Gizmodo

Last year Valve proclaimed that it would allow virtually any game on its Steam service, so long as the game wasn’t illegal or “straight up trolling”—but activist-minded developers who have made games about the Hong Kong protests have realized that, perhaps, there are other ways to get barred from the gaming platform.

On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission, the ghoulish specter of a disemboweled regulatory body, for a fleeting moment appeared before a House oversight committee as shadow of its former self. It produced: a report! The result of a year-long investigation, FCC field agents exposed mobile carriers’ sham…

The United Kingdom’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has recorded the first known instance of invasive mice preying on the adult albatrosses, according to a press release.

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a proposed class action alleging that the app Musical.ly violated children’s privacy laws by collecting their data and operating the app “in a reckless and unlawful manner for commercial gain.”

Researchers with the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence released a report this week showing that—shocker!—it remains as easy as ever to buy followers and engagement on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

There are three types of people in this weird world of ours: people who are losing their minds with excitement for the Arrowverse’s imminent Crisis on Infinite Earths; people who are interested in DC’s epic, live-action superhero crossover event but don’t know enough about all the comics and continuity to understand…

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Modern life is increasingly impossible to live without the internet but according to the FCC, more than 31 percent of Americans still lack access to high-speed broadband connections. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wants to change that, releasing a lengthy $150 billion ‘High-speed Internet For All’…

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For weeks now, Australia has been dealing with severe bushfires. They’ve engulfed the country’s largest city in smoke, threatening air quality throughout New South Wales and destroying key koala habitat. In New South Wales alone, more than 100 bush and grassfires were burning as of Friday.

An average mug costs between $5 and $10, while a nice travel mug goes for around $20, or maybe a little more if you’re feeling fancy. So how on earth does a company justify a smart mug that costs a whopping $180?

Have you been hankering to see the bullets that killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on that fateful day in 1963? Researchers sometimes ask the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) if they can see the bullets, but the government doesn’t like to give people access given their fragility. That’s…

New research out Thursday starkly highlights the dangers of so-called “abortion reversals,” an unproven practice condemned by most medical experts. Scientists were forced to prematurely end a trial of pregnant women testing out the procedure after three volunteers experienced severe hemorrhaging that sent them to the…

Lego becomes more and more enjoyable as your collection grows, until the point when your morass of plastic bricks becomes so overwhelming that it’s impossible to find the piece you’re looking for. At that point, you need to develop a sorting system, or do what Daniel West did, and use a bunch of your Lego to build a…

Seasons 1-3 of Rick and Morty, a Strategy Board Game Gold Box, and a Philips Norelco OneBlade Trimmer and Shaver lead off Friday’s best deals from around the web.

Over the past few days, 56 hungry polar bears have wandered into Ryrkaypiy, a village in far north Russia, forcing locals to cancel their New Year’s celebrations.

In addition to recent news of its bizarre issue with segregating bathrooms, Uber has long struggled with keeping its passengers safe, though we only now know the extent of the problem (in the U.S., at least) courtesy of the company’s first study on unsafe incidents involving the ridesharing service.

There are reports coming out of the UK that at least a dozen people who bought a Nintendo Switch as part of Amazon’s Black Friday sales did not get sent a Nintendo Switch. Instead, they’ve received everything from air freshener to photopolymer resin instead.

Our BPA problem might be even worse than we think, according to a new study out Thursday. Researchers say they’ve devised a new test to measure levels of the common industrial chemical in our bodies—levels that might be far higher than tests endorsed by the U.S. government and others suggest they are.

Uber, a company helmed by claybrained dopes, is often in the business of explaining why things aren’t what they are. For instance, if you merely ignore all the taxis it puts on the road, Uber is a technology company. And if you squint hard and run your head gently through a woodchipper, its drivers do look a lot more…

The governments of the U.S. and the UK on Thursday announced the unsealing of indictments against two Russian members of a major cybercriminal operation called Evil Corp.

It’s no secret Apple’s got designs on the Apple Watch being some sort of medical device. It introduced ECG capability on the Series 4, which was also FDA cleared, and then with the Series 5, Apple announced it was launching a series of medical studies for hearing, reproductive health, and mobility and heart health.…

In the past decade, Congress and the White House cut the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) funding for science and pollution regulation by 16 percent (if you adjust for inflation) and cut 2,699 positions. Those cuts were fueled by the idea that environmental protection should be states’ responsibility,…

Well, well, well. After failing to address a KrebsOnSecurity report that a location icon appeared in the status bar of an iPhone 11 even after all individual location and service settings have been disabled—giving the appearance that the device was sharing location data without a user’s consent—Apple has finally…

Following yesterday’s look at the Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm is wrapping up its annual three-day tech summit by announcing a few other new Snapdragon chips: one for mixed reality and a couple for laptops.Read more...

The wildlife who rely on tropical rainforests may be more screwed than we thought. A new study has found that tropical forest species are six times more sensitive to forest fragmentation than species in temperate ecosystems.Read more...

