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Tech NewsNews
Martin Shkreli Is Reportedly in Solitary Confinement After Trying to Run a Company From Prison
So-called “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli earned the eternal ire of the public when he was the CEO of a company called Turing Pharmaceuticals, which he had buy up the rights to and jack up the price of life-saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill. He then landed himself a seven-year prison sentence in … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsNews
Boeing’s 737 Max Fix Won’t Be Ready for Weeks, FAA Says
Boeing’s 737 Max line of jets won’t be flying passengers again for at least a few weeks as the company continues working on software and hardware updates deemed necessary after two air disasters, CNN reported on Monday, citing an updated timeline issued by the Federal Aviation Administration. Countries the world over grounded 737 Max jets … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsNews
Thousands Tell the FCC to Scrap Its Dumb Rules That Let Carriers Block Text Messages
Thousands of people have written to the Federal Communications Commission to lambast the agency over its controversial decision to give wireless carriers far more power over text messages sent to large groups. Essentially, the FCC’s decision gives your carrier the ability to block or charge senders more for certain messages. As Gizmodo previously explained following … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsFacebook
Facebook’s Misinformation Problem Is Only Getting More Complicated
In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook’s potential to be a subversive political tool has been all too clear. And several years later, the social network still struggles to deal with the very real dangers its platform creates for political systems. As the social network cracks down on its core product, new … Continued
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Tech NewsFacebook
The Annoying Posts in Your Facebook News Feed Will Soon Come With an Explanation Box
One of the enduring criticisms of Facebook is that the News Feed is a black box. Starting this week, however, the box will suddenly take on a shade of dark gray. No one outside the company fully understands why they saw this post or that one. We do know that Facebook’s News Feed algorithms are … Continued
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Tech NewsGiz Asks
What’s the Oldest Disease?
Some things never change. Dying terribly from bone cancer, for instance: that’s something humans have been doing from about the beginning of our time. Has it always been like this, or was there some blissful period, in our species’ salad days, in which no one perished from bone cancer? Which sickness has burdened us—or our … Continued
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Tech NewsNews
Man Pleads Guilty to Apple Phishing Scam Used to Hack iCloud Accounts of Rappers and Athletes
A Georgia man pleaded guilty last week to using phishing tactics to hack the Apple accounts and credit card details of a number of “high-profile” celebrities and athletes, scamming victims out of hundreds or thousands of dollars, according to the Justice Department. For roughly three years beginning in at least March 2015, Kwamaine Jerell Ford … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech News
New Alarm Clock App Is Betting You Won’t Be Able to Sleep Through the Sound of a Puking Dog
Neural adaptation is our brain’s ability to gradually ignore sounds, smells, and other stimuli we’re routinely exposed to. It’s what allows people who live in crowded urban settings to tune out all the noise at night and sleep, and then continue sleeping right through a familiar alarm clock sound in the morning. Odd Alarm is … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogle
Gmail Finally Gets Email Scheduling Baked Right In
Google’s ubiquitous email service has now been around for 15 years, so to celebrate this milestone, Gmail is getting a couple of important new features. The first big addition to Gmail is actually something people have been asking about for years: the ability to schedule emails. Now, when you’re finished writing an email in Gmail, … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogle
Google Employees Call on Company to Kick Heritage Foundation Ghoul Off AI Ethics Board
Google announced the formation of a global council on technology ethics last week to some deserved trepidation. Sure, the company had amassed some highly qualified individuals to fill seats on this board—but Google’s track record of following its own internal ethics codes is less than spotless. What provoked the most outrage, however, was the appointment … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech NewsNews
Flights on Five Airlines Delayed Nationwide Due to Computer Outage
At least five airlines are experiencing delays this morning due to a computer problem. Early reports indicate that Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, and JetBlue all experienced the same outage, which has reportedly been fixed. A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines told Gizmodo over email that the outage was caused by “a vendor that services multiple carriers … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
2 Million Credit Cards Exposed After Hack of Buca di Beppo, Planet Hollywood and Others
Over 2 million credit cards have been compromised after hackers installed malware on point-of-sale systems for Earl Enterprises, a restaurant company that owns national chains like Buca di Beppo, Planet Hollywood, and Earl of Sandwich. The hacking occurred between May 23, 2018 and March 18, 2019, according to the company. Krebs on Security was the … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsBest of the Week
Gimlet’s Union Drive, Twisted Graphene, and Psychedelic Mice: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week
Well, folks, it’s just a few hours shy of the turn of the month, and you know what that means: April Fool’s Day. Yes, it’s that special time of year when insipid brands, mean-spirited teens, and tech titans compete to be the first to trick you into thinking they released Skittle’s… For Men, that it’s … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsPrivacy and Security
The DEA Ran a Massive Database of People Who Bought Money-Counting Machines for Years
The Drug Enforcement Administration maintained a database of people who purchased money-counting machines as part of a “legally questionable” effort to identify suspected drug dealers for further surveillance and enforcement efforts, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The Times reported that a U.S. Department of Justice inspector general report indicated that said program operated … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech News
Facebook Reportedly Worked on Project to Build Fleet of Bird-Sized Internet Drones
It turns out that Facebook’s onetime plan to build huge drones that would relay wireless networks to parts of the world without widespread access to high-speed internet, Project Aquila, isn’t the only odd method the company has explored in its quest towards world e-domination. According to a recent report in Business Insider (paywalled), Facebook worked … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsAmazon
Investigator Jeff Bezos Hired to Look Into Who Got His Dick Pics Says Saudis Broke Into Bezos’s Phone
Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos beat the National Enquirer to the punch by announcing the dissolution of his marriage—which the tabloid was planning on blowing up anyways in the form of a lengthy expose of his affair with news anchor and media personality Lauren Sanchez. The mildly-interesting-at-best story got a whole lot more interesting, however, … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsFacebook
Mark Zuckerberg: OK, Fine, Regulate Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg—whose company has blundered its way into controversies over everything from user privacy and data breaches to amplification of extremist content and literal genocide as of late—responded to growing criticism of the tech sector by calling for more outside regulation in an op-ed in the Washington Post (and on his own personal … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech News
The Online Icons That Didn’t Survive the Web’s First 30 Years
As March draws to close, so does our celebration of the World Wide Web’s 30th birthday, making it as good a time as ever to take a look back at some the features and formats that bit the dust along the way. The internet has come a long way from the bare-bones, plain text and … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech News
RSS Is Better Than Twitter
There is a good reason people call Twitter the hell website. Cynicism, egos, unprovoked hostility, unchecked propaganda, sexism, bigotry, and outright hate—Twitter is as full of it as virtually anywhere online, and worse, it’s unbearably nonstop. The design of the place feels uniquely unhealthy due in large part to its speed and unrelenting stream. Opening … Continued
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Tech NewsNews
Tesla Hacking Report Is a Good Reminder of the Risks of Stored Data
It can be easy to forget how much personal data we share with the various technologies geared at streamlining our lives, be they voice assistants, smart home devices, or the phones we carry with us virtually everywhere. And if you own a car, that may go for your ride too. According to a report from … Continued
By Catie Keck