Technology News

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is accusing Grindr of using a return-to-office (RTO) mandate as an attempt to block employee efforts to form a union.

On July 20, 2023, employees at the LGBTQ+ dating app announced plans to unionize. On August 3, 2023, Grindr told employees that they had two weeks to decide if they would start working in an office location two days per week or exit Grindr with six months of severance, per The New York Times, which reported that it saw the memo. Grindr also reportedly offered up to $15,000 for relocation expenses to its offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Washington, DC. Before the RTO mandate, Grindr allowed fully remote work.

Despite the announcement's timing, Grindr said in August 2023 that it had been working on an RTO mandate for months and that employees were notified of this in early summer 2023, per the NYT. On August 4, 2023, the Communications Workers of America Union, which Grindr employees were working to join, filed a complaint with the NLRB.

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In the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump proclaimed himself the winner long before enough votes were counted. We asked the major platforms if they’d let him do it again.

Canadian authorities have arrested a man on suspicion he breached hundreds of accounts belonging to users of cloud-storage provider Snowflake and used that access to steal personal data belonging to millions of people, authorities said Tuesday.

“Following a request by the United States, Alexander Moucka (aka Connor Moucka) was arrested on a provisional arrest warrant on Wednesday, October 30, 2024,” an official with the Canada Department of Justice wrote in an email Tuesday. “He appeared in court later that afternoon, and his case was adjourned to Tuesday, November 5, 2024. As extradition requests are considered confidential state-to-state communications, we cannot comment further on this case.”

Word of the arrest first came from Bloomberg News and was later confirmed by 404 Media.

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The story of Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's failed 1914 expedition to be the first to traverse the continent of Antarctica has long captured the popular imagination, as have the various efforts to locate the wreckage of his ship, the Endurance. The ship was finally found in 2022, nearly 107 years after it sank beneath the ice. The stories of Shackleton's adventures and the 2022 expedition are told in parallel in Endurance, a new documentary from National Geographic now streaming on Disney+.

Endurance is directed by Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo). According to Vasarhelyi, she and Chin had been obsessed with the Shackleton story for a long time. The discovery of the shipwreck in 2022 gave them the perfect opportunity to tell the story again for a new audience, making use of all the technological advances that have been made in recent years.

"I think the Shackleton story is at the heart of the DNA of our films," Vasarhelyi told Ars. "It's the greatest human survival story ever. It really speaks to having these audacious objectives and dreams. When everyone tells you that you can't, you want to do it anyway. It requires you to then have the actual courage, grit, discipline, and strength of character to see it through. Shackleton is that story. He didn't sensibly achieve any of his goals, but through his failure he found his strength: being able to inspire the confidence of his men."

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Along with other foreign influence operations—including from Iran—Kremlin-backed campaigns to stoke division and fear have gone into overdrive.

There's nothing unfair about Google collecting fees to profit off Google Play gift card scams while refusing to refund victims who collectively lost millions, federal Judge Beth Freeman ruled Monday.

Largely granting Google's motion to dismiss a proposed class-action suit seeking substantial damages for a range of allegedly unfair practices, Freeman found that Google is shielded from liability because the tech giant did not induce victims to purchase the gift cards—scammers did.

The lawsuit was filed by Judy May, who lost $1,000 in 2021 when scammers tricked her into buying Google Play gift cards by claiming she was eligible for a government grant. May was told she could send codes from the gift cards to cover "certain costs upfront to receive same-day delivery of the grant money." After she fell for it, she realized she'd been scammed, but Google refused to provide a refund, citing terms May considered "unconscionable."

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The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world.

"You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking," said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government's spy satellite agency in 2019.

The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX's Starlink satellite assembly line to build a network of at least 100 satellites, and perhaps many more, to monitor adversaries around the world. So far, more than 80 of these SpaceX-made spacecraft, each a little less than a ton in mass, have launched on four Falcon 9 rockets. There are more to come.

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Whenever we write about electric vans, the comments reveal a growing but pent-up demand for a camper version. Well, it seems that those vibes are being felt at Kia. It has created a pair of concepts for the  Specialty Equipment Marketing Association (SEMA) automotive trade show, which got underway in Las Vegas today.

One of the two concepts will look more familiar—the EV9 ADVNTR is based on the popular electric three-row SUV. But the other is the PV5 WKNDR, a rugged off-road camper based on a forthcoming Kia electric van platform.

The EV9 ADVNTR makes good use of the existing EV9's angular design, with new sections filled in with protective cladding. There's a suspension lift and all-terrain tires, plus a roof rack, to distinguish it from lesser EV9s, but otherwise it's relatively stock.

