Notification permission prompts are, to put it lightly, annoying as fuck. Just because you regularly visit a website, doesn’t mean you want them to bombard you with pop-up notifications. To combat the issue, Mozilla has decided Firefox 72 will automatically block such notifications, shunting them to a small icon in…Read more...
by James Whitbrook on io9, shared by Andrew Couts to on (#4TRXP)
So we knew that the creepy baby in M. Night Shyamalan’s new Apple TV+ show was gonna be, well, creepy. Somehow—somehow—we were not adequately prepared for just how goddamn creepy it is.
So far, aside from concerns about its face unlock working even when someone’s eyes are closed, the Pixel 4's launch has been smoother than Google’s previous phones. However, in a recent video, YouTube channel JerryRigEverything may have uncovered a potential issue with the latest Pixel.Read more...
Would you run an errand for just two bucks? How about $3? Maybe $4? These are the questions many delivery workers for the courier service DoorDash say they now face after the company instituted a new pay model paying out as little as $2 per job—a system that was meant to replace its previous, predatory wage model. And…Read more...
by Ana Suarez, Shep McAllister, Tercius, Eric Ravensc on (#4TRK4)
A giant 75" TV, discounted NFL sweats from Fanatics, a fart launcher, and a big ol’ bag of Reese’s mini cups lead off Wednesday’s best deals.
At last month’s big hardware extravaganza, Google finally showed off an update to its three-year-old mesh wifi system that now lives under the company’s Nest smart home brand. Despite a lack of support for the new WiFi 6 standard, Google Nest Wifi includes other hardware and performance upgrades, including access…Read more...
Scientists analyzing data from a defunct satellite say we should all consider that our universe might be round, rather than flat. The consequences, they explain in a new paper, could be crisis-inducing.Read more...
by James Whitbrook and Gordon Jackson on io9, shared on (#4TRA3)
Tom Hardy’s already starting to tease Venom 2. Amazon is setting up its own zombie series. Billy Campbell talks handing off the jetpack to a new Rocketeer. The Craft cast continues to expand. Plus, what’s to come on Arrow and The Flash, and new pictures from Nancy Drew. To me, my spoilers!
Most of us are comfortable using digital assistants to ask about the weather, or the traffic on the way to work, or just how many years it’s been since our favorite sports team actually won anything—but what’s happening to all of our voice commands and queries? And just how many human beings are listening in to them?…Read more...
by Matt Novak on Earther, shared by Matt Novak to Giz on (#4TRA6)
Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year-old member of New Zealand’s parliament, was interrupted by another politician while giving a speech about climate change on Tuesday. And rather than stop everything to address the heckles, she did what anyone of her generation has learned to do when confronted with climate deniers. She said…Read more...
In the world of smartwatches, Fossil is best known for being Google’s main partner for Wear OS watches. Today, it’s taking a step out from Google’s shadow with a new hybrid analog watch, the Hybrid HR. And, as the name suggests, the Hybrid HR adds integrated heart rate monitoring, plus a hybrid display that smartwatch…Read more...
A man riding an ATV and suspected by authorities of involvement in a fatal shooting led police on a chase through the streets of Philadelphia on Tuesday night, NBC Philadelphia reported.
by Rebecca Fishbein on The Slot, shared by Tom McKay on (#4TQQN)
Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear appears to have won the Kentucky gubernatorial election, besting Republican incumbent Matt Bevin. Bevin, who’d initially hinged his campaign on fighting the Affordable Care Act, pivoted to attacking Beshear’s support of abortion rights shortly before the election, with the…Read more...
Federal investigators have determined an Uber self-driving car that killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona in March 2018 lacked programming to either recognize or respond to the presence of jaywalkers on the road, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
After seven years of lobbying Facebook to address the rampant hatred that continues to choke the most powerful social media platform in the world, top officials at several prominent civil rights organizations on Monday finally got a meeting with the boss.
Speaking in Washington, D.C. earlier today, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he’s convinced of AI’s potential to fundamentally alter human consciousness—including changes in our self-perception and to our strategic decision-making. He also slammed AI developers for insufficiently thinking through…Read more...
AT&T is set to pay a pretty large chunk of change to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the company sold unlimited data plans that were not, in fact, unlimited—far from it, in fact.Read more...
Microsoft’s Japan offices recently experimented with shorter work weeks, and the results provide a glimmer of hope that large companies can alter the workweek and save us from collectively burning out.Read more...
by Yessenia Funes on Earther, shared by Andrew Couts on (#4TQEE)
October is a time for pumpkin spice lattes, scarves—and record-breaking heat. Yup, October 2019 was the hottest October ever documented, but c’mon, does that surprise anyone anymore?Read more...
by James Whitbrook on io9, shared by Andrew Couts to on (#4TQEF)
The war for Westeros has been won, and regardless of how you feel about how it all played out, Game of Thrones is over. If you want to reminisce about the show without spending a gabillion hours doing a rewatch, io9 has an exclusive look inside a gorgeous new book that will let you do just that.
Like the gaming version of a turducken (those Thanksgiving abominations with a chicken and a duck stuffed inside a turkey) but less horrifying, YouTuber Geeksmithing has created a self-contained portable version of the original NES console that even includes a tiny projector for big screen gaming anywhere.Read more...
