Gizmodo

Robots in factories are really good at picking up objects they’ve been pre-programmed to handle, but it’s a different story when new objects are thrown into the mix. To overcome this frustrating inflexibility, a team of researchers from MIT devised a system that essentially teaches robots how to assess unfamiliar…Read more...

He may be the most beleaguered and mistrusted CEO of any major tech company, but if an enormous new profile of Mark Zuckerberg makes one thing clear, he’s not as dumb as Twitter’s CEO.Read more...

A wildlife trade watchdog found 1,521 listings for animals on Facebook in Thailand. The posts included live animals, dead animals, and body parts.

Google recently rolled out a big update to Wear OS with improvements including a new streamlined UI, better health and fitness tracking, and an all-around smarter and more useful Google Assistant. But as nice as that all sounds, software is just one piece of what you need to make a good smartwatch, because without the…Read more...

There is no denying the 2018 Tesla Model 3's importance. It is intended to be Tesla’s volume-seller, the car that will hopefully make luxury electric cars more accessible to more people, especially when the long-promised $35,000 version hits the market. It is the key to Tesla’s future, the source of many of its …Read more...

Did you ever imagine what the future would be like when you were a kid? We all did. Some of us were obsessed with jetpacks and robots, while others dreamed of videophones and space travel. It was “all of the above” for two kids in Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, who imagined what the futuristic world of 1999 would look…Read more...

With Apple’s big fall event just two days away, iPhone speculation has reached peak turgidity. And so far, there’s a lot of info that’s trickled down via rumors and leaks that seem like a lock for September 12, including Apple’s plan to introduce three new iPhones, with the new iPhone Xs serving as the successor to…Read more...

Hurricane Florence is the biggest threat in the Atlantic right now, but it’s hardly the only storm. The tropics have gone wild, with three hurricanes spinning at the same time, as you can see for yourself in satellite imagery captured as the sun rose on the Atlantic Monday morning.

It’s easy to feel smug around kids. You might not have it all together—you might, in fact, be rapidly disintegrating professionally and psychologically—but at least you can spill some apple juice without wailing inconsolably for six hours. Comparatively terrible things happen to you all the time, and you don’t freak…Read more...

The Are You Afraid of the Dark? movie won’t adapt any of the original stories. New rumors hint the Mulan reboot could work some songs into the mix. Doom Patrol could be casting Cyborg’s dad. Plus, new footage from The Predator and Fear the Walking Dead, and new snippets from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Spoilers…Read more...

Anker’s new SoundCore Arcs are, by my count, the company’s 47,000th iteration on wireless headphones in the last three years, and they appear to be one of the best sets yet for working out.Read more...

Originally sold as the world’s first remote control ball, Sphero’s baseball-sized rolling toy has evolved over the years to eventually become one of the most accessible ways to learn the basics of coding robots. Bolt, the company’s latest creation, adds new abilities and ways to automate the bot’s behavior, including…Read more...

We’re up for a big week in the news, folks. There’s a lot going to happen, from Apple’s big September 12th announcement event to the notably less fun Hurricane Florence, which is currently projected to barrel into the East Coast at a minimum Category 3 status or possibly even worse before the weekend. As the president…Read more...

The Dutch nonprofit Ocean Cleanup deployed a 2,000-foot-long, $20 million unmanned boom designed to gather some of the Pacific Ocean’s massive amounts of plastic garbage from San Francisco Bay on Saturday. But it’s not clear the plan will work, the New York Times wrote.

Fighting king, young and free, only 93.Read more...

Update: Back in stock!Read more...

At any moment, Donald Trump could be just one tweet away from starting a disastrous war. Yes, that apparently almost happened.Read more...

Hurricane Florence, which was briefly downgraded to a tropical storm last week, was re-upgraded to hurricane status on Sunday and looks like it is destined to barrel straight at the U.S.’ East Coast. According to CNN, odds are good that it will have strengthened to Category 4 status—meaning sustained winds in the…Read more...

Deku, meet Peter. Peter, meet Deku.

Six more women have come forward to accuse CBS executive Les Moonves of sexual assault and harassment, according to a new report by Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker. Moonves has now been accused of sexual misconduct by a total of 12 women, and CNN reports his departure is now imminent.Read more...

A Spider-Man fan who asked to have a marriage proposal put into the new Spider-Man video game got his wish, but things didn’t quite work out for him.Read more...

Google took down a series of YouTube ads for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny before a vote for regional governors on Sunday and amid protests over President Vladimir Putin’s plans to raise the retirement age for state pensions, the Guardian reported.

Monique Ganderton has had an impressive career. The stunt double for Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, a stunt coordinator on Avengers: Infinity War, and a stunt performer in a long list of films, she’s a seasoned and respected voice in the stunt side of film.Read more...

Vice President Mike Pence, with no sense of irony, called the recent op-ed published in The New York Times by an anonymous Trump administration official, an “assault on democracy,” while simultaneously defending President Donald Trump’s efforts to politicize the Justice Department.Read more...

