Gizmodo

Amazon has a well-deserved reputation for taking over whatever industry it gets itself into, but its record of success is far from flawless. The online retailer has spent years hesitantly flirting with the gaming business with little to show for it. But as the wide-open field of game streaming picks up steam, it…Read more...

Scientists have measured a fundamental property of a supermassive black hole—how fast it spins—by measuring a star slamming into it.

A bombshell report by the New York Times in October revealed that Google, like many companies, was willing to bury inconvenient sexual harassment complaints against its executives. In the case of Andy Rubin, a veteran associated deeply with the creation of the Android operating system, his fall from grace was…Read more...

Moscow Mules are already my favorite drink, but I have a feeling that they would taste even better when sipped out of one of these cool stainless steel mugs with a gunmetal finish from Pier 1 — and not just because they’re on sale for $2 each. Wait. Actually, yeah, that’s why. What can I say? Deals are delicious.

In a bizarre decision on Wednesday, Joshua Tree National Park reversed course on closing its gates, despite clear evidence visitors are destroying the park’s namesake trees, illegally camping, and off-roading.Read more...

There’s a lot wrong with women’s fashion, but torn stockings rank pretty high on the list of annoying quirks I’ve just learned to shut up and deal with. Seriously, anything will tear pantyhose. Is your toenail hideously long? Tear. Did you walk too close to a sharp table edge? Giant hole in your thigh. Did you simply…Read more...

You’d barely even know it, but CES just happened this week. In the last couple years the big technology trade show was very much a car show, where automakers and startups alike showed off the latest in hopeful self-driving systems always billed as just “a few years away.” In 2019? Barely a peep from anyone, and that…Read more...

At some point, Acer is going to have to give up its yearly quest to make the Swift 7 just a little bit slimmer, but that time hasn’t come yet, because at CES 2019 Acer has once again triumphed over physics to create something stupendously skinny.Read more...

AMD CEO Lisa Su sat down with press, including Gizmodo, yesterday to chat about the company’s CES announcements. The conversation started with a bang, addressing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s criticisms of AMD less than an hour earlier, then moved to a broad discussion of AMD’s business. Of particular note was the…Read more...

There are some huge 40th anniversaries coming up this year for horror fans; as you’ll see (and probably already realized), 1979 was a mighty big year for the genre. But that’s not all. As long as you’re planning one party, might as well recognize these other spooky classics that are marking milestones in 2019.

Climate change seems to be leading to more fatal conflict between a pair of bird species, according to a new study. The research demonstrates an important indirect consequence of a warming globe.Read more...

Over the past few years, Ossia has impressed us with demonstrations of its over-the-air power delivery system which promises to make charging cables and pads obsolete. But it’s always been just demos of prototypes, which feels like a constant tease of a future we want right now. For CES 2019, however, Ossia worked…Read more...

There’s one thing that’s clear from visiting the set of Syfy’s new comic book series, Deadly Class: This is Rick Remender’s show.

The U.S. government may be in partial shutdown mode, but operations to configure instruments critical to NASA’s InSight mission on Mars are right on schedule—and things are going swimmingly, as the latest mission update attests.

CES is a physically taxing event. So far, according to my trusty Fitbit Versa, I have walked upwards of 50,000 steps while carrying a 15-pound backpack. I busted my knee, I’m fighting a cold, and I don’t remember what the loving embrace of a human feels like.Read more...

It’s hard to imagine CES without TVs, and this year that almost happened. This is not to say there weren’t any TVs in Las Vegas. There were a lot! There were 8K TVs, OLED TVs, QLED TVs, big TVs, small TVs. But it’s hard to explain how they’re meaningfully different than the fancy TVs we were excited about at CES last…Read more...

Stuffing our bodies into a metal tubes to fly miles above the ground is already a pretty dehumanizing experience. And “jokes” about bombs can make it a lot worse, as a teenager’s lawyer seemed to acknowledge, calling a recent incident in New Zealand the “grossly stupid event of the century.”Read more...

California’s devastating wildfires are now simply a way of life for residents—and things will likely only get worse. Since the president’s solution for combating these climate change-fueled disasters is to threaten to cut FEMA funding for the state, local governments are taking matters into their own hands. The plan:…Read more...

Google is not responsible for protecting people’s “right to be forgotten” in any countries outside of the European Union, according to a preliminary opinion from the European court of justice.Read more...

I don’t have my swim trunks or my flippy-floppies, and there aren’t any dolphins anywhere, but you can’t stop me ‘cause I’m on a boat.Read more...

I don’t have any plans to die, ever. But if I do eventually eat it for some unseen reason, having my 6,000-year-old corpse loaded onto a canoe and immolated at sea by a perfectly aimed flaming arrow would be the way to go, in my humble opinion. As with many dreams of mine, it turns out this is illegal—at least under U.…Read more...

The Hubble Space Telescope team has temporarily suspended operations of Wide Field Camera 3 following a hardware glitch.

The Disney nerd community recognized a sad anniversary yesterday. It’s been 20 years since the ride Horizons closed at the Epcot theme park in Walt Disney World. But there was one bright spot. People were able to share home videos of the beloved “extinct attraction” on YouTube.

Home robots had a bad 2018, and compared to previous years, they’re not as visible on the ground at CES 2019, too. The robots that haven’t bit the dust tend to be of the “teach kids how to code” variety, or conceptual bots like the laundry folding FoldiMate that at this point are more CES perennials than likely…Read more...

