Gizmodo

In his third ad of this year’s midterm elections, a wetsuit-clad Joe Cunningham bobs off the South Carolina coast. Treading water, the ocean engineer-turned Democratic candidate for Congress explains that he’s always opposed offshore drilling and that if elected, he’ll “make sure we never do” drill along South…Read more...

There are only a handful of USB battery packs out there with USB-C Power Delivery, and this is one of the lowest price we’ve ever seen on one of them.

I understand that the NES Classic is meant to feel as authentic as possible, but really, I’d be okay breaking the illusion to use a wireless controller. 8Bitdo makes a wireless controller designed just for the NES Classic, with the same nightmarishly pointy rectangular design, and it’s just $22 on Amazon today. It…Read more...

Just as the dust looked to be settling for Elon Musk’s Tesla, it appears the company has another investigation on its hands. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether the electric car company misled investors about its production goals for the Model 3,…Read more...

In a soon-to-launch online social experiment that is definitely in no way going to backfire, researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab are reportedly planning to hand an individual’s free will over to the internet. The experiment, which is titled BeeMe and is being described by MIT as the…Read more...

When most people think of the Millennium Falcon, they think of one specific image: The way the ship looked in George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy. But in recent films, it has been hinted that the YT-1300 Modified Corellian Freighter doesn’t necessary have to look like that.Read more...

If you’ve long been a user of Google Docs, Google Sheets, or any other various G Suite tools, you may be familiar with the semi-arduous process of navigating to a document, sheet, form, or other file every time you need to start a new one. On the scale of things to find incredibly annoying, taking three extra seconds…Read more...

The unstoppable stock market has been experiencing some turmoil this month with the S&P 500 experiencing the most daily losses since 2008. Tariffs, interest rate hikes, and tech stocks are getting a lot of the blame from financial tea-readers. Here’s the good and the bad we saw from the earnings reports of the tech…Read more...

Days before the arrest of Cesar Sayoc Jr., the man police say mailed up to 14 pipe bombs to chief political rivals of President Donald Trump, teams of Facebook employees were already busy combing the platform trying to remove as much content as possible praising the failed terrorist attacks.

In these trying times, it’s nice to know some scams are as painfully obvious as they seem. According to a new study, vaginal jade eggs aren’t an ancient Chinese remedy for women’s sexual problems, as promoters often claim they are—they’re actually a modern invention.

At one of the most prominent artificial intelligence (AI) conferences in the world last year, keynote speaker Elon Musk reportedly made a joke about “tits” on a stage in front hundreds of researchers and engineers. He seemed to be referring to the name of the mainstay AI conference, NIPS, and its unofficial…Read more...

Earlier this year, Amazon’s facial recognition tech Rekognition—which can scan photos and videos and match them against databases of faces—faced a flood of criticism from Amazon employees, shareholders, and civil rights activists who argued that its use by government agencies was unethical or even dangerous. That…Read more...

The concept of a great beyond, whether heavenly or hellish, exists across so many fictional universes—be they part of belief systems or, more often than not in the realms of sci-fi and fantasy, actual planes of existence. To celebrate Death Week at Gizmodo, we gather up a few our of favorite afterlives.

A ghostly dust satellite or two might be orbiting the Earth, according to new research building on a 60-year-old idea.Read more...

Pee contains some pretty amazing stuff. Scientists have known for nearly a decade that it’s possible to produce bricks from bacteria, sand, and urea—a chemical found in urine. Researchers have gone ahead and produced those bricks, now for the first time with human pee.Read more...

The U.S. Geological Survey has updated its National Volcanic Threat Assessment, ranking the most dangerous active volcanoes in the United States. To the surprise of no one, Hawaii’s Mount Kilauea is ranked at the top of the list, but other potentially dangerous volcanoes—including some lurking below the public’s…Read more...

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday entered into an agreement with the telecom industry groups currently suing California over its recently passed net neutrality law, potentially delaying its implementation until next year.

Facebook on Friday announced the removal of 82 pages, groups, and accounts linked to Iran, a majority of which had misrepresented themselves as being U.S. citizens and posted on “politically charged topics,” including immigration and race relations, as relevant to the United States.

Nintendo’s Labo Robot Kit will be a ton of fun for your kids. Right? Your kids. Definitely not you. So uh, get your kids the kit for $60 on Amazon right now, a $20 discount. You can even stash it to use as a holiday gift in a couple of months.Read more...

Cesar Sayoc Jr., the 56-year-old Floridian arrested in connection to a rash of pipe-bomb mailings directed at many of President Trump’s foremost political opponents, has a considerable criminal history (among them, a previous arrest for a pipe-bomb threat, according to the Washington Post.) But Sayoc’s history of…Read more...

There are many, many jobs that are much worse than working at Netflix. But based on an extensive profile of the company’s culture, the streaming company certainly seems to have built a unique version of corporate hell.Read more...

When a 32-year-old man was struck and killed by lightning while visiting Sunken Meadow State Park in Long Island, New York this August, he became the first lightning fatality recorded in the state since 2016. And he was only the 16th lightning death reported in the entire U.S. this year.Read more...

Over three seasons, Syfy anthology show Channel Zero—which takes its inspiration from Creepypasta stories—has explored some extremely dark nightmares. Season four, The Dream Door, begins a terrifying new chapter tonight, so we caught up with creator Nick Antosca to get the spooky scoop.Read more...

In 2018, the Oxford English Dictionary added words like beerfest, jumbotron, modder, antifa, binge-watch, and nothingburger, reflecting the awful, awful times we live in. But have you ever wondered what words officially entered our lexicon the year you were born? Probably not, but it turns out Merriam-Webster’s Time…Read more...

Love is a wonderful thing, especially when it involves gay penguin dads.Read more...