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What We Do in the Shadows, La Máquina, and Rivals are just a few of the shows you should be watching on Hulu this month.

Social media companies that once at least tried to promote a healthy information ecosystem have largely given up—and insiders say Musk’s example gave them cover.

Universal Music Group yesterday sued a music firm that allegedly distributes pirated songs on popular streaming services under misspelled versions of popular artists' names—such as "Kendrik Laamar," "Arriana Gramde," "Jutin Biber," and "Llady Gaga." The UMG Recordings lawsuit against the French company Believe and its US-based subsidiary, TuneCore, alleges that "Believe is fully aware that its business model is fueled by rampant piracy" and "turned a blind eye to the fact that its music catalog was rife with copyright infringing sound recordings."

Believe is a publicly traded company with about 2,020 employees in over 50 countries and reported $518 million (474.1 million euros) in revenue in the first half of 2024. Believe says its "mission is to develop independent artists and labels in the digital world."

UMG alleges that Believe achieved "dramatic growth and profitability in recent years by operating as a hub for the distribution of infringing copies of the world's most popular copyrighted recordings." Believe has licensing deals with online platforms "including TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram and hundreds of others," the lawsuit said.

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Emails obtained by WIRED show that technology from a company called EagleAI Network is helping election deniers target their neighbors.

Alexander “Connor” Moucka was arrested this week by Canadian authorities for allegedly carrying out a series of hacks that targeted Snowflake’s cloud customers. His next stop may be a US jail.

GMC's Hummers have always been divisive. After getting hold of the rights to a civilian version of the US military vehicle in 1999, the company set about designing new, smaller vehicles to create an entire range. The ungainly H2 and H3 followed, both SUVs playing to the sensibilities of a country grappling with its warlike nature. By 2010, the Hummer brand was dead and laid dormant until someone had the bright idea to revive it for the electric vehicle generation. We drove the pickup version of that new Hummer in 2022, now it's time for the $104,650 Hummer EV SUV.

I'll admit I was worried that the Hummer EV wasn't going to fit in my parking space. This is an extremely large vehicle, one that's classified as a class 3 medium-duty truck—hence the yellow lights atop the roof. In fact, at 196.8 inches (5,000 mm) long, it's actually slightly shorter than the pickup version, although that length doesn't count the big spare tire hanging off the back.

The SUV fit—just. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin It even filled the charger bay. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

Its 86.5-inch (2,196 mm) width just about fit between the lines, although it was a tight squeeze to try to open a door and climb up into the Hummer if my neighbor was parked as well. And climb up you do—there's 10.2 inches (259 mm) of ground clearance even in the suspension's normal setting, and the overall height is a towering 77.8 inches (1,976 mm). There is an entry mode that drops the car on its air springs by a couple of inches, but only if you remember to engage the feature when you park.

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A Cargo Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station on Tuesday morning, less than a day after lifting off from Florida.

As space missions go, this one was fairly routine, ferrying about 6,000 pounds (2,700 kg) of cargo and science experiments to the space station. Over the course of nearly a dozen years, this was the 31st cargo supply mission that SpaceX has flown for NASA to the orbiting laboratory.

However, there is one characteristic of this flight that may prove significant for NASA and the future of the space station. As early as Friday, NASA and SpaceX have scheduled a "reboost and attitude control demonstration," during which the Dragon spacecraft will use some of the thrusters at the base of the capsule. This is the first time the Dragon spacecraft will be used to move the space station.

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A bug that WIRED discovered in True the Vote’s VoteAlert app revealed user information—and an election worker who wrote about carrying out an illegal voter-suppression scheme.

The Long March 9 super heavy-lift rocket made an appearance at a major airshow recently—and looks awfully familiar.

The night before the election, Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona, a former TV anchor turned election truther, thanked her supporters for voting early—something she has long railed against.

More than 33,000 Boeing workers reached a tentative agreement Monday night to end a weekslong strike that quickly became one of the costliest strikes in recent history—estimated to have cost the US economy more than $9.6 billion.

Through their unions, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Districts 751 and W24, workers in Washington state, Oregon, and California had previously rejected two inadequate Boeing offers while the company lost hundreds of millions daily. Negotiations had stalled until US Secretary of Labor Julie Su stepped in, IAM said in a press release, helping to restart talks and get to a deal that 59 percent of workers could agree on.

Under the proposed deal, workers will receive a 43 percent wage increase over four years, as well as a $12,000 bonus they can choose to receive in their paycheck, as a 401(k) contribution, or a combination of both. Additionally, Boeing agreed to match 401(k) contributions up to 8 percent.

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Your cat needs scratching posts and litter boxes, but they don’t have to be ugly.