Gizmodo

Just in time for the holidays, Apple and Amazon have teamed up to stick it to the little guys. Namely, in exchange for a direct line to Apple’s goods, Amazon has agreed to cut out unauthorized third-party resellers.Read more...

A multi-university study released this week concluded that Sprint has been throttling the bandwidth of customers using Skype, Microsoft’s popular internet-based video chat service.

White nationalism is resurgent in the streets of America. It’s driving federal policy in the Trump administration. It’s leading to the murders of people like Heather Heyer in Charlottesville. White supremacists are gunning people down in synagogues and supermarkets.

Earth’s oldest soil could be tucked away in an ancient rock outcrop in Greenland, according to new research. Dating back some 3.7 billion years, the suspected soil—exposed underneath a retreating ice cap—could potentially contain fossilized traces of primordial life.

A Pennsylvania birder spotted the bird of a lifetime in his backyard this past spring—it was a hybrid of three species across two genera in a single bird. He’d found a three-in-one warbler.Read more...

If there was any doubt that traditional satellite and cable plans are on the decline, earlier this year, cord cutting hit an all-time high after more than one million subscribers ditched their services in just one quarter.Read more...

Don’t get between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his moxes.Read more...

Eight cryptocurrency machines reportedly drained electricity from a Chinese high school for nearly a year before the headmaster was busted, and later fired, for running an Ethereum-mining operation.

Both ends of California are on fire. While firefighters battle the Camp Fire in Northern California, their compatriots in Southern California are facing an equally harrowing situation. Spurred by the Santa Ana winds, the Woolsey and Hill fires are wreaking havoc just north of Los Angeles with an estimated 75,000 homes…Read more...

A decade before Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, famed physicist Albert Einstein was already sensing imminent peril for his country and his own welfare, as a newly discovered letter reveals.

If your brain is already feeling a little fried by the week’s end, you might want to skip the trailer for a Tamil film called 2.0. But if you want to try to wrap your brain around one potential outcome of our hopeless addiction to smartphones, this trailer’s got robots, explosions, and a gigantic cyborg eagle made…Read more...

Deadspin These Are My Two Favorite Weird NFL Stats | Splinter Jeff Sessions Does One Last Despicable Thing on His Way Out the Door | Jezebel Lindsay Lohan Seeking Prestigious, Well-Paying Endorsement Deals (On Facebook) | The Root Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade Welcome the Daughter They’ve Always Deserved | The A.V.…Read more...

No one will ever say there’s too much Planet Earth.Read more...

Watching a six-minute YouTube video is a lot to ask when the internet serves up bite-size snippets of entertainment requiring just a few seconds of your attention. But close-up magician Eric Chien manages to squeeze so many impossible tricks into his World Championships of Magic-winning routine, you actually might wish…Read more...

In a rare victory for environmentalists, the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline is on pause after a federal judge vacated a presidential permit Trump signed last year. The judge’s reason? The permit’s disregard for “inconvenient facts,” including the pipeline’s impacts on the climate.Read more...

Godzilla vs Kong casts an Iron Fist star. Lego Batman Movie and potential Nightwing director Chris McKay could bring Jonny Quest to the big screen. The CW wants a lot more of the new Charmed. Plus, Swamp Thing could be adding another DC villain, and casting rumors for the Game of Thrones prequel. Spoilers get!

While dawn in California is still a few hours away, it will rise on a town completely changed. The 27,000-person community of Paradise was ravaged by the explosive Camp Fire last night. Early reports indicate the entire town was basically wiped out, and residents died or were severely burned trying to escape the…Read more...

I have a lot of Apple-hating frineds who are always asking me: “What’s the best Wear OS smartwatch?” And I always say the same thing: They’re all bad. That said, the Fossil Sport could be the first contender for the title.Read more...

The so-called Camp Fire has already consumed over 20,000 acres in Northern California, forcing about 50,000 people to evacuate. But the fire has moved so quickly that some people have barely escaped—like Brynn Parrott Chatfield from the town of Paradise, who posted this video to social media showing her family’s…Read more...

A selection of work and belongings of the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking snatched hundreds of thousands of dollars per item at a recent Christie’s auction. Among the items sold were his motorized red leather wheelchair and a copy of his doctoral thesis Properties of Expanding Universes—one of five known…Read more...

A former Tesla employee was charged by a federal grand jury today of embezzling roughly $9.3 million from Elon Musk’s electric car company over the course of two years. The indictment comes as the result of an FBI inquiry.

Last week, thousands of Google staffers walked out of their offices and into the streets in what is perhaps the largest collective protest of tech workers in history. The demonstration, which included Google offices across several continents, was sparked by reports that the company offered lucrative exit packages to…Read more...

The director of Another Earth and I Origins is bringing together two of today’s most popular stars for a literal star-crossed love story.Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration may soon enforce huge restrictions on where some flavored vaping products can be sold—and soon. The move is brought on by the agency’s effort to crack down on the sale of vaping products to underage consumers.Read more...

An analysis of recently declassified U.S. military documents confirms suspicions that, during the late stages of the Vietnam War, a powerful solar storm caused dozens of sea mines to explode. It’s a stark reminder of the Sun’s potential to disrupt our technological activities in unexpected ways.

