Gizmodo

SpaceX will work with space tourism company Space Adventures to send up to four people into space onboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, according to a press release.

Each month we share an avalanche of new books to feed your need to read. But there are also tons of older sci-fi and fantasy books worth your time, too—including those with the added interest of television or movie adaptations on the way. Here are eight titles you should add to your read (or re-read) list; if you…Read more...

On Tuesday, the Japanese government announced it will begin clinical trials to test treatments for the deadly new coronavirus that’s engulfed China and spread to over two dozen countries. Rather than new drugs, they’ll be studying existing medications already used to treat HIV and other viral diseases. But why exactly…Read more...

You can prevent facial recognition cameras from identifying you by wearing face paint, masks, or sometimes just a pair of oversized sunglasses. Keeping conversations private from an ever-growing number of microphone-equipped devices isn’t quite as easy, but researchers have created what could be the first wearable…Read more...

The delayed international rollout of Disney+ means that The Mandalorian’s biggest twists and turns have already been plastered all over the internet, if only so Disney can sell us on some very bad Baby Yoda merchandise while promising that the better stuff will be on the way eventually. So news that international fans…Read more...

Color Coral Cleaner | $6 | Amazon

New excavations at a well-known Neanderthal site have revealed a previously undiscovered Neanderthal skeleton, along with more evidence that these extinct hominins may have had “flower burials” for their dead.
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Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. This weekend’s Toy Fair will bring all sorts of awesome gaming news. We’ve got some exciting stuff here, and be sure to be on the lookout for some reveals and announcements on io9 in the coming days. Right now, we’ve got …Read more...

On Sunday, President Donald Trump gave the command to the “gentlemen” to start their engines at the Daytona 500. Around the same time, a story broke about a Trump administration policy in which the words given in confidential therapy sessions would be used to deport children. Despite what we may want to think, the two…Read more...

In a historic vote, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has become the first major tech company to successfully form a union, with a narrow vote of 46 workers in favor and 37 against.Read more...

Of all the things that Google’s afraid of (employee revolts! antitrust actions! diversity!) ad fraud is certainly high on the list. And now, some creative scammers have turned Google’s fraud crackdown against its own users.Read more...

Democratic presidential candidates will gather for the penultimate debate of the primary season tomorrow night, just three days before the Nevada caucus.

Google Stadia is finally getting an upgrade...sort of. Google’s cloud gaming service is coming to a whole new slew of phones and for once they’re not Google-made ones.

Alex Garland has covered a lot of ground in his career—from authoring novels to screenwriting and directing. You might have noticed that he leans toward sci-fi; his directing debut, Ex Machina, dealt with artificial intelligence, and its follow-up, Annihilation, focused on alien life. Devs, his new television…Read more...

A Logitech gaming headset sale, a Harry Potter LEGO set, and a discount on cozy waffle knits lead off Tuesday’s deals of the day.

Microsoft is finally bringing three of its obligatory products under a single, unified app for Android—meaning users who use all three apps will no longer be required to install all three individually.Read more...

There’s no denying the engineering and building skills of YouTube’s The Practical Engineer. But it’s the “practical” claims we feel the need to question because as impressive as this invention is, does anyone actually need a handheld blaster that can hurl playing cards at speeds over 120 miles per hour?Read more...

The deepfake hits just keep on coming. Following an excellent reimagining of Back to the Future where Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox are replaced with Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland, another talented deepfaker has put Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving into Office Space, creating the fourth Matrix film we really…Read more...

Batman strikes in new footage from Harley Quinn’s season finale. New Black Widow art gives us our best look yet at Taskmaster. Ronald D. Moore teases the new Battlestar Galactica project’s connections to his reboot. Plus, a new look at Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. To me, my spoilers!

Liu Zhiming, the 51-year-old director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, China, died at 10:54 AM local time Tuesday morning after being infected with coronavirus, according to the Wuhan Health Commission. Multiple Chinese state media outlets like the People’s Daily and Global Times reported Liu’s death yesterday but…Read more...

Holy hell, that is fast.

On Monday, the U.S. flew in more than 300 Americans after they spent almost two weeks stuck on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which had seen hundreds of its passengers test positive for COVID-19, the official name for the coronavirus. However, among the people that came back to the U.S. were 14 passengers that…Read more...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who with a net worth of $130 billion is currently the world’s richest man, announced that he was creating the Bezos Earth Fund on Monday. The fund is a $10 billion global initiative that aims to fund “any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”Read more...

Weird controllers! I love ‘em! And so does the YouTube channel Stop Skeletons From Fighting. They recently released a video going over some of the dumbest, weirdest and most expensive controllers ever made.Read more...

In its latest dystopian stab at curbing the spread of COVID-19, the Chinese government has employed two of the biggest tech giants in Asia to help it roll out a nationwide color-based tracking system to keep tabs on those suffering from coronavirus symptoms, according to a new Reuters report.

The past few episodes of Doctor Who had slowly begun to unravel a lingering problem with this latest iteration of the show: too many people at the TARDIS console, leading to narrative setups that take too long to get going, or leave some of our heroes behind to really get there. Ahead of its season finale however, the…Read more...

