Gizmodo

Smartphone cameras have become so good that they’ve turned us all into amateur directors. But because social networks like Snapchat and Instagram encourage vertical videos, we don’t shoot the horizontal footage that makes sense for, say, a movie. That’s fine when an Instagram Story video is only 15 seconds long. But…Read more...

The coronavirus robot has one thing going for it: out of all the androids that have asked me if I’ve experienced diarrhea in the past seven days, this one is definitely the most swole. Sadly, the machine (called Promobot) is also a total himbo—ultimately just a laggy iPad attached to a large, imposingly muscular metal…Read more...

The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it was unsealing a superseding indictment against Chinese tech giant Huawei, charging the company and several of its affiliates under a law traditionally used to take down sprawling criminal syndicates that operated under multiple layers of secrecy.

A humbling photo of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 probe from a distance of 3.7 billion miles has been reprocessed by NASA to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the image.Read more...

A new study of soccer players seems to show that repeated mild blows to the head can affect athletes’ brain function, at least temporarily. It found evidence that players perform worse on simple tests of eye coordination and cognition right after heading a ball than players who simply kick it around, for up to 24…Read more...

Picture this: It’s 68 degrees Fahrenheit. You’re comfortably rocking a light denim jacket. You’re sipping a gin and tonic. You’ve got a picnic blanket and a spread of raw veggies and dips. The wind is in your hair. So nice to be in…the Antarctic.Read more...

Until February 19, Blizzard is offering Overwatch players a skin nobody asked for, but that is, admittedly, pretty funny: “Goat Brigitte,” a horned, blue-and-purple number meant to commemorate the notoriously unpopular “GOATS” meta that dominated OWL season two last year. There’s just one problem: It’s currently…Read more...

Last summer, Marvel head Kevin Feige cleared up some confusion about when audiences could expect to see the studio’s first queer superhero fighting to save the world on the big screen. After initial reports that Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie would explore her canonical bisexuality in Thor: Love & Thunder, Feige explained…Read more...

The Bong Joon-Ho 3-Film Collection | $15 | VuduRead more...

Nothing you encounter is truly “pristine.” Nearly every atom on our planet has been processed in some way, either by humans, the Sun, Earth’s core, or other influences. But on New Year’s Day 2019, the New Horizons mission flew past one of the most pristine objects in the solar system: Arrokoth, an object far beyond…Read more...

Love is in the air as Valentine’s Day is just around the corner (and right before a holiday weekend)! To celebrate this horniest of days, io9 is back with our latest collection of nerdy Valentines—featuring cameos from the Mandalorian, Jean-Luc Picard, Harley Quinn, and, of course...a Witcher in a tub.

Yes, Macs are susceptible to malware and virus as much as a Windows PC, and it’s probably in your best interest to have at least an app or two that can give you some extra protection and peace of mind.Read more...

Not sure you’ve heard, but the planet is getting hotter. The heat is making farming harder in some places, but it’s also making it possible to bring agriculture into new areas. Farmers are growing food in northern Alberta, Canada. Russia plans to “use the advantages” of global warming to expand its agriculture…Read more...

A squall of Michael Bloomberg-approved “memes” swept Instagram virtually overnight, and all the thirsty hitmakers are here: FuckJerry, Shitheadsteve, Sonny5ideup, Four Twenty, kalesalad, Tank.Sinatra, thefunnyintrovert, and the grapejuiceboys. They’re not funny and they’re not technically memes, but they are content.…Read more...

Drama is afoot in the capital of North Dakota. The state is the site of both the famous Standing Rock protests of 2016 and some of the country’s greatest crude oil reserves. And it was going to be home to one amazing mural of 17-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg in Bismarck, North Dakota until a whole bunch of…Read more...

Late one night last September, I received a phone call from a stranger. The man, the owner of a stone-cutting workshop near Cairo, told me he had seen something strange—some kind of fossil—while slicing into a large block of limestone that was to be used in building a kitchen. As a professional paleontologist with a…Read more...

With a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars, Boston Dynamics’ Spot robodog was a tough sell when it officially went on sale last September. A real dog was much cheaper, and arguably more useful, but as an alternative to an electric car, Adam Savage might have found the perfect way to justify buying a robotic dog.Read more...

In Canada, indigenous rights and climate justice advocates are holding protests all over the country, blockading trains, ports, streets, bridges and other transit. Things escalated on Tuesday when protestors blockaded a major rail line connecting Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal halting traffic and forcing nearly 250,000…Read more...

It’s no secret that the U.S. trails behind plenty of other countries when it comes to data protection legislation. Today, Senator Kristen Gillibrand has published a bill proposal that would create an independent Data Protection Agency that would act as a regulator tasked with protecting consumer data.Read more...

Swimmers in warm coastal regions often exhibit sting-like symptoms despite not coming into direct contact with venomous animals such as jellyfish. Scientists have now pinpointed the cause of these “stinging waters” to a particular jellyfish equipped with its own weaponized mucus.

An electric body groomer, pink fuzzy socks, and *shudders* canned cheese sauce are some of Thursday’s top bargains across the whole dang internet.

A couple of weeks after info leaked out regarding Canon’s next full-frame mirrorless camera, Canon today officially announced its development of the EOS R5.Read more...

Schick Hydro 5 Electric Shaver and 5 Blade Razor | $8 | AmazonRead more...

China reported 15,152 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, according to state broadcaster Xinhua, the largest jump in a single day and up significantly from the few thousand confirmed cases China typically reports daily. Chinese health authorities also reported 254 new deaths, the largest number in a single day…Read more...

Authorities linked a man to a factory arson that destroyed “well over a million” dollars in property last month by convincing his son to give them access to an app that would allow them to view the suspect’s movements, Forbes reported.