Karen Gillan could be leading her own assassin movie universe. Adam McKay says he’s talked to Marvel about bringing the Silver Surfer to the big screen. A few more Toho classics could appear in a potential Godzilla 3. Plus. Chris Pine teases Steve Trevor’s demeanor in Wonder Woman 1984 and what’s to come on The Flash.…Read more...

In the future, cyborg birds may help monitor ocean currents and help ground-truth satellite data. It may sound like an odd prognostication, but a study released on Thursday in Scientific Reports lays the groundwork.Read more...

If you’re still listening to your computer through its built-in speakers, stop torturing yourself and buy Logitech’s MX Sound 2.0 audio system for an all-time low $60, or $40 less than usual.

Yesterday I spent two hours listening to the CEOs of rival companies talk trash about each other. It reminded me of my parents right after their divorce. Nvidia was shit talking AMD, and AMD politely responded with just enough bite for you to take notice.

Following increased pressure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Juul Labs is taking a notably different approach from its ad campaigns of yore—the ones accused of making its e-cigarette products widely appealing to kids. The company unveiled new TV spots this week as part of its “adult education campaign”…Read more...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday officially nominated Andrew Wheeler—former coal lobbyist and man with little tact on social media—to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Wheeler, who has been serving as acting chief following the ouster of former EPA leader Scott Pruitt, could be confirmed to…Read more...

Given the nightmarish hustle of Donald Trump’s administration, it’s hard to believe that it was less than a year ago when Trump met North Korean totalitarian strongman Kim Jong Un for a historic nuclear summit in Singapore in June 2018. The two men described each other in glowing terms, watched a bizarre “Destiny…Read more...

A 26-year-old Seattle man who described himself online as both a member of the far-right Proud Boys group and a believer in the sprawling QAnon conspiracy theory, Buckey Wolfe, is in custody after allegedly stabbing his brother in the head with a sword on Sunday, the Seattle Times reported.

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon is a comically evil man, so logically, he apparently tried to get a job lobbying for the vape company Juul, according to a new report from The Daily Beast.

The Philadelphia Police Department said Wednesday that Johnny Bobbitt Jr., the homeless man linked to an alleged GoFundMe scam that raised more than $400,000, was arrested after he failed to appear in court in New Jersey the previous day.

Senate Democrats called on federal agencies Wednesday to investigate the practice by major telecommunications companies of selling location data generated by subscribers’ mobile devices following an undercover investigation by a security reporter that shed new light on a black market trade.

Twitter will be rolling out beta updates including “conversational”-style speech bubbles and indented/color-coded replies based on whether you follow another user in the coming weeks, the Verge reported on Wednesday. Other features under consideration, but which will not be available in the forthcoming beta, include…Read more...

Normal time loop stories are out. Time loop stories based around someone dying over and over? In.

Turns out when you a) kill your good figure of authority two episodes in and b) replace them with a morally grey scapegoat you eventually reveal is an alt-universe, MAGA-quoting, colossal space-tool, you don’t really have the time to get into the heady moral questions of the day. So it’s a good job Star Trek: Discovery…Read more...

A new study confirms something we all already suspected to be true: people older than 65 are more likely to share fake news on Facebook than people of other ages. Age was a better predictor of sharing fake news than any other factor, including sex, race, income, social media usage, or even political affiliation.

The corporate lawyer and former chief U.S. law enforcement officer nominated to replace Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department has a controversial past involving the warrantless surveillance of Americans and once fought to make it easier for phone companies to secretly hand over customer records to the government,…Read more...

As the dust settles on CES and all of the big gadgets have astounded or disappointed, it’s time for another round up of the little devices that weren’t notable enough to warrant their own coverage but still deserve plenty of love.Read more...

Do I need another portable gaming device weighing down my backpack every time I leave the house? My spine says no, but the retro gamer in me loves the idea of taking an NES with me wherever I roam. As handheld consoles go, My Arcade’s RetroChamp, announced at CES this year, pushes the boundaries of portable gaming.…Read more...

Soft drink companies have fought tooth and nail to hold onto their customers, even as public health experts and governments have tried to get people to cut down on the sugary products they make. But a new investigative report in the BMJ highlights just how far Coca-Cola in particular has gone to protect its profits…Read more...

At this year’s CES Innovation Awards—the consumer electronic show’s “annual competition honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products”—a sex toy company was selected as an honoree in the Robotics and Drone category, only to have their award swiftly rescinded by the organization’s…Read more...

Old people may have the worst internet journalism literacy, according to common sense, and partially backed up by new research on the spread of so-called “fake news” immediately before and after 2016 presidential election.Read more...

Nineteen years ago, I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and fell in love. To this day, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time. So, when I saw Split four months before release, the shocking revelation that it took place in the same universe was one of my most memorable theatrical experiences. I say these things…Read more...

Las Vegas is a very bad place for skin. The casinos are full of smoke, the air is dry, and there are damaging UV rays everywhere because well, it’s the desert. And while I packed some drug store moisturizer and sunscreen for my trip to CES 2019, I have admittedly been very remiss about maintaining a good skin care…Read more...

While working on a property in Sydney, Australia, a man says he found a wall-mounted phone that “looked dirty and was not working.” Luckily for us, he filmed his subsequent investigation.

IBM has announced the release of Q System One, or as the IBM team described it, “the world’s first fully integrated universal quantum computing system designed for scientific and commercial use.”

Anker dominated the Kinja Co-Op for best Bluetooth speaker, and the second-generation, extra-portable SoundCore Mini 2 just got its best discount ever.Read more...