Gizmodo

The lyrics for beloved Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” very clearly affirm that “scary ghost stories” are just as much a part of the holiday season as “mistletoeing.” And if FX’s spin on the oft-adapted Dickens classic wants to lean into its horror elements, we are all for it.

In July 2017, former South Carolina governor and the Trump administration’s former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley used a government system for unclassified information to discuss North Korean rocket launches because she forgot her password to the secure one, the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday.

A glaring lack of right-to-repair protections touches just about everyone, from consumers to farmers and independent repair shops. But a new op-ed explains how this form of corporate greed even impacts the United States military.Read more...

The past few weeks of bush fires have created a nightmare in Australia. Smoke has clogged the Sydney skyline, and state governments have issued terrifying warnings essentially urging residents to flee or risk death.

Archaeologists in Ecuador have uncovered evidence of a previously undocumented funeral ritual, in which the heads of recently deceased infants were adorned with the skulls of other children. Scientists can only speculate as to the reasons why.

After years of calling PopSockets ugly eyesores, I get the appeal now. Earlier this year I upgraded to an iPhone XS Max and my Big Phone was a smidge too large for my hands. I grumbled, but it was surprisingly useful. Then when I lost my wallet on a business trip, I even upgraded to a PopWallet+. Readers, it changed…Read more...

Scientists have completed the first ever placebo-controlled investigation of the effects of the hallucinogen DMT on resting brain activity, according to a new study.

Mozilla’s privacy report on gadgets has returned just ahead of the holidays to remind us that many high-demand devices and smart-tech gizmos are far, far creepier than they let on. And wouldn’t you know it, many of the most popular devices on the market are getting dogged.Read more...

Reebok Women’s Quick Capri Leggings | $14 | Daily Steals | Promo Code KJRBKRead more...

Whether Bitcoin, an immaterial resource derived from hype and blind faith, will vanish into thin air is uncertain, but it will leave behind a dark cloud of carbon pollution. Cryptocurrency mining facilities use so much energy that the government of Abkhazia cut power to 15 mining centers last year. A Norway…Read more...

Citing the potential for sensitive footage “detailing the lives of millions of Americans” to fall into the hands of hackers and foreign spies, a group of a U.S. lawmakers are demanding to know more about how Ring, Amazon’s home security company, is protecting its customers’ data.

I rarely use an external monitor with my laptop for the simple fact that I don’t want to get used to all the extra screen space which isn’t available when I travel with my computer. My ideal solution to this problem would be exactly what Matt from YouTube’s DIY Perks channel has created: a laptop with an extra screen…Read more...

An international team of astronomers has detected a pair of gamma-ray bursts with energies more powerful than anything ever seen before. GRBs are the strongest explosions known in the cosmos, but these latest observations suggests we’ve significantly underestimated their true potential.Read more...

News on endangered species is often not good. It comes with the territory. But every now and then there are success stories of species starting to crawl back from the brink. New findings raise cautious hopes for one of the world’s rarest and most critically endangered reptiles.Read more...

DOT | $34 | ThermoWorksRead more...

A year and a half after Uber announced it was “getting serious about safety” as a response to the horrific deluge of reports about drivers committing murders and sexual assaults, the ride-share giant is planning a program that will record audio of rides in the U.S.Read more...

Xinhua News, China’s largest state-run news agency, is currently buying ads on Facebook that feature a video of Bill Gates talking about China. The video ad is a fascinating example of the ways in which the Chinese government is using Facebook, which is banned in mainland China, to spread propaganda online while…Read more...

Even if you’re diligent about app permissions, sometimes you just can’t predict how or when a bad actor will abuse them. This time around, a team of security researchers found a terrifying flaw with the Android camera apps that could let malicious apps completely take control over a phone’s camera to spy on users…Read more...

You’re addicted to The Mandalorian, and you’re looking forward to all those Marvel shows on the way. But your Disney+ subscription doesn’t only contain must-see TV and nostalgia-burnished Oscar winners! The studio dug deep to fill up its new streaming service, and it shook loose some wonderful weirdness.Read more...

The findings of a new study involving gunshot survivors are unlikely to surprise you—but they aren’t any less depressing. It suggests that many survivors are left physically and mentally devastated by their experience, even years later.Read more...

In June, Google made an enticing offer for its new streaming service, Stadia—anyone who pre-ordered the Founder’s Edition would be able to lock in the usernames of their choice before anyone else could. Now, however, some people who pre-ordered the service say they haven’t even gotten in. Instead, they still find…Read more...

Astronomers at a Chilean observatory were rudely interrupted earlier this week when a SpaceX satellite train consisting of 60 Starlink satellites drifted overhead, in what scientists are apparently going to have to accept as the new normal.Read more...

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At the start of this decade, the federal government called out consumer DNA testing as a burgeoning scam industry. Little did we know how it would explode in popularity.

Looking back at 2009, it was one of the most consequential years in climate and not in a good way.Read more...

