Gizmodo

A FaceTime bug that allowed virtually anyone to listen in on others when using the Group feature has drawn the interest of federal lawmakers who want to know more about what Apple is doing to secure its users’ privacy.

Attention-grabbing patents tend to fall into the category of “that’s totally ridiculous and will never happen.” But on Monday, Samsung was granted a patent for cramming a camera with an optical zoom into what sure looks like its S-Pen stylus—and it actually seems like a great idea.Read more...

Who really thinks about where the money is coming from as long as you get the money?

Scientists have created perhaps the most detailed view of the rust formation process yet, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fun fact: the “+” in Disney+ stands for “more,” obviously, but also “not available on Netflix, sorry.”Read more...

A unique view of the Moon, with its far side facing the camera and an unsettlingly tiny Earth lurking in the background, has been captured by China’s Longjiang-2 satellite.Read more...

Deadspin The Sixers Are Going For It | The Root White Tax Tears: Trump Voters Are Now Realizing They’ve Been Had | Jezebel That’s Mr. Cooke Maroney-Lawrence to You! | The A.V. Club Stephen Colbert goes live to make Trump’s laughable State Of The Union speech actually funny | Splinter AOC Is Not Having It |Read more...

Late last year, Samsung put an end to the notch era with the Galaxy A8S. Sadly, that device is currently only available in Asia, which largely puts it out of reach for people living on this side of the Pacific. But just recently, Honor followed up Samsung’s phone with its own punch-hole wielding bezel-less handset.…Read more...

Disney+ nabs another fantasy series. Joe Russo offers a teeny update on Avengers: Endgame. John Boyega is open to returning to Attack the Block. ABC is keen—but doesn’t have plans yet—to reboot both Lost and Alias. Plus, what’s to come on Roswell and The Flash, and more Doom Patrol teases. Spoilers, away!Read more...

A new study out of Harvard might complicate the narrative around pot’s potential health risks, at least when it comes to men’s fertility. It found that men who reported ever using cannabis actually had higher sperm counts on average than men who claimed to have never touched the stuff. Male cannabis users were also…Read more...

The Start menu is your way into Windows and the web—it’s where you find your apps and start your searches, where you go to customize the system and organize your digital life. It’s the hub of everything you do on your Windows computer, so don’t settle for the default configuration: Make the Start menu your own.Read more...

Attention small business owners, right now you can pick up a fancy new Square Register for $200 off its normal price.Read more...

An unidentified man who was running on Horsetooth Mountain Open Space’s West Ridge Trail near Fort Collins, Colorado had a nasty encounter on with a juvenile cougar on Monday, which ended with the runner wounded and the animal strangled to death, the Coloradoan reported this week.

Apple’s head of retail and online stores, former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, is departing the tech giant after five years, CNN reported on Tuesday.

Snap Inc., the company behind the Snapchat app and a failed line of wearable cameras, is slightly less fucked than it was before, according to Q4 2018 earnings released on Tuesday.

We hoped this day would never come.Read more...

It’s been over a month and we’re still not over the excellence that is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. And whether the movie sent you down the rabbit hole of related Spider-Man comics or not, you will definitely appreciate this new Spider-Gwen poster.Read more...

When the family-focused Walt Disney Company moved to acquire 20th Century Fox, many wondered if the integration of Marvel properties would have one particular casualty: the R-rated nature of Deadpool.Read more...

I like to think I’m a friendly guy. I frequently wave at people and tend to like a lot of tweets on Twitter. Today, that friendliness was transformed into something dark and unfamiliar. Today, I accidentally re-liked hundreds of years-old tweets, alarming some, delighting others, and leaving me very, very sorry.

Google is rolling out two new tools today to help the password-challenged beef up their security game. The first is a Chrome extension called Password Checkup that can identify if you’re using a password that’s been exposed in a third-party data breach. The second is a feature called Cross Account Protection, which…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.Read more...

Hoping to color President Trump’s wall as a “medieval” solution to border security, Democratic leaders have offered up what they hope Americans view as a more suitable, 21st-century alternative. This so-called “technological wall” or “virtual fence” (they’re still working on the branding) would, first, cost…Read more...

Researchers have built a massive dataset of hotel images with the intention of helping law enforcement in human trafficking investigations. The dataset, called Hotels-50k, consists over more than 1 million images from 50,000 hotels globally.

In what is easily one of the weirdest press releases New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has put out, the agency announced it had unearthed a fully functioning USB drive from a mound of frozen leopard seal poop.

Paleontologists in Argentina have uncovered a dinosaur unlike anything ever seen before. Alive some 140 million years ago, these majestic herbivores featured long, forward-pointing spikes running along their necks and backs. These spikes may have served a defensive role, but their exact purpose now presents a…Read more...

The optimal system for chopping, arranging, and serving cucumber sushi in Overcooked 2 exists only in my dreams. Lately, I’ve had those dreams a lot.

Patients use medical cannabis to treat the symptoms of a wide variety of ailments—but only some of those uses are actually backed up by science. A new study out Monday, however, suggests the vast majority of patients are prescribed medical pot for conditions like chronic pain and multiple sclerosis, for which there is…Read more...

