Gizmodo

Did you fly a jetpack over Los Angeles at approximately 3,000 feet on Sunday? Some kind of tiny helicopter? Maybe a lawn chair with balloons tied to it?

Often times, a classic movie can help us time travel. It brings us right back to the instant we first saw it. Maybe you were with a special person. Maybe you were a certain age. But few things tap into nostalgia like a fan’s relationship to a movie.Read more...

The U.S. won’t contribute to an international effort to develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes covid-19, the White House said on Tuesday, because it involves the “corrupt World Health Organization” and China.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may or may not have the authority to halt evictions, but it plans to swing for the fences regardless. Effective immediately, it—or more accurately, Trump—plans to enact the sort of eviction moratoria tried in many states nationwide.

Sorry, Hawkeye. We’ll be playing as Hawkeye, please and thank you.

Citing the unprecedented strain the coronavirus has wrought on the U.S. election system, Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced that he and wife Priscilla Chan are donating $300 million to increase voter turnout and bolster state and local election security efforts.Read more...

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. In this latest edition, we’ve got a board game about gods celebrating the wonder of dinosaurs, some awesome roleplaying dice inlaid with (fake) mosquitos, and another delay for one of IDW’s most anticipated games. Check it…Read more...

A pacemaker might help people prone to fainting stay on their feet more, according to preliminary research out this week. The findings from this study and others could very well lead to pacemakers becoming the first dedicated treatment for chronic fainting.

Weeks later, I’m still completely stunned by it.Read more...

Today, Nvidia showed us the true promise and vision of ray tracing—making virtual environments look as real as possible based on how light is cast and reflected off surfaces and objects. It’s not a new concept. Animation studios like Pixar have been working with ray traced effects for years. But it’s always been…Read more...

One day in the perhaps not-so-distant future, you’ll be able to interact with your tablet, phone, or computer using a regular ole sheet of notebook paper.Read more...

When the Chicago-area brewery 5 Rabbit Cerveceria created a beer to protest Donald Trump’s infamous, discriminatory campaign announcement, it caused quite a stir. The beer, Chinga Tu Pelo (“Fuck Your Hair”), was seen as a potent (and popular) form of protest, and it brought the brewery national attention. That story…Read more...

Donald Trump, who’s recently claimed not to know much about QAnon but is keenly aware that believers like him, is now officially dropping unfounded deep state conspiracies on television, one of which seems to have been lifted from a viral Facebook post.

Yet another popular rideshare company will soon require documented proof that you’re not behaving like an idiot when using its service. Uber says it will soon introduce a mask-verification feature that requires riders to submit selfies as proof of a mask, a tool the company introduced for its drivers earlier this…Read more...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, Gulf Coast residents have been exposed to toxic emissions from chemical fires and oil and gas refinery plants—but we don’t even know how much pollution, because some important air monitors are offline.

Nvidia has consistently maintained its status as the lead creator of graphics cards, pioneering the transition to fancy lighting effects like ray tracing in games. Now that Nvidia’s officially announced its next-gen GPUs and the rumor mill is put to rest, we know just how much fancier its GPUs are going to get from…Read more...

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender is not a good movie. By all standards—but especially when compared to the animated series—it’s a waste of time. But even the worst cinematic experiences will usually have something about them that works.

A new study using lasers suggests that face shields and masks outfitted with an exhaust valve aren’t particularly great at protecting others from tiny respiratory droplets containing contagious germs like the coronavirus that causes covid-19. These aerosols can spill through and around these types of face equipment,…Read more...

With so many people still quarantined at home, getting deliveries of food, clothing, and other household staples has becoming increasingly important. And starting on Sept. 15, Amazon Prime is going be facing a major new competitor in Walmart+.Read more...

If you were wondering whether you should save yourself a couple hundred dollars and opt for an Apple Watch Series 3: Don’t. A Bloomberg report says alongside the forthcoming Series 6, Apple is planning to introduce a new, more affordable Apple Watch to replace the Series 3.Read more...

Right now, just 17% of the world’s energy comes from renewable sources. The lion’s share still comes from planet-warming fossil fuels. It’s clear that we have to change that ratio quickly in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions and slow the climate crisis.Read more...

We’ve had old Yoda. We’ve had slightly less old Yoda. We’ve had Baby Yoda, albeit that’s an entirely different character. Now, the time has come, for what might as well be the closest we’ll get to teen Yoda. Okay, maybe more of a middle-aged Yoda.

A new paper published today offers surprising insight into the American mastodon and its reactions to a changing environment. This stocky megafauna—whose tusks, trunk, and four legs echo today’s elephant—is thought to have lived predominantly within forests and marshy environments throughout ancient North America…Read more...

Samsung Galaxy Buds+ | $130 | AmazonRead more...

Jeff Bezos obviously doesn’t want a union in his company. Amazon’s increasingly flippant statements about protest activity have made that clear, as have years of leaks in the press that detail the sort of anti-labor reeducation workers are subjected to, how company brass discuss labor leaders, and the sheer resources…Read more...

Liu Cixin’s Hugo-winning sci-fi story The Three-Body Problem is becoming a television show at Netflix, with Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss showrunning alongside True Blood and The Terror: Infamy’s Alexander Woo.

After having teased its next flagship foldable back in early August, Samsung has finally returned to fill us in on all the details about the Galaxy Z Fold 2, including its price, specs, and release date.

