Tech News

Fox News Bans Ad For Documentary About American Nazi Rally in 1939

Fox News has refused to air an ad for the short documentary film A Night at the Garden, according to a new report from the Hollywood Reporter. The 7-minute movie, which was recently nominated for an Academy Award, explores the terrifying day on February 20, 1939 when thousands of American Nazis held a rally at … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

It Sure Looks a Lot Like the Pro-Trump Brother of Jeff Bezos’s Girlfriend Helped Leak Those Sexts

CNN reported on Wednesday evening that “two people with knowledge of the matter” had confirmed that Michael Sanchez, the brother of the woman with whom Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had an affair, was the person who initially tipped off the National Enquirer to the secret romance and set off a firestorm. In January, the National … Continued

Tech NewsNews

What’s Going on With This YouTube Chuck E. Cheese Conspiracy Theory?

The internet is a vast well of (often extraordinarily idiotic) conspiracy theories, some of which are so convincing that they creep out from their remote corners of the web to hook the attention of millions on social media. That’s what happened this week when a YouTuber who deals heavily in exactly this kind of content, … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Report: Stolen Equifax Data Hasn’t Been Sold Online, Raising More Questions Than Answers

In 2017, consumer credit reporting agency Equifax suffered one of the largest data breaches in history, exposing extensive personal information on nearly 150 million Americans (and in countless thousands of additional cases, credit-card numbers and scans of driver’s licenses, social security cards, and other identity documents). Congressional investigators later found the incident was the result … Continued

Tech NewsApple

We May Finally See Apple’s Streaming Service and Netflix Rival Very Soon

We may finally get Apple’s long-awaited streaming service in mere months. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the company plans to (finally) introduce us to its video streaming competitor to Netflix at a March 25 event. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the event has invited several high-profile celebrities and entertainment industry heavyweights attached … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

The One Choice You Weren’t Given In Black Mirror: Bandersnatch 

When Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was released on Netflix last December, it was fairly obvious that the choose-your-own-adventure experiment represented a fresh step in data collection for the streaming service. Now, a researcher has offered proof that Netflix is storing and mining your choices. Surprisingly, that’s actually a good reason to feel optimistic. For those who … Continued

Tech NewsTech Policy

‘Free Streaming’ Offers From Internet Providers Ultimately Cause Price Hikes, Research Suggests

They say nothing in life is free. Maybe that isn’t always the case, but when it’s your internet provider offering you a freebie, it’s best to assume there’s always going to be some hidden cost. So-called zero-rating schemes have been long been a contentious point in the net neutrality debate. This is largely because, to … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook’s Most Intriguing New Hires Aren’t in Silicon Valley—They’re in Washington

Facebook’s home turf is in Silicon Valley, but the company’s most important future battles are largely shaping up 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. To win, the social media giant is on a hiring spree focused on the nation’s capital. As public opinion turns increasingly skeptical of the 2-billion person strong social network and more … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Feds Say Ex-Air Force Officer Helped Iranians Catfish American Spies on Facebook

Monica Elfriede Witt, a former counterintelligence officer with the U.S. Air Force, has been charged with giving the Iranian government classified information in an indictment unsealed today. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says that information provided by Witt aided Iranian hackers in a phishing campaign directed against her former colleagues in the American intelligence … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Fired Apple Executive Charged With Crime He Was Supposed to Prevent

Gene Levoff, a former Vice President of Corporate Law at Apple, was charged with insider trading on Wednesday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Levoff, who was until last year responsible for Apple’s compliance with the SEC, was fired in September 2018. He is accused of trading on insider information for eight years to … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Indian Lawmakers Call for TikTok Ban Due to ‘Cultural Degeneration’

There’s pressure building in India to regulate the shortform video app TikTok, with some lawmakers pushing for the platform to be blocked as a vessel for societal decay. M. Manikandan—the information technology minister of the Indian state Tamil Nadu—said on Monday the state government will recommend the app be banned in Tamil Nadu, according to … Continued

Tech News

2-Billion-Year-Old Squiggles Could Be the Earliest Evidence of a Mobile Life Form

The reported discovery of 2.1-billion-year-old fossilized track marks etched in sedimentary rock is pushing back the earliest evidence of self-propelled movement by an organism on Earth by a whopping 1.5 billion years. New research published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests ancient life on Earth had acquired the capacity for self-propelled … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Romance Scammers Swindled $143 Million From American Lonely Hearts Last Year

The stigma of online dating might be gone, but the scams are not. According to the Federal Trade Commission, over 21,000 romance scams were reported to the agency in 2018, costing Americans a total of $143 million. That makes them more costly than any other type of consumer fraud reported to the agency—and sets a … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

Why an Amazon Router Freaks Me Out

Amazon just acquired the mesh networking startup Eero for an undisclosed sum. This is great news for Eero’s founders who are undoubtedly chin-deep in Bezos bucks, and it’s bound to be a great move for Amazon, which can now control an unknown number of people’s wifi routers. However, it’s cause for concern if you’re an … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Report: Apple Is Trying to Get Newspapers to Fork Over Half of Revenue From Planned Subscription Service

Tech giant Apple, which is trying to pivot to services as sales of some of its electronics slow, is reportedly working to launch a subscription-based news service that would get readers past paywalls at a discounted rate and share the revenue with publishers. But according to a Tuesday report in the Wall Street Journal, many … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Apple, Google Both Hosting Saudi Government App That Lets Men Track Women, Restrict Their Travel

Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store both continue to host a Saudi government app, Absher, that allows men in the country to track their female relatives’ movements and restrict their travel. According to the Washington Post, the Saudi Interior Ministry-designed app serves as an e-government and e-services portal, including functions like requesting a passport, … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I Suck and the Problem Is the Whole Site

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, whose platform has become synonymous with yelling, trolling, and a less-than-stable president who uses it for incoherent rants and threats of nuclear annihilation, is in a tough spot: Many if not most of the criticisms of his site are accurate, and Dorsey’s tactic of choice when responding to them is usually … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

‘Hackers’ Charged by U.S. Over Hundreds of Hoax Bomb Threats on Schools

An alleged hacker accused of sending fake bomb threats to hundreds of schools was reportedly arrested Tuesday by FBI agents in North Carolina, while an alleged accomplice, who is currently incarcerated in the U.K., now faces charges in the U.S. Timothy Dalton Vaughn, 20, is facing an 11-count federal indictment, including charges of making interstate … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

U.S. Congressman Wants to Make Amazon Testify on Its Facial Recognition Tool

Last year’s wide-ranging and critical congressional hearings caught Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and other tech giants in their dragnet. Amazon, for the most part, came out unscathed, but that might soon change. The ACLU researchers raised concerns over Rekognition, Amazon’s facial recognition software suite, this past summer when they discovered what the researchers characterized as … Continued

Tech News

This Man Traveled 10,000 Miles to See America’s Trash Birds—and Loved Every Minute of It

20-year-old Tasmanian George Vaughan had three main goals for his trip to the United States last month: see a Metallica concert, visit Niagara Falls, and go to a landfill in southern Alabama. The landfill, he hoped, would help him realize a dream he’d held for six years: to see a laughing gull, a “seagull” generally … Continued