Gizmodo

It could be much easier to pull off the perfect heist than you think. According to a new study from the UK, you don’t need to disguise yourself much in order to fool the average person into thinking they’re looking at someone else. It might even take as little as a goth makeover.

Facebook, ever the thoughtful steward of our most intimate personal data, announced today that it’s rolling out a feature change for its Android users: those with location sharing turned on will no longer have to continually report their whereabouts to the social network at all times.

While the Galaxy Fold is the undoubted star of today’s Unpacked event, Samsung also officially revealed its new wearables lineup, led by its sporty Galaxy Watch Active. And yes, friends, it is missing the signature rotating bezel.Read more...

Taking a morning stroll can do wonders for your blood pressure, according to a study out Wednesday, especially if you’re not moving around much to begin with. The research found that sedentary older adults who walked in the morning for 30 minutes experienced a noticeable drop in blood pressure. And women who also took…Read more...

Michael Rivera, now 17, has been a sneakerhead since he was a little kid. His mom, who goes by Tootie, saw an opportunity: Get straight A’s in school, she told him, and you can get a pair of sneakers.Read more...

The Samsung Galaxy S9 was undoubtedly a great phone, but thanks to its iterative design and relatively niche new features like a variable aperture camera and AR emoji, it lacked a bit of excitement.

At this point, it’s practically impossible to go outside without seeing white, Q-tip-looking earbuds sticking out of people’s heads, and with sales of Apple AirPods expected to rise to between 50 and 55 million this year, that phenomenon probably won’t go away anytime soon.Read more...

The first bendable phone was bold and innovative, but ultimately, it’s a piece of junk. But the new Samsung Galaxy Fold seems like an entirely different kind of a beast.Read more...

Introducing Hippocamp—the smallest of Neptune’s seven inner moons. The recently discovered moon likely formed from a collision with another moon billions of years ago.Read more...

When President Trump last year passed anti-trafficking legislation that led to the removal of online resources sex workers relied on to discuss violent clients, sex workers feared for their safety and fought back. The erasure of these online spaces for the community have continued to proliferate the web, and now, due…Read more...

This morning Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported that sources tell him Apple is planning to create a unified app architecture that works across macOS and iOS, and that it ties into a bid to develop an Apple computer with an Apple-designed CPU inside. Your Apple apps will be cross-platform, and the line between iOS and…Read more...

The anti-vaccination movement has become so widespread that the World Health Organization added it to its list of the top threats to global health in 2019. Social media companies are drawing criticism for not doing more to prevent the spread of misinformation about vaccines and Pinterest has come up with a novel…Read more...

Instruments aboard NASA’s InSight lander are now gathering meteorological data from the Martian surface, allowing for daily weather reports that are being made available to the public.

A pilot based in Adelaide, Australia, took an artistically inspired flight path on Tuesday morning.

It’s barely two months into 2019, but Nest has already had a bit of a year. After some hacking scares involving its line of home security cameras, Nest’s latest headache involves its modular Nest Secure security system. More specifically, a microphone that customers weren’t aware was included in the base device. And…Read more...

The spacecraft Hayabusa2's first touchdown onto the asteroid Ryugu is scheduled for this week. If successful, the craft will shoot a bullet into the rock in order to capture samples to bring back to Earth.Read more...

Mobile World Congress starts in Barcelona, Spain, next week, and ahead of all the announcements from that show Samsung’s pointing the spotlight at itself today by announcing the Galaxy S10, at least a couple of other variants, and possibly even the company’s much-hyped folding mobile device. Here’s how to watch it all …Read more...

Syfy is developing a truly insane take on The Banana Splits. Dune’s impressive cast continues to expand. Could another Star Wars show be headed to Disney+? Batwoman finds Kate Kane’s dad. Plus, new Captain Marvel footage, and what’s to come on Star Trek: Discovery. To me, my Spoilers!

Right now, there’s a big networking and storage sale going on at Amazon. Highlights of this Gold Box include big discounts on wireless routers, mesh networking systems, like the Netgear Orbi and the D-Link Covr, modems, and Powerline adapters.Read more...

Since becoming one of China’s most popular smartphone brands, Xiaomi has slowly been gaining steam globally, claiming the top spot in India while also expanding into the Middle East and Europe. And while you can buy a smattering of Xiaomi products like the Mi Box in the U.S., Xiaomi phones are still a no go, which is…Read more...

Chip manufacturer Qualcomm, which is locked in a bitter patent battle with tech giant Apple that has yet to go to trial, is asking U.S. trade officials to reverse a court ruling and impose a ban on imports of some iPhones, Reuters reported on Tuesday.Read more...

Amazon has a lot riding on its secretive, $250 million deal with The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate, publisher HarperCollins, and New Line Cinema to produce a streaming show in the franchise’s Middle-Earth setting, with expectations that the budget could cross one billion dollars.

There is allegedly a great, big super moon outside my window—not just any super moon, mind you, but potentially the biggest, brightest, super mooniest super moon we’ll get to see until 2026. I could look at it, but I will not. Sorry, moon! I’m sure you have many other, far more interested fans.Read more...

Donald Trump’s administration rushed to reach a deal to provide Saudi Arabia and its despotic government with protected U.S. nuclear technology, despite numerous legal and ethical warnings that such a deal was ill-advised and possibly in violation of the law, Democrats in the House of Representatives alleged in a…Read more...

Digital tools like 3D animation and motion capture helped revolutionize the visual effects industry, but there’s still plenty of room for practical effects to help bring the impossible to the big screen. Solo: A Star Wars Story’s VFX supervisor Julian Foddy revealed to the BBC that one of the film’s most memorable…Read more...

Members of Congress on Tuesday requested a briefing with Facebook over allegations that the social network potentially misled users who discussed their medical conditions in “closed” groups that they believed to be private and anonymous. But Facebook says users who shared information in these groups should have…Read more...

