Tech NewsNews

Nvidia Buying Arm Means Nothing for Apple, but Maybe Good Things for Nintendo

After weeks of rumors, Nvidia announced last night that it was ready to plop down $40 billion to acquire Arm Limited, better known as that company that designs Arm architecture behind CPUs in practically every gadget you use on a day-to-day basis. That tracks with reports from the past few months. In late July, Bloomberg … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Oracle Is the Likely Winner of the Great TikTok Bake-Off

It’s official: After a monthslong race against time, Oracle, a very American and very Trump-friendly company, has beat out Microsoft and WalMart to as the likely winner of the US portion of TikTok, CNBC reported. “Oracle confirms Secretary Mnuchin’s statement that it is part of the proposal submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

The Bonkers LG Wing: Pretty Fly for a Smartphone

Between the Surface Duo, ZTE Axon 20, Galaxy Z Flip, and others, we’ve seen a lot of phones with unusual designs in 2020, but the new LG Wing might be the boldest and wackiest of them all. Sporting a swiveling 6.8-inch primary OLED display, the LG Wing sort of seems like a modern interpretation of … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Do You Really Need an AI-Powered Smart Range?

As the pandemic has forced us to spend more time at home than we did previously, many of us have invested in making these spaces—which are now our offices, daycares, cafeterias, and entertainment hubs—a little more conducive to an always-home lifestyle. This has presented a unique opportunity for electronics makers, who’ve been making a killing … Continued

Tech NewsGiz Asks

How Can I Live a More Phone-Free Life?

It is the rare person who—logging off after a long day’s scrolling—thinks, “I need much more of that in my life.” Because the thing about the internet is, it’s awful. Even the good parts suck, because the good parts are swirled in with the bad—you can’t access one without wading through the other. Often, the … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Silicon Valley’s Biggest Trump Supporter Wins TikTok

Oracle, one of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Silicon Valley, beat out Microsoft for TikTok’s U.S. operations on Sunday, multiple media outlets reported. Nonetheless, after weeks of talking about a sale, it is not clear that the deal will involve one. According to the Washington Post, Bytedance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, will announce that Oracle … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

No, You’re Not Seeing Things. Facebook Has Launched a Poll Worker Recruitment Drive.

If you saw a new popup message when you opened Facebook recently, don’t worry: It’s not a hoax. In a bid to make up for, eh, letting the Russians run rampant on its platform before the last presidential election, Facebook has launched a poll worker recruitment drive this weekend. The measure is part of the … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Facebook Finally Cracks Down on Bogus Propaganda About Oregon Wildfires

As emergency responders in Oregon struggle to contain a record 900,000 acres of wildfires across the state, local police have been fighting to contain a torrent of bogus rumors spreading online. Throughout Thursday and Friday, tens of thousands of users shared posts blaming extremists on both sides of the aisle (but mostly antifa) for setting … Continued

Tech NewsApple

What to Expect from Apple’s September Event (Hint: Maybe No iPhones)

Since the very beginning of time, which has lost all meaning at this point, almost every September has delivered a new iPhone. It’s possible that Apple’s event next week will also deliver a new iPhone, but for the first time in many moons, we may not see a phone. Rumor has it that, due to … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Major QAnon Site Shutters After Operator Gets Outed

One of the internet’s largest hub of Qanon conspiracy theorists, QMap, abruptly went dark this week after a fact-checking group uncovered the identity of the developer behind it, Bloomberg reported Friday. An investigation by Logically.ai identified Jason Gelinas, a financial information security analyst based in New Jersey, as the “developer and mouthpiece” for the site, … Continued

Tech NewsNews

China Would Rather See TikTok Go the Way of Vine Than Bow to U.S. Pressure: Report

The international game of chicken between China and the Trump administration over TikTok is starting to feel like an episode of “The Bachelor” at this point, with suitors like Microsoft, Twitter, and Walmart competing for the app’s U.S. assets in the face of a possible ban. Apparently, though, China would rather choose option d) None … Continued

Tech NewsPolitics

Dem Congressional Nominee Abruptly Drops Out of Race Against QAnon Conspiracy Theorist

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon conspiracy theorist endorsed by Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for Congress in Georgia’s 14th district, was already more than heavily favored to win. Now it’s a virtual guarantee that she’ll walk into Congress next year with the dropout of her Democratic opponent in the race. Per the New York … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

Tuck Me Inside the Scorpion Machine

Reader, if I may, can I bend your ear for a moment? In the two years I’ve worked for Gizmodo, I have struggled to identify a workstation more sadistic, more unhinged than the 18-million-pixel Craigslist rig that my colleague Tom McKay once reviewed (and for which Gizmodo paid real, actual money—a fact I frankly still … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Amazon Japan to Pay Nearly $19 Million to Suppliers, Seems Pretty Okay With It

Amazon Japan will pay around 1,400 suppliers a collective 2 billion yen, or about $18.85 million, for pushing the costs of discounts onto suppliers, the Japan Times reported yesterday. If you’re excited that Amazon had to cough up a couple million, so is Amazon, which arguably got off very easy. According to the report, the … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Debunked ‘Antifa’ Wildfire Rumors Spread on Facebook Overload 911, Spur Calls to Violence

By Thursday evening, more than 10 percent of Oregon’s 4.2 million residents were under an evacuation order, according to state estimates. Uncontained wildfires fueled by sustained global heating and extreme winds have burnt enormous swaths of land to a crisp, leaving the state’s air quality on par with some of the most prolifically polluted cities … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Apple Updates App Store Rules Regarding Game Streaming, Still Doesn’t Really Allow Game Streaming

Earlier today, Apple posted an update to its guidelines for the App Store including new language regarding game streaming that makes it appear as if game streaming services are technically allowed. However, in practice that doesn’t seem to be true. Aside from the recent spat between Apple and Epic after Fortnite got booted from the … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook: Privacy Is Cool, but Have You Guys Heard of Money?

For a platform that likes to keep reminding us over and over and over again that it prizes our individual privacy, Facebook’s done a pretty piss-poor job of actually following through. Over the past few months, we’ve seen the company purposefully prevent any of us from opting out of this sort of data-mining machine, while … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Enable 2FA on Zoom’s Mobile and Desktop Apps Right Now

Multi-factor authentication is one of the easiest ways to protect your accounts from unauthorized access or bad actors, but the security feature was noticeably missing on some devices in one of the most popular videoconferencing apps on the planet—and that’s a big problem. Now, virtual meet-up app Zoom—a service that’s used for everything from remote … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Does Trump Remember When He Wanted TikTok to Be Sold?

We may never understand why Donald Trump has decided to force the sale of TikTok’s US assets. More troublingly, his remarks on the matter, and its seemingly arbitrary deadline, indicate he may not fully grasp the concepts of cause and effect, or of linear time. “I’m not extending deadlines, no. It’s September 15th,” President Trump … Continued

Tech News

Pentagon Official Warns About Chinese Drones Without Explaining Specific Security Risks (Again)

Ellen Lord, the top official at the Pentagon in charge of acquiring new technology, appeared on a virtual panel Thursday to discuss the threat posed to the U.S. by small drones made by Chinese companies like DJI. And while it might seem self-evident to many people within the national security establishment that a geopolitical adversary … Continued