How phones track location is changing – if you’ve upgraded to the latest Android 10 or iOS 13 updates, you may have noticed more prompts around what apps can do with data about your whereabouts. Here’s what those new prompts mean, and how you can get your phone’s location tracking settings set up in a way that you’re…Read more...

With continued competition from Apple as cheaper iPads are now gaining support for the Apple Pencil, Wacom has followed up on its $650 Cintiq 16 from last year with the even cheaper $400 Wacom One. As with larger Cintiq displays and tablets, the Wacom One is a secondary display, not a real tablet with a dedicated OS,…Read more...

You begin to wake up from stasis as your lander descends to Pluto’s surface. You strain to locate the Sun in the sky as you peek out the window; you finally spot it at the zenith as you wipe your eyes. Though brighter than anything else in the sky, the Sun is now 40 times farther than it was when you were on Earth,…Read more...

There are countless questions the novice exerciser should be asking themselves before their first day at the gym. I have no idea what those questions are, but I do know that, in exercise as in everything else, it is important to cut corners and maximize one’s leisure time. To that end, for this week’s Giz Asks we’ve…Read more...

Anker 60W 2-Port USB-C Charger | Amazon | $35 | Promo code KINJAPDC2Read more...

These are some of the best words on the Internet: Happy three-day weekend! We hope you’re enjoying the time off. Does anyone else feel like February has flown by? When I was younger, I used to think that only “older” people said things like “time sure flies by.” Now, I want to eat my words every time I say the same…Read more...

Authorities in Puerto Rico reported this week that hackers had targeted more than four million dollars in government funds in recent months. The attack unsettled lawmakers on the island, who criticized the vague explanations given by the government at a time when Puerto Rico is in a financial crisis.Read more...

Is the vehemently pro-Buttigieg account @easychinedu actually a staffer for the Democratic candidate trying to curry favor with minority voters? Or is it just the latest in a series of troll attacks on the 2020 presidential nominee?

Before Peter Jackson’s movies, the visual identity of Lord of the Rings was the territory of artists and animators. And few created a vision so iconic, and so loosely related to the actual books, as Barbara Remington.Read more...

Samsung’s proclaimed that it has “done the impossible” with its Galaxy Z Flip, that the smartphone even “bends the laws of physics.” But now a new durability test video has us questioning whether its screen really is made of that ultra-thin glass that’s supposed to set it apart from the company’s other bendable phone,…Read more...

Deepfake technology continues to weird me out. It seems just a matter of time until it changes how we experience visual media. These just look so damn persuasive, and I have to imagine they’re only going to get better. Or worse, depending on how you look at it.Read more...

It used to be conventional wisdom that video game movies were not a way to walk the path to success. Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, and a whole pile of bizarre failed ‘90s game adaptations tell the tale of a film niche that was better left alone. But that may be changing, and Sonic the Hedgehog might be the harbinger.Read more...

Until now, the majority of us might have simply hung up on robocallers. However, there’s now a way to get back at the companies who torment you with endless robocalls that ask you for your information or try to sell you stuff. The solution is called Robo Revenge, a service that lets you sue the unwanted caller for up…Read more...

A queen on the run. A deadbeat. A mechanic. And a whole galaxy looking to shoot ‘em, or hunt ‘em down, or toss ‘em out the airlock. Sounds like fun.Read more...

After hearing yesterday’s news that HQ Trivia was penniless and abruptly shuttering, host Matt Richards paid $5 out of his own pocket so its last show could have some sort of prize for viewers who stuck around until the very end.

There are a lot of monsters on the Continent. So to take ‘em out, you need a lotta witchers. Whole schools of ‘em, in fact. For its second season,

New documents released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week reveal the agonizing experience of one of the drivers involved in the fatal crash with a Tesla Model 3 in Delray Beach, Florida in 2019. The Tesla crash in Florida is one of two recent cases that have captured the federal government’s…Read more...

Quibi, Quibi, you odd beast. High production quality, tiny episodes. A new format for television, or a bizarre experiment? I honestly have no idea. But I do know that some of the shows coming out for it are a little intriguing.Read more...

Netflix does love its rescues, doesn’t it? Maybe even a bit more than it loves canceling shows after producing two seasons.Read more...

Large portions of Canada’s train service have shut down—including a vital cross-continental rail line—after indigenous land defenders blockaded several major railways in countrywide anti-pipeline protests.

Now that his time making afterlife cameos as Han Solo is definitely wrapped and done, Harrison Ford seems to be about ready to move on to his other big legacy role: Indiana Jones. In a new interview, Ford reveals that he’s going to start working on returning to that role rather soon. Though it’s unclear what,…Read more...

France reported the first death due to coronavirus, formally known as COVID-19, outside Asia on Saturday. According to health authorities, the victim was an 80-year-old Chinese tourist from the Hubei province, the center of the outbreak, who arrived in France on Jan. 16. The man was hospitalized shortly after his…Read more...

Ignite the Spark, the Story of Magic: The Gathering is an upcoming documentary film that will, according to a press release, explore the history and popularity of the most popular card game of all time that isn’t played with a deck of standard playing cards.Read more...

I’m not going to lie; smoking dabs is over the top. But solvent-based cannabis extracts, also referred to as dabs, has become a popular way to consume cannabis for years. And now that 11 states have legalized the use of cannabis recreationally and 47 out of 50 states have some form of medical marijuana (sucks for you…Read more...