During a company-wide meeting today, Amazon addressed its relationship with law enforcement agencies, including Immigrations Customs and Enforcement—its first direct response to employee concerns raised in June about the company’s often successful attempts to provide cloud infrastructure and facial recognition…Read more...

By the end of this year, Google’s Waymo self-driving program plans on expanding its public self-driving ride-sharing program in Arizona, and in the next decade there are about 46 companies working to do the same. Many of these systems don’t yet use thermal imaging, but after a demonstration of how effective it is at…Read more...

Hot Duck mania has gripped the internet. It’s sent birding twitter atwittering, and the New York City news media seems to hang on the duck’s every move. At this point, the duck may be a semi-permanent fixture of Central Park, and it’s good that so many people love it.

An incredibly dangerous wildfire has exploded to life in Northern California. The Camp Fire has spurred numerous evacuations in Butte County as it races across the landscape.

The Nintendo Switch is getting an official YouTube app starting today.Read more...

It’s a huge day for archaeologists and anyone interested in the history of America’s first settlers. Findings from three new genetics studies—all released today—are presenting a fascinating, yet complex, picture of the first people in North and South America, and how they spread and diversified across two continents.

Like clockwork, the influenza virus rears its ugly head every winter and makes our lives miserable. But the flu isn’t the only germ that likes a particular time of year, according to a new paper published this week in PLOS Pathogens. Seemingly every infectious disease, including polio, gonorrhea, and even HIV, is…Read more...

Salmon will do whatever it takes to make some babies. They’ll even dart across oncoming traffic, apparently.Read more...

On Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to all employees promising a number of changes to the company’s policies following last week’s massive walkout. Many of these changes addressed the demands made by the walkout organizers, including optional arbitration for sexual harassment and assault claims and an…Read more...

It looks like NASA will offer billionaire entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner help on the first private deep-space mission: a journey designed to detect life, if it exists, on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, according to documents acquired by New Scientist.Read more...

If you’ve ever listened to an Apple hater rant about why Macs suck, chances are you’ve heard those “You can’t repair or upgrade it yourself!” arguments. But with the new MacBook Air and Mac mini, Apple seems like it’s ready to toss Mac diehards a small, but welcome bone.Read more...

A motivational guru from the Netherlands, who voiced a villainous Zaporozhets supermini in the Dutch-language version of Pixar’s Cars 2, is trying to legally change his birthday so he will face less discrimination, including from potential online romantic prospects.

The White House doesn’t want us to believe what we’re seeing, so they’re showing us things that are unbelievable.Read more...

If you sat down to eat at any point and in any part of the U.S. in the 1800s, nothing on your plate was quite what it seemed. The level of vile, often toxic contamination in basic consumer products was almost unimaginable to modern folk raised under the auspices of the FDA.

Surprise! Apple decided to go with USB-C charging for its latest batch of iPad Pros, which means... well, what exactly does it mean? Whether you’re putting down some cash for one of the new Apple slates or you’ve already got a USB-C device in your life, here’s how the emerging technology works and exactly what you can…Read more...

Cockatoos have once again demonstrated that birds have surprisingly advanced toolmaking abilities—particularly when delicious cashews are involved.Read more...

In recent years, portable Bluetooth speakers have become essential gadgets for modern living. Going into the woods and want to listen to some Phish? Get a speaker. Want to listen to podcasts in the shower? Use a Bluetooth solution. But beyond being so useful, what’s exciting about Bluetooth speakers these days is the…Read more...

A lot of interesting ballot measures were taken up by voters on Tuesday but none of them were more curious than Florida’s Amendment 9. The successful ballot item actually amends Florida’s constitution to ban offshore drilling and vaping in indoor workplaces. But why were those two things bundled together?Read more...

Scooby Doo is offering a bizarre follow up to a 30-year-old mystery. Get another brief snippet from Bumblebee. A new clip from The Good Place teases big things for Eleanor. Meet Caitlin’s dad in new pictures from the next episode of The Flash. Plus, a 4400 reboot could be in the works. To me, my spoilers!

Jabra’s Elite 65Ts might just be the best true-wireless headphones out there. In addition to their excellent five hours of battery (plus 15 with the charging case), they feature some of the best microphones in class for calls, compatibility with all the major voice assistants, and even a two year dust and water…Read more...

The U.S. Air Force published a video overnight showing its latest missile test from Tuesday. But the Air Force insists that the test is “not related to any real world events.”

There was plenty of Samsung buzz coming out of two individual events this week, not the least of which included the unveiling of its yet-unnamed foldable device. Another neat reveal coming out of the Android Dev Summit, however, is a feature that will allow users to continue using Android apps while they’re being…Read more...

MoviePass, the ticketing startup that burned through hundreds of millions of dollars trying to undercut the theater business by selling tickets at cost to subscribers, has screwed up an awful lot as of late. Its parent company Helios & Matheson is being sued by shareholders for alleged fraud, as well as investigated…Read more...

Hot on the heels of a report that Amazon is planning to split its HQ2 between Arlington, Virginia and New York’s Long Island City, Google is reportedly looking to expand its own presence in New York City. Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the company is nearing a…Read more...

Dutch police say they have “decrypted more than 258,000 messages” sent using an expensive chat service, Ars Technica reported on Wednesday, citing a National Police Corps statement that claimed authorities in the Netherlands have achieved a “breakthrough in the interception and decryption of encrypted communication…Read more...