Gizmodo

Jingoistic nationalism and promoting fossil fuels go hand in hand for the Trump administration. But the Department of Energy took that connection to a new level on Tuesday with a press release touting natural gas as “freedom gas” full of—I feel stupid even typing this—“molecules of U.S. freedom.” Which I guess means…Read more...

The Chinese government is showing signs that it’s ready to use rare earth metals as a bargaining chip in the trade war between the U.S. and China that’s escalated over recent weeks. China supplies roughly 80 percent of all rare earth metals used by the U.S. in everything from smartphones to X-ray machines, which means…Read more...

During an announcement-packed press event in Tokyo this week, the Pokémon Company unveiled a handful of new services and hardware, including what I believe is the clear standout in this collection of new products: a game called Pokémon Sleep. And based on the limited information I have about how it works, I’m…Read more...

There’s a moment in The Handmaid’s Tale’s third season when Aunt Lydia comes up to June and issues a stern warning: “Don’t be clever. There are consequences when you’re clever.” That’s no longer true, at least not as much as it used to be.

Let’s say you purchased a pencil case for your kid on Amazon.com. But it turns out it contains lead that’s way over the federal legal limit, and your kid gets sick as a result. You liked Amazon, used it frequently to buy products and even own an Amazon Echo. But now you want to sue the company. There’s just one…Read more...

Huawei phones, Amazon tablets, and Google Pixel phones all run Android, but one of those groups of devices doesn’t have access to the Google Play Store—and another could lose it very soon. But why is that? If you’re wondering what exactly Android is and isn’t and why the Play Store only seems to appear on some Android…Read more...

It’s Thursday night and Eddie is looking for action. He scrolls through Twitter hoping to find the woman of his dreams. Finally, he finds her, or someone who looks a lot like her: A woman going by the name “Katfish Princess” who describes herself as “hot, greedy and completely fake.”

On Wednesday, London police officers were called to investigate a “possible unexploded device,” which had apparently washed onto the bank of the River Thames in east London.Read more...

Meet Forky in a new clip from Toy Story 4. Bryce Dallas Howard talks about making The Mandalorian. Get new looks at what’s to come on Black Mirror. Plus, creepy alien trees on The 100, the Clifford the Big Red Dog movie gets some casting and a bonkers premise, and Syfy highlights its not-Godzilla monster movie.…Read more...

Today, Woot has some of terrific Philips Hue deals for those new to the system and for those who want to expand their collection.

Michael Ouellette has a lot of Star Wars tattoos. The 42-year-old has a full sleeve of Darth Vader on his left arm and a full sleeve of Luke Skywalker on his right. But Ouellette’s most curious tattoo is the one of Jar Jar Binks that covers his entire back. And whatever you think of his tattoo, Ouellette would like…Read more...

We’re still in the early days of 5G, but if you take a quick look around the smartphone world, it’s clear Qualcomm has gotten a head start when compared to other chipmakers. Nearly every 5G phone on the market today is powered by a Qualcomm modem, and while Qualcomm recently got slapped for violating antitrust laws,…Read more...

While most home robots never see much success with consumers, iRobot’s made a nice little niche for itself with its Roombas. Today, the company is announcing its most advanced bot to date—the Roomba s9+: A self-emptying, room-memorizing cleaner that also costs a whopping $1,300 to start. Oh...and iRobot has also…Read more...

We still don’t know the full impact of Australia’s big, bad encryption law.

The third season of The Handmaid’s Tale may be a month away, but it already feels like it’s making headlines. More states have passed and signed legislation that makes it hard for women to get safe and legal abortions—including in Georgia, which has become a key state for the film industry. How are media companies…Read more...

Amazon has long touted its relationships with the small businesses who sell on its platform as helping them “reach hundreds of millions of customers around the world.” But Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the e-commerce giant is about to cease bulk ordering for “thousands of mostly smaller suppliers,” which could…Read more...

Few things in this world are as terrifying as tornadoes. The wrath of Mother Nature just shooting from above in a whirlwind of destructive winds and debris is nothing to underestimate.Read more...

There are plenty of wild rumors, mythologies, and eyebrow-raising stories from the long history of music, including claims that parts of synthesizers designed by electronic music pioneer Don Buchla had been dipped in LSD. But as engineer Eliot Curtis recently discovered, those claims might actually hold some truth.Read more...

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

Researchers in Senegal recently flew drones in the vicinity of green monkeys to see how the primates might respond. Incredibly, the monkeys produced an instinctual alarm call consistent with an eagle sighting. Kinda makes sense—except for the fact that green monkeys aren’t threatened by eagles.

One year ago, a team of FBI agents executed a warrant to search former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s storage unit.

Is it a little shameful that one of the most exciting elements of macOS Mojave was the dark mode option it presented? Probably! Is it as equally shameful that one of the elements of iOS 13 that I’m most excited for is a proper dark mode? Sure! Will that fact dissuade me from being delighted by these screenshots of…Read more...

Donald Trump did a bizarre thing aboard the USS Wasp on Tuesday. After wishing the sailors “a very Happy Memorial Day,” the President conducted an impromptu poll, asking the crowd who preferred steam-powered catapult systems and who preferred electric. Steam won out in the poll, and now, Trump says he’s going to…Read more...

Rideshare drivers don’t have it easy, but few have had to put up with the nightmare scenario Eduardo Madiedo experienced recently in Queens, New York.

When Colin Bundschu first started at Rockstar Games in November of 2014, he says his new colleagues offered a warning: Don’t cross Jeronimo Barrera. Barrera, the vice president of product development, would often fly in from New York to visit Rockstar’s offices in Carlsbad, California, where they were all working on…Read more...

