Gizmodo

In a welcome bit of news as water shortages hit major cities worldwide, scientists have discovered an enormous low-salinity aquifer off the U.S. East Coast. The researchers say it could indicate other such aquifers trapped beneath the salty seas in ocean sediments across the planet.

In a blog post yesterday evening, social media giant Facebook announced several changes meant to mitigate the effects of misinformation and hate speech causing real-world violence, including the formation of a Strategic Response team meant to stop a repeat of what happened in Myanmar.

Astronomers captured a first look at radiation emitted directly by Uranus’ rings.

If you own a Dell, now would be a good time to update your system. Even if your PC wasn’t manufactured by Dell, it’s possible that a new vulnerability affecting millions could apply to you.

It’s hard to know precisely when the electric fan was invented, but Thomas Edison was probably involved. In the century-plus since then, the basic idea hasn’t changed: spin a propeller really fast, wind results, room cools down. The performance of your average table fan, however, has evolved quite a bit. Now,…Read more...

It’s amazing what a set of wheels can do. What was once a vague chunk of metal, wires, and circuit boards is now finally starting to look like an actual rover.Read more...

It’s become abundantly clear that Amazon is interested in incorporating surveillance into many of its products and services—through the internet, in our homes, and from the sky.Read more...

Apple iPad Air/iPad Pro 10.5" Smart Keyboard Cover | $80 | AmazonRead more...

What were those two strange objects flying over Kansas City, Missouri last night? Plenty of people took to Twitter yesterday to speculate that they might be anything from internet balloons for Google’s Project Loon to slimy green aliens. But in reality, they’re almost certainly Darpa’s new test balloons. What was…Read more...

Something odd happened in Hong Kong last week. Protestors against a controversial proposed extradition bill were afraid to use their metro cards. Instead of swiping their cards through the turnstiles of the city’s subway system, they lined up to buy single-journey tickets with cash, apparently worried about “leaving a…Read more...

Up to 30% Off Home Security Cameras and Systems | Home DepotRead more...

Mark Hamill hopes The Rise of Skywalker will be his final turn in Star Wars. It seems like Halloween 2 is all but ready to start shooting. Peter Parker has a superheroic heart-to-heart in new Spider-Man: Far From Home footage. Plus, new snippets from Midsommar, and what’s to come on the next season of The Terror.…Read more...

Thanks to the internet and all the apps and services that run on top of it, we can now ping someone on the other side of the world instantly—but that person doesn’t necessarily want to hear from you in the middle of the night. The same goes for social media sharing, because the time when inspiration strikes may not be…Read more...

JetBoil Flash Camp Stove | $75 | AmazonRead more...

A massive fire rocked an oil refinery in South Philadelphia early Friday morning, causing explosions that could be felt as far away as New Jersey, according to early news reports. No evacuations have been issued for the area, but those in neighborhoods near the blaze were ordered to shelter in place.Read more...

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order overnight barring U.S.-based airlines from flying over some airspace controlled by Iran. The FAA order came just as news broke that President Donald Trump had ordered a military strike against Iran on Thursday, but had called it off at the last minute.Read more...

House Republicans and Democrats came together on Thursday to put forth comprehensive legislation designed not only to help end the scourge of robocalls but prevent U.S. consumers from being forced to foot the bill.

Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses of Oregon’s legislature and the governorship. That means that they can pass basically whatever the hell they want unless, of course, Republican legislators decide to desert the capital.Read more...

You might have heard recently, from publications like the Washington Post, NBC, and of course, Newsweek, that some people are growing a “horn” or a “spike” out of the back of their skull from using a smartphone too much.Read more...

A Christian group known as Return to Order has been running a campaign to urge Netflix to remove the show Good Omens, which was released on Amazon.Read more...

Google isn’t killing all tablets, but it will no longer be making its own tablets. It’s a crying shame as Google’s merging of Android and Chrome OS for last years abysmally reviewed Pixel Slate was perhaps the perfect tablet OS.Read more...

With the historic Rosetta mission now firmly in the rear view mirror, the European Space Agency has set its sights on a different kind of comet, that is, a comet that’s never visited the inner reaches of the solar system. Called Comet Interceptor, the mission will include a mothership and two “daughter” spacecraft.

In its first day on the New York Stock Exchange, workplace messaging company Slack leapt over 50-percent above its reference price of $26 per share despite employing an unusual, less costly strategy to debut on the market. The past few hours of trading have sent Slack’s total value soaring to $23.1 billion, while…Read more...

I’ve spent most of my day thinking about the video going around describing the absurd, 12-part process that’s required to reset GE C-Life smart bulbs. So I bought some and performed the Sisyphean ritual myself.Read more...

Trond Larsen was night-searching for rare frogs and insects in the Lost City recently discovered within Honduras’ Mosquitia Rainforest when his headlamp illuminated something surprising: a curious black puma. Larsen, a researcher who led this February 2017 expedition into the so-called Lost City of the Monkey God,…Read more...

It’s no fun being a fan of retro gaming if you grew up a fan of Sega consoles. Emulators and game-bundled throwback consoles have been notoriously bad, but recently things have improved—as long as you’re a Sega fan happy to throw money at your passion. The $190 Mega Sg console plays classic Sega games flawlessly, and…Read more...

