Gizmodo

Microsoft or Sony don’t make the best controllers for your Xbox or PlayStation. Instead, they’re made by Scuf, a company that produces high-end customizable controllers intended for competitive gaming and people who want the best experience. So when the company announces a new super customizable Xbox One controller,…Read more...

Decreasing levels of air pollution in the U.S. have led to fewer deaths and illnesses, according to a new report out this week. But there are pockets of the country, namely Los Angeles, where air pollution kills thousands of people, and, frighteningly, the Trump administration is poised to reverse the progress against…Read more...

The U.S. government continues to mull over T-Mobile’s potential merger with Sprint, that hasn’t stopped T-Mobile from giving its most popular phone plan a new name and a few added benefits, but at the expense of a bit more complexity.Read more...

It was exciting when Jabra announced its latest Bluetooth headphones at CES earlier this year. The $300 Jabra Elite 85h look like a beefed-up version of the company’s well-reviewed Move wireless headphones, and inside there’s an intriguing surprise: artificially intelligent noise-canceling technology that learns your…Read more...

Rotten Tomatoes is adding a new feature to keep the Audience Score more authentic by verifying that users have seen the movie. And whiny, woman-hating man-babies are going to be pissed.

Using ground-penetrating radar, scientists detected a massive reservoir of frozen water sandwiched by layers of sand beneath the northern polar ice cap on Mars. This reservoir contains so much ice that, if melted and brought to the surface, it would submerge the entire planet.Read more...

Fake videos are getting really damn good, and now they’re getting even easier to make. For innocuous purposes like, say, a moving avatar, it’s a pretty cool development. But for more insidious use cases, like exploiting the technology to harass someone online, it’s unsettling.

Eight years ago, the deadliest tornado in U.S. history wreaked havoc on the 50,000-person city of Joplin, Missouri, killing 161 people. On Wednesday night, city residents had to relive the fear of that day as more than two dozen tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma and Missouri, one touching down near Joplin.Read more...

Two years ago exactly, someone began hacking Equifax. Today, it’s starting to feel some pain.

What do Reddit, free speech, and the Jehovah’s Witness religion have in common? A lawsuit regarding the right to remain anonymous online. Last week, a federal court ruled that a Redditor does not have to reveal his identity in a copyright case.Read more...

It looks like Amazon is working on a new Alexa-powered gadget that can listen to you and decide how you feel, and make recommendations based on your human emotions. Citing internal documents and an unnamed source, Bloomberg reports that the company has designed a device that you wear like a wristwatch and beta testing…Read more...

The first teaser is here for CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Picard, which brings the incredible Patrick Stewart back as the even more incredible Jean-Luc Picard. But the admiral, who’s been spending a lot of time with his grapes, is no longer a part of Starfleet. The mystery, of course, is finding out why.Read more...

Last year, when Google first showed off its new Duplex feature that used artificial intelligence to make calls for users, it terrified us because it sounded so human.Read more...

You’ll have to wait a bit longer to see Super Pets in action. Spider-Man: Far From Home’s stars give us some new looks. Plus sneak peeks at Star Trek: Picard, Legion, and more. Spoilers ho!

Unless you really need to print in color, Brother makes some of the only printers worth buying, and their small office-friendly DCPL2550DW is on sale for by far the best price ever today.

At its most recent developer’s conference, Google announced that it would be rebranding its Nest lineup of products, ultimately resulting in some changes to its Works with Nest program. The program was initially put into place to help bridge the connection between Nest devices and vetted third-party apps and services.…Read more...

As omnivorous creatures, chimpanzees eat all sorts of things, including fruits, termites, tiny rodents, and even full-grown monkeys. As for chimps eating reptiles, that’s completely unheard of—until now. Unprecedented observations have uncovered a community of chimps in Gabon that regularly consume tortoises.

The first trailer for the third attempt at rebooting the Terminator franchise is here and, appropriately enough, the new Terminator power is in line with that.

The city of Las Vegas has approved a $48.6 million contract for Elon Musk’s Boring Company to build an underground transit line that’s scheduled to be completed by January 2021, just in time for the Consumer Electronics Show. But it remains to be seen whether Musk’s high-speed transportation concept can really live up…Read more...

A Chinese national and former engineering student in Oregon pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods in a scheme that defrauded Apple out of roughly 1,500 iPhones.

A newer Tesla feature to allow its cars to switch lanes automatically may present safety risks for drivers who aren’t actively engaged while the setting is enabled, according to findings by Consumer Reports.

Now that Game of Thrones is over for good, the focus is on when George R.R. Martin is finally going to complete his side of the story. Thanks to an airline’s offer to fly Martin out so he can have some peace and quiet to finish The Winds of Winter, he’s jokingly promised a deadline. If he doesn’t meet it, New Zealand…Read more...

To literally no one’s surprise, the head of the Federal Communications Commission on Monday announced Monday that he’d recommend approving the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. But it now looks as if the Justice Department’s own attorneys vehemently oppose the merger.

Customs officials at the border don’t need a warrant or probable cause to search your electronic devices, an invasive practice that has only spiked in the last few years, resulting in a bunch of horror stories and some profoundly dumb screwups. But two US senators want to change that, introducing a bill on Wednesday…Read more...

Ads are the bane of the internet. On top of being an eyesore, by now everyone’s had that experience of googling an item, only to find targeted ads for that same product follow you across the web. It’s creepy, and today, Apple announced in a blog post that it’s working on a way to make the ads you see while browsing on…Read more...

