Gizmodo

A week after a fireball erupted from the base of SpaceX’s prototype “StarHopper” rocket during a static-fire test at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facility, the company’s first “untethered” test launch of the craft was aborted after encountering technical difficulties on Wednesday, CNBC reported.

Electric car giant Tesla had its stock plunge over 10 percent in after-hours trading after posting a $408 million loss in Q2 2019—despite shipping record numbers of cars, CNBC reported on Wednesday.

When the Galaxy Fold’s launch was delayed indefinitely due to durability concerns, many thought Samsung’s $2,000 bendable phone was dead in the water. Some folks like Apple enthusiast John Gruber even proclaimed that the Fold “is never going to ship and everyone knows it.”Read more...

After spending years being kept out of the spotlight, Marvel’s mutants are finally set to return to center stage this year in writer Jonathan Hickman and artists Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, and colorist Marte Garcia’s House of X and Powers of X, the first two pieces of the publisher’s grand plan to revitalize the X-Men…Read more...

Two Republicans and one independent were the only holdouts Wednesday as the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act by a nearly unanimous vote.

You know what none of us needs more of in our homes? Amazon products. And yet that’s exactly what’s promised to prospective homebuyers should they decide to purchase through its new TurnKey service. The company will reportedly gift thousands of dollars in products and services to tempt homebuyers to transform their…Read more...

A tiny spacecraft in Earth orbit has successfully deployed its solar sails. Called LightSail 2, the craft will now use the power of the Sun to lift its orbital height even further, in what’s considered an important test of this promising means of propulsion.

The end of a breast implant product linked to a rare type of cancer is seemingly finally here. On Wednesday, the Food and Administration said it had pushed for a recall of Biocell textured breast implants, sold by the pharmaceutical company Allergan. Allergan announced the same day that it would pull all remaining…Read more...

It’s no secret that Spotify and Apple have beef. But according to a Variety interview with the authors of a new book, Spotify Untold, that beef dates all the way back to 2010 when Steve Jobs would purportedly prank call Spotify CEO Daniel Ek... and just breathe deeply into the phone.Read more...

When it comes to image recognition tech, it’s still remarkably easy to fool the machines. And while it’s some good comedy when a neural network mistakes a butterfly for a washing machine, the consequences of this idiocy are pretty nightmarish when you think about rolling these flawed systems out into the real world.

Sure, $5 billion sounds like a pretty big fine, and for most Americans, the size of it is difficult to fathom. But for a corporation as massive as Facebook, it represents only around three month’s worth of profit, a proverbial drop in the bucket.Read more...

Perhaps one of the profound yet underappreciated aspects of being alive is the ability to reach out with your hand and feel the world around you—whether it’s fresh-cut grass or the face of a loved one. For people who have lost a hand or arm, prosthetics may restore some functioning, but not the sense of touch itself.…Read more...

Hulu’s next big show is coming from the beloved mind of Douglas Adams—as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy returns to TV once more.

Scientists have discovered a pair of white dwarfs that might one day produce a major gravitational wave discovery, according to a new paper.Read more...

Who doesn’t love to spend time in garden? Some people love it so much, though, that they stake out for hours, camera in hand, waiting for an insect to land on a flower petal to capture the perfect shot.Read more...

Rutger Hauer, a staple in science fiction and fantasy, has died at the age of 75. As reported by Variety, the Dutch actor who starred alongside Harrison Ford in Blade Runner passed away after a short illness.Read more...

After some rumor-milling and informed reportage attributable to anonymous sources, Facebook has finally made public the contours of its deal with the Federal Trade Commission to end a probe into its handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From what few specifics are shared by the company’s general council, Colin…Read more...

Of all the things that could end our world, an asteroid strike may be the doomsday we have the most control over.Read more...

Netflix has finally unveiled its new, comparatively cheaper mobile-only plan in India—and honestly? This kind of seems like something that a lot of its U.S. users could get on board with.Read more...

Ever since human beings have been jamming themselves into little metal canisters and shooting themselves off into space, there has been one thing everyone wants to know: how do you go to the bathroom? Sure, you can read about how it’s done, and for most people that’s enough. But not for me. I wanted to experience the…Read more...

A federal Green New Deal has remained a dream-like idea since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey introduced a proposal to do just that in February (and since the Senate shot it down in March). Other Green New Deals have taken hold on the local and state level—I’m…Read more...

No one needs a $250 ereader, but the Kindle Oasis is often good enough that you can convince yourself otherwise. Its display and backlight are better than average, and its asymmetrical design is purpose-constructed for the avid reader. Though it’s got its detractors, I’ve always liked it. I read a lot, and I love…Read more...

The fourth Riddick has an intriguing title. Get a look at an infamous reunion in new It: Chapter 2 pictures. Kevin Feige discusses the scope of Marvel’s new animated Disney+ series, What If? Plus, wild Crisis on Infinite Earths casting rumors, and what’s to come on The Purge’s second season. Spoilers away!

If rumors ahead of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10's likely August 7 launch are to be believed it looks like both versions of the Note 10 will be sporting Qualcomm’s most powerful mobile processor, the Snapdragon 855 Plus. That’s surprising because it was only announced earlier this month. Purported specs for the Note 10…Read more...

Food delivery app DoorDash has, for months, doubled down on its policy of systematically skimming customer tips meant for its fleet of contract delivery workers. That resolve cracked on Tuesday night when CEO Tony Xu took to Twitter to announce some unspecified changes to its compensation model.Read more...