If you thought the heat wave-induced melting of half of Greenland’s surface last week was alarming, wait until you hear the long-term projections for its ice sheet.

Facing overheating batteries that “may pose a fire safety risk,” Apple launched a voluntary recall and replacement program on Thursday for the 15-inch 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

It seemed virtually inevitable that I would be thrown out of AutismOne, a yearly conference that has been accused of being a hive of anti-vaccine sentiments, bad science, scaremongering and worthless products. The conference has, after all, ejected several science bloggers who have previously attended, as well as a…Read more...

A London student was just convicted for using a 3D printer to make a gun—but not just something that looks like a gun. On Wednesday, Tendai Muswere pleaded guilty to manufacturing a lethal firearm with a 3D printer. The weapon in question resembles a pepper-box revolver, popular in early 19th century America. Muswere…Read more...

Plenty of people around the world, it turns out, are willing to return a stranger’s lost wallet—especially if it’s filled with cash, according to a counterintuitive study.Read more...

The U.S. Justice Department argued in federal court this week that government agencies like Customs and Border Protection have no responsibility to provide toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap to migrant kids who are currently held in America’s vast network of concentration camps. Human rights organizations have…Read more...

You can get a very capable smartwatch for a few hundred bucks now, as long as you’re not overly concerned with aesthetics. Following luxury watchmakers like TAG Heuer, Garmin’s new MARQ line strives to finally bridge the gap between stylish analog timepieces and less stylish smartwatches. But with a price tag ranging…Read more...

The leaders of Riviera Beach, Florida, this week voted to authorize a payment of $600,000 to criminals who crippled the city’s computer system after targeting its police department with ransomware.

At the end of the day, everything about climate change is a choice. And among the most serious choices are the ones we’ll face are along our coasts.Read more...

It’s probably a bad idea to buy used connected devices because it can be difficult to determine who could still be connected to that device.Read more...

Vaping may or may not be healthier than smoking conventional cigarettes, but a recent incident involving a teenage boy, in which an exploding e-cigarette blew out several of his teeth and cracked open his jaw, is a serious cause for concern.

Most people would probably agree that YouTube comments are generally pretty worthless (especially the ones that tell you the year the commenter last watched a particular music video). In fact, the video streaming site is widely known for having some of the vilest comments on the internet. So now, after all these…Read more...

With his son. And teaming up with Ultimate Spider-Man artist and Miles Morales co-creator Sara Pichelli to do so.

Back in 1990, subsistence hunters in Greenland gave a skull to scientists. Its origin, they explained, was a strange creature, evenly grey, with flippers like a beluga but a tail like a narwhal. The specimen was larger than either a beluga or a narwhal’s skull, but seemed to contain the proportions of both.

Three U.S. senators received a classified briefing on reported Navy encounters with unidentified flying objects, Politico reported on Wednesday, including vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Mark Warner.Read more...

Cary Elwes joins the Black Christmas remake. Brace yourselves, a seventh Paranormal Activity is on the way. The Rain will return for one final season. Plus, what’s to come on Swamp Thing and Krypton, Daisy Ridley goes fantasy-horror, and Chucky claims his latest Toy Story victim. Spoilers away!

President Donald Trump has often complained that America’s largest social media companies, like Facebook and Twitter, are censoring conservative voices. But even if they were, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to social media companies, and a video from President Trump’s latest rally in Florida shows that he (or, at…Read more...

People of the 20th century imagined that Americans of the future would be zipping around in flying cars and jetpacks. Instead, we’ve got a plummeting life expectancy, the rise of measles, and even a resurgence of concentration camps on U.S. soil.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has shot down a U.S. drone, according to multiple reports by Iranian state media channels. U.S. officials initially claimed that the drone was an MQ-4C Triton brought down by a surface-to-air missile, but CENTCOM now says it was an RQ-4A Global Hawk. And there are major differences in the…Read more...

The UK government’s plan to implement a mandatory, nationwide age verification system for pornographic websites attracted ridicule from technical experts who pointed out it could easily be evaded by anyone with minimal technical know-how, but would likely require sweeping tracking of porn viewers’ identities and web…Read more...

We are somehow on Day 2 of the “are the migrant detention centers concentration camps?” discourse, because one full day of arguing about this—all while migrants and migrant children continue to be detained in overcrowded, dehumanizing facilities—wasn’t nearly enough. Indeed, now Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd has decided…Read more...

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is set to scrutinize Facebook’s cryptocurrency ambitions at a hearing set for July 16, Reuters reported on Wednesday, in yet another sign that legislators are extremely wary (to put it mildly) of the company’s shift into global financial services.

With Toy Story 4's premiere upon us, now’s as good a time as any to start thinking about Pixar’s future projects, and not just ones like Onward that we’ve already seen glimpses of. Today, Disney and Pixar announced the title of Soul, their next major feature hitting theaters next summer, and included a cryptic tagline…Read more...

Fans hoping to learn more about Supreme Leader Snoke before that minor incident of him getting sliced in half by a lightsaber in The Last Jedi, rejoice! But not that much.