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While Google has already held two splashy events about Stadia, its big bet on streaming games, Microsoft, has been a little more lowkey about its own streaming game initiative, xCloud. We still don’t know a whole lot about it, but today I got to play it—and watch it break. The concept behind xCloud isn’t a … Continued
Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Fukuoka, Japan reached a tentative agreement on Saturday to “compile common rules to close loopholes used by global tech giants” such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, Reuters reported—with a particular focus on reducing the practice by some companies of routing profits through countries that offer rock-bottom corporate … Continued
Sony and Google have spared few details about their next-gen video game systems, but Microsoft has been quieter about how it plans to deliver games in the future. Sure we heard a few details about the console, codenamed Scarlett, and the cloud service, xCloud. We know these things exist. We just haven’t known what they’d … Continued
Update: 6/9/2019 at 10:10 p.m. ET: Per a Raytheon press release on Sunday, this merger is now official (and announced slightly sooner than expected). Gizmodo’s original coverage follows below. Sometimes, when two major military contractors love money very much, they get together and reverse-mitosis into one larger military contractor. Defense contractor Raytheon, manufacturer of everything from … Continued
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Brian Walsh rejected tech giant Google’s efforts to have a lawsuit originally brought by ex-Google engineer James Damore dismissed, the Mercury News reported on Friday, meaning that the case can now proceed into the discovery phase. Google fired Damore in August 2017 after he authored a lengthy anti-diversity document … Continued
Chinese government officials summoned representatives from major tech companies both from the U.S. and elsewhere this week to warn them of “dire consequences” if they go along with the Trump administration’s prohibition on sales of certain U.S. technology to a number of Chinese companies, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing two “people familiar … Continued
Ridesharing giant Lyft is fighting to retain total control of the docked and dockless bike share market in San Francisco, the Verge reported Friday, and has filed a lawsuit that its contract prohibits the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) from issuing permits to competitors. Per the San Francisco Chronicle, Motivate, which Lyft acquired for … Continued
Many of us are familiar with the uniquely infuriating hell that is robocalls, and folks, I hate to say it, but the problem isn’t getting any better. A recently announced iPhone feature arriving with iOS 13, however, might help quiet some of those unknown callers by kicking them straight to voicemail. So far, I’m loving … Continued
YouTube dug a great big hole for itself earlier this week when its PR bungled its response to the ongoing harassment of a journalist by a far-right pundit. Internally, the backlash from employees at its parent company is growing as LGBTQ and allied workers mobilize to demand a satisfactory response. To recap: Carlos Maza, a … Continued
Multiple vaping companies were sent letters by federal regulators this week over posts by social media influencers that did not include necessary warnings about the vape products. The warning letters—which were sent to Artist Liquids Laboratories, Humble Juice Co., Hype City Vapors, and Solace Technologies—stated that the posts in question were reviewed by the Food … Continued
For more than two hours on Thursday, one of China’s largest internet providers forced a huge chunk of European mobile traffic to be rerouted through its own servers. China Telecom has been implicated in similar incidents before. For about 18 minutes in April 2010, roughly 15 percent of the world’s internet traffic suddenly traversed through … Continued
In case you hadn’t heard, Facebook’s working on a cryptocurrency. There have been plenty of rumors floating around on the secretive project, codenamed Libra, for a while now, but this week we saw the floodgates open with reports of a likely official launch on June 18. So, what do we know so far? A few … Continued
Comcast violated the Consumer Protection Act a whopping 445,000 times, a Washington State court ruled on Thursday. The ruling stems from accusations by the state’s attorney general that the telecom giant signed up tens of thousands of customers for a shitty monthly program without their consent. King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw’s ruling in … Continued
Warning: This post contains graphic imagery. An 81-year-old Florida man claims he lost a portion of his thumb when the automatic door on his Jaguar XJL R closed on his finger, snapping it off. A lawsuit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, claims that on August 7, 2018, Theodore Levy … Continued
RT has published leaked footage from inside the prison where Julian Assange is currently serving a 50-week sentence for jumping bail in 2012. And hilariously RT, a Russian propaganda outlet financed by the Kremlin, claims that news outlets and internet users aren’t allowed to embed the video, despite the fact that RT has posted it … Continued
On Friday, Walmart fired its latest salvo in the retail wars, announcing a bizarre scheme where a worker will physically stock your fridge while you watch from afar via livestream. This poses an obvious question: Which company will be the first to baby-bird a chewed-up, eight-ounce steak directly into my mouth, Amazon or Walmart? A … Continued
A Google employee who helped organize last year’s 20,000 worker walkout left the company this week and said she’s faced professional retaliation as a result of her speaking out. Claire Stapleton, a YouTube marketing manager, helped organize a worker walkout after a New York Times article reported that Google paid a $90 million exit package … Continued
Technology can learn a lot about us, whether we like it or not. It can figure out what we like, where we’ve been, how we feel. It can even make us say or do things we’ve never said or done. And according to new research, it can start to figure out what you look like … Continued
Ever google something and the results are all from the same site? Google’s aiming to fix that with a Search update that will give users more site diversity. In a tweet, Google SearchLiaison explained the update means you won’t see more than two top results from the same website. Of course, that still depends on … Continued
Russia is getting closer to implementing the sort of internet regulations that exist under the Great Firewall of China. Earlier this year, internet providers began preparing to conduct tests to find out if Russia can build an internet disconnected from the rest of the world. Now, Russia plans to block major VPN (virtual private network) … Continued