Former special counsel Robert Mueller will testify on Capitol Hill today about the investigation into various crimes that President Donald Trump committed against the United States. And if you want to watch Mueller’s testimony live, we’ve got you covered.

The Federal Trade Commission recently attracted scorn from congressional Democrats for fining world-spanning social network Facebook just $5 billion rather than tens of billions after the company failed to abide by the terms of a 2011 settlement with the agency on user privacy. But the FTC still has more dirt to dish…Read more...

Snap Inc. has been slowly righting its ship recently, stymying its nose-diving stocks prices and exodus of users. The Snapchat creator’s Q2 2019 earnings imply that things are looking up.Read more...

The man behind Twitter’s “Retweet” button—which is pretty much the foundation of the whole site—now thinks he screwed up big time, telling BuzzFeed News in an interview that he recalled thinking, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”

Since their discovery 13 years ago, scientists have puzzled over the origin of tiny glass beads found inside ancient clam shells. New evidence suggests they’re microtektites—a byproduct of meteorite impacts—marking the first time these celestial remnants have been found hiding in old clam shells.

Several U.S. lawmakers have called for further action in the wake of a $700 settlement reached by state prosecutors with the credit bureau Equifax over its disastrous 2017 data breach.Read more...

The Justice Department is finally set to being its long-rumored review of monopoly concerns in the areas of online search, ecommerce, and social media, specifically targeting big tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. An exceptionally broad probe, the agency announced this afternoon it would seek…Read more...

Because of its free and open-source nature, VLC is one of, if not the most popular cross-platform media player in the world. Unfortunately, a newfound and potentially very serious security flaw discovered in VLC means you might want to uninstall it until the folks at the VideoLAN Project can patch the flaw.Read more...

You might think of meteors as flashes in the sky that result in lumpy-looking meteorites on the ground. But not all meteorites are lumps. A substantial population, like the leftovers from the 2013 Chelyabinsk airburst, are notably conical. One team of scientists thinks they know why.

For soulless ghouls who view the bottom line as superior to basic human rights, for-profit prisons are an apt investment, one that the investment arm of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just increased its stake in.

The Lion King offers a number of lessons around innocence, deception, and love. However, one of my favorite takeaways from the movie—both the original and the remake—is the so-called Circle of Life. We all know the term, made famous by the classic song by the same title.Read more...

Democratic presidential candidate and self-help author Marianne Williamson is on the defensive. In her latest tweet she says that she’s “not a cult leader” and “not anti-science.” She even says that the idea she’s anti-science is laughable because she quotes Albert Einstein so much.Read more...

In late 2016, U.S. and Canadian diplomats at their embassy in Havana, Cuba began coming down with unexplained symptoms, including nausea, headaches, and hearing loss. Some also claimed to have heard mysterious sounds just prior to their symptoms, fueling a theory by some U.S. officials and the media that a “sonic…Read more...

Anna Sorokin—the woman who posed as a German heiress and swindled New York’s social elite and numerous institutions out of hundreds of thousands of dollars under the name Anna Delvey—may not be able to cash in on the forthcoming Netflix series based on her story.

UE Boom 3 | $120 | AmazonRead more...

After nearly a decade in court, Google has agreed to pay $13 million in a class-action lawsuit alleging its Street View program collected people’s private data over wifi from 2007 to 2010. In addition to the moolah, the settlement—filed Friday in San Francisco—also calls for Google to destroy all the collected data…Read more...

Sony has been trying to crack a tough nut for the past couple of years. The company wants to translate the tremendous success it’s had making over-ear noise-canceling headphones and shrink the technology down to something you can put in your pocket. The new $230 WF-1000XM3 represent its latest attempt at miniaturizing…Read more...

The Chandrayaan-2 mission is officially off to a promising start, as India vies to become the fourth nation to land on the Moon.Read more...

Should electric scooters be allowed on highways? Obviously not, you might say. With a top speed somewhere in the ballpark of 15 mph, it’s a recipe for carnage to the scooter rider’s brains.Read more...

You know how you instinctively reach for your pocket every time you feel your phone vibrating with a notification? Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel have harnessed that same reflex to create what is essentially a remote control dog that receives silent commands and signals through a vibrating vest.Read more...

Merely existing in the modern world means giving up a wealth of your information to countless institutions and services. While many of the places make promises to keep your identifiable data as secure and private as possible, they can still—and oftentimes do—share anonymized versions of your data to third parties,…Read more...

I don’t go to the beach for the sand or the sun. I go for the waves. There’s nothing like splashing in the water after lugging your cooler, chair, and beach umbrella to your designated spot. Unfortunately, I may need to think twice about going for a swim at the beach. And so should you.Read more...

If you search YouTube for Facebook’s Libra, you’ll find plenty of videos that tell you how to buy the digital currency. The problem is that many of the videos are published by scam artists who are apparently trying to steal your personal information. How do we know they’re scams? Libra hasn’t even been launched yet.Read more...

Two police officers in Gretna, Louisiana have been fired over a Facebook post that suggested Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be killed. One of the officers published the content and another police officer liked it.

Microsoft will pay out $26 million in a settlement to resolve charges that its staff bribed government officials in Hungary, the Washington Post reported on Monday, with President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith telling staff in an email the matter “involved employee misconduct that was completely unacceptable.”