In our real-world cyberpunk dystopia, paper already feels a bit outmoded in a lot of life. It’s all screens, all the time. So it’s interesting to examine how sci-fi handles the classic writing surface. And in Star Trek, as it turns out, there’s a surprising amount of it.Read more...

If you don’t mind getting a refurbished MacBook, Woot’s offering a ton of savings on early 2016 and mid 2017 models. The sale page notes these MacBooks were originally destined to be warranty replacements, which means they’re pretty much as new as you can get when buying refurbished.Read more...

Update: Back down to $105 on AmazonRead more...

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk added yet another wearying episode to our multi-month-long Musk news cycle this week by smoking weed on camera with podcast host Joe Rogan, sending Tesla’s stock tumbling and triggering yet more speculation about his capacity to serve as CEO. But the episode may have bigger ramifications…Read more...

In 2014, some 76 million JPMorgan Chase customers were less than thrilled to hear that hackers were roaming around company databases containing their records for two months. Now, U.S. officials have secured the extradition of the Russian citizen believed to be responsible, Andrei Tyurin, from the nation of Georgia…Read more...

The major character cameo at the end of Solo is one of the most intriguing things to happen to the Star Wars film universe. Now, even if you missed the movie, you can watch the clip online.

A casting call has popped up in the United Kingdom for Ciri, the young ward of Geralt of Rivia, played by Henry Cavill, and the details of the call have garnered a huge controversy in the fandom.Read more...

Apple CEO Tim Cook has done an awful lot of schmoozing with Donald Trump, and to date he’s gotten a lot of out his dance with the devil. Cook has along with other titans of industry sought huge corporate tax cuts, which Trump was more than happy to sign late last year. That helped Apple avoid $50 billion in taxes,…Read more...

You can tell a lot about filmmaking from small moments. Single frames, brief glances, singular fleeting shots. Many creators put so much into these that they can inform your understanding of an entire work.Read more...

Attentive fans might have noticed that Shazam’s suit in, y’know, Shazam shifted a little between the early images, the trailer, and newly released marketing materials. That’s apparently just how it goes.Read more...

Alex Jones, purveyor of conspiracy site and lead-tainted supplement shop Infowars, has seen pretty much every major platform rally against him as of late. After Apple banned most of his media network’s podcasts, Facebook stripped him of his accounts, YouTube and Vimeo banned him, and he managed to get himself kicked…Read more...

Who wins: a multibillion dollar film studio, or a YouTuber with a computer and the right tech?Read more...

You might occasionally swap around the wallpaper on your smartphone, but do you give much thought to the bleeps and buzzing sounds that your handset makes—they’re just as customizable as any other part of your handset, and can help you make your phone your own or just reduce the stress brought on by an incessant…Read more...

There’s no such thing as having too much flash storage, and you can stock up on a bunch of different types from today’s PNY Gold Box.

Employees at one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies are being urged by their bosses to sign a petition opposing net neutrality legislation passed one week ago by the California legislature.

When President Trump first tossed out the idea of starting a trade war with China, there was a serious chance those taxes would impact the prices of gadgets back at home.

People who use dietary supplements containing an ingredient called higenamine are playing with fire, suggests a new study. There’s often no telling just how much higenamine is packed into a single pill, it found, meaning people could be dosing themselves with dangerously high levels of the plant-based stimulant.Read more...

A pair of lucky Northern Irish fishermen pulled in this skull with enormous antlers, measuring a whopping six feet in length. The extraordinary specimen belonged to the extinct Great Elk, which hasn’t been seen in Ireland for over 10,000 years, Belfast Live reports.

At long last, the Tor Project is releasing an official web browser for Android users. The new Android app is available now as an alpha release in Google’s Play Store and on the experimental releases section of the Project’s download page.

A woman in Connecticut was severely injured earlier this week after mistaking a quarter stick of dynamite for a candlestick.

It’s been a year of unique weather to say the least. The latest potentially bizarre weather happening to add to the list? Florence, the first major hurricane of the season, could follow a highly unusual route from the center of the Atlantic into the heart of the Eastern Seaboard thanks to a weird atmospheric setup.Read more...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has survived his hearings in front of Congress and mustered the courage to ban Alex Jones this week, and now it’s time to get back to business. “🎤🔉🔊,” Dorsey tweeted on Friday.Read more...

It’s long been suspected that hand dryers, especially those quick-drying ones that blast hot air known as jet dryers, are actually way worse at keeping our hands and bathrooms free of disease-causing germs. Worryingly, they could even be spreading illness in hospital bathrooms, new research suggests.

A new 360-degree panorama captured by the Curiosity Rover is one of its best yet.

Last month, Russian archaeologists found a secret chamber inside a medieval castle. While exploring this previously unknown area, the archaeologists discovered a clay brick with tracings of what appears to be a medieval board game.

Sitting atop Saturn’s north pole is one of the Solar System’s most striking weather patterns: a rotating, color-changing hexagon slightly wider than Earth. A new study shows there’s another hexagon directly on top of the first one—and that’s weird.Read more...