Tech News

Trump’s Department of Labor Is Targeting Microsoft for Pledging to Hire More Black Managers

Trump’s Department of Labor has opened an investigation into whether Microsoft violated federal law by promising to hire more Black and African American managers and leaders, ABC News reported on Wednesday. Microsoft has faced criticism for years about a lack of diversity everywhere from its rank and file to the executive suites, as well as…

Tech News Tom McKay

Nvidia Wants to Eliminate Compression During Video Calls by Using Neural Networks to Perfectly Render Your Face

There are a thousand reasons to hate hopping on a video call every 10 minutes to chat with your co-workers, among them the ugly video compression artifacts that can occasionally make your face completely unrecognizable. Nvidia has a potential solution to the problem, but instead of fixing compression algorithms, it wants to use neural networks to…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Presidential Debate Commission Clearly Not Playing With a Full Deck

The first telephone was invented in 1861. The underlying technology evolved greatly over the next 100 years, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that Americans stopped seeing home phones as an extravagance. (The 1920s also saw the invention of the two-way radio, hand-held versions of which were later dubbed “walkie-talkies.”) Nokia arguably ushered in the…

Politics Dell Cameron

GPT-3 Bot Spends a Week Replying on Reddit, Starts Talking About the Illuminati

A Reddit user went on an impressive comment streak last week. The user stuck to the pages of the mega-popular AskReddit subforum, and their responses were relatively elaborate. But the length of the replies was especially unusual in that they were sometimes coming within a minute of the question first being asked. After an impressive…

Artificial Intelligence Rhett Jones

Why Is It So Hard to Make a Beautiful Smartwatch Band?

A couple of weeks ago, on a camping trip with a friend, I was describing my newfound obsession with wearing my smartwatch to track things—namely, about how it’d been the primary driver in helping me overcome my quarantine workout slump. But as she glanced at the thick band on my Apple Watch Series 6, she…

Gadgets Catie Keck

Slack Is Having An Identity Crisis

Slack is a company in trouble. For some reason, the workplace messaging app—one that’s cursed not only with occasional outages, but a mind-numbing layout and features explicitly designed to snitch on all of our DM’s—has faced nothing but slumping stocks since its debut on the public market last year. But rather than addressing those issues…

Tech News Shoshana Wodinsky

I Miss When It Was Quiet

My weekend was like most other weekends in the pandemic era. I went for a walk in the park with my wife, briefly saw some friends outdoors and socially distanced, made some mac and cheese, and mainly chilled. But for all the trappings of normalcy (or what goes for normalcy these days), there was something distinctly…

Politics Brian Kahn

QAnon-Obsessed CBP Officer Arrested After Sending ‘Numerous’ Threats to Superior

An agent for Customs and Border Protection in New Jersey, Alberto Almeida, was arrested and is facing charges after he allegedly sent threatening messages accusing a senior CBP official of child trafficking and calling for his extrajudicial execution, the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday. According to a criminal complaint filed by a special agent with…

Crime Tom McKay

Siri Is What’s Really Holding the HomePod Back

It’s easy to dunk on Apple’s HomePod speaker. For one, it costs $300. Currently, it doesn’t support third-party music services (though that’s supposedly on the way). HomeKit is a mixed bag when it comes to controlling a smart home, and for the price, the Apple TV is arguably the smarter choice for a HomeKit hub.…

Tech News Victoria Song

The Internet Is Broken, and ISPs Are to Blame

Welcome to the big day: The launch of System Reboot, Gizmodo’s new podcast on how to repair a broken world. There’s no better place to start our mission to fix the world than the internet. We rely on the tubes and wires more than ever due to the pandemic that has us working from home,…

Tech News Brian Kahn & Alex Cranz

Intel’s 11th-Gen Desktop Processors Are Coming Early Next Year and They’ll Support PCIe 4.0

Intel announced this morning that its 11th-gen desktop processors, code-named Rocket Lake, will release sometime in the first quarter of 2021. But unlike the 10th generation, this generation will actually provide support for PCIe 4.0. Not much more information was provided beyond that, although Intel did say it would reveal more in the coming months.…

Tech News Joanna Nelius

Latest Leak Suggests Apple’s Got a HomePod Mini In Store—But Is That Enough?