Making a sequel to Aladdin is no easy task. At the end of the first film, the genie is no longer the genie. He can’t grant any more wishes. Plus, Aladdin and Jasmine are happily together. Where do things go next, after that perfect fairy-tale finale?Read more...

Wherever mass tragedy strikes, there will be vulturous hucksters looking to take advantage of people’s fears. The outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus in China and other countries is no exception. Medical quacks are already trying to sell the very bad idea of swallowing silver to ward off the virus—something that’s…Read more...

A judge in the sprawling case against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and former company president Ramesh Sunny Balwani has thrown out some of the charges after her defense team argued prosecutors’ case was too broad and too vague, SFGate reported on Wednesday.Read more...

Antarctic has been on one the past few weeks. It reached 65 degrees Fahrenheit last week, a new record high for the continent. Scientists have found warm water creeping farther under its most vulnerable glacier. Other researchers dropped a little remote-operated robot under the same icy “superhighway,” recording eerie…Read more...

Scientists are continuing to discover weird-as-hell viruses all over the world. This week, researchers detailed their finding of relatively mammoth bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. These large microorganisms don’t just dwarf typical viruses in size—they also seem capable of complex tricks normally only…Read more...

H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man was published in 1897, giving sci-fi one of its most intriguing and enduring characters. Thankfully, that Dark Universe version with Johnny Depp never came to fruition, but the latest adaptation—starring Elisabeth Moss as a woman tormented by her invisible ex—is out February 28.Read more...

Former Google executive Andy Rubin’s smartphone startup, Essential Products, is officially done after years of circling the drain.Read more...

There are lots of reasons not to eat greasy deep-fried fast food, the least of which being the challenges involved with disposing of used cooking oil (clogged sewers). But researchers at the University of Toronto found a way to turn oil from a deep fryer into a light-sensitive plastic for 3D printers.Read more...

We already knew 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster was the biggest oil spill in history. When the BP rig exploded, it released 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of 87 days. Eleven workers died. So did thousands of marine animals. By all counts, it was horrible.Read more...

The Skywalker bloodline is perhaps defined by a series of failures. Anakin’s attempts to protect Padmé brought about the rise of the Empire. Luke’s pressure to live up to this prophecy of the chosen one brought about the undoing of his fledgling Jedi Order and his own nephew—who himself saw a moment of weakness and…Read more...

Not all police are bad, but Facebook is the highway to surveillance hell, and cops are on it. In the latest story to highlight cop’s social media activity, a homeless resident of Los Angeles has filed a civil rights suit against the city and a police officer who is accused of conducting a several-year-long harassment…Read more...

Companies have been canceling appearances at Mobile World Congress 2020 left and right—to the point where GSMA, the conference’s organizer, has decided to pull the plug on the event entirely.Read more...

Scientists explored the physics of tossing fried rice in order to devise the “optimal regime” for producing the dish, according to a new paper.Read more...

Because I cover healthcare, and because I work for a website concerned with all the ways people try to separate women from their money, I’m often directed to clinics that say they are revolutionizing basic care. Friends and strangers send me links to Instagram ads, portholes into identically extravagant offices. The…Read more...

Shipt doesn’t command the name recognition of its main competitor, Instacart, nor the market share of Amazon Fresh or Walmart Grocery, for that matter. But unlike many gig work platforms, Shipt was transparent about pay and afforded its personal shoppers the chance to earn respectable wages.Read more...

The smartphone changed the world, but it wasn’t all for the better. Mobile devices are packed full of endless productivity-killing distractions, and the ability to actually make a phone call almost seems like an afterthought now. A frustrated Justine Haupt came up with an unorthodox solution: she designed and built a …Read more...

Samsung believes deeply in the future of foldable phones, but its first attempt, last year’s Galaxy Fold, was a complete shitshow. Devices provided to reviewers ahead of launch were plagued with problems: debris that caught in the hinge, a plastic overlay that turned out to be part of the screen but was easily peeled…Read more...

By prodding a tiny brain region linked to consciousness, scientists caused anesthetized monkeys to suddenly become awake and alert. This fascinating result is providing new clues about the brain and how it produces conscious awareness—insights that could potentially lead to therapies for patients trapped in a coma.

The latest episode of Doctor Who tackled mental health struggles through the lens of a fight against eternal, godlike beings who fed off the traumatic fears of the mortal realm. But it ended with a scene between the Doctor and one of her companions that has left some fans deeply disappointed—and the BBC has had to…Read more...

Thanks to 120Hz displays, fancy new cameras, and support for 5G networks across the entire line, Samsung’s new Galaxy S20 seems like a real powerhouse of a phone. However, with a starting price of $1,000 for the standard S20 and prices going even high for the S20+ and S20 Ultra, it feels like Samsung may have tried to…Read more...

The narrow hallway behind the bowling lanes looks like a miniature factory, rows of well-oiled pipes and pulleys facing boxes and boxes of jewelry-sized parts. On a freezing January evening, the machinery’s caretaker moves down the line with a clipboard, taking his monthly inventory of backup parts.

Social media is a content minefield, and Britain’s had it. Today, the British government announced it will appoint its media watchdog Ofcom as a regulator for social media content in a bid to rein in platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, among others.Read more...

The Westerdam cruise ship will be allowed to dock in Cambodia, according to a new statement from Holland America Line. The ship had previously been refused entry by five countries over concerns that passengers might have been infected with the new coronavirus that has killed 1,116 and sickened over 45,000 worldwide.

Entrepreneur and Venture for America founder Andrew Yang, the technocratic Silicon Valley bro candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries, is out after scoring just three percent in the New Hampshire primaries.