Gizmodo

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Two of the minds behind the nation’s largest pirate streaming services, iStreamItAll and Jetflicks, have pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement charges, federal officials said Friday. Now we all can rest easier knowing there are a few less bad actors getting one over on multi-billion-dollar giants like…Read more...

The white whale of any Star Wars fan—besides my dream Ahsoka Tano video game—is an unmodified release of the original Star Wars trilogy. Forget the special editions, forget the even-specialier editions. Many of us, from film buffs to preservationists to shameless, Prequel-hating nerds, want to see the films as they…Read more...

The UN’s climate summit in Madrid—dubbed COP25 in UN jargon—continued into the weekend as countries remained deadlocked on divisive environmental issues, chief of which is how to handle a part of the Paris Agreement known as Article 6 that’s focused on carbon markets. After overrunning its initial deadline Friday, the…Read more...

The Game of Thrones Starbucks cup debacle. Watching Notre Dame go up in flames. The moment the world fell in love with Baby Yoda. Going through Google’s top searches of the year feels like flipping through a scrapbook of the internet’s collective obsessions. Released this week, the company’s annual “Year in Search”…Read more...

If you ask any random fan off the street how to get into cyberpunk or science fiction influenced by cyberpunk, there’s a solid chance they’re going to tell you to read Snow Crash. Neal Stephenson’s 1992 classic is a massively influential cyber dystopian work that prefigured a lot of what modern cyberpunk pastiche…Read more...

Remember the good ol’ days, when, to see a movie trailer, you actually had to go see the movie the trailer was running before?Read more...

Orlando Jones gave one of the breakout performances in American Gods as Mr. Nancy, an African trickster god who sharply reflected and reacted to America’s history of slavery and racism. In the second season, his role on the show increased, as Jones took on production and writing tasks alongside his stunning…Read more...

When HBO’s ersatz Watchmen sequel was announced, it was framed, very clearly, as a miniseries. One season, in and out, one and done. But when asked the question now, the various answers given by the cast and crew of the show are... a bit different.Read more...

First came the Nexus, then, as Google continued to try and build its own iPhone: a winning (in theory) mix of mobile software and hardware that it has full control over, we got the Pixel. The Pixel feature drop is it’s latest ploy in getting you to switch, and we’re here to explain what exactly that is, and what…Read more...

Google and its armada of camera-rigged Steet View cars and other devices have been photographing the globe piece by piece for well over a decade now, and all that footage adds up to some pretty staggering tallies: more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery and 36 million square miles of Google Earth imagery,…Read more...

The year is over. Whoop-de-doo.Read more...

The teens are pissed. Perhaps you’ve heard.Read more...

Short-term apartment rental site Airbnb has banned over 60 users of Iron March, the defunct white supremacist web forum that recently had its entire SQL database leaked to the internet, the company told Gizmodo.Read more...

A seemingly spontaneous conga line by a pair of captive chimpanzees might tell us something about how humans first learned to dance, scientists behind a new study say.Read more...

Emotion recognition technology, at best, promises to read commuters’ mental anguish and adjust subway cabin conditions accordingly, and at worst, puts biased and buggy mental microscopes in the hands of corporate overlords. In a new report, the NYU research center AI Now calls for regulators to ban the tech.

Dark matter could be responsible for the mysterious observation of gamma rays in the center of our galaxy, according to a new paper.

An alleged SIM-swapping scammer is accused of using his spoils to purchase cars, expensive jewelry and diamonds, and the royalty rights for rap music.Read more...

Android creator and disgraced former Google executive Andy Rubin has gone on some type of bizarre Twitter blocking spree, blocking virtually everyone who follows him on the site. Rubin now only has eight followers on the site, down from 11 on Wednesday and some 117,000 others that were following his account as of…Read more...

We’re now less than a week from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and two emotions seem to be dominating the conversation. Excitement, of course—we’re about to get a movie fans have waited years for. But also, fear. Fear of what will happen in the movie and how it may change the discourse.

He was on his way home from the grocery store when he got the call. After a weekend out of town, John’s kids were finally asleep in his Houston area home. His wife, too, had been getting ready for bed—until she heard a stranger’s voice echoing down the hallway.

Back in September, Facebook blocked the account of Casapound, an Italian far-right party. Now, an Italian judge has ruled in favor of Casapound on the basis that removing the party’s account ‘prevented political pluralism.’ And to rub salt in the wound, Facebook also has to pay the group 15,000 euros ($16,500) in…Read more...

The OSIRIS-REx team has decided on a location to collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu. It’s a 460-foot-wide crater that they’ve dubbed “Nightingale.”Read more...

Another year has come to an end, and we wouldn’t have gotten here without some pretty incredible comics to read along the way. We’ve had new dawns and final ends, epic sagas and intimate tales, serious drama and serious silliness. But above all, we’ve had some serious fun—and these series are the ones we had the most…Read more...

In 2013, researchers at MIT demonstrated how the wifi signals that fill every corner of your home with high-speed internet could also be used to detect the movements of pets and people—even through walls. Six years later, Linksys has introduced similar functionality on its tri-band mesh routers, and while the…Read more...

