Gizmodo

Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen, a name that you have trouble spelling, definitely definitely not me, is one of the central players of Game of Thrones, but she, of course, wasn’t the only person auditioned for the part. According to a recent Vulture interview, Elizabeth Olsen, of Scarlet Witch fame, also went out…Read more...

With calls for breaking up Facebook now winning support from multiple 2020 presidential candidates, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, it’s getting hard for the social media giant’s leadership to hide from the growing chorus of voices throwing their weight behind the cause.Read more...

The New York City Fire Department responded to a report in Times Square on Saturday after a billboard went up in flames. In video of the incident, the billboard could be seen spilling debris as it continued to flash ads for data collection, which seems about right for our digital dystopia.Read more...

It’s time for the real heroes to show up.Read more...

Following an episode involving discharged bear repellent at an Amazon warehouse late last year that affected dozens of onsite workers, the company plans to store similarly hazardous products in specialized facilities.

Alongside news of the Rescue Rangers film, the Hollywood Reporter dropped one more bombshell last night, in the form of a well-sourced rumor about the future of Matt Reeves’ The Batman movie: in particular, its villains.Read more...

What if you only had to buy one notebook for the rest of your life? That’s basically the value proposition of the Rocketbook Everlast, which is on sale today just for our readers with promo code KJRCKTBOOK.Read more...

It’s easy to be a security pessimist.

The founder of uBiome, an embattled startup claiming to employ “machine learning, artificial intelligence, and advanced statistical techniques” and probably a few other buzzwords to assess gut health, repeatedly misrepresented her actual age, Business Insider reports, landing her on several minimally-prestigious lists…Read more...

Soon after Mike Schroepfer was promoted to Facebook CTO, he began recruiting top neural network researchers to build up the company’s AI capabilities. At the time, he and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to use machine learning to focus on areas like facial recognition, targeted ads, language translation, and chatbots.Read more...

It’s commonly accepted at this point that if you’ve spent enough time online, Google has a wealth of data on you. But did you know this also includes an itemized list of purchases you’ve made, and not just through Google services? For instance, the first (humbling) item on my purchases page is “chicken fingers,” which…Read more...

The best buttons on the internet are all children of the “delete” key.

Dental evidence suggests Neanderthals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor around 800,000 years ago—hundreds of thousands of years earlier than standard estimates. The finding could finally reveal the provenance of our shared ancestry, but some experts say the new evidence is unconvincing.Read more...

Are we living in a golden age of television? Quite possibly, if your idea of TV is “a piece of visual entertainment to be watched alone, enjoyed, and never thought about again.” Personally, I find shows themselves less interesting than talking about them—even if it’s just complaining about why bad episodes were…Read more...

A dangerous weather setup is shaping up over the Midwest this weekend. Powerful storms could usher tornadoes, hail, and lighting into the region, putting millions at risk. Heavy rain could also cause flash floods as it falls on saturated soil in areas already grappling with historic flooding.

A California man who emailed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and threatened to murder his children in 2017 has been sentenced to 20 months in prison.Read more...

Some are drawn to the dark mystic arts in a search for ultimate knowledge. Others, out of desire to impose their will on the world. Some folks, however, are just trying to get laid.Read more...

An ancient burial practice involving the use of massive stone jars seems to have been more widespread in Southeast Asia than once assumed, owing to a surprising trove of new discoveries in Laos.

Former Facebook recruiters say the company’s damaged image is driving away potential hires, according to a new report. Facebook, meanwhile, claims it’s doing better than ever, thank you very much.Read more...

Ask a Star Wars fan what they think about The Phantom Menace and you’re going to get a very specific answer. At Star Wars Celebration in Chicago last month, io9 spoke with fans about their memories and feelings on the eve of the film’s 20th anniversary, and the sentiment was way more positive than expected for all…Read more...

Snapchat filters—love’em or hate’em, about once a year one goes viral, floods your timeline, and you think to yourself, “Oh yeah, Snapchat still exists.”Read more...

Americans are continuing to have fewer and fewer children, according to a new government report released this week. Slightly fewer than 3.8 million children were born in 2018, the report found—a 2 percent decrease from 2017, and the lowest total number of births seen in 32 years. The fertility rate among women also…Read more...

In recent years, eerily accurate deepfake videos have gotten a lot of press, but automated voice replication has been quietly sliding into the uncanny valley as well. Case in point: The AI company Dessa has created a simulation of podcaster Joe Rogan’s voice that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.Read more...

Imagine if Avengers: Endgame was the first Marvel movie. Not storywise, of course. That would be silly. But think about a team-up, comic book movie on this scale coming into theaters, sight unseen. Logistically, that feels like a nightmare for a ton of reasons, especially if a company (or several) was tasked with…Read more...

A university in the United Kingdom is backpedaling after publishing an article claiming that one of their scientists helped crack the famously indecipherable Voynich manuscript, according to a statement.

