by Germain Lussier on io9, shared by Tom McKay to Giz on (#4ZY61)
Centuries after humanity has been all but destroyed by nuclear holocaust, a woman wakes up on an alien spaceship. She finds out the aliens that saved her want to help bring back the human race.Read more...
The latest news from the White House on the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus, which the Centers for Disease Control has warned is likely to hit the U.S. imminently, is not very reassuring: Vice President Mike Pence, whose poor epidemiological instincts helped fuel an HIV outbreak in his home state of Indiana,…Read more...
A scathing opinion piece in the BMJ is accusing the World Health Organization of conducting a pilot program in Africa for an experimental malaria vaccine without acquiring the informed consent of participants. Experts are calling it a “serious breach†of international bioethical standards and potentially “a disaster…Read more...
by Charles Pulliam-Moore on io9, shared by Tom McKay on (#4ZY62)
Nerds love watching gargantuan kaiju beat the snot out of each other almost as much as they love watching professional wrestlers get greased up and brawl in the ring, which makes it surprisingly as hell that a movie like Paramount’s upcoming Rumble wasn’t made years ago.Read more...
Scientists say they’ve for the first time conducted an extensive analysis of the bacteria that live in the human vagina. And they seem to have found plenty of surprises.
Ten dollars a month will buy you some decent things, even in this economy. Or you can flush it down the shiny new toilet that is Seamless+.Read more...
Streaming giant Twitch.tv issued 24-hour bans to some of its biggest left-wing podcasters on Tuesday night, including Chapo Trap House, radio host David Pakman, and Mychal “Trihex†Jefferson, citing Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests over streams of the Democratic primary debate in South Carolina.
A security breach at a face-recognition startup, already embattled over its unfettered collection of Americans’ personal data on behalf of its hundreds of law enforcement clients, further underscores the potential hazards faced by consumers at the hands of a controversial and largely-unregulated surveillance technologyRead more...
Until recently, Lisa McCarrick was a loss prevention manager at Amazon, albeit one who alleges she was compensated significantly less than men who held her title prior, and her male subordinates. But in a wrongful termination lawsuit, filed yesterday in her home state of California, McCarrick references a pattern of…Read more...
by Beth Elderkin on io9, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola to on (#4ZY1X)
Game designer Elizabeth Hargrave helped jumpstart a tabletop revolution with Wingspan, an environmental board game about creating habitats for birds. Her upcoming release, Mariposas, has players guiding monarch butterflies on their migration. But there’s something unsettling lurking beneath the table.
If for some reason you have willingly handed over your Gmail address to allow yourself to be spammed by presidential campaigns—perhaps because you want to be alerted to fundraising efforts or to find out more on the candidates’ stances—you might have already noticed something a little funny about which candidates’…Read more...
As tech and social media giants engage in a kind of Whac-A-Mole for COVID-19 scaremongering and product misinformation on their websites, Facebook says it’s cracking down on ads intended to mislead users about their products on its Marketplace.Read more...
Thanks to some dedicated coders and hardware developers in China, fans of handheld gaming no longer have to rely on Nintendo to get their fix. The Anbernic Retro Game 350 might not play the latest and greatest titles like the Switch or 3DS do, but when it comes to classic gaming, the RG350 delivers the best experience…Read more...
On January 3, 2019, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) accomplished a human first: It successfully placed a lander on the far side of the Moon. Today, the team is revealing new insights about what they found beneath the lunar surface.Read more...
Scientists think they’ve helped settle a debate over one of the most endangered (and cutest) animals around: the red panda. New genetic evidence suggests there are really two different species of red panda, each with a unique evolutionary history.
by James Whitbrook on io9, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola t on (#4ZXKA)
Indiana Jones is coming back for a fifth adventure—this we’ve known for ages, as the film’s been in a long development process. But now as it begins to slowly come out of that process, it’s going to be doing so without the man that has been behind the camera since the very first movie in the franchise.
by Yessenia Funes on Earther, shared by Brian Kahn to on (#4ZXKD)
On Wednesday, the House is holding a hearing on Trump’s racist border wall and the threat it poses to the cultural and environmental resources in Arizona, including Organ Pipe National Monument and parts of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s tribal lands. Guess what else is going down Wednesday? The Department of Homeland…Read more...
by James Whitbrook on io9, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola t on (#4ZXKE)
In 1998, Disney’s attempts to launch its animated take on the fable of Hua Mulan in China hit a snag that delayed its release by nearly a year. Now, on the precipice of releasing its live-action remake aimed even further at capitalizing on the Chinese market, Disney finds itself in another problematic situation: the…Read more...
Astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey say they have detected a rare mini-moon around Earth. Sadly, we shouldn’t get too attached to our new natural satellite, as the rock—if that’s indeed what it is—will only hang around for a few months.Read more...
by Niko Vorobyov on Earther, shared by Brian Kahn to on (#4ZX9Z)
The dark, rocky face of the Dois Irmãos Mountain rises over the rainforest and through the clouds, overlooking the largest slum in Latin America. A young man emerges from around the corner of an alleyway to meet me with a handgun tucked under his arm; the local gang’s “manager.†Weaving our way down the hill through…Read more...
by James Whitbrook on io9, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola t on (#4ZXA0)
Ever since Kohei Horikoshi’s seminal shonen manga, and then Studio Bones’ incredible adaptation of it, hit the world, it feels like it’s just kept powering up, quite like its cast of rough-and-ready wannabe heroes. Now the series’ second crack at the box office continues to amp up the scale, but in doing so it might…Read more...
by Ashley Reese on The Slot, shared by Andrew Couts t on (#4ZXA1)
Thirty-eight-year-old presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg would be winning the election if the election was held on Archive of Our Own, an open-source platform of slightly highbrow user-submitted fanworks from a variety of fandoms. On Archive of Our Own, Buttigieg and husband Chasten Glezman are the stars of…Read more...
Apple rules over its brand image with an iron fist—and that extends to the silver screen. In a Vanity Fair interview, Knives Out and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson revealed that Apple won’t let villains and bad guys use iPhones onscreen. An interesting tidbit, but one that has the potential to spoil mystery…Read more...
by Germain Lussier on io9, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola t on (#4ZXA3)
The latest rebirth of the Universal Monsters happened so fast, you almost couldn’t see it. Writer and director Leigh Whannell was in a meeting that he thought was about his recent movie, Upgrade, when the conversation started to veer into the iconic collection of creatures.
May 15, 1989, 83-year-old Modine Wise was found naked and beaten in her home. The perpetrator left evidence scattered around her: a bloody handprint, a jacket, a pack of cigarettes, and two hairs. In February of 1991, the court sentenced 23-year-old Timothy Bridges to life in prison for the crime.Read more...
Pete Buttigieg deleted a tweet overnight that attempted to belittle both Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and the “revolutionary politics†of the U.S. during the 1960s. It’s not immediately clear why the tweet was deleted, especially since the exact same sentiment was echoed by Buttigieg at the Democratic debate in…Read more...
If you’ve been paying attention to Fujifilm’s recent announcements, you’ve probably noticed that the company has been going through and revamping a number of its mirrorless cameras. And now, one of Fujifilm’s most popular APS-C cams is getting a refresh in the new Fujifilm X-T4.Read more...
Amazon is warning third-party sellers on its Marketplace platform not to gouge customers on protective face masks as the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak that originated in mainland China continues to spread internationally and becomes increasingly likely to hit the U.S., emails obtained by Wired show.
by Germain Lussier on io9, shared by Tom McKay to Giz on (#4ZWGA)
Everyone’s always arguing about Batman. Who played him best? Whose costume was the best? Who had the most supple Bat-lips? It never ends. Then, of course, there’s the debate over which Batman movie is the best. Is it The Dark Knight? The 1989 Tim Burton version? The 1966 Adam West film?Read more...
Around this time last year, the National Security Agency stealthily shut down its disputed mass surveillance program that tracked Americans’ domestic calls and texts. Well, now it would appear that between 2015 to 2019, that program cost $100 million but only resulted in one significant investigation and two unique…Read more...
A recently aired segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that was critical of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reportedly been censored on the Disney-owned streaming platform Hotstar, a wildly popular service the company snapped up during its acquisition of 21st Century Fox last year.Read more...