As AT&T rushes to pare down its business in an apparent attempt to not seem like a giant monopolistic media company sucking at the teat of the American public by relying on subsidies and overpriced data plans to stay afloat, some hard choices have to be made. The latest is devastating for anyone who likes old films. …Read more...

Vikings acquired the capacity to produce tar at an industrial scale as early as the 8th century AD, according to new research. The protective black goo was applied to the planks and sails of ships, which the Vikings used for trade and launching raids. Without the ability to produce copious amounts of tar, this new…Read more...

There is a light at the end of the seemingly never-ending skincare tunnel, literally. The Neutrogena Light Therapy Acne Mask is a breakout-clearing marvel (and one of our favorite collagen-boosters), and now, it’s available on Amazon with a $7 coupon. The mask covers your entire mug, and delivers powerful targeted…Read more...

On Thursday, a 45-year-old man wielding a hammer reportedly smashed through a glass screen protecting one of only four copies of the original Magna Carta. The incident, which predictably has a lot of people making National Treasure jokes, happened at Salisbury Cathedral in the UK. The man, who is not Nicolas Cage, is…Read more...

It’s not unusual for construction workers to find historical objects inside of walls. But the team renovating the T.B. Converse Building in Valdosta, Georgia, were caught off guard when they found an estimated 1,000 teeth buried in a second-floor wall. The weirdest thing is that the same thing has happened in two…Read more...

As most people were sitting down for dinner Thursday evening, ready to put another horrendous day in a stressful week behind them, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin was sitting down as well, only he was firing up the camcorder, gearing up for a good ole PSA on shitposting.

Every year, various members of the illusion community—which is made up of scientists, neurologists, researchers, and even artists—get together to decide which of their recently created mind-melters deserves the honor of Best Illusion of the Year. This year, Japan’s Kokichi Sugihara claimed the top prize with a…Read more...

The long-in-limbo Labyrinth sequel has a script. Alexander Skarsgård joins the monster mashup madness of Godzilla vs Kong. Milla Jovovich shows off behind the scenes on the Monster Hunter movie. Plus, John Barrowman still wants in on Doctor Who, and what’s to come in the DC/CW universe. To me, my spoilers!

Lenovo’s line of Yoga laptops is well known and liked for the clever hinges that allow the devices to smoothly transform from a regular clamshell with a decent keyboard to a thick tablet. In particular, the Yoga made a name for itself with a slick “watchband” hinge that looks more like a fancy piece of jewelry than…Read more...

Dry winter air is knocking at the door, but you can fight back with this highly rated Levoit humidifier, on sale for an all-time low $67, today only.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is suing Ecuador, the country that has been protecting him ever since he jumped bail in London on sexual misconduct charges in 2012. Assange claims that Ecuador is violating his rights of asylum by limiting his internet access in the London embassy, but the suit is already off to a…Read more...

Instagram has pulled from its platform a post by former Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos that seemingly praised the apparent pipe bombs sent this week to a number of top Democrats—including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—as well as CNN. The post, shared Thursday,…Read more...

An image of a pea-sized cephalopod captured by a team of scientists in Hawaii has been making the rounds this week as the result of how cute this tiny squish appears at first glance. But make no mistake, even a baby octopus can be a cold-hearted killer—and there’s photographic evidence to prove it.

While this should seemingly go without saying, it turns out that “kill it with fire” is not a great idea when it comes to ridding your home of pests. Nonetheless, there is no shortage of failed cases of people attempting to kill spiders or insects with blowtorches, and it doesn’t often end well.

A painting made by an artificial intelligence program sold at Christie’s in New York auction on Thursday for $432,500—far more than the estimated $7,000 to $10,000.Read more...

The active ingredient that makes magic mushrooms so magic—the psychedelic drug psilocybin—is one step closer to becoming a legal treatment for difficult cases of depression. This week, the company Compass Pathways announced that it had received the Food and Drug Administration’s Breakthrough Therapy designation for its…Read more...

Toronto’s Pearson Airport has an important message for would-be stem-pickers: The weed there is not up for grabs.

Among the measures Facebook brought in to respond to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election on the platform was increased transparency around political ads bought on the platform, including making all political ads available in an online archive. Earlier this year, the company began requiring all political…Read more...

Earlier today, a report from the New York Times described in excruciating detail the latitude given to one of Google’s former golden boys, Andy Rubin, better known as the “father of Android,” after an investigation into sexual misconduct. A hollow statement from current CEO Sundar Pichai notably does not deny any…Read more...

Jodie Whittaker’s new Doctor Who ensemble isn’t just functional, it’s fashionable—but in a way that’s quirky, slightly androgynous, and alternative. That’s no surprise, considering its origins.

The conditions under which early lifeforms originated and exploded into the many animal groups we see today is a mystery that has confounded scientists for decades. New research suggests shallow marine environments were a critical testbed for these early animals, providing the perfect space for them to evolve the…Read more...

The nation’s most vocal privacy advocate in the U.S. Senate is pressing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week to implement new technologies that would stop foreign hackers from identifying which U.S. government website Americans are visiting, including U.S. government employees.

The iPhone XR hits stores on Friday, and everybody is flipping out about it being the most affordable new iPhone. Starting at $750, however, the XR isn’t actually that much cheaper in the grander scheme of things. And yet, to the casual observer, the device also looks a heck of a lot like the undeniably expensive…Read more...

Antarctica has been really been letting its hair down lately. First, there was news of a haunting hum coming from one of its ice shelves. Then came the weirdo rectangular iceberg.

It takes little more than logging on to see the flaws in today’s internet—mainly, how easy it is to steal or intercept data. One future solution for these problems could be an upgrade that relies on the latest advances in the science of subatomic particles: a quantum internet.