Gizmodo

These are scary times for the web as we know it, and a new petition before the United States Supreme Court could have broad implications for how we’ll interact online. One of President Trump’s go-to lawyers has made it his mission to get the highest court in the land to reconsider a landmark defamation case against…Read more...

Right now, some 7,200 Central Americans—including many women with small children—are migrating north toward the U.S. in large, openly visible groups called caravans. It’s a dangerous journey that may involve crossing more rivers and encountering human traffickers, but the desperation is real for many communities in…Read more...

The winged Archaeopteryx is one of the most famous dinosaurs known to science, yet arguments persist about its place in the evolutionary family tree. The reported discovery of an entirely new species of Archaeopteryx with distinctly bird-like characteristics suggests its relationship to modern birds is more meaningful…Read more...

In folklore and movies, silver is often one of the best tools against terrifying monsters like vampires and werewolves. But a recent study seems to show that silver could help defeat some real-life horrors, too. Silver nanoparticles loaded with common anti-seizure drugs might be able to safely and effectively treat…Read more...

Consider the ladybug. Our polka-dotted little friend spends its days munching aphids, climbing leaves, occasionally alighting upon a delighted child’s outstretched finger, and generally beetling around being adorable. It’s one of nature’s most inoffensive critters, which is perhaps why the Dinocampus coccinellae wasp…Read more...

CBS’s all-encompassing expansion of the Star Trek universe just got a weird new addition: an adult animated comedy from one of the minds behind Rick and Morty.

Laptops haven’t changed much since 2012. Sure, they’re a bit sleeker, more powerful, and have slightly better battery lives. But after Microsoft conjured up the original Surface with its kickstand and detachable keyboard in 2012, it’s largely been five plus years of iterative improvements. That doesn’t mean companies…Read more...

More than a century ago, a teenager named Abigail Roberson had her photo taken at a professional studio in upstate New York. The photo wasn’t particularly scandalous—Roberson is pictured from the shoulders up, looking away from the camera—but it achieved the 1890s version of virality and set off a legal debate about…Read more...

President Trump regularly uses his iPhones to tweet and, reportedly, to make phones calls. And according to the New York Times, Chinese and Russian spies are listening, especially to his unsecured cellphone. But President Trump would like you to know that he “rarely” uses his cellphones. He says so in this morning’s…Read more...

A month after Apple revealed a new smartwatch and a new iPhone lineup that finally does away with the home button once and for all, the company will hold a follow-up event next week that’s tag-lined, “There’s more in the making.” A new, home button-less iPad Pro seems likely, but what else does Apple have planned to…Read more...

The Phantom Tollbooth’s adaptation has a new director. The fifth Purge movie could be the last in the franchise. Stephen Amell’s got more behind-the-scenes pics from the big DC/CW crossover, Elseworlds. Plus, a new Star Wars Resistance clip, and see the Riverdale kids play their parents for a new flashback episode.…Read more...

The Chinese government, no stranger to mass censorship, has halted a stopgap approval process it has been using to vet video games before they can be released to the public amid a broader crackdown on the market, Bloomberg reported this week.Read more...

The New York Times published a troubling report yesterday alleging that President Trump uses off-the-shelf iPhones to talk with friends and that both Russian and Chinese spies are listening to Trump’s phone calls to figure out how to manipulate him. But China would like the American president to know that if he’s…Read more...

Facebook has been fined £500,000 ($645,000) by the United Kingdom today over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The miniscule fine was the most allowed under the law, but Facebook can probably find that kind of money in its couch cushions. Based on last year’s revenue, Facebook makes $645,000 in less than 9 minutes of…Read more...

A so-described “ghostly” cephalopod put its deep-sea acrobatics on full display this week after it was captured by researchers in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in what the team says is a previously unexplored area. The creature is part of a genus known as Grimpoteuthis and is sometimes referred to as a…Read more...

All across the country this week, pipe bombs have been showing up in the mail of prominent Democrats and critics of Donald Trump—with NBC News listing former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Maxine Waters, billionaire philanthropist George…Read more...

That people would generally prefer to minimize casualties in a hypothetical autonomous car crash has been found to be true in past research, but what happens when people are presented with more complex scenarios? And what happens when autonomous vehicles must choose between two scenarios in which at least one…Read more...

Donald Trump has never been a person who comes to mind when one thinks “cybersecurity”—he may not even know how to use a computer—but even by that low bar, the president and his administration have barely been able to keep it together when it comes to the security risk posed by cell phones. A report in the New York…Read more...

In a movie that’s oh-so-totally ’80s, no moment in The Lost Boys is more ’80s than the boardwalk saxophone performance.Read more...

Today, roboticized model kits. Tomorrow, the world!

Lawyers from the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that, in their opinion, American businesses are free to discriminate against trans employees.Read more...

Let’s say there is a hundred dollar bill wedged behind a bookshelf just beyond your reach, and beside the shelf is a set of TinkerToys. Even a toddler could probably snap together a few of the sticks to fish the bill out. But what about an animal? One especially smart crow species seems to have figured out this…Read more...

The Antarctic desolation and cold could be too much for some people—even folks you would think are used to some cold weather. A Russian researcher has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly stabbing a peer at the Bellingshausen Station on Antarctica’s King George Island.Read more...

Facebook is rolling out new anti-harassment tools for its virtual reality platform as it continues to push for more users to plug in.

Apple’s latest iteration of iOS has reportedly turned the GrayKey hacking device into an expensive doorstop. Law enforcement around the world has taken to using GrayKey to break into locked iPhones but it appears Apple has finally gotten ahead of the device’s crafty manufacturers. For now.Read more...

