Gizmodo

Wanting to make a show about Lego is one thing. Actually making a show about Lego is something else. You’d need an expert. Someone to make sure you were doing things right and had everything you need. You’d need someone like Nathan Sawaya.

The “global leader” in cybersecurity—Avast—announced today it would be shutting down its analytics arm Jumpshot that was recently found harvesting the data of the hundreds of millions installing Avast’s free browser extension. Apparently, the optics of a company that prides itself on privacy-forward approaches and…Read more...

Thwaites Glacier is one of the most remote parts of the Antarctic (which is saying a lot) and yet its fate is intimately tied with millions of people around the world. The glacier is the bulwark against ice stored on West Antarctica. If it collapses, it could destabilize the region’s ice and send sea levels spiraling…Read more...

The World Health Organization on Thursday declared an international public health emergency over the deadly new coronavirus that has hit China hard. The announcement comes as nearly a hundred cases have been spotted in countries outside of China, including the first case of human-to-human transmission in the U.S.,…Read more...

I have a never-ending list of quests to find the perfect every day carry accessories, which includes a drawn out hunt for the ideal water bottle. At CES earlier this month I spent a week with Matador’s new squishy, packable water bottle and while it’s not my holy grail of hydration, it’s a nice option when traveling…Read more...

Ten years ago, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, spilling 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil spill in history.

A new study out Thursday highlights a disturbing consequence of the much-hated tradition of Daylight Saving Time. It found evidence that the yearly moving-ahead of clocks in the spring leads to more fatal car crashes throughout the U.S. during the following week.Read more...

Apple was having a pretty good week. The company just reported a record quarter, raking in billions thanks to the iPhone 11 and selling a whole lot of AirPods and Apple Watches. Just a day later, Apple and its wireless chip provider, Broadcom, were slapped with a $1.1 billion judgment. According to Bloomberg, the fine…Read more...

The F-35, the next-generation fighter plane that the U.S. government is planning on dropping $1.5 trillion on at the same time it’s planning on slashing health care and kicking the disabled off Social Security, still sucks shit and can’t even shoot straight, according to a report in Bloomberg.

At this point, there’s no denying the Apple Watch is the smartwatch to beat. It’s feature-rich, massively popular, and when you wear one, it confers a certain sensibility about you, the tech-savvy consumer. But for the love of everything holy, can other smartwatch makers please stop trying to shamelessly ape the…Read more...

The Trump regime is lifting an Obama-era ban on America’s deployment of most landmines in warzones, according to a new report from CNN as well as a cable from the U.S. State Department that was leaked to Vox.Read more...

Art lovers now have more than 100,000 works of art from Paris museums at their fingertips to download and use as they please, courtesy of a recently announced initiative from the Paris Musées.Read more...

Samantha Rae Anna Jespersen never expected to be asked for articles of incorporation for her butthole. But that’s the kind of cold-stupid question she would come to expect over the years in a nightmarish search for a human being in the gears and cogs of the Facebook Support apparatus.

Sometimes your computer breaks. It happens. You spill something, or drop something, or you try to boot up and nothing happens. Many of us resolve the issue with a liberal use of Google, and others take the failing device to a person trained to fix computers. And some people thoroughly screw up their device trying to…Read more...

Australia just can’t seem to catch a break. The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather update Thursday noting that the current heat wave that began on the northwestern part of the continent earlier this week is making its way southeast, toward the region where the bushfires continue to burn.Read more...

We’re all a little Neanderthal. That’s the conclusion of a study that used a new statistical technique to revise estimates of the degree to which modern humans have retained Neanderthal DNA. The research suggests that even people of African descent have Neanderthal heritage, something that was previously in doubt.Read more...

In 1849, Ephraim Wales Bull strolled through rows of wild grapes in his Concord, Massachusetts yard, each plant’s bare limbs spread out as if shrugging. After more than a decade experimenting with Isabella grapes that wouldn’t ripen outdoors and musty-tasting wild grapes that ripened too late, most people would’ve…Read more...

So far, 2020 hasn’t exactly gotten off to a great start, what with a terrifying virus quickly spreading across the planet. It’s not all doomsday news, however, this year also promises to bring us mountains of Baby Yoda merchandise, and Sideshow Collectibles is leading the charge with this life-size and staggeringly…Read more...

Star Trek: Picard’s premiere re-introduced us to a world where the Federation feels more beaten back and weary of its ideals than it has in years—even than when it was actively at war. Its second episode reveals this weariness has rendered its finest champions frustratingly aimless, to the advantage of friend and foe…Read more...

Tech billionaire Jack Ma has donated $14.5 million to help develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus that has killed at least 170 people and sickened over 7,700. Ma is China’s wealthiest person with an estimated $41.8 billion, which means that his donation is roughly equivalent to the average American household…Read more...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has an ominous message for the rest of us: You may not like me, but you will understand me.

There’s something very DC/CW-niverse-y about the idea that Arrow—the show that started it all as a grounded and (occasionally) self-serious comic book adaptation—got the inspiration for its very last scene from someone who was mid-tranquil-state. You could almost say it appeared as a vision.

In the penultimate issue of Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and Marte Gracia’s House of X, Charles Xavier’s grand plan to ensure that no X-Men ever truly die again is revealed. In the months since then, the concept of death has become something different for the world’s population of mutants. People carrying x-genes…Read more...