The myths and legends of days gone by are coming back for a new generation. Fremantle and the Jim Henson Company have announced that they are teaming up with Neil Gaiman to bring back The Storyteller—an anthology series that brings classic folktales to life with puppets.

In case low salaries and thankless work weren’t enough to keep you from seeking a public service job in Arizona, a new bill seeks to force applicants to hand over a sample of their DNA and pay a $250 processing fee. The proposed legislation would apply to anyone in Arizona who is required to be fingerprinted for a job.Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration is officially not a fan of Elizabeth Báthory. On Tuesday, the agency sent out an advisory warning people to avoid clinics and companies that promise to rejuvenate health with infusions of blood plasma taken from young people. Among other things, they noted, there’s no proof these…Read more...

Scientists have discovered a nearby “stellar stream” containing thousands of stars spanning the southern sky. They made the discovery thanks to the recent release of data from the Gaia sky survey.Read more...

A Virgin Atlantic flight making the grueling journey from Los Angeles to London yesterday hit a ground speed of at least 801 mph, thanks to a streak of fast-moving air in the jet stream over Pennsylvania. You’re probably wondering how, as breaking the sound barrier over land is illegal, but despite surpassing the…Read more...

Last summer, voice actor Vic Mignogna went into a booth with a few others to record audio for a video game. At one point, Mignogna asked the client, who was overseeing the session, if she was okay with his performance. When she didn’t answer right away, he followed up with: “You know the old Latin—or is it Greek?…Read more...

Earlier today, President Donald Trump signed a directive to create the Space Force, what will become the sixth branch of the U.S. military—but the new branch will be placed under the purview of the U.S. Air Force, rather than being a separate and autonomous branch, as the president had initially hoped.

The World Wide Web turns 30 this year, and to celebrate three decades of utter chaos and brilliance, CERN developers and designers have created a version of the original WorldWideWeb browser that can run inside a modern browser. What, you wonder, is it like to surf the original web? Well, give it a try here. It’s kind…Read more...

The great white shark is impressively terrifying (though not actually much of a threat to humans). But a new study shows that the animal is also an impressive feat of evolution. For the first time, scientists say they’ve fully unspooled the genome of the great white, a discovery that will help us better understand why…Read more...

Making bullshit copyright claims to get content removed from YouTube remains a tried-and-true way to screw with creators, which is why the company’s plan to overhaul its “three-strikes” policy sounds like the much-needed improvement users have been asking for. But confusingly, YouTube’s new policy update has…Read more...

On Friday, President Trump tossed precedent out the window and declared a national emergency to pay for an unneeded border wall he previously promised Mexico would pay for.

A paper published Monday in a well-known science journal begins with the following sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a pair of grape hemispheres exposed to intense microwave radiation will spark, igniting a plasma.” A universally acknowledged truth indeed... but what causes this microwave marvel?

Our online conversations are riddled with emoji, and while the amusing characters can be a creative way to express certain concepts between friends, how they’re interpreted can be a giant legal headache.Read more...

Earlier this month, a National Park Service safety manager sent a “rogue” email alleging the improper storing of radioactive material at a Grand Canyon facility frequented by children, the Arizona Republic reports.Read more...

Amid a firestorm of legal and political salvoes fired at Huawei by the U.S. government, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei insisted this week that “there’s no way the U.S. can crush us” while denying that his company will give China’s government backdoor access to its next-generation 5G network.Read more...

This might tell us a little bit about what Pepper Potts is up to in what’s apparently her final Marvel movie, but it’s also a bit weird, considering Paltrow is 7 years younger than her Marvel co-star Robert Downey Jr.

Have you ever watched a show like Mad Men and wondered where they found those early Xerox machines? Or where The Americans got their hands on all the Reagan-era IBMs that you thought would be piled in a landfill? Well, there’s a good chance these historically-accurate gadgets came from a massive warehouse in…Read more...

An 80-year-old woman from the United Kingdom is the first patient to undergo gene therapy to treat age-related macular degeneration—the most common cause of sight loss in the world.Read more...

The Surface Studio 2 isn’t supposed to just be Microsoft’s answer to the iMac or an alternative to a gaming desktop. It’s a machine built for designers, animators, artists, and other people who spend most of their day hunched over a giant display with a stylus in their hand, which is what I do as a creative producer…Read more...

VR is still in its infancy. It’s at the stage at TVs before color, or computers before they got personal. It’s easy to forget that because there are so many headsets (and cardboard boxes). But Varjo’s VR-1, a slick looking headset intended for the professionals making the content you’ll one day use, is a great…Read more...

Get a look at Creepshow’s spooktacular host. There might be more Doctor Who on the way this year, just not in the way you’d expect it. Melissa Rosenberg is already promising big things for Jessica Jones’ final season. Plus, meet a few more of Detective Pikachu’s horrifyingly adorable Pokémon pals, and a new Toy Story 4…Read more...

You probably know Sphero best for licensed toys like the super-cute-but-now defunct BB-8 and other licensed bots. But its latest robot, the RVR (pronounced Rover) pushes forward with the company’s renewed focus on STEAM friendly robots, by adding a modular robot that can keep up with more advanced coders.Read more...

Thousands of people have been infected in a measles outbreak that has been linked to the deaths of 136 people, according to the Philippine health secretary on Monday. The Associated Press reported that most of those who died were young children, with roughly half between the ages of 1 and 4.Read more...

Last week, I asked you—yes you, or at least, the plural you that is the io9 readership—to tell me your favorite spaceship reveals in sci-fi and pop culture at large, that grand moment when an iconic ship comes into the scene for the very first time. And boy howdy, did you tell me about a lot of good spaceships.