You know the world is ending when dicks start to take over entire beaches. No, I’m not talking about a penis havers-only nude beach. I’m talking about the fat innkeeper worm, or Urechis caupo if we’re talking sexy. The best version of its name, though, is penis fish because this worm looks like a fucking dick, man.…Read more...

The decade of the 2010s saw the rise of social media and the proliferation of digital tools that allow people to alter photos and videos. When you put those two forces together, you get a lot of fake images circulating. And these were the ones that helped define the past 10 years.

With T-Mobile having flipped the switch on its nationwide 5G network and Sprint and Verizon’s 5G service available in 10 or more cities, AT&T is now following suit and closing out 2019 by turning on real 5G in 10 cities of its own.Read more...

Abandoning meat isn’t easy. Believe me: I ate a beefy-ass bolognese for lunch yesterday and later munched on some chicken wings. Unfortunately, the meat industry is a growing source of carbon pollution, and continuing to let meat consumption grow could eat up a huge chunk of the world’s carbon budget by 2030. So,…Read more...

Sony’s take on Cinderella finds its king. Warner Bros. gives the Shazam sequel a release date. Ubisoft’s Rabbids are making the leap to the big screen. Florence Pugh says Black Widow is not about Natasha handing off her mantle. Plus, what’s to come on Supernatural, and another element from the recent comics comes to …Read more...

What happens when someone else locks your iPhone and demands you do something in order to regain access? You freak out—rightfully so, since it means someone has access to your iPhone that shouldn’t or, worse, your entire Apple account.Read more...

Smart glasses definitely got off to a rocky start with consumers. To quickly recap, they were expensive, dorky-looking, and in real life, they didn’t live up to the fantasy painted for us in pop culture. As technologically advanced as something like Google Glass was, the first iteration wasn’t anything like what we’d…Read more...

The U.S. military launched a new ground-based missile yesterday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California that landed in the Pacific Ocean. The missile had previously been banned under a Reagan-era treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but this wasn’t the first time that once-banned missiles have been…Read more...

A hacker broke into one Mississippi family’s Ring security camera and used its speaker function to scare their 8-year-old daughter, local CNN affiliate WMC reported this week. This incident marks the latest in a recent series of reported Ring hacks wherein strangers terrorize users through their devices, and…Read more...

Microsoft’s next-generation gaming console is called Xbox Series X, the company announced during an onstage unveiling at this year’s Game Awards Thursday. It’s slated for a holiday 2020 release, unsurprisingly corresponding with competitor Sony’s release date for its Playstation 5.

Look, you can’t call yourself a big game system if you don’t have a sports game. Madden, The Show, FIFA, NBA Jam—they’re all games that have been critical to the platforms they appear on. Apple Arcade has been bereft of sports games and particularly bereft of licensed sports games. That means there hasn’t really been…Read more...

In its latest attempt to bail out its sinking ship of a company, WeWork is examining roughly 100 of its leases worldwide, which could unravel 10-15 percent of its global presence, CNBC reported Thursday. The company confirmed the news after an earlier report by the Information.Read more...

Harrison “HarrisonJr” Patrick Stewart had, until last week, been a verified streamer and partner on Microsoft’s Mixer platform. His deal has since been cancelled after he tweeted an image of himself alongside the text “Come watch a registered sex offender plays Fortnite with 10 year olds!!”

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed that a robocall firm pay about $10 million in fines for spamming Californians with lies about a state assembly candidate.Read more...

You can now add ‘30 million-watt peak power tattoo removing laser’ to the long list of things you probably shouldn’t be able to buy on eBay. YouTuber Drake Anthony, better known as Styropyro, is an expert on all things lasers, and even he was taken aback by the power of a laser that he, or really anyone, can buy on…Read more...

A new nationwide 3-digit emergency line is intended to make the process of seeking help easier for those who need it.Read more...

The Federal Trade Commission is considering asking the courts to put a halt to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to merge the technical backends of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram on antitrust grounds, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The control Disney has on pop culture right now is so enormous it’s kind of terrifying. Marvel’s superhero movies and Star Wars are two of—if not the—biggest franchises in the world. Add those to Pixar’s beloved library of films and its own perennially popular movies, and Disney is effectively in charge of an enormous…Read more...

Young climate activists with the Sunrise Movement broke into the national spotlight last year by occupying members of Congress’ offices demanding a Green New Deal. Now, they’re rolling out their strategy to change who’s in the House in the first place.Read more...

For years, archaeologists have debated the existence of ancient Egyptian head cones. These objects are portrayed in Egyptian artworks, but not a single one has been found by archaeologists—until now.

Always more, we want.

With just a few weeks left until the end of the decade, there’s still time to get the best gift possible for your health and the health of everyone around you: a flu vaccine.

For better or worse, no gadget exemplifies the 2010s more than the smartphone. Smartphones helped propel the meteoric rise of social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, and most recently TikTok, while also giving millions of people an incredibly powerful and practically always available pocket camera (much to the…Read more...

Good news for everyone who likes Live Photos. If you want to share them on Twitter, you can now convert them to GIFs. So you know, they’ll move now as God intended.Read more...

New York City commuters have gotten used to bizarre delays. Falling tree limbs and trains that were invisible to controllers until a computer was rebooted are among the issues that have slowed down commutes. But visitors to Williamsburg’s Broadway station were recently met with an obstacle they couldn’t get around: a…Read more...