Dealing with kidney stones can be one of life’s most painful and stressful experiences, to hear any sufferer describe it. That distress is even greater when it’s a recurrent problem. But researchers at the Mayo Clinic may have found a way to take some of the edge off. They have developed a publicly available…Read more...

Week 5: Apple

If climate change has its way, the seeds the world is saving for doomsday might just be able to grow in the Arctic, according to a report released Monday by the Norwegian government.

Last April, TechCrunch revealed that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had used his executive power to remove his own messages sent in the Messenger app, an option that regular users don’t normally have at their disposal. Following the report, Facebook scrambled to make good and said we’d all soon have delete powers in the…Read more...

Scientists hope to employ networks of “dark fibers,” unused fiber optic cables, in order to sense sound waves moving underground—the signals of earthquakes.Read more...

Some parents get their kids smartwatches to buy themselves a little peace of mind about their child’s safety. But as it turns out, these devices are a total privacy nightmare. The latest incident involves the Enox Safe-KID-One, which was just recalled by the European Commission as it was deemed particularly vulnerable…Read more...

A 24-year-old man in Fort Worth, Texas has died after a vape pen he was using exploded in his face and severed an artery to his brain, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner. The incident adds to a growing number of devastating vape explosions.Read more...

When the availability of the original iPhone X dried up almost immediately after the iPhone XS was announced, it sort of made sense. After all, the iPhone X was a limited-edition thing meant to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the iPhone. That said, it’s disappearance was a bit of a blow for people hoping to pick up…Read more...

Last November, as wildfires ravaged the town of Paradise, California, Robert Vigil received an urgent call from the Department of Health and Human services (HHS). Local officials were racing to identify the remains of fire victims, and Vigil, who has spent 26 years as a funeral director in Yuma County, Arizona, was…Read more...

As violent ethnic clashes and a labyrinth of civil wars continue to plague Myanmar, Facebook banned four armed groups based in the country from using the platform. The Tuesday announcement came as part of an ongoing effort to oust “dangerous organizations” promoting violence on the social network.

You might recall that grade-school experiment where an iron filing-covered sheet of paper draped over a magnet reveals the invisible lines of its magnetic forces. But with a strong enough magnet (the kind they won’t let you play with in school) and a miniature trampoline, you can actually see those invisible magnetic…Read more...

Don’t let anybody talk you out of a good pair of running shoes—they’re vital to preventing injuries when you run. But generally, when it comes to picking out kicks to run in, most runners and specialty shoe stores that serve them are primarily concerned with fit. If you go for a fitting, usually a specialist will have…Read more...

Phone or tablet tethering can give you some precious internet connectivity when you’re out of wifi range, and in terms of connecting on the go, it’s much more secure than the public wifi you’ll find in hotels, coffee shops, and so on. Here’s how to do it, simply and painlessly, whether you’ve got Android or iOS on…Read more...

Taiki Waititi torpedoes those Guardians of the Galaxy 3 rumors. Stargirl casts some intriguing villains. The Riverdale spinoff is already adding some supporting stars from its sister series. Ryan Murphy is pondering a potential return to Scream Queens. Plus, even more Birds of Prey set pictures. To me, my spoilers!

After a couple of false starts, President Donald Trump is scheduled to give the State of the Union address to Congress tonight at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific, 5am Moscow time. And there are plenty of ways for cordcutters to watch the speech this year on YouTube, Facebook, and TV-connected devices like Roku and Fire TV.Read more...

Last week, local media reports indicated that a meteorite hit the Cuban town of Viñales after soaring across the Florida Keys, with residents reporting hearing a massive sonic boom as well as seeing a trail in the sky. The event was apparently picked up by the National Weather Service Key West’s radar some 26,000 feet…Read more...

AT&T is continuing to move forward with its bullshit strategy to rebrand slightly enhanced 4G service as “5G E,” 9to5Mac reported on Monday, with some of its customers who have downloaded the latest iOS 12.2 beta reporting that the 5G E icon has replaced the LTE service icon on iPhones.

You thought the Galaxy of Adventures series would peak at turning Darth Vader’s Rogue One massacre into a kid’s animated short? No. No, it did not.

Happy Zuckerversary! Facebook officially turned 15-years-old on Monday, and its founder has blessed us with yet another blog post explaining how he sees his own creation in its terrible teens. After all this time, Mark Zuckerberg still either can’t or won’t accept that he runs a platform, not the internet.Read more...

The future of artificial intelligence and war sounds dizzyingly high-tech, but that’s not always the case.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner and public health services agency are reportedly investigating how the private data of a patient who had an abortion may have landed in the hands of a harasser.Read more...

The Patriots winning the Super Bowl objectively sucks for all of America that isn’t Boston and the surrounding, even more racist areas of New England, but one good thing that might happen as a result is that Tom Brady now has one more chance to kiss Donald Trump on the mouth.Read more...

A dome placed over InSight’s seismometer will now protect the sensitive device from Martian wind and extreme temperature fluctuations.