Gizmodo

In what looks and sounds like something straight out of a Star Wars movie, a robot named Shimon from Georgia Tech can now sing and compose songs with human collaborators, among many other cool upgrades.Read more...

Following decisions to cancel event appearances and restrict travel, Amazon also appears to have put in-person job interviews on hold indefinitely, according to screenshots shared with Gizmodo.

Video games. Remember those? They’re like movies but interactive and most people ignore the story. Anyway, if you’ve got a particular itch that needs scratching this weekend, you may want to turn your head to Amazon, where a slew of games are on sale across all platforms. (Accessories too!)

Geralt of Rivia may be a surrogate father to young Ciri, but he’s got a father figure of his own. Netflix has announced that Killing Eve actor Kim Bodnia has joined the cast of The Witcher for season two.Read more...

On Friday, the House of Representatives approved new legislation that bans the sale of flavored e-cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products. The bill was contentious among the Democratic caucus this week but ultimately passed with a vote of 213-195. The bill will now advance to the Senate but the Trump…Read more...

The Trump Administration’s early reaction to the outbreak of a new coronavirus that’s near certain to hit the U.S. hard hasn’t been great, to put it lightly.

Outdoor domestic cats are a conservation concern as invasive and effective predators that prey on wildlife around the world. Introduced cats are responsible for the extinction of at least 63 bird, reptile and mammal species in the past 500 years.

In 2016, the U.S. began exporting oil after hitting pause for 40 years. The increase in fracking and domestic energy production in part fueled that change, but the climate crisis is forcing Democratic candidates to weigh whether they’d reinstate that ban if they win the White House.Read more...

Our planet recently adopted a mini-moon that’s roughly the size of a car, though astronomers aren’t sure yet if it’s an asteroid or an artificial object. An observatory in Hawaii is now providing us with a clearer view of Earth’s intriguing new—yet temporary—celestial companion.

Science fiction author Jeff VanderMeer doesn’t just envision a better world. He hopes to live in a less stupid world.

YouTube TV subscribers who rely on the service to stream regional sports coverage from Fox will now have to find their content elsewhere, as the service says a disagreement with its parent company has resulted in it dropping Fox Regional Sports and Yankee Entertainment and Sports Network programming.Read more...

If you do an Amazon search for “coronavirus,” you get a ton of self-published guides on how to beat it, a foul-mouthed coloring book, some sanitizing products, and of course, face masks. But in recent weeks, Amazon has banned more than 1 million products for falsely claiming that they can cure or protect against…Read more...

Last year, Vivo’s fancy Apex 2019 concept showed us what a phone without ports might look like. But now, Vivo has returned with an even more fantastical concept device featuring a number of potentially major innovations throughout the device.Read more...

Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg has been the target of climate denying trolls before, but the latest example is too far even by already horrifying standards.Read more...

Despite its utterly awful image quality (maxing out at a resolution of just 160x144 pixels), the Game Boy Camera was still a popular add-on, thanks in part to a cheap accessory that could print out tiny photos. But finding paper stock for the Game Boy Printer is no easy task these days, so Vaclav Mach created a $20…Read more...

A $550 Epson ful HD home cinema projector, a $33 Kyoku paring knife, and a Mario Party Switch bundle at Kohls head up Friday’s deals of the day. TGIF indeed.Read more...

Texas’ 28th congressional district stretches from Laredo to San Antonio’s East Side. Along the way, it cuts through one of America’s most productive fossil fuel sites. Known as the Eagle Ford Shale reserve, fracking has driven a huge natural gas and oil boom there over the past decade.Read more...

The amazing canine nose is more impressive than we thought, demonstrating the ability to detect weak infrared radiation from a distance, according to new research.Read more...

There’s nothing wrong with the new, rebooted Motorola Moto 360. There’s just nothing special about it either.Read more...

Tokyo Disneyland, Legoland Japan, and Universal Studios Japan will close their gates for at least two weeks on Saturday over concerns about the coronavirus outbreak that has sickened at least 226 people and killed four in Japan alone. The closures were announced on Friday after the Japanese government suggested a…Read more...

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The Senate unanimously voted Thursday to grant rural telecom carriers a cool $1 billion in funding to help them ditch and replace any existing equipment from Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and ZTE. Its official name is the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, but many simply call it the “rip and replace”…Read more...

A face recognition app used by thousands of law enforcement agencies, which has drawn considerable scrutiny in past weeks over its creator’s dubious data collection methods, contains code hinting at an unreported range of potential features, based on a version of the app discovered by Gizmodo.Read more...

Apple really, really wants you to consider the iPad a MacBook replacement, so after adding cursor support in the latest version of iPad OS, the company reportedly has a reimagined Smart Keyboard with a built-in trackpad on deck.Read more...

A whistleblower from the Department of Health and Human Services has alleged that officials sent more than a dozen workers to receive American evacuees from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the global coronavirus outbreak, without providing sufficient protective gear or medical training, according to recent reports from …Read more...

Walmart is gearing up to launch a new membership program called Walmart+, a service that’s reportedly being tailored to compete with Amazon Prime by offering deals and services that a Prime membership doesn’t.Read more...

