Gizmodo

The Oculus Rift, Facebook’s cord-free VR headset that starts at just $400, is getting a couple of new features over the next year. I had the opportunity to check out what might be the coolest one: hand tracking.

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Alek Minassian, the 26-year-old man accused of killing 10 people with a rented Ryder van in Toronto on April 23, 2018, told police that he’s an involuntary celibate (incel) and that he was radicalized online through websites like Reddit and 4Chan, according to a police interrogation that took place shortly after the…Read more...

Amid mounting criticism and lawsuits concerning Uber shortcomings when it comes to passenger safety, the company unveiled several new safety features planned to roll out along with an app-wide update it announced Thursday.Read more...

After prototyping what Like count-less Facebook would look like earlier this month, Facebook moved forward with official testing Thursday and rolled out this new format to Australian users.

DoorDash has announced that the personal data of 4.9 million people on its platform—including customers, dashers, and its merchants—has been compromised in a security breach. Now is a good time to change your password.Read more...

A diverse group of civil rights leaders sat down in Atlanta on Thursday for a town hall attended by Facebook officials, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, to discuss the matter of hateful content, racist threats, and misinformation that continue to plague the platform.

One of the more popular takeaways from Amazon’s big hardware event yesterday was Dave Limp, the company’s Senior Vice President of Devices and Services, caught wearing an Apple AirPod during an interview.Read more...

If you’ve ever run a foreign language through Google Translate, you know it’s good enough to maybe get you the general gist but not the whole picture. Yet somehow, the U.S. government has decided that the service is good enough to vet the social media accounts of refugees, according to a new ProPublica report.Read more...

Not all animals can escape when fire comes burning through the forest. In Bolivia, millions of animals are likely dead as a result of the raging forest fires that continue to burn across the region, including the Amazon.Read more...

Scientists have spotted the best evidence yet of a trio of supermassive black holes in apparently merging galaxies, a new paper reports.

For those antsy about getting their birth control online, a new study should offer some reassurance. With the help of secret shoppers, researchers found that several online sites and apps that prescribed contraceptives were generally affordable, timely, and safe.Read more...

World leaders didn’t exactly act with urgency at this week’s United Nations Climate Action Summit, but a group of children sure did. Sixteen youth filed an unprecedented complaint against five G20 countries for not acting on climate change.Read more...

Here we go again.Read more...

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Officials at Galápagos National Park are considering a substantial rate hike for visitors, a move that could make the islands a lot more inaccessible—which is exactly their goal.

The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly planning on joining the growing cluster of agencies investigating Facebook for antitrust violations.Read more...

While it started off as a smartphone maker, OnePlus has since moved into other categories including wireless headphones, car chargers, and even backpacks. But now, OnePlus is making a major push into a brand new segment with its first TV.Read more...

If you watch the trailer for Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch, it looks silly. A bunch of people around the world making idiots of themselves with the help of a giant flexible ring with a Joy-Con in it. A Ring-Con, if you will. On their left thigh is a holster with the other Joy-Con. They run in place in…Read more...

As smartphone screens have grown, using their on-screen keyboards with one hand has become problematic for anyone without lanky digits. Dougie Mann’s TypeCase might be the solution. It’s a smartphone case packed with electronics and five buttons meant to make single-handed typing doable again. You don’t even need to…Read more...

From its humble start making “flagship killers” in 2014, OnePlus has become one of the fastest-growing smartphone makers, ranking in the top five globally and overtaking brands like Sony, HTC, and even LG—the same companies OnePlus once sought to take down. However, as OnePlus has grown, so too has the price of its…Read more...

Acne is the most common skin condition in the United States—it affects some 50 million faces each year, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. But it’s also one of the most complicated, as its causes and effective treatments seem to differ from person to person.

In an explosive whistleblower complaint made public on Thursday, senior White House officials are accused of attempting to conceal records of President Trump’s conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart—the content of which has prompted impeachment proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives—by placing the…Read more...

The Apple Watch Series 5 is the first of Apple’s smartwatches to come with an always-on display, so you no longer need to lift your wrist to see what the time is—one of the few features that Google’s Wear OS got first. This upgrade is made possible by a change in the screen tech on the Apple Watch, and we’re going to…Read more...

Production has wrapped on the Quiet Place sequel. Ruben Fleischer teases the zombie types of Zombieland: Double Tap. Keanu Reeves teases the plans for Matrix 4. Plus, get another spooky glimpse of the CW’s Nancy Drew, and more familiar faces could return for Crisis on Infinite Earths. Spoilers, away!Read more...