The flu vaccine remains the best proactive way to protect yourself and your loved ones from the influenza virus. But this upcoming flu season, there’ll be a new weapon available against the nasty disease. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration announced their approval of a new antiviral treatment for the flu,…Read more...

Archaeologists have discovered two previously unknown forms of spearpoint technology at a site in Texas. The triangular blades appear to be older than the projectile points produced by the Paleoamerican Clovis culture, an observation that’s complicating our understanding of how the Americas were colonized—and by whom.

A few weeks back my coworker Mario Aguilar set about buying the first ever Android phone to commemorate the mobile OS’s 10 year anniversary. He succeeded, and the T-Mobile G1 came with a surprise—a micro SD card with exactly 11 mp3s on it. So the question we’re left with is, hey, do we have your phone? [Please see the…Read more...

Facebook is using new machine learning tech to flag child exploitation and nudity on the service, the company’s global safety head Antigone Davis announced today. In the last quarter alone, Davis says the new tools helped the company delete “8.7 million pieces of content” that “violated our child nudity or sexual…Read more...

Another study has found that when well-meaning people donate to crowdfunding campaigns raising money for medical treatments, that cash sometimes ends up in the pockets of people offering useless or even dangerous therapies.

Cell phones have changed the way people think, act, and communicate. They’ve also been hell on the horror genre. Smartphones have rendered many classic horror movie tropes ridiculous, or even implausible. However, they’ve also provided opportunities to scare us in new and inventive ways. Let’s look at where modern…Read more...

For at least 11 years, an unnerving story has made the rounds on Disney fan blogs: people regularly scatter the ashes of loved ones at Disneyland and Disney World. Well, today, the Wall Street Journal has confirmed the urban legend. And we’re not talking about a couple of isolated cases. This happens on a monthly…Read more...

You’ve probably cleared your local browser history before. Maybe you did it just moments ago. Perhaps you didn’t want your partner, roommate, or coworkers to see what kind of weirdness you’d been searching for. But clearing the activity data that’s on Google’s servers has never been especially easy—deterring many…Read more...

You’ve probably heard about Thomas Edison’s infamous 1903 film where he electrocuted an elephant. It’s just as horrifying as you’d imagine. But fewer people know that this wasn’t actually Edison’s first electrocution film. Two years earlier, in 1901, he produced a film re-enacting a famous execution. Perversely, it…Read more...

Your photos and videos are likely to be some of the most precious files you have on your smartphone. Even if you’ve got new photos and videos taken with the camera synced to the cloud though, what about the pictures your family send you over WhatsApp? Or the Instagram Stories you post? Here’s how to make sure every…Read more...

Yahoo’s ongoing legal troubles related to the biggest data breach in history appear to be coming to a close. It has submitted a settlement to a U.S. district court agreeing to pay victims $50 million along with some other benefits. Anyone who spent time undoing damage from the breach should pay attention.Read more...

New photos of a surprisingly rectangular iceberg are offering the full picture of this now-famous Antarctic structure—and it remains weird as hell.

Emily Penn had a mission: To find a piece of trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch large enough to stick a satellite transmitter on so that researchers back on shore could track it until a vessel came to pick it up.

Explosive devices were sent to both Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, the Secret Service said Wednesday.Read more...

Robert Englund thinks he’s got one more Nightmare on Elm Street movie in him. Get a look at the animated adaptation of Reign of the Supermen. Erik Oleson has hopes that Daredevil will get a fourth season. Plus, what’s to come on Black Lightning and The Flash and our best look yet at Star Trek: Discovery’s hairy…Read more...

If you’re considering getting one of Google’s new Pixel 3 devices, beware: Unless you use a Google-certified accessory, wireless fast charging will only work at half of the phone’s maximum 10 watt charging speed.

At least 20 people, many of them Russian fans on their way to attend a Champions League soccer match between AS Roma and CSKA Moscow, were injured after an escalator in the metro station at Rome’s Piazza Repubblica went haywire, CNN International reported on Tuesday.

The German Luftwaffe suffered another devastating defeat today when a plane bearing its World War II-era insignia crash-landed on the center divider of U.S. 101 in California on Tuesday, promptly going up in an inferno like its historical predecessors.

Few people capture a science fiction scene quite like artist Kilian Eng, and rarely has that been illustrated better than his latest art piece.Read more...

A stunning photograph of Utah’s Badlands—with the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies in the background—captured the top prize of this year’s Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.

What happens when the latest installment of your multi-billion dollar franchise grosses less than $200 million domestic? Yup, it’s time for a reboot.Read more...

Todd Phillips’ Joker movie may be focused on the origin of the Clown Prince of Gotham, but it’s gonna touch on the Dark Knight too. Because of course it is.Read more...

It feels like 2018 is the year of rapid intensification. Storm after storm after storm has spun up from humble begins to cyclonic monster around the world. The latest cyclone to join the ignominious club is Typhoon Yutu which is in the midst of spinning up into a forecast Category 5 super typhoon by Wednesday. Guam…Read more...

I got my flu shot today. It was fine. No biggie. I didn’t flinch as the nurse shoved a hollow metal rod into my arm. I even watched her do it, to which she remarked that I was “very brave.” Yes, I am.Read more...

According to new plans filed with city officials, the Boring Company is building a car elevator inside the garage of a nondescript house near Los Angeles. The steel shaft is designed to lower a vehicle down to a test tunnel that snakes beneath the city of Hawthorne. And as some jokesters have pointed out, the whole…Read more...