
Several preeminent states in the European Union are backing Bluetooth-based, contact-tracing technology to help map the spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak via smartphone apps, Reuters reported this week. This news comes courtesy of German tech entrepreneur Chris Boos, a major coordinator behind the project dubbed the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity…

When Apple and Google publicly announced that they’d be partnering to roll out contact-tracing tech meant to help stem the coronavirus’s spread, the duo did everything they could to promise the program would put user privacy front and centre. It’s a claim that’s left more than a few researchers and…

“It’s inspiring to watch Whitney self-actualize into an absolute mutant,” my colleague Bryan Menegus remarked this morning, in the Gizmodo Slack channel devoted to dropping morning news tips for our daily assignments. Whilst my fellow reporters have been hard at work pursuing tech-related leads, holding the CDC to account, and…

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.” That’s Winston, from 1984, explaining that there’s no hiding from the Thought Police. Reading the line on my Kindle recently, I got a similar sense that I wasn’t alone. On Amazon’s e-reader, the sentence bears a faint underline…

From the get-go, there’s something different about “Old Friends, Not Forgotten.” Absent is Kevin Kiner’s triumphant, truncated fanfare that has opened practically every episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Gone are the words of wisdom that typically join them, as is the searing-yellow title placard that zooms into view….

In a dim sign that social distancing is quickly becoming a full-fledged culture war issue, protesters demanding that state governors lift measures imposed to hinder the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have gathered at statehouses in multiple states this week, fuelled in part by disinformation and egged on by conservative…

The Brazilian Volkswagen Fastback Was Even Weirder Than You Realise And Brings Up Some Big Questions
I’m well aware that if you even realise the Brazilian Volkswagen Fastback was weird at all, you’re already in kind of a minority, human-being-wise. But that’s ok—I’m here to walk you through this, and through it we will get, together. We’re going to start with this premise: though the Brazilian…

The FIA’s all-electric open wheel racing series is on the ropes for the 2019-20 season. Having started in November, the racers have already completed 5 rounds of the championship, but with Thursday’s announcement that all races in May and June have been indefinitely suspended, there are only two race weekends…

Nearly 1,000 years ago, a megadrought ravaged the southwestern U.S., swiftly wiping out a thriving indigenous culture and rendering once-arid land unusable. Scientists have long warned that the climate crisis may trigger another megadrought. And according to a new study, that megadrought isn’t just on its way”it’s likely already under…