Now that Apple has finally set a date for its iPhone 12 event, new info is coming about other products Apple might release with one leak suggesting that instead of a HomePod 2, Apple will release a cheaper HomePod Mini. In a short but direct post on Twitter, L0vetodream—who has a pretty solid track record…

Tech News Sam Rutherford

The Future of Software Is at Stake in Google’s Latest Trip to the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court will finally hear arguments in a case that could rewrite the rules of software development as we know it. On Wednesday, Google will defend its use of Java code in the development of the Android operating system. Oracle claims that code is protected intellectual property, and if the court agrees, there are…

Tech Policy Rhett Jones

Polar’s Newest Smartwatch Sounds Perfect for Fitness Wonks

While some of us are perfectly happy with closing basic activity rings, there are also data nerds among us who love to comb through a mountain of metrics to measure progress. For those folks, there’s Polar’s latest flagship smartwatch, the Vantage V2. As the name suggests, the Vantage V2 is the successor to Polar’s high-end…

Gadgets Victoria Song

Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon Are the Big Monopolies You Thought They Were, Lawmakers Find

Just as you suspected, Big Tech is dominated by monopolies, a House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee found. After more than a year of investigating Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon’s behavior, lawmakers released a 449-page report with their findings on Tuesday, complete with recommendations that the four companies be broken up to make the market more competitive.…

Tech News Caitlin McGarry

Facebook Bans the Future of the Republican Party

The future of the Republican Party faces a mild inconvenience as the world’s largest social network said on Tuesday that it plans to take sweeping action against groups and accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy across Facebook and Instagram. The move to ban all QAnon Facebook Groups, Pages, and Instagram accounts regardless of whether they…

Politics Andrew Couts

Hero Child Sues Nintendo Over Hellish Joy-Con Drift

If you’re familiar with the dreaded Switch phenomenon known as “Joy-Con drift,” you’re likely privy to the unique feeling of rage you feel when the movements of your controllers aren’t aligning with what’s happening on your screen. One child has evidently had enough, and he and his mother are now suing Nintendo over the ongoing…

Tech News Catie Keck

DoorDash Wants a Big Wet Kiss on the Lips

It’s become normal, thanks to Silicon Valley, for companies to periodically burst, unannounced, into our feeds to tell us they are ACTUALLY VERY GOOD FOR SOCIETY and then recede into shadows til the next battle with regulators. Why is DoorDash here, now, with a report telling us it saved the restaurant industry during a pandemic,…

Tech News Whitney Kimball

Razer’s Dumb Light-Up Visa Card for Gamers Is Proof This Timeline Is Cursed

Tech companies are really loving the idea of making credit cards. Apple did it, Google’s purportedly working on it, Samsung got on that train this summer, and just yesterday, Venmo announced it, too, making a card. But leave it to Razer to create the dumbest of them all: the Razer Card, a prepaid Visa cashback…

Tech News Victoria Song

Beirut Blast Ranks Among History’s Most Powerful Accidental Explosions

By analyzing videos uploaded to social media, scientists have calculated the strength of the blast that devastated the city of Beirut in August, finding it to be among the biggest non-nuclear explosions in human history. When a warehouse at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon exploded this past summer, it released the equivalent of 500…

Tech News George Dvorsky

Trump’s Department of Labor Is Targeting Microsoft for Pledging to Hire More Black Managers

Nvidia Wants to Eliminate Compression During Video Calls by Using Neural Networks to Perfectly Render Your Face

Presidential Debate Commission Clearly Not Playing With a Full Deck

GPT-3 Bot Spends a Week Replying on Reddit, Starts Talking About the Illuminati

Why Is It So Hard to Make a Beautiful Smartwatch Band?

Slack Is Having An Identity Crisis

I Miss When It Was Quiet

QAnon-Obsessed CBP Officer Arrested After Sending ‘Numerous’ Threats to Superior

Siri Is What’s Really Holding the HomePod Back

The Internet Is Broken, and ISPs Are to Blame

Intel’s 11th-Gen Desktop Processors Are Coming Early Next Year and They’ll Support PCIe 4.0

Latest Leak Suggests Apple’s Got a HomePod Mini In Store—But Is That Enough?

The Future of Software Is at Stake in Google’s Latest Trip to the Supreme Court

Polar’s Newest Smartwatch Sounds Perfect for Fitness Wonks

Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon Are the Big Monopolies You Thought They Were, Lawmakers Find

Facebook Bans the Future of the Republican Party

Hero Child Sues Nintendo Over Hellish Joy-Con Drift

DoorDash Wants a Big Wet Kiss on the Lips

Razer’s Dumb Light-Up Visa Card for Gamers Is Proof This Timeline Is Cursed

Beirut Blast Ranks Among History’s Most Powerful Accidental Explosions

Trump Says He’ll Sign Order to Pay TSA

Deadpool Will Deface ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Classics for a New Secret Lair

Apple’s Siri Isn’t Just Going to Use One Chatbot. It’s Going to Use All of Them

Why ‘For All Mankind’ Season 5 Is the Key to the Rest of the Series

ASUS ZenScreen 15.6-Inch Portable Monitor Is Now Cheaper Than Black Friday in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale

Early Wildfires Are Surging Across the US—and Trump’s New Fire Agency Isn’t Ready

INIU Brings Another Power Bank to the Spring Sale as SnapGo Keychain Portable Charger Drops to Its Lowest Price

Attorney Hit With Historic Fine for Citing AI-Generated Cases

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

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