Accounts of mysterious drones flying over rural Colorado that drew national attention after they were published by the Denver Post in December 2019 are probably hot bullshit, Motherboard reported on Wednesday, with a joint task force failing to find evidence anything suspicious was happening and local officials joking…Read more...

As cannabis becomes widely decriminalized, another drug-legalization movement in the U.S. is picking up steam. On Tuesday, the city council of Santa Cruz, California voted to decriminalize the use of psychedelic mushrooms within its borders. It’s now the third city in the U.S. to have done so.Read more...

It is a fact somewhat lost to time—though certainly not one Blizzard will ever forget—that the eternally enduring MOBA genre got its start in Blizzard games. Riot and Valve, however, ended up reaping the rewards of seeds that were sown by custom game-makers in StarCraft and Warcraft 3. After a 2012 lawsuit, Valve even…Read more...

An international team of scientists has developed a soft robotic hand that literally perspires in response to excess heat. This innovative concept could improve the durability and endurance of robots, while also allowing them to work in extreme environments.Read more...

More than 100 new emoji were officially announced on Wednesday, among them more inclusive emoji, a “pinched fingers emoji,” and a dodo bird. But one emoji in particular—the newly introduced placard—confounded Gizmodo staffers, all of whom read radically different wording on the sign.Read more...

Google has announced it’s launching an “experimental social video sharing app” called Tangi for short, 60-second tutorials.

As Uber, Lyft, and lesser-known transportation companies masquerading as tech firms have gradually squeezed savings out of their contingent workforces, those same contract drivers have gotten angry and organized. The first big mass action was a global strike in May of last year, kicked off by LA’s Rideshare Drivers…Read more...

This image is the first high-resolution shot from the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawai’i.

We all know that Apple’s definitely gonna put out a new iPhone (or four) this year, and probably a fresh iPad and Apple Watch, too. But the company is also rumored to have a few unexpected accessories in the works, one of them being an attempt at a wireless charging mat. Again.

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What is a girl gang film? Well, at the heart of it is the “Bad Girl.” Usually, that means a woman who breaks the rules—or rather, the rules somebody else has made. They can range from homicidal go-go dancers to cliquish high-schoolers and even Birds of Prey, but are all united in sticking it to “The Man.” But for…Read more...

Lending political muscle to the concerning data acquired by Reveal and Gizmodo about abnormally high rates of workplace injuries at Amazon facilities, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ilhan Omar last month made a small request of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: injury data for all of the…Read more...

As a climate reporter, I’m not used to reporting any remotely good news on a global scale. But according to a new comment in Nature, things might be looking up a bit. This (potential) good news is super technical, but it’s also super important.Read more...

Apple chief Tim Cook this week said the company is preparing for its production to be affected by an ongoing coronavirus outbreak, and the company is limiting employee travel to the region. Apple joins other tech companies in keeping China travel to only crucial business functions as U.S. health officials warn against…Read more...

A pair of decommissioned satellites are at risk of colliding later today, potentially producing hundreds if not thousands of new pieces of space debris. Regardless of what happens, however, this incident illustrates our dire need for sensible space management practices.

Casting a spotlight on the U.S. government’s lack of preparedness for handling the deluge of disinformation circling the 2020 elections, White House hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a 14-bullet-point plan for combating the spread disinformation on social media—should she win the day.Read more...

The U.S. Department of the Interior is formally banning its staff from using Chinese-made drones today, a move that comes after it grounded roughly 800 drones in its fleet last October, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. All of the Interior Department’s drones are made in China or are produced…Read more...

Canon has already released two full-frame mirrorless cameras: the EOS R and EOS RP, and while Canon’s next mirrorless cam isn’t expected to get officially announced for another few weeks, recent leaks suggest the EOS R5 could be the high-end mirrorless camera Canon fans have been waiting for.Read more...

A group of local governments and nonprofits in France filed an unprecedented suit against Total SA on Tuesday. They say Total isn’t doing nearly enough to take the existential threat of climate change seriously.Read more...

Eight seasons and who knows how many arrowheads later, Oliver Queen has finally saved that damn city. Who would have thought back in 2012, watching that dirty, hairy man run around on an island, that all he needed to do was command some mighty cosmic powers?Read more...

Google’s always tinkering away at something, but the latest round of rumored features hint that native call recording and real-time translations are on the way. Oh, and it looks like both features will also allow for transcriptions, too.Read more...

If you’re all in on the idea of making your home smart and automated, a company called Sonoff has created a simple adapter that will add wifi connectivity to any USB-powered device allowing it to be powered on and off without you ever having to lift a finger.Read more...

Being able to record your computer screen can be useful for all kinds of reasons—from streaming your gaming exploits to the world, to showing your parents how to turn on their antivirus software—and there are numerous ways of going about it. These are the top software and hardware options to consider.Read more...

A new review study out Tuesday has a sobering conclusion for pregnant women: Drinking alcohol will increase the risk of your child being born with cognitive problems and lower birth weight.Read more...

After teasing a 5.1 surround sound solution with the introduction of wireless speakers in 2018 and a soundbar in 2019, Roku is finally doing the thing. If you already own a Roku Soundbar you’ll be able to add additional speakers and a subwoofer for a 5.1 surround sound experience. More importantly, it will actually be…Read more...

The Matrix 4 could be adding another huge name to its cast. The next Doctor Strange could add another familiar face from the comics. Gretel & Hansel’s director wants to try his hand at Friday the 13th. Plus, new footage from Sonic, the subject of Riverdale’s next musical episode, and a first look at the Mortal Kombat…Read more...

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