Gizmodo

A Canadian man who announced he was infected with the new coronavirus during a WestJet flight from Toronto to Jamaica on Monday says he was trying to make a viral video, according to a new report from Canada’s Global News. The plane turned around after the man, identified as 28-year-old James Potok, stood up and told…Read more...

In recent days, some public health experts and scientists have begun uttering the P-word in reference to a surging outbreak of the new coronavirus that’s already infected at least 24,000 people and killed over 400: pandemic. But when will we know if the Wuhan coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, has spread far and wide…Read more...

Despite what some might think, PC gaming is thriving. Companies like Corsair are gobbling up smaller outfits in order to create massive gaming hardware empires, while streamers are getting signed to big money contracts across multiple platforms. However, as gaming has outgrown its basement-dwelling image, the price of…Read more...

Dwayne Johnson continues to hype up Black Adam (and his back). Gemma Chan has finished her time on The Eternals. Is Joaquin Phoenix up for an iconic Disney villain role? Plus another new look at Birds of Prey, and what’s to come on The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. To me, my spoilers!

You may well use your phone to help you get out of bed in the morning, but have you tried using it to get to sleep? A plethora of apps are ready and waiting to bathe your bedroom in all kinds of music and sounds, and many of them come with a built-in sleep timer that means you don’t have to leave them playing all…Read more...

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The U.S. tested a nuclear-capable missile overnight, launching an unarmed Minuteman III from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, according to the 30th Space Wing, which is now part of the newly organized United States Space Force.

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CEO Gerard Niemira of Shadow Inc., the developers of the unfortunately named election app that caused Monday’s Democratic presidential caucus in Iowa to turn into a much bigger shitshow than it usually is, told Bloomberg on Tuesday night that he’s really sorry about all that. But he argued that the app was actually…Read more...

Defense lawyers for former CIA software engineer Joshua Adam Schulte say that the CIA and federal prosecutors don’t actually know for certain who was behind a 2017 leak of cyber espionage documents, let alone whether it was their client, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Instead, they said he really pissed…Read more...

Hoan Ton-That, the CEO and founder of a face recognition company that he freely admits could help lead to a surveillance “nightmare” and a “dystopian future or something,” says he has a First Amendment right to scrape whatever images he damn well pleases off public websites like Twitter to pad out his company’s…Read more...

Apple is looking for a new exec to lead its Apple News+ business, because no one wants to pay $10 a month for magazines when there are so many things to watch on TV.Read more...

Margot Robbie has been hoping to get a movie like Birds of Prey on screen for years—and this Friday, that dream will finally be achieved. But in the time since Birds of Prey first became an idea over at DC, the superhero cinema landscape has slowly but surely begun to change. From Wonder Woman to Captain Marvel,…Read more...

When the summer movie season ends this year, Disney+ heats up. Disney CEO Bob Iger announced today that Marvel Studios’ first streaming show, The Falcon and Winter Soldier, will debut in August. It’ll be followed by season two of The Mandalorian in October, and WandaVision in December.Read more...

Having delivered the last of this season’s letters to Santa, the United States Postal Service marches into bad winter determined to ferry bundles of wishlists from the wide-eyed children of the College Avenue Student Loan Company, who really really wanted a couple to pay their bill this quarter. The company addressed…Read more...

The proliferation of doctored or misleading images that manage to spread like wildfire has required that newsrooms, fact-checkers, and journalists be especially wary of disinformation and targeted campaigns in various media. Jigsaw, an Alphabet-owned company, has announced a new tool aimed at helping journalists…Read more...

Two butterfly activists have been found dead in Mexico in less than a week.Read more...

Mobile World Congress, the biggest phone and wireless industry trade show of the year, is just weeks away, but the coronavirus outbreak is causing at least two companies to put their announcements on hold.Read more...

It’s been said that, despite a robust transit system, all New Yorkers do is complain about the subway. This is true! We like complaining. But every bit of bile stored for the next unplanned service outage is nothing compared to the gallons of piss and vinegar that should deservedly be poured onto the MTA’s pilot plan…Read more...

The UK is going hard in its game to ban cars. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced at the launch of talks related to COP26, the next chapter of international climate talks, that his government would accelerate its ban on the sale of gas- and diesel-run vehicles from 2040 to 2035. Leaders are even adding hybrids to…Read more...

Few Star Wars characters are more difficult to cosplay than General Grievous. He’s a skeletal being, more machine than anything else, with four arms and a very distinctive way of moving. It’s simply not something a normal person can do.Read more...

Look at the screenshot above, from the website for credit-repair company Finance Council, featuring noted mother-and-daughter pair Tina Knowles-Lawson and Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, and you may think, “Well, that’s obviously fake. Anyone can put any picture on their website and say it’s a celebrity endorsement.”…Read more...

Wild animals of different species going on adventures together is a fiction invented by animated films—or is it? A new video, in which a coyote and badger are seen traveling together at night, has us questioning reality as we know it.

Cameras on phones have gotten pretty good over the last few years (especially the ones with multiple rear lenses), but sometimes you just want something that snaps pics with a bit better quality, and with the new X100V, it feels like Fujifilm has made an everyday travel camera that fills the gap between phones and…Read more...

If you genuinely take your online security seriously you should be using two-factor authentication paired with a security key every time you log in. There are lots of options out there, including Google’s own $50 Titan security key set, but the company has also recently released software you can use to build your own…Read more...

The novel coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China continues to ripple around the world. More than 20,000 cases have been confirmed across Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia, and the official death toll of 425 has surpassed that of the 2002-03 SARS outbreak.Read more...