In a letter aimed at gutting Facebook’s rationale for allowing misleading and dishonest political ads across its platform, a prominent civil rights organization on Tuesday issued a stern warning to Mark Zuckerberg, outlining a number of federal laws to which, the group claims, Facebook may theoretically be held to…Read more...
by George Dvorsky on Earther, shared by Rose Pastore on (#4TQ6B)
California’s Kincade Fire is into its 30th day, and mercifully the blaze is now mostly contained. The scope of the damage, however, has been extensive, as this disturbing new satellite image reveals.
Activists with The Satanic Temple say a now-former therapist in Canada has been pushing conspiracies about globe-spanning, mind-controlling cults for years. And after they exposed some of her professional talks to her licensing board, she voluntarily gave up her psychology license.Read more...
Apple has had a long slow crawl from hardware maker to entertainment service provider. First, there was iTunes and selling music online, then movies and TV shows. Later came Apple Music, a streaming service provided for a monthly fee, and earlier this year there was News+, a news service... provided for a monthly fee.…Read more...
As watchmakers scramble to jump on the smartwatch bandwagon and attempt to steal a sliver of market share away from Apple, Timex has decided to take the opposite approach. The company has dug into its archives and revived the T80, an iconic digital watch from the ‘80s whose only smart feature is retro styling.Read more...
Every so often, Big Tech likes to announce splashy social initiatives where it throws money at a problem. Big Tech looks good for ‘caring’ and, more importantly, it distracts from the not-so-great things happening on the sidelines. Yesterday, Apple announced a $2.5 billion plan to address the housing crisis in…Read more...
by Beth Elderkin on io9, shared by Andrew Couts to Gi on (#4TPWD)
His Dark Materials has finally debuted on BBC and HBO, introducing folks to Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen) and the weird and wonderful world she inhabits. But there’s still plenty more story to tell in the first season...including that thing you all know we’re here for. That’s right: The bear fight.Read more...
With the calendar having recently turned over to November, Google has sent out updates to its latest phones with the Pixel 4 getting a handful of improvements. However, anyone still rocking an original Pixel unfortunately got nothing.Read more...
by Yessenia Funes on Earther, shared by Andrew Couts on (#4TPWF)
It only Tuesday, but more than 11,000 scientists around the world have come together to declare a climate emergency. Their paper, published Tuesday in the journal Bioscience, lays out the science behind this emergency and solutions for how we can deal with it.
by James Whitbrook and Gordon Jackson on io9, shared on (#4TPHE)
Tim Miller’s pretty sure that Kitty Pryde movie is dead. Filming ends on Halloween Kills with another sneaky glimpse. Guy Pearce is ready for a spooky Christmas visitation in the BBC’s new Christmas Carol. Plus, new footage from Frozen 2, and Jumanji: The Next Level posters invite you to gaze longingly at...a horse?…Read more...
by Shep McAllister on Kinja Deals, shared by Shep McA on (#4TPHF)
It’s not unusual for a handful of Anker products to be on sale during any given week, but today, nearly a dozen products ranging from charging cables to HD projectors are on sale for one day only as part of an Amazon Gold Box.
From the moment I opened up the Surface Pro X, I got the sense that Microsoft had entered a new chapter for its homegrown hardware. Gone are the huge bezels and hard edges found on the company’s previous detachables, and in their place you something that’s sleek and sophisticated, unlike anything Microsoft has made…Read more...
Beleaguered ride-sharing giant Uber continued to torch cash like an outdated Joker reference in Q3 2019, but it claims that the news is positive because parts of its business would technically be profitable if one looked past all the ways it’s losing money.
by Beth Elderkin on io9, shared by Tom McKay to Gizmo on (#4TNZP)
His Dark Materials is not an easy story to adapt. The trilogy from Philip Pullman is full of breathtaking sights, sounds, and emotions that only work on the page. In some ways, the HBO and BBC adaptation was never going to measure up. But the debut episode is trying its hardest, and the result is something to…Read more...
by Alex Cranz on io9, shared by Tom McKay to Gizmodo on (#4TNVS)
Batwoman continues to be Arrow’s rightful successor—a grim exploration of superheroics with a lead that’s all charm, but hampered by their character’s sullenness. Only, where Arrow leaned into realism to the point of ridiculousness, Batwoman at least has the sense to embrace the comic book nature of its titular…Read more...
It sounds a bit ridiculous at first. Dozens of gigabytes of data can now be encoded on a virtually indestructible glass hard drive that’s the size and shape of a drink coaster. Microsoft just revealed a proof of concept. It’s a thin square of glass that’s been laser-etched with microscopic geometric shapes called…Read more...
Thanks to the laborious stewardship of the blessed Internet Archive and the unyielding armies of Wikipedia’s citizen scholars, we may, within our lifetimes, reach a consensus on basic historical information.
by Germain Lussier on io9, shared by Andrew Couts to on (#4TNPN)
“If you have a story that lends itself to a continuation, that should kind of be there in it,†director Tim Miller told io9. “It was in T2, even if you didn’t recognize it. I don’t think it was [James Cameron’s] intention to put it there but he really did leave an open-ended story because Sarah says, ‘I don’t know…Read more...
Last Friday, Google plunked down $2.1 billion to acquire Fitbit. If you’ve been paying attention to wearables, the news wasn’t exactly a surprise. Google has been hobbling along in the smartwatch space for what feels like eons, and despite Fitbit shelling out $23 million to buy Pebble in 2017, its foray into…Read more...