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a bizarre speech on Tuesday night at the United Nations General Assembly that included plenty of dire warning about the future, including everything from the rise of killer robots to “limbless chickens” on the kitchen table. And as strange as it sounds, Johnson may have been trying to…Read more...

For thousands of years, Siberia’s Denisova Cave was home to various bands of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans. But as new research shows, animals occupied this cave more frequently than not, showcasing the pains, perils, and complexities of paleolithic life.Read more...

Acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, will testify to the House Intelligence Committee this morning at 9:00 am ET/ 6:00 am PT about the whistleblower complaint that President Donald Trump has been trying to hide from the American public. And there are plenty of ways to watch Maguire’s testimony…Read more...

There’s a Donald Trump pee tape floating around on the internet. It looks real, but it is almost uncontestably not, according to a Wednesday report by Slate reporter (and Gizmodo alum) Ashley Feinberg.

Facebook claims to be doing a lot to fight hate speech. But Facebook has also cashed nearly $1.6 million in ad money from organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center between May 2018 and Sept. 17, 2019, according to a Wednesday report by Sludge.

Just a few pages into the second issue of Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora’s Once & Future, there’s a fascinating twist on multiple elements of different King Arthur legends that illustrate some of the bigger, more complicated ideas about British identity that the comic is grappling with.

I mean, you also get to wield the Force in VR and that’s pretty cool, but let’s rewind a touch: Four. Armed. Rancor.Read more...

Few companies have done more than Amazon to dilute the meaning of the word “privacy.” A little more than a decade ago, “privacy” was a word used by people to describe the state of being alone and unobserved, away from prying eyes and ears. Today, so-called “privacy” policies are little more than legal disclosures…Read more...

It’s no easy task finding love online. It’s harder still when some of the many dating service options are littered not with hot singles in your area, but with scammers, as has evidently been the case with Match.com, according to a newly filed lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission.

Three decades ago, while working at the Royal Guide Dogs Association of Australia, Wally Conron bred a guide dog that could live in a household with a blind woman and her dog-allergic husband. Almost immediately he realized that his creation, the labradoodle, was a monstrosity.Read more...

Today at Oculus Connect 6, Facebook’s annual event that does its best to convince the world why VR is still a thing, the company announced Horizon, a giant virtual reality playground where users can build their own worlds, create and play games, or just socialize with friends who are represented by legless animated…Read more...

More Alexa, anyone?Read more...

A glacier is on the verge of collapsing in the northwestern Italian Alps. This is yet another reminder of why global leaders need to take action to stop climate change. Now.

Hulu just did something hundreds of evil villains couldn’t do in the pages of Marvel Comics. It killed Ghost Rider.Read more...

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Most of us see an airplane and think they’re cool. It might inspire us to get a pilot’s license or maybe buy a few Micro Machines or even put together a model plane. Michael Kelly saw his first Douglas DC-3 aircraft at the Shannon Airport in Ireland when he was just a little boy and became very passionate model planes.Read more...

Before the public even gets a glimpse at a new console, it’s made available to developers in prototype form so they can have new games ready for its launch. Thanks to strict NDAs and contracts those prototypes are rarely revealed, but Shane Battye, a retro gaming preservationist, managed to get his hands on an early …Read more...

The so-called “transcript” of a July 25 phone call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart serves as a poignant reminder of how absurd conspiracy theories—even ones widely and thoroughly debunked for many years—have come to influence daily life in the Oval Office.

The Oculus Quest has been out for a few months, and while Mark Zuckerberg told the crowd at Oculus Connect 6 that Facebook is selling its standalone VR headset as fast as the company can make them, Facebook is planning to add some major features including hand tracking and PC tethering in two separate future updates.Read more...

One woman’s wedding wasabi—apparently mistaken for avocado—ended up sending her to the emergency room with a strange medical condition called broken heart syndrome, according to a new case study.Read more...

A chemical analysis of pottery feeding vessels from the Bronze and Iron Ages suggests prehistoric European babies and toddlers had diets supplemented with, and possibly replaced by, animal milk, in what’s potentially the earliest archaeological evidence of infant weaning.

The Apple Watch is hands-down the best smartwatch out there. There, I said it. It’s a boring conclusion that is nevertheless the cold, hard truth. You can prefer a round face, or a different operating system. You can scream about better battery life and third-party watch faces until you die, purple-faced from…Read more...

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Megabots, a startup that was dedicated to bringing behemoth battle-robot entertainment to the masses, is selling off its assets before filing for bankruptcy.Read more...