including the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s internet and telecom branch, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Three people briefed on the matter told Reuters under the condition of anonymity that the attackers are believed to have used a similar…
On the same day that Tesla CEO Elon Musk told his employees that they needed to increase production “as much as possible” for the remainder of the year, the company purportedly sent out an email informing its employees at its Fremont, California factory that it was shutting down its Model S and Model X production…
Ever since I was young, I’ve always been a cat fan (although dogs are lovely, too). Nonetheless, my current landlord doesn’t allow me to have a cat, so I just settle for following cute ones on Instagram. Considering that I live alone, there have been many times during the pandemic where I’ve thought, “Wouldn’t this…
Disney World will reportedly stop “enhancing” on-ride photos by pasting digital face masks onto maskless park guests. And no, you aren’t reading the Onion. It’s 2020, baby, where reality is so much of a joke at this point that headlines and punchlines are literally synonymous. It was already dystopian enough that Disney World decided to…
What many might have hailed as Twitter setting an example by restricting engagement with President Donald Trump’s misleading and incredulous tweets about his election loss was, according to the company, an accident. Hold your fanfare. The company has since reversed course, fully restored engagement to Trump’s tweets, and ostensibly let the beginnings of its shiny…
A team of amateur codebreakers has reportedly cracked the Zodiac Killer’s most infamous cipher, solving a mystery that’s had law enforcement stumped for more than 50 years. The Zodiac Killer is the moniker of the as-yet-unknown American serial killer who authorities believe murdered at least five people in California in the late ‘60s (and who…