Facial recognition experts called to testify before a congressional hearing on Wednesday found themselves in broad agreement: Citing a litany of abuses, each pressed federal lawmakers to respond to the widespread, unregulated use of the technology by law enforcement at every level across the country. However, the idea…Read more...

With conventional medicines in short supply during the Civil War, the Confederacy turned to plant-based alternatives in desperation. New research suggests some of these remedies were actually quite good at fighting off infections—a finding that could lead to effective new drugs.

Last year, when a Robinson R22 crashed outside of Charleston, South Carolina, the student pilot and instructor in the helicopter said they lost control of the aircraft as they tried to avoid a DJI Phantom quadcopter. The incident could have been one of the first drone-caused aircraft crashes in the U.S.Read more...

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

Let me start by describing one of the first magic tricks I learned to perform when I was a kid. Here is what the audience sees: I reach into my pocket and reveal a jumbo-sized card depicting the four of spades on one side and the ace of spades on the other side. After mumbling some magic words, I turn the card, and to…Read more...

At Amazon’s shareholder meeting today, employees and investors voted on a wide-ranging spate of proposals, from banning the practice of selling facial recognition technology to adopting a serious plan to address climate change. Each of the proposals ultimately failed, but they were undeniable signs of a paradigm shift…Read more...

Back in 2010, scientists were monitoring a shark population on the Mississippi-Alabama border. They had hauled up a small tiger shark to tag when something strange happened: It puked up feathers. A DNA analysis revealed that the shark had eaten a brown thrasher, a speckled migratory songbird related to the…Read more...

Lots of elements factor into whether a community suffers higher rates of asthma. There’s air pollution, access to healthcare, and even a genetic component. When Anthony Nardone, a medical student in the University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley’s Joint Medical Program, first began learning about the…Read more...

Long-simmering concerns over Amazon’s facial recognition software came to a head today during the company’s annual shareholder meeting, where activist investors put forward several agenda items that would increase oversight of the software and limit who could use it.Read more...

That bipedal humanoid robot is named Digit. Say goodbye now, because you’ll never see one in person.

The recovery of the ozone hole has been a quintessential environmental success story, as the world has worked largely in harmony for decades to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. So last year’s discovery that emissions of CFC-11, one of those banned chemicals, was suddenly reversing course came as a shock.

A team of physicists has published peer-reviewed results documenting near-room-temperature superconductivity in the hydrogen-rich compound lanthanum hydride.Read more...

If you’ve suffered the throes of chronic insomnia, you’ll do almost anything to fall asleep. Pills, guided meditation apps, vigorous exercise, melatonin, screen dimmers, aromatherapy diffusers, sleep tracking via fitness tracker, smart beds, bedtime calculators—at some point or another, I’ve tried them all and…Read more...

On May 7, hackers infected about 10,000 of Baltimore city government’s computers with an aggressive form of ransomware called RobbinHood, and insisted the city pay 13 bitcoin (then $76,280, today $102,310) to cut the computers loose. The hackers claimed the price would go up every day after four days, and after the…Read more...

While Qualcomm may have chalked up a big win in settling its global feud with Apple, it didn’t fare quite as well against the Federal Trade Commission. Late Tuesday, Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled that Qualcomm had violated antitrust laws, charged high royalties for its patents, and ordered Qualcomm submit to monitoring for…Read more...

Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe aborted an attempt to drop a highly reflective target marker on the surface of Ryugu in preparation for its second sample extraction mission. But with surface temperatures rising steadily on the asteroid, the probe is running out of time.

Like a well-chosen keyboard shortcut, a button combination can save you some serious time on your phone—whether you want to snap a photo, launch a digital assistant, or take a screenshot. What you might not know is that you can change these button combinations to suit your own needs.Read more...

After the Trump administration placed Huawei on the U.S. Entity List due to concerns that Huawei poses a national security risk, that meant Huawei would be banned from buying products from U.S. tech organizations including big names such as Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and others.Read more...

Amazon is currently experimenting with a pilot program that turns warehouse jobs into a sort of video game, a system the company claims is meant to break up the monotony of the day-to-day tasks required of its workers but has, conveniently, led to competition among employees to outperform their colleagues, according…Read more...

Stef Bokhorst has spent a number of Christmases in the South Pole. He’s never come across Santa Claus, but he has spotted some orcas, penguins, and elephant seals over the years. And he’s seen a lot of poop.Read more...

Child’s Play is taking more jabs at the poor toys from Toy Story 4. Even more new looks at The Dark Crystal, plus Swamp Things’ first episode and Doom Patrol’s last. Spoilers set sail!

If you’ve always dreamed of having a low-maintenance, vaguely dog-shaped companion, well, you’re in luck. A group of undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford University have just unveiled Doggo, a relatively cheap, light, four-legged robot with the bouncing ability of a typical toy breed. Best of all, they’ve…Read more...

Here’s your no-brainer deal of the day. If you visit this page and enter your email, Grove Collaborative will give you $30 worth of Grove and Mrs. Meyer’s products for free when you spend $20 on anything else on the site. I was also given a free glass spray bottle and concentrated cleaner, for seemingly no reason at…Read more...

The U.S. government is considering a tech export ban that would target Hikvision, a Chinese video surveillance company that’s been instrumental in sending anywhere from 1 million to 3 million Muslims into China’s network of secretive concentration camps, according to a new report from the New York Times.

Those who still play HQ Trivia and plan to tune in for Season 4 may have more chances to win some of that sweet free cash. But there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?)