Tech NewsAlternate Internet Week

What Would Happen If the Whole Internet Just Shut Down All of a Sudden?

A world in which the internet suddenly stops: surely the TV show’s already in development. Sprawling cast, gorgeous visuals, tediously on-the-nose themes. Some handsome B-lister tearing around the country in pursuit of his wayward kids, or the shadowy sect that pulled the plug in the first place. A patch of prairie in Kansas with a … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

China’s Biggest Propaganda Agency Buys Ads on Facebook and Twitter to Smear Protesters in Hong Kong

China’s largest state-run news agency, Xinhua News, is buying ads on Facebook and Twitter to smear protesters in Hong Kong, a new tactic being used to influence how the rest of the world perceives the pro-democracy demonstrators. An estimated 1.7 million people in Hong Kong, roughly a quarter of its population, took to the streets … Continued

Tech NewsBest of the Week

Semen Smugglers, Spreadsheets, and Laughing to Death: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

It’s been a weird one this week at Gizmodo, folks: From hacking buttplugs and realizing our dog photos have personally identifiable information in them to smuggled boar semen and an Arctic weather station hitting nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit, we’ve been hard at work churning out the content you crave and that makes our heads hurt. … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

Nintendo Says That Rumored Switch Exchange Deal Doesn’t Exist

So you know all those reports earlier this week about a Nintendo Switch exchange program? Yeah, turns out it was all a bunch of crap. The Verge published an official statement from a Nintendo rep on Saturday debunking the deal. The unofficial (and now, unfortunately, confirmed untrue) offer was first noted on Reddit, where users … Continued

Tech NewsPolitics

To Curb Hate Speech Online, Beto O’Rourke Says Hold the Platforms Hosting That Shit Responsible

Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke wants to stem the spread of hate speech on the internet after several recent mass shootings, including one in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso earlier this month, have been linked to online extremism. One solution proposed in a recent blog post on his campaign website would hold online platforms accountable for … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Report: FTC, FCC Squabbled About Who Is Responsible for Cracking Down on VoIP Robocalls

As automated Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems fueled a national robocall epidemic estimated at tens of billions of bogus calls annually, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission argued over who should actually do something about it, according to a Sunday report in the Wall Street Journal. “Relatively few” of the calls … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Apple Sues Corellium for Selling Access to Cloud-Based ‘Perfect Replicas’ of iOS

Apple is suing a company, Corellium LLC, that it says is illegally reselling virtual copies of its iOS operating system under the pretense of legitimate security research, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Corellium advertises itself as “the first and only platform to offer iOS, Android, and Linux virtualization on ARM.” Per TechCrunch, the company allows users … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Report: Facebook Content Mods Say Company Therapists Were Pressured to Share Session Details

Adding to an already ridiculously long list of complaints, now Facebook’s content moderators say a higher-up asked company-appointed counselors to share information from their sessions, according to a new report from the Intercept. Numerous investigations have described this workforce as notoriously underpaid and overworked in crappy working conditions that require them to scan through some … Continued

Tech NewsTech Policy

Democratic Senators Urge FCC to Delay T-Mobile-Sprint Merger Vote, Seek Public Comment

In July, the Department of Justice cleared T-Mobile’s planned takeover of Sprint, paving the way for the nation’s third and fourth largest wireless carriers to merge into a titan to rival AT&T and Verizon. Sixteen states are suing to block the merger, and now some congressional Democrats are lobbying to have the Federal Communications Commission … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Report: Huawei Could Get 90 More Days to Buy American Parts to Fill Pre-Blacklist Orders

Though U.S. trade sanctions are still in effect, Huawei Technologies will have an additional 90 days to buy from American companies so it can wrap up work with existing customers, according to a Reuters report. The world’s largest telecom gear supplier received a “temporary general license” shortly after the ban that was initially set to … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

The Bright Side of Humans Eavesdropping on Your Alexa Recordings

Over the past few months, a waterfall of details about how companies handle voice recordings has poured into the news. First, there was news that Amazon hired thousands of contractors to review Alexa commands. Apple and Google were doing the same thing with their voice assistants. Then, more recently, we learned that Facebook and Microsoft … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

Study on Amazon and Fake CDs Makes Sweeping Claims After Testing Fewer Than 100 Albums

It’s no secret that Amazon struggles to keep fake products off its online marketplace, and it has for a while now. So when a new study made headlines this week for supposedly finding that a quarter of CDs “Fulfilled by Amazon” are knock-offs, it wasn’t exactly a shocker. But this alarming statistic becomes decidedly less … Continued

Tech News

Go Ahead, Share Your Most Revolting Bug-Eating Stories

Reader, let me ask you an honest question: When’s the last time you ate a bug, wittingly or otherwise? A colleague today shared a deeply unsettling image on Slack of a worm stowaway burrowed deep in the core of a farmer’s market tomato—a would-be snack (shown above) had it not been caught by his partner. … Continued

Tech NewsTransportation

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Causes Havoc as Computer System Goes Down Nationwide

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s computer systems are reportedly having issues across the country. The federal law enforcement agency tweeted out a statement Friday afternoon explaining that its processing system is having a “temporary outage,” and it is working to “address the technology disruption.” Bloomberg reports that the affected system processes passengers traveling on international … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Disney+ and Big Cable Team Up to Crack Down on Password Sharing, and Now We’re Freaked Out

Well, folks, I hate to rain on your streaming services parade, but those of us who are hoping to skirt a Disney+ subscription and instead leach off a buddy’s account may run into some trouble. Disney and Charter Communications on Wednesday announced a distribution agreement for programming that falls under the Disney umbrella, including, the … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

Nintendo Is Apparently Giving New Switch Owners a Free Upgrade to Version 2 [Update]

Is there anything worse than buying something only to see the company release a new and improved version just a few weeks later? Nintendo feels your pain, and if you purchased a Switch, the original version, after July 17, the company will let you swap it for the newer version, as long as you pay … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Engineers Will Love this Dead Calculator Hacked Into a Wireless Keyboard

On the surface, hacking a broken calculator to serve as a Bluetooth ‘keyboard’ for a calculator app on a smartphone seems like hacking for hacking’s sake. But we all know how frustrating a touchscreen keyboard can be for anything but short messages, so for engineers or mathematicians crunching numbers all day, this hack might actually … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Stop Doxing Yourself With Your Pet Photos

People are hyper-vigilant these days about protecting their personal information, all the little details about themselves that can lead to stalking or harassment online. But there’s one mistake they’re repeating so often it’s deserving of its own special reminder: leaving their home addresses and phone numbers exposed in photos of their beloved pets. It’s almost … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Why Is Apple Flexing on High-end Camera Company Red Over Vague Patents?

Apple isn’t afraid of beef, and the latest company on its bad side is Red Digital Cinema. The two companies are currently locked in a lawsuit over one of Red’s RAW codec patents, which Apple is trying to get invalidated. The big question, however, is why Apple is going through the trouble in the first … Continued

Tech NewsTransportation

That Man Who Went Viral Claiming He Took a Delta Flight Alone Duped Everyone

Vincent Peone’s lucky flight story went viral earlier this week after he posted a video showing how he got his “own private jet” for an apparent trip from Aspen to Salt Lake City after Delta rescheduled his original flight. Turns out, people should have been more skeptical of Peone, who is a comedy film director … Continued