While working from home is a luxury for some, it’s becoming a necessity for others. The world is currently witnessing its “largest work-from-home experiment,” as Bloomberg put it, due to the rapid spread of the Wuhan coronavirus that’s killed more people than the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. Many businesses across China are…Read more...

Very few land turtles managed to survive the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, but at least one species of primitive turtle managed to fend off extinction in the northern hemisphere, according to new fossils found in France.

If you were on trial for a murder you didn’t commit, it’s possible that Facebook has evidence that could set you free. But it is extraordinarily unlikely that Facebook would hand it over. Facebook would not only refuse to help you, but it will pay exorbitant legal fees to fight your subpoenas through appeals courts as…Read more...

In a new privacy-related fuckup, Google told users today that it might’ve accidentally imported your personal photos into another Google user’s account. Whoopsie!Read more...

DC Entertainment is about to achieve something that Marvel Studios hasn’t. When Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) opens on February 7, it will be the first comic book movie starring an all-female superteam. And assuming the CW picks up the Arrow spinoff and Birds of Prey-inspired …Read more...

There are lots of valid reasons to be worried about how deep learning techniques could potentially be used to manipulate footage for nefarious reasons. But as Denis Shiryaev demonstrates by upscaling some old black and white film footage from 1896, those AI-powered tools can also be a powerful way to bring the past…Read more...

Ireland’s data protection commission has announced a new probe into Google’s handling of location data, specifically the “the legality of Google’s processing of location data and the transparency surrounding that processing.”Read more...

One of the scarier concerns about the Wuhan coronavirus may be overblown. This week, researchers appeared to debunk findings from last week that suggested the virus could spread from people not showing symptoms. Indeed, it seems the patient initially suspected of passing on the infection while asymptomatic did in fact …Read more...

Nvidia’s big game-streaming competitor to Google Stadia and Microsoft Project xCloud, GeForce Now, is finally launching today. While Stadia relies on a cultivated selection of games, and Project xCloud leans largely on Xbox One-only titles, the biggest appeal of Nvidia GeForce Now is the ability to play just about any…Read more...

Rally Sweden, with its treacherous snow-packed roadways and unique winter conditions, has been a longstanding gem in the World Rally Championship calendar. But the fate of this month’s February 13-16 event is currently hanging in the balance because there’s just not enough snow.

Last year, Del Rey’s excellent Star Wars novel series gave us a tale of damaged pilots amid the formation of the New Republic in Alphabet Squadron, a spiritual successor to the X-Wing books of the old Expanded Universe. Now, io9's got an exclusive look at the second book in the trilogy—where we’ll really get to know…Read more...

High in the Sierra Nevada, a spotted owl soundlessly touches down in a massive red fir. As its ears scan the forest for the faintest flying squirrel noises, the moon arcs overhead. A flood of hostile, feathered invaders is the furthest thing from its mind, but new research suggests that’s precisely what’s coming.

Could Black Adam be looking to cast another obscure comics hero? Kathleen Kennedy says Harrison Ford is still up for Indiana Jones 5. Go behind the scenes on Birds of Prey. A familiar MCU face is joining The Simpsons’ riff on Marvel. Plus, why Wally West’s Flash return will be such a huge deal, and what’s to come on …Read more...

If you buy a smart home device right now, it’s more than likely it’ll work with Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant, or maybe even both—but while these digital assistants are adding a layer of convenience on top of a living space full of sensors and gadgets, they aren’t really the smart home platforms we should be…Read more...

Have you seen that viral video of people farting in public, captured by China’s thermal imaging cameras that are on the hunt for coronavirus? It’s completely fake.Read more...

The Washington Post’s Tony Romm reported on Monday night that Twitter has decided it will allow certain right-wing accounts to spread disinformation about the Iowa Democratic Caucuses, including tweets that suggest the results are being “rigged.”

Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. has disclosed how much YouTube’s advertising business rakes in for the first time, writing in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the streaming giant made just shy of $15.15 billion in ad revenue in fiscal year 2019. It made some $4.79 billion of it in Q4 2019…Read more...

Update: 11:30 p.m. ET: Prior accounts of some problems with the app the Iowa Democratic Party is using to collect and tabulate results appear to have been somewhat... understating the situation. It is now hours after the process of releasing caucus results was expected to begin—and instead, there’s been little beyond…Read more...

When you think sci-fi, you think metal. You think space. You think speed, technology, lasers, and everything mechanical. You don’t think trees. You don’t think grass, rivers, or flowers. And yet, the crossovers between nature and sci-fi are everywhere, which is especially evident in this beautiful new art show.Read more...

Hey, hey! Here’s something you may not know about Babu Frik!

Cars parked outside $12 million renovation project at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ D.C. mansion were tagged with at least 564 separate parking tickets costing nearly $17,000, of which $5,600 were listed as unpaid in DMV records, WUSA 9 recently reported.

As if the Pablo Escobar Fold 1 wasn’t enough, there is now a second Pablo Escobar-branded folding smartphone. The name? Wait for it—the Pablo Escobar Fold 2.Read more...

China passed a bleak milestone over the weekend, as more people in mainland China have now died of the newly discovered coronavirus than did during the SARS outbreak, which also began in China almost two decades ago. Cases in other countries are also increasing each day.

A recently proposed House bill that calls for NASA to send humans to Mars in 2033 is coming under fire from scientists who think it would be a mistake to assign secondary importance to a lunar mission and to neglect technological contributions from the private sector.