There are ways in which digital forensics experts can identify if an image has been manipulated, but there’s certainly room for improvement, especially at a time when faking images is only getting easier, more realistic, and, most insidiously, more coordinated. And researchers see the very technology being weaponized…Read more...

A used Samsung NC10 costs less than $200. But a used Samsung NC10 with six of the most dangerous types of malware is apparently worth $1.345 million—so long as it’s art.Read more...

We, humans, do love our plastic. From our morning yogurt to our evening takeout, all this plastic feels impossible to avoid. The thing is, well, this plastic needs to go somewhere. Malaysia, a major plastics importer, is one of those somewheres. But now, the country is shipping thousands of tons of the world’s plastic…Read more...

Facebook, a company so heinous that it was cited by the United Nations as being complicit in genocide, is still the most popular social network in the world. But people are at least spending less time on the site these days.

A Russian Soyuz-2-1b rocket was struck by lightning yesterday, just seconds after liftoff. Remarkably, the uncrewed rocket continued on its mission as if nothing had happened.

Well, well, well! It looks like after Amazon’s hilariously dramatic exit from its plans to build its HQ2 facilities in Long Island City, Amazon may be coming to New York after all. The New York Post reported Monday that the company is allegedly exploring office space on Manhattan’s West Side. Big if true, as the kids…Read more...

We take our phones everywhere, so it’s inevitable that they’ll eventually feel the brunt of the life we’re living. And just as we hit the shower first thing after a long weekend of camping, our smartphones also need a deep cleaning once in a while.

In a briefing a couple of years ago, a representative for a major laptop maker sat across from me with a huge grin on his face. He had a special mock-up in his bag, and he wanted to show it off. It was a super thin Windows 10 laptop—no fans required, and maybe only 10mm thick. According to the rep, it would be one of…Read more...

Twenty years ago, Microsoft vastly improved how we all point and click with the introduction of its IntelliMouse Explorer that used a small camera to track movements instead of an easily dirtied rolling ball. Countless iterations were released over the past few decades, but Microsoft has finally revived the original…Read more...

Amazon’s marking down a ton of storage devices, plus a few PCs and accessories, in today’s Gold Box. There’s something from everybody here—microSD cards, rugged external drives, and awesome SSDs from companies like SanDisk, Seagate and Western Digital.Read more...

The New York Times published a shocking article over the Memorial Day long weekend about the Trump regime’s dangerous policies on climate change. But one quote in the article really stuck out:

At CES Alienware announced a major redesign, featuring devices with soft-touch plastic, curved, and an overall look that was meant to be less aggressive with its gamer aesthetics. But new design only launched on Alienware’s enormous and enormously powerful Area-51M, a laptop that starts at $2,150 and requires a…Read more...

When it comes to laptops, I’m a big advocate of 2-in-1s like Lenovo’s Yoga C930 and Microsoft’s Surface Go because their flexible designs let you use them in situations a traditional notebook might not be able to handle. However, to deliver that kind of adaptability, sometimes 2-in-1 makers have to include trade-offs…Read more...

There are things I associate HP with: printers, hyper-expensive ink for printers that threatened to ruin me that one time in college, and inexpensive enterprise computers. Oh, and very interesting laptop design? I know, it’s weird.Read more...

Does a VR headset still qualify as a standalone device if the computer powering the headset is strapped to your back rather than built into the goggles? I don’t know, and I’m not sure how much that distinction really matters, because while Oculus is out there trying to make VR go mainstream with gadgets like the …Read more...

The hottest trend sweeping Washington right now has officially arrived in Silicon Valley: Defying lawmakers’ subpoenas is all the rage and Facebook apparently has no plans to be left out.

Using a motion-activated camera, scientists at Wolong National Nature Reserve in southwest China have snapped a blurry but unprecedented photograph of the world’s first known albino giant panda.

The state of Maine has joined California, West Virginia, and Mississippi in barring the use of religious and philosophical exemptions to opt out of school immunization requirements.Read more...

An 8.0 magnitude earthquake rocked northern Peru on Sunday, killing at least one man and causing several injuries, the Associated Press reports.

Pioneering physicist Murray Gell-Mann has passed away at the age of 89. Among his many scientific contributions, the Nobel laureate will be remembered for bringing order to the chaotic field of particle physics, and for coining the term “quark”—a fundamental building block of matter.Read more...

The lawyer for an Australian teenager who twice breached Apple’s internal security says he did so because he thought it might land him a job at the California-based tech giant, the Australian Associated Press reports.

The memory of buying my first Leatherman is unusually clear in my head. I was 16, broke, and incredibly passionate about backpacking in the Smoky Mountains, where my family lived. That year, Leatherman announced a new multitool called the Wave, and the big deal feature was that some folks could open it with one hand,…Read more...

A satellite tracker in the Netherlands has captured stunning video of dozens of SpaceX Starlink satellites passing overhead. Launched together late last week, the chain of satellites looked like a giant, brightly lit train chugging away in the night sky—a rare sight that understandably prompted UFO sightings.

Ten years ago tomorrow, Google introduced an app that was meant to transform the communications space. During an hour-plus keynote presentation at Google I/O in 2009, the company’s then-Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra introduced what he called a “magical” new web app that combined email, messaging, and…Read more...

Reaching for your phone in moments of silence, or because you simply struggle to disconnect, can be socially rude and emotionally tiring (especially if you’re a news fan). University of Washington researchers believe they have identified four common triggers that prompt us to take our phones out, and they’re the same…Read more...