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Tech NewsFCC to Release Report Wednesday Telling You If Your Broadband Provider Is Screwing You [Update: Here It Is!]
The Federal Communications Commission plans to publish a report on Wednesday that will purportedly reveal whether internet service providers are providing the broadband speeds they claim they are. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai published a cheesy Thanksgiving blog post on Tuesday. Mixed in with some quaint dad jokes and various other announcements, Pai mentions that the … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
Scientists Worldwide Are Getting Serious About Quantum Internet
It takes little more than logging on to see the flaws in today’s internet—mainly, how easy it is to steal or intercept data. One future solution for these problems could be an upgrade that relies on the latest advances in the science of subatomic particles: a quantum internet. Just last week, three scientists from the … Continued
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Tech News100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It
The World Wide Web is officially old enough for us judge what it’s produced. That’s right, it’s time for the world to start building a canon of the most significant websites of all time, and the Gizmodo staff has opinions. What does a spot on this list mean? It certainly doesn’t mean “best.” A number … Continued
Gizmodo Staff -
Tech NewsGadgetsHow to Do Passwords Right in 2018
Even in a world of face unlocking and fingerprint scanning, we still haven’t escaped the password just yet. They’re still a necessity and they’re still annoying to remember. There are now numerous browser features, third-party tools, and even hardware dongles designed to help keep your login credentials safe and secure. Here’s how to make sure … Continued
By David Nield -
ScienceHealth
A Major Scientific Project Aims to Find Out Exactly How the Internet Is Screwing With Your Brain
As anyone who has spent any amount of time on Twitter can tell you, the internet can bring out the worst in us. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that scientists in Europe are now hoping to catalogue exactly how the online hellscape affects mental health and well-being. On Monday, a group of scientists … Continued
By Ed Cara -
Tech NewsWi-Fi 6 Is Coming: Here’s Why You Should Care
Get ready for the next generation of wifi technology: Wi-fi 6 (for so it is named) is going to be appearing on devices from next year. But will you have to throw out your old router and get a new one? And is this going to make your Netflix run faster? Here’s everything you need … Continued
By David Nield -
Tech News
Verizon’s New Home-Based 5G Won’t Offer Next-Gen Speeds Yet, But Users Will Get Some Free Shit
Verizon is launching what it’s calling “the world’s first commercial 5G broadband internet service” later this fall, with customers in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento eligible to sign up for an October 1st launch date. However, there’s a big caveat: It’s technically not real 5G, and early adopters will mostly see speeds … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsGadgetsWhy Your Router Has Two Wifi Bands and How They Work
Few devices are as essential to the smooth running of a modern-day digital household than a wireless router, so it’s strange that this black box is so little understood. Here we’ll outline one of the key features of many modern routers, dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz support, so you know exactly what it is and … Continued
By David Nield -
io9
Google Chrome Has a Forking Clever Good Place Extension
Have you been looking for a browser extension to cleverly replace curse words and search the web with the help of an omnipotent being? Well, holy forking shirtballs, has Google got the answer for you! The company recently launched a Chrome extension tied to The Good Place (whose third season starts on NBC September 27), … Continued
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Tech NewsTech Policy
New York Is Moving to Kick Charter Out of the State
In 2016, Charter, the U.S.’s second largest cable provider bought out Time Warner Cable and rebranded the company as Spectrum. However, in order for the deal to get approved, the company promised New York State officials that it would increase broadband speeds to 100 Mbps by the end of 2018 while also extending cable coverage … Continued
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Tech News
Google Announces Plan to Lay Massive Subsea Cable From Virginia to France
On Tuesday, Google announced yet another massive subsea cable project, this time a private line stretching across the Atlantic Ocean to connect a data center in the US directly to another in Europe. Per TechCrunch, the planned “Dunant” cable (named after Red Cross founder Henry Dunant) will make landfall in France after crossing nearly 4,000 … Continued
By Tom McKay -
EartherClimate Change
Not Even the Internet Is Safe From Rising Sea Levels
If the internet went down, America would devolve into chaos. A new study suggests that’s an increasingly likely possibility as rising sea levels submerge critical infrastructure buried along densely-populated coastlines. Thousands of miles of fiber optic cables buried underground make up what’s known as the “physical internet.” But as sea levels steadily creep up our … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & Security
Revenge Porn Offenders to Face Harsh Punishment Under New UK Guidelines
The council tasked with ensuring consistency in criminal sentences in England and Wales has provided instruction on how courts should handle revenge porn cases: harshly. The Sentencing Council published on Thursday new guidelines on how courts should handle perpetrators who non-consensually share photos of their ex-partners. It’s the first time the committee has addressed the … Continued
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Tech News
Comcast Blames Nationwide Outage on ‘Fiber Cut’
If you’re a Comcast customer, you might have already realized your internet is borked today. That wave of sadness and despair you’re presumably experiencing seems to be the result of a few cut fiber cables, according to a tweet from Comcast. If it makes you feel any better, the company says it’s trying to fix it. … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityWe Need to Study the Effects of Revenge Porn on Mental Health
Leah Juliett was 14 when nude photos of her were circulated throughout her school without her consent. She had sent the photos privately to a boy, who then shared them with fellow students. “It really was kind of an emotional numbness. I completely shut down,” Juliett told Gizmodo. For years after the crime occurred, she … Continued
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Tech NewsWhy the Government Sucks at Making Websites
In April, the day before taxes were due, the IRS’ online filing system failed, just as procrastinators were settling into the annual TurboTax panic. How did this happen, especially before the most important tax day of the year? And why does this keep happening to government websites? A few days later, the glitch was figured … Continued
Caroline Sinders -
Tech News
New York to Charter: Expand Your Network or We’ll Reverse the Time Warner Merger
The New York State Public Service Commission is doing something that just about every consumer wishes they could do to their internet service provider: telling them to actually provide the service promised or get bent. The agency ordered Charter to pay a multi-million dollar fine and complete required expansion of its network or face having … Continued
By AJ Dellinger -
Tech NewsHow Many Social Media Users Are Real People?
Most social media users know that bot accounts are among us, whether as fake voters with loud opinions or obsessive re-tweeters of a single corporation’s content. When it comes to telling many ‘fake’ accounts from real ones, however—or just knowing how many non-individuals are active online—even savvy users are mostly in the dark. Tallies suggest … Continued
Janet Burns -
io9
One of the ‘Net’s Longest-Running Webcomics Has Done Something Weird to Its Most Memed Strip [Updated]
“Loss” is one of the modern internet’s most pervasive, and most strange, memes. Now, it’s, uh, a little different. Some background: Ctrl-Alt-Del is a webcomic. A very old one, in fact. Beginning in 2002, the strip, written and drawn by Tim Buckley, has updated regularly for the past sixteen years, expanding from a special-interest gaming … Continued
By Julie Muncy -
io9
Did Thanos Kill You?
There’s a very simple new website making the rounds that all the kids are talking about. It’s called “Did Thanos Kill Me?” It’s in response to the events in Avengers: Infinity War, so…. The link, appropriately enough, is http://www.didthanoskill.me/. Upon navigating to the site it, very simply, gives you one of two options: Either you … Continued