Images taken by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft are helping scientists to understand why small particles are occasionally flying off the surface of Bennu, a nearly spherical asteroid that resembles a spinning top.Read more...

Min-Liang Tan was “officially pissed off,” he wrote in an email to members of Razer’s marketing team in February of 2014. The gaming hardware company hadn’t made the business website Fast Company’s 2014 list of “Most Innovative Companies,” and in his email, part of an exchange obtained by Kotaku, Tan asked of his…Read more...

Spoiler alert: We all love spoilers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we all want them, of course—there are as many people who fervently avoid details about upcoming stories as there are people who hunt them down to learn beforehand. But as the 2010s come to a close, the way we talk about spoilers with each other…Read more...

It’s finally happening: Our self-proclaimed betters are leaving for that big Libertopia in the sky, or under the sea, or in space, or whatever.

In the third episode of HBO’s Watchmen series, Laurie Blake aka Silk Spectre pulls out a gigantic electric blue dildo. It’s an obvious sight gag—her ex is a blue man who can control his size, right down to the most intimate level. That said, it does raise some questions. Like, how would the “Electromagnetic Lithium…Read more...

Opera’s version 55 for Android is introducing a darker mode and a feature to dim the piercing white of web pages that don’t yet support dark mode on their own.Read more...

Uber doesn’t have the greatest history when it comes to how it treats its drivers. Its latest gaffe? In at least one office, Uber has separated bathrooms for “partners” aka drivers, and employees.

15% Off Sitewide | Sunday Scaries | Promo code HOLIDAYSCARIESRead more...

Despite multiple generations plagued by lackluster sales, Snap continues to pump out more versions of its try-hard Spectacles. But now, thanks to the release of some limited edition Gucci-themed Spectacles 3, we’re faced with an interesting question. What’s worse, the new Spectacles themselves, or the short film Snap…Read more...

I’m one hundred percent in support of a future where screens are flexible and foldable instead of fragile and easily shatterable. I’m just not willing to spend $2,000 on a folding phone or $10,000+ on a rollable TV. I will, however, happily drop $2 or $3 on a plastic bottle with a glowing lightsaber on the label.Read more...

A spectacular cirrus arc, which stretched from Nebraska to northern Minnesota and Canada, foreshadowed the recent winter storms in the Midwest and New England.

This story was produced in partnership with Atlas Obscura.Read more...

Jordan Vogt-Roberts has a tiny update on his long-in-gestation Metal Gear Solid movie. The Wheel of Time continues to flesh out its cast. Thomas Jane could be heading to the world of Stephen King. Plus, new footage from The Witcher, Kevin Conroy on bringing back his Batman Beyond voice for Crisis on Infinite Earths,…Read more...

When you buy yourself a Windows or macOS machine, you’re not just buying the operating system on top of your hardware, you’re buying a suite of free apps as well. These pre-installed, built-in tools can often get overlooked or forgotten about, so we’re here to remind you how useful some of them really are.Read more...

People are absolutely obsessed with Baby Yoda, a breakout character from the new Disney+ show, The Mandalorian. And it’s easy to see why. Baby Yoda is so adorable we just want to squeeze his little face and protect him forever. Fans are so obsessed that they’re already getting Baby Yoda tattoos, even before the first…Read more...

Two browsers have yanked Avast and AVG online security extensions from their web stores after a report revealed that they were unnecessarily sucking up a ton of data about users’ browsing history.Read more...

If you’re a woman, regularly coloring or straightening your hair might come with a hidden risk, according to new government-led research. The study found a link between using permanent hair dye and straightening products and an increased risk of breast cancer in women, especially for black women.Read more...

Copyright law, boring on its face, has posed various unprecedented threats to intellectual freedoms in recent internet history. It threatens to kill our links, kill our news, kill our memes, kill our precious videos of babies dancing to Prince. And yesterday, the Supreme Court considered the momentously stupid…Read more...

Meteorites are an unappreciated food source for a specific metal-loving microorganism, according to new research. The finding could reveal an entirely new chemistry that facilitated the emergence of life on Earth—or possibly even how life got here in the first place.Read more...

International climate talks were supposed to be in Chile this year. Instead, the Chilean government withdrew from hosting the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) after anti-neoliberalism protests took over the streets. The talks are happening now in Spain, and mass actions are planned there.Read more...

Oh my, this recently discovered black hole... well, it’s big.Read more...

The third season of The Expanse ended with a double triumph: the assurance that Amazon would be its new home, and a finale that teased the thrilling and dangerous prospect of interstellar expansion. Season four is finally here, and it’s indeed a leap forward for the outstanding sci-fi show on multiple levels.Read more...

Yesterday at its annual tech summit, Qualcomm announced the name of its next flagship mobile processor—the Snapdragon 865—and now today, we’re finally getting a bit more detail on all the new improvements and features Qualcomm packed into its shiny new chip.Read more...

Natural gas, which fossil fuel companies market as a clean bridge fuel to renewables, is the fastest growing energy source. Renewable energy is on the rise, too, and the U.S. and Europe are using less coal. But according to new research, the world’s carbon emissions will still reach an all time high this year.Read more...