Humans may have continued to thrive in spite of a supervolcano eruption 74,000 years ago, according to a new study. The finding could have important implications for our understanding of human history.Read more...
by Dharna Noor on Earther, shared by Brian Kahn to Gi on (#4ZW61)
Billionaire Rebekah Mercer, who with her father Robert Mercer has poured millions of dollars into climate-denying organizations, candidates, and media, is off the board of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
As an outbreak of a new pneumonia-causing coronavirus is poised to spread across the globe, people in largely unaffected places like the U.S. might worry about visiting areas where the virus is spreading or traveling by air at all. The answer to whether you should cancel existing travel plans, however, is complicated.
After years of prototyping, and more years still experimenting with surveillance-based convenience stores, Amazon has officially opened its first cashierless grocery location in its home city of Seattle. One of America’s largest food worker unions is already pissed about it.
Over the past few years, Reddit’s gained a reputation for being one of the last mainstream strongholds for kinda fascist-y content, thanks in part to the free-speech ideals long touted by its leadership. But it looks like the need for “growthâ€â€”and funding—is pushing the platform to do a bit of growing up.Read more...
On Tuesday, health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a dire warning: The U.S. will almost certainly not be spared from the outbreak of a new pneumonia-causing coronavirus that threatens to sweep across the globe. It’s only a matter of time before the virus will start to spread…Read more...
by Erin Marquis on Jalopnik, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola on (#4ZVXM)
If the shady business practices, abuse of drivers or straight-up possible negligent homicides don’t make you pause before hitting that Uber or Lyft app, maybe this will: at least one Dallas exterminator is doing big business killing bed bugs in ride-share vehicles.
Things have swiftly turned very, very bad for e-cigarette titan Juul. The company has been targeted by health officials and regulators as being a primary driver behind a surge in kids and teens hooked on tobacco products, and Juul is now in crisis mode as it works to prevent its products from being yanked from the…Read more...
Scientists have published a treasure trove of new research from the InSight lander’s first year on Mars, showing just how active the Red Planet really is.Read more...
The U.S. military has adopted new ethics guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence in its futuristic robot tanks and smart weapons systems, according to a new press release by the U.S. Department of Defense. And at least one outside expert is actually impressed with the result, provided the Pentagon adheres to…Read more...
It is porn’s destiny to porn. Porn porned YouTube; porn porned Spotify; finally, after a surprisingly long delay when you think about it, porn has porned TikTok. Say hello to YouPorn’s new TikTok-fashioned app SWYP.Read more...
The scourge of low-budget news broadcasts and impromptu live streams has reared its ugly head once again as a North Carolina TV reporter forgot to disable the wacky Facebook Live Mystery Mask augmented reality filters before going on air to report on some unusual snowfall in the area.Read more...
Two years ago, Amazon opened its first cashless Go convenience store, and in the time since, Amazon Go stores have expanded to 24 other locations throughout the country. But now, Amazon is trying to take its cashless stores big time with the official launch of its first Amazon Go Grocery store.Read more...
Today, Mozilla is flipping on the switch to turn on encrypted DNS over HTTPS for U.S. users by default. If you’re unfamiliar with the tech, the pitch is this feature will help prevent internet service providers from tracking the sites you go to.Read more...
Apple’s AirPods have become so ubiquitous that rival Bluetooth earbud makers have had to differentiate themselves with less-obnoxious designs, more features, or a lower price—or, as in the case of rival Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds+, a combination of the three.Read more...
by James Whitbrook and Gordon Jackson on io9, shared on (#4ZVM4)
Harrison Ford talks about wanting to get Indiana Jones 5. The Next DC animated movie has set up its sizeable cast. Stephanie Beatriz sadly explains why she can’t become Disney+’s She-Hulk. The BBC has hope for Doctor Who’s future, despite its ratings slump. Plus, new footage from Mulan and A Quiet Place II. Spoilers…Read more...
Defense lawyers for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder facing possible extradition to the U.S. from the UK on 18 charges related to his leaks of U.S. military and security secrets, plan to argue they have evidence new acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell abused his power to interfere in the case…Read more...