Wireless Charging and Accessory Gold Box | AmazonRead more...

The government of Iran shut off the internet for virtually everyone in the country on Saturday as protests over fuel prices turned violent. The internet in Iran has now been inaccessible to the general population of 81 million for almost four days, and it’s not clear when the government will turn it back on.

Fossil fuels are the root cause of climate change. So it would stand to reason that we should rapidly wind down production of them to avert a catastrophe.Read more...

The Indiana Supreme Court seemed dubious that a suspected Warrick County drug dealer who removed a hidden police tracker from his car should really be charged with theft, Ars Technica reported on Tuesday.Read more...

The Indian government has asserted sweeping powers to “intercept, monitor, or decrypt” any information that is “generated, transmitted, received, or stored” on any computer network in the country, per TechCrunch, and for purposes as vague as national security or safeguarding “public order.”

We here at io9 love Funko Pops. We write about them. We buy them. We’ve talked about them being decimated. We’ve even made a pilgrimage to Funko Headquarters in Everett, Washington to visit the flagship store. That place is incredibly epic, as it should be, but it doesn’t come close to touching the toy company’s new…Read more...

Kirk and Spock may be coming back to the big screen and from a very exciting filmmaker too.Read more...

The path to the million-member-strong league on Reddit’s r/conspiracy is paved with politics, toxicity, and tech culture, a sprawling study has found. From an eight-year sample ranging from 2007 to 2015, a team of Australian researchers compared 15,370 r/conspiracy posters to an equal number of users who’d started out…Read more...

DoorDash is in deep shit over in DC over the controversial wage model it had in place for years that used customer tips to pay worker wages and inflate its bottom line.Read more...

The unwieldy GameCube pad is ubiquitous in Super Smash Bros. competition. Smash players have long been improving the controller through mods, the latest of which is an internal hand-warming mechanism that gets fingers nice and toasty after periods of inactivity.

Like a kid burning holes in their toys using a magnifying glass, solar furnaces essentially do the same thing on a much grander scale. The larger an array of reflectors you can build, the bigger the sun-focusing lens you get. But a new startup is promising a better way to build solar furnaces using AI to reduce their…Read more...

Waffle Knits | Starting at $20 | JachsRead more...

Since news broke that Google bought Fitbit for $2.1 billion, one of the big questions was how that massive treasure trove of Fitbit data would be handled. Everyone saw what happened with Nest. As a company, Nest and its data operated separately for a long while, but earlier this year, Nest users were told to migrate…Read more...

In the wake of recent reports showing that antibiotic-resistant superbugs are on the rise, some scientists in the UK are pushing for a fix that might seem radical. They argue that the research and development of new antibiotics should be taken out of the pharmaceutical industry’s hands and publicly funded on a global…Read more...

I simply must inform you of this crucial bee fact: When bees get trapped in water, they use their wings as hydrofoils to surf back to the safety of land.

Hulu has, very regrettably, alerted users that its Live TV plans are spiking $10 per month beginning December 18. That means that its ad-supported Hulu + Live TV package is now going to run $55 per month—an additional $120 per year. That’s a very real chunk of change for cord-cutters on a budget.Read more...

Using data gathered by NASA’s Cassini probe, scientists have compiled the first global geologic map of Saturn’s enigmatic moon Titan. The new map reveals a world that’s distinctly familiar, yet completely foreign at the same time.Read more...

Julian Assange has evaded more charges by running out the clock. Sweden has announced it has dropped an investigation into a rape allegation made against the Wikileaks founder, arguing that too much time has elapsed since the accusation was made in 2010. In a news conference, NPR reports, Swedish Deputy Director of…Read more...

Trash talk has long been an effective (but underhanded) tool when it comes to sports, gaming, and other competitive endeavors. But it’s been assumed that it’s a strategy that only works between humans who can deliver remarks with emotional weight. It turns out that’s not the case, as researchers from Carnegie Mellon…Read more...

The League dating app—which filters users to make sure they’re in the right league—has decided to mess around with video speed dating.Read more...

A huge Puma sale, SteelSeries Mouse, Mophie power bank, and an Anker Gold Box lead off Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

This simple thing never clicked for me before I saw it on Reddit: In many keyboard shortcuts on Windows and MacOS, adding the shift key makes the shortcut do the opposite of what it normally does.

It’s not enough for humans to screw up our planet. Apparently, we’ve screwed up Earth in the Pokemon universe as well.

To help sell people on its new console after the 1983 video game crash, Nintendo branded the NES as a complete “Entertainment System”, which included a robotic accessory that could play along with gamers. Thirty years later, some hackers at Croxel have found a clever way to revive that long-forgotten accessory.Read more...

Facebook recently announced that white supremacist propaganda site Breitbart would be considered a “high quality” news source on its platform, leading to complaints that Facebook was legitimizing hate. But it’s fine, according to one Facebook executive who gave an interview at the Code Media conference in Los Angeles…Read more...