Gizmodo

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?)

For years, Arya Stark was focused on one thing: killing every person on her death list. But it ended a couple of names short, as other people, old age, or falling rocks got to her intended targets first. However, Game of Thrones actors Maisie Williams and Lena Headey both agree that there was one name Arya should’ve…Read more...

Google revealed a bug on Tuesday that left enterprise G Suite passwords stored incorrectly for the last 14 years so that they were encrypted but unhashed. It’s a bug that could have allowed Google employees to access credentials — but Google was quick to point out no such access was detected.

Airbnb and DNA-testing company 23andMe announced on Tuesday the two companies have partnered to help people “connect with their ancestry” through a heritage travel program.

Our Moon features a nearside and far side with dramatically different geological features. This anomaly has puzzled scientists for years, but new computer simulations suggest the Moon’s asymmetric disposition can be traced back to an ancient collision with another object—possibly a dwarf planet.

AT&T has donated nearly $200,000 to politicians who’ve helped pass state-level laws either banning abortion or restricting women’s access to the medical procedure, according to a recently compiled list of contributions.

About a week ago, the “a” key on my MacBook Pro broke. Once flat and useful, the poor little guy now looks like a mini ski slope and barely works. Several of my friends have similar keyboard problems on their overpriced laptops. So it felt like a relief earlier today when Apple announced an expansion of Keyboard…Read more...

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

A new study out Tuesday is the latest to suggest that cannabis—or at least a key ingredient of it—might help people struggling with addiction. It found that people with opioid use disorder experienced less symptoms of craving when given cannabidiol, or CBD, over a placebo. CBD also helped them calm down and reduced…Read more...

How we talk about climate change is rapidly shifting as the ramifications of unchecked carbon pollution become ever clearer. The Guardian sped that shift along last week, when it updated its style guide to encourage reporters to refer to climate change as a “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and using “global…Read more...

When Intel announced a new line of 9th-gen CPUs a few weeks ago, it was sort of expected that those processors would find their way into a wide range of new and refreshed laptops like those from Asus and Razer. However, since Apple sometimes skips over entire generations of silicon, being able to get those chips in a…Read more...

Comcast is working on a new in-home device that will monitor your health, according to a new report from CNBC. A source familiar with the product confirmed its existence to Gizmodo but clarified that much of CNBC’s early reporting on the device today was inaccurate—namely that Comcast was working on anything close to…Read more...

Game of Thrones has ended, and the results were mixed. The series did wrap up some of its biggest storylines—some a bit more confusingly than others—but a few were also abandoned early. Here’s a list of some of the mysteries we’ll never see solved...unless the showrunners pull a Russo Brothers and start…Read more...

In advance of the 2020 elections, a new federal law proposed on Tuesday seeks to remove impediments faced by national political parties when seeking to help shore up the cybersecurity of their state-level counterparts.

In a post Thrones pivot, Jerome Flynn, better known as the Bronn of the Blackwater and one half of Robson & Jerome, has taken on an advisory position with a cryptocurrency startup aimed at promoting vegan lifestyle choices and ethical food production, because every single headline has to sound like it was produced by…Read more...

Mozilla launched a new version of Firefox on Tuesday spotlighting its speed and privacy features as the San Francisco-based open source upstarts continue to compete against Google Chrome’s global browser dominance.

WikiLeaks editor in chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has issued a warning that any information recovered by U.S. authorities from Julian Assange’s devices—seized following his expulsion from London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April—is likely to be tampered with, claiming that chain-of-custody procedures have already been violated.

Some 3 million years ago, a tiny mouse featuring reddish fur on its back and a white belly scurried across the landscape of what is now Germany. We know this thanks to a remarkable new breakthrough in which reddish color pigment was detected in an ancient fossil—a scientific first.

The $1,300 Canon RP is not the best camera made or even the slickest mirrorless camera. It will win no awards for dynamic range or color rendition, and if you’ve got strong feelings about the number of megapixels available in post-production, it will leave you uninspired. But the Canon RP is the cheapest full-frame…Read more...

The most valuable startup in the world is planning to launch a streaming music app.Read more...

Now that Game of Thrones’ series finale has come and gone, even more attention is being paid to author George R.R. Martin. He’s mostly been minding his own business and living his life while the rest of the world harangues him about the final two entries in the series of novels that started it all.Read more...