E-readers not only survived the arrival of the iPad and other tablet devices, they’re thriving, and innovating, with 2020 marking the arrival of the first full-color E Ink displays in products like the PocketBook Color and Hisense A5C. Like most first-generation products they’re far from perfect, but they promise to…Read more...

The tundra is exploding in Siberia. Again.Read more...

Chris Pine still has hopes to return to Star Trek’s cinematic captain’s chair. There’s bad news for NOS4A2. Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to spy-fi. Plus, what’s to come when Wynonna Earp returns next year, and a new look at both Dune and Godzilla vs. Kong. To me, my spoilers!

Facebook has threatened to ban all news content for users in Australia if a law proposed by the Australian government moves forward, according to a press release published by the social media company late Monday. Facebook’s ban on news would apply to both news organizations and individual users in Australia and is…Read more...

The FBI warned in a November 2019 bulletin that smart video doorbells, such as Amazon’s Ring or Google’s Nest Hello cameras, could tip off suspects that police are coming for them, according to a Monday report in the Intercept.

Waze, Google’s driving and traffic app, is letting users drive with Kevin Conroy, the best Batman voice, as their personal navigator beginning today.Read more...

Internet access is pretty essential to get anything done these days, whether it’s chatting with working-from-home colleagues in Slack, binge-watching the latest hit Netflix show, or writing up reports in Google Docs. Most of the apps we rely on run from the cloud, and it’s all too easy to just assume the cloud will…Read more...

I downloaded a Mac OS 8 emulator a few weeks ago—not just because it looked cool, but because I had a serious hankering for some classic Oregon Trail. The app itself is pretty neat. It’s made by the same Slack developer, Felix Rieseberg, who also made a Windows 95 emulator. It’s not a fully functioning Mac OS 8…Read more...

Scandal boy Scott Pruitt’s tenure as Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator may now be long over, but the $43,000 paranoia chamber he had illegally installed in his office hasn’t seen the light of day until now.

If you haven’t been on the receiving end of updates from Facebook comms, then you’re lucky to have avoided the equivalent of a weekly robocall pitching you new and exciting offerings. We got another one today, this time on the subject of “Recommendation Guidelines.”

A breed of wild dog known for its lyrical sounds may not be as extinct as we thought, according to a new paper out Monday. The study details genetic evidence suggesting that the New Guinea singing dog—thought to have only existed in captivity for the past 50 years—is still alive in the wilds of Indonesia. The authors…Read more...

Take Excellent Adventure, tie in Bogus Journey, shove them through time as well as a modern lens, and you’ve got Dean Parisot’s Bill & Ted Face the Music, the very funny, very moving, very fitting third film in the saga. It is most triumphant, with only a sprinkle of heinous.Read more...

Apple has followed through with its word to give developers a formal appeals process, which will allow them to fight back if Apple’s App Store reviewers find that an app violates its guidelines. The company originally announced it would be giving developers a way to challenge its decisions at its Worldwide Developers…Read more...

The Federal Aviation Administration has given the go-ahead for Amazon’s fleet of Prime Air drones. Yes, that means Amazon can now begin trialing air deliveries. With drones. Commence weeping, for the commerce dystopia is one step closer to coming true.Read more...

Plenty of apps currently allow you to sync up with a buddy and stream a movie or series simultaneously, creating a kind of cinema-at-home experience until it’s safe for us to return to theaters. As of yet, Disney has yet to introduce an official, in-app watch party tool for its service Disney+, but it may be exploring…Read more...

Star Trek’s first foray to the box office is a strange beast—a gorgeous, haunting exploration of the franchise’s love of the cosmos wrapped up in an overwrought, over-long plot. So it’s perhaps a good thing that a new making-of book puts the spotlight on what works about Star Trek: The Motion Picture: the art behind…Read more...

Movies are slowly trickling back into theaters, but a far safer option is to pick up one of September’s new books instead. And it’s a ridiculously bountiful month, with witches, warriors, time travelers, ghosts, robots, aliens, monsters, and space pirates to fire up your imagination without needing to leave the house.Read more...

A new support page about the transition to next-gen consoles over on Ubisoft’s website appears to confirm that PS3, PS2, and PS1 games will not be backward compatible on PS5.Read more...

We know Apple’s going to launch products powered by its custom silicon soon. How soon and which products, however, are currently up for debate. However, a report from the China Times hints that the first Apple Silicon computer might arrive later this year—and it’d be an extremely lightweight 12-inch MacBook that…Read more...

Lenovo is shrinking the chassis of the Legion 7i from 0.79 in. to 0.7 in., and the weight from 4.6 lbs to 3.9 lbs., making the up-coming Legion Slim 7i the lightest and slimmest gaming laptop it’s ever made. The company is attempting to tackle the holy-grail of laptop design: a laptop that is light, thin, and…Read more...

The oceans may seem vast and indomitable, and yet humanity has found a way to spread its influence over them. New findings show that the world’s oceans are cluttered with all other sorts of human infrastructure.Read more...

It was a simple request: I’d say the words “Demon Bear,” and the cast of The New Mutants would tell me what pops into their heads. The results, as you can see above, were amazing.Read more...

Netflix has always stood out from many of its competitors by eschewing an ad-supported model since its inception, no matter how hard its investors begged the company to consider otherwise. They’re still very much no going that route, but a “free” version of the service exists now—sorta.