In 2019, broadcast news programs produced more climate coverage than the previous year. But it’s still far from enough.

In June of last year the world was introduced to the Raspberry Pi 4: a tiny computer with an even smaller price tag that could run a full desktop operating system making it useful for more than just hacks and homebrew projects. To celebrate the Pi’s eighth birthday it just became an even better bargain with the base…Read more...

When we think about companies “harvesting our data,” chances are we’re thinking of The Big Tech Names doing that harvesting. But sometimes, even these companies get taken for a bit of a ride. Case in point: earlier today, the adtech company OneAudience got slammed with a hefty Facebook lawsuit, on charges that the…Read more...

On Wednesday, a British appeals court issued a ruling that Heathrow Airport’s long-planned third runway expansion in London is illegal due to its climate impacts that planners failed to adequately account for. The move is the latest in a decade-plus of wrangling over the expansion that would be a climate disaster.Read more...

Frederick Brennan, the founder of the fringe 8chan discussion board that disbanded after users on its far-right /pol/ subforum were linked to multiple mass shootings, could face arrest in the Philippines thanks to criminal libel charges brought by the site’s current owner, Jim Watkins.Read more...

The spread of coronavirus is prompting companies to cancel nonessential travel. That includes trade shows like the smartphone-centric Mobile World Congress, which was scheduled to be held in Barcelona this week but was called off. Now Facebook has canceled its own annual event, the F8 developer’s conference, citing…Read more...

Earlier this week, the developer behind Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios, invited press to watch hours of gameplay in which a developer died over and over again in the difficult isometric RPG based on Dungeons and Dragons. I went because the Baldur’s Gate series is one of my absolute favorite ever made—and also because…Read more...

The Clone Wars is back, which can only mean a few things: One, some of our favorite Star Wars characters in the galaxy have returned. Two? It’s all about to end rather tragically for most of them. But Rex and Ahsoka will come out of the Clone War...mostly unscathed, and for the voice behind the former, their…Read more...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to seek a total of at least $200 million in fines from cellphone carriers accused of illegally sharing the location data of their customers, Gizmodo has learned.Read more...

This week, the other shoe dropped for people living in the U.S. worried about the spread of the new coronavirus. Officials have reported the first local cases of the respiratory illness, COVID-19, in California. The virus is here—and has probably been here for some time—and the U.S. is almost certain to face the sort…Read more...

Facebook is already responsible (at least in part) for one of the biggest and most poorly named smartphone flops ever: the HTC First. But in a new book about the inner workings of Facebook, author Steven Levy reveals the social media giant had an even wilder prototype device that never saw the light of day.Read more...

Etsy is rolling out a new campaign for offsite advertising that automatically enrolls its sellers and charges them a fee for sales from those ads, but some sellers won’t be able to opt out—meaning they’ll pay for the service whether they like it or not.Read more...

Scientists have discovered evidence of the largest energy outburst ever recorded. The clues to this ancient explosion come in the form of a giant bubble of ancient radio waves.Read more...

He knows what’s up. Danger, that’s what’s up.

The Associated Press published a story early Thursday morning using reporting from Chinese-based Ningbo Evening News that Chinese authorities were deploying 100,000 ducks to Pakistan to help combat the locust swarms plaguing the country. Outlets around the world picked the ducks vs. locusts battle up before AP amended…Read more...

Earlier this week, British medical journal The Lancet published a brief correspondence from two Chinese medical aid workers who said they were currently fighting the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. The letter, which describes extreme and intolerable working conditions inside the isolation wards, was suddenly retracted…Read more...

The Apple Watch is the smartwatch to beat. It’s massively popular, has a full range of features, and compared to some of its competitors, leads the way in rethinking how wearables can function within the health sector. During the Apple Watch portion of Apple events, you can generally expect a feel-good reel of…Read more...

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Unless artist Jeff Koons, known for his giant balloon dog sculptures, decides to get litigious, Moose Toys will be introducing some competition for Sony’s Aibo later this year with Squeakee, the world’s first robotic balloon dog that could potentially put clowns and birthday party entertainers out of business.

Let’s skip past all the hemming and hawing. Between its huge 6.9-inch 120Hz screen, beastly specs, 5G support, 108-MP main camera, Space Zoom lens, and 8K video capture, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is an absolute powerhouse. It has practically any feature you could ever want (aside from a headphone jack), and unless…Read more...

One of the benefits of going all-in on Apple hardware is that everything works so seamlessly (most of the time): Photos from your iPhone appear on your Mac, you can switch between the desktop and mobile when working on documents, video calls can be made from anywhere, and so on. A similar sort of integration can be…Read more...

Twenty countries have reported their first cases of the new coronavirus this week, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to over 82,000 in 50 countries since the outbreak began in December. At least 2,800 people have died worldwide.

When DJ Casper picks up the phone, it’s like getting a direct line to a messiah, or the Moviefone guy. You know he exists of flesh and blood, but speaking with him is the miraculous proof that he is out there. “DJ Casper?”

NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home Mesh WiFi System (RBK23) | $200 | AmazonRead more...