On Thursday, an F-16 fighter jet crashed into a warehouse near the March Air Reserve Base in southern California. The pilot ejected and survived, but roughly a dozen people inside the warehouse were sent to the hospital for minor injuries related to the crash. The aftermath was all captured on video.

Maybe you’re taking your first tentative steps into the smart home market, or maybe you’re expanding what you’ve already got, but at some point you’re going to want to get everything working together—or else be faced with using dozens of different apps every day to get your smart gadgets doing your bidding.

The Goon movie lives. The Tick is searching for a new home. AMC is exploring a new sci-fi anthology series about true love. Akiva Goldsman sets his sights on another comic book universe. Plus, new details on Disenchantment’s return, a creepy new look at Child’s Play’s updated Chucky, and a Katy Keene teaser. Spoilers…Read more...

A bug discovered in Slack, the workplace messaging app, may have allowed an attacker to intercept files downloaded from inside Slack’s Windows desktop client, according to security researchers.

Grumpy Cat has died from complications following a urinary tract infection. She was 7 years old.Read more...

Online retailers are engaged in a constant, all-consuming quest to make the process of buying stuff ever faster and more efficient and to remove as many barriers between you and the final click-confirmed purchase as possible. Amazon has experimented with IRL ‘dash’ buttons that automatically order you more detergent…Read more...

From Batfleck...to Patman. Twilight star Robert Pattinson is in talks to play Batman for Matt Reeves in his upcoming film, The Batman.Read more...

What’s the absolute easiest way to unify America today? Go anti-robocall.

As wonderfully cute as dog breeds like the French Bulldog look (for some people at least), it’s long been thought that these dogs’ distinctively compact skulls also make them very vulnerable to severe health and breathing issues. But new research out of Europe suggests that smushy faces are only part of the problem…Read more...

Scientists created a variant of the E. coli bacteria with an entirely synthetic genome, according to a new paper.Read more...

The worst part about visiting somewhere you don’t speak the local tongue is that sinking feeling as you squint at a phrasebook, open your mouth, and prepare yourself to totally butcher the language. If that’s your nightmare, good news. Google is working on an AI that can actually speak in another language using your…Read more...

Last year, Amnesty International spotted a long-running campaign against journalists and human rights activists in the Middle East.Read more...

A NASA scientist-turned-biohacker celebrity and entrepreneur—who has won over mad scientists around the world for his anti-establishment science advocacy—is reportedly being investigated for practicing medicine without a license.Read more...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before but the ice is screwed. New findings released on Thursday reveal that a quarter of the ice sheets in West Antarctica, the most vulnerable part of the continent, have destabilized. Ice loss has sped up fivefold across the region’s most imperiled glaciers in just 25 years.Read more...

You’re The Man Now Dog, one of the earliest sites associated with web 2.0 internet culture, went dark sometime in the past few days, though exactly when or why was a mystery until just about an hour ago.

Chelsea Manning, who was released from jail last week after the federal grand jury she was subpoenaed to testify before lapsed, was taken back into custody on Thursday as a recalcitrant witness.Read more...

A U.S. government-led trial may confirm the worst fears of anyone whose diet starts and ends in the frozen food aisle. It suggests that people who mostly eat ultra-processed foods will take in more calories and gain more weight than those who stick to mostly unprocessed foods—even if the two diets start off with the…Read more...

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has been strongly urged by a Democratic lawmaker to make corrections to statements he made during a contentious oversight hearing on Wednesday while raising the possibility that he intentionally lied.

There’s plenty of evidence indicating that facial recognition tech is far from serving as a fair and accurate identification tool but because the sector is mostly lawless, this technology is easily weaponized. And according to a new report, in the hands of many cops, it is being used in profoundly dumb and…Read more...

Six bags made the cut in this week’s hiking day pack Co-Op, but now, it’s time to tell most of them to take a hike. Check out the finalists below, then be sure to vote at the bottom of the post.

New Horizons mission scientists have released the first peer-reviewed results from their study of 2014 MU69, demonstrating just how “pristine” this object is.Read more...

At Google I/O 2019, Google announced it was renaming the Google Home Hub smart display to be the Google Nest Hub while also combining the two brands into a presumably more harmonious single entity. Now Google wants Nest users to better understand what’s happening.Read more...

Long before any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s heroes had the slightest inkling they might one day have to literally turn back time to save half of existence, Thanos was busy moving heaven and Titan to get his sizable purple hands on each of the Infinity Stones.Read more...

In recent years, police have increasingly used data from ancestry-testing companies to identify major crime suspects through the DNA of their family members. A new case, however, is reigniting the debate about when and where it’s appropriate to use this powerful crime-fighting tool.

It was easy to get excited about the Dyson Cyclone V10 Absolute, when it launched last spring. The cordless vacuum is “so good, it’s killing cords altogether,” wrote a Gizmodo colleague. I’ve now been using my Dyson Cyclone V10 for a year, and it might be too good, too powerful. No wonder Dyson redesigned the thing.Read more...