Gizmodo

The latest episode of Game of Thrones bought the war to end all wars crashing down on Winterfell, with a surprisingly dramatic conclusion to one of the show’s biggest threats. It’d be exciting, if only had it not brought with it a tide of completely ridiculous fandom nonsense.

Using robotic and animal models, researchers have shown that some dinosaurs were already flapping their rudimentary wings as a side effect of running, prior to evolving the ability to fly. The finding offers a unique perspective on the origins of flight, but experts say more evidence is needed.Read more...

One of the most recognizable animals of the sea, the narwhal, is even more unique than their looks would suggest, according to a new study of their genetics released this week.

Six years after being acquired for an astonishing $1.1 billion, blogging platform Tumblr and its 550 million monthly users are reportedly on the auction block with no indication of who might be in market to buy it.Read more...

A 28-year-old man in Oklahoma tore a vertebral artery in his neck that leads to his brain, causing him to suffer a stroke, ABC affiliate KOCO News reports. According to the news outlet, Josh Hader of Guthrie, Oklahoma ruptured the artery simply by cracking his neck.Read more...

Spoilers be damned, a local Philippine cable station has invited the fury of theaters and fans by airing a pirated version of Avengers: Endgame just one day after the film premiered in the country.Read more...

Update: A few hours after this story was published, the NBA terminated the relationship with the local company responsible for this tweet according to NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO Mark Tatum. The story has been updated.Read more...

Facebook announced today that it is banning a number of far-right political figures on its platforms, including InfoWars founder Alex Jones, former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopolous, and InfoWars contributor Paul Joseph Watson, among a host of others.

The transformation of Beto O’Rourke into a legit climate change candidate took another turn on Wednesday night when he announced he was pledging to turn away donations from fossil fuel executives.Read more...

Digital assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are easier to use than ever. Not only are they built into smart speakers, these days you can access them via your phone, TVs, and even your smartwatch.

A small fish somehow evolved resistance to the heavily polluted water of the Houston Ship Channel by mysteriously acquiring genes from another fish from thousands of miles away, according to a new paper.

A pair of objects, each more massive than the Sun but only as wide as a city, have once again produced ripples in spacetime that were picked up by sensitive gravitational wave detectors on Earth. But this time, scientists think they may have measured something even weirder the usual.

Update: Last day to get in on this offer before a new Humble Monthly month starts!Read more...

It’s hard to imagine a video game dominating more screen time than Microsoft’s Solitaire has since first introduced with Windows 3.0 in 1990. It’s been the go-to distraction for procrastinators for almost three decades, and it’s finally being honored with a rightful place in the World Video Game Hall of Fame.Read more...

A ship owned by the Church of Scientology that serves as a critical vessel for a religious retreat has been quarantined in the island nation of St. Lucia after it was confirmed that a female crew member aboard had contracted the measles.

Bones from an extinct short-faced bear and a wolf-life carnivore are among the many fascinating remains pulled from a submerged cave in Mexico. The discoveries provide a glimpse into the kinds of animals that lived in Central America during the last Ice Age.

Cyclone Fani is bearing down on India and has forced the largest evacuation in the country’s history as millions flee from the coast.Read more...

About 20 minutes into my screening of Avengers: Endgame, I started losing my mind. It was a befuddlement not necessarily caused by what was happening on screen and what it meant for the plot of the film, but because what I was seeing unfold felt like it shouldn’t exist. Or that it arguably can ever exist in another…Read more...

In these gadget-filled times, it’s likely that you’re going to have to shift some of your used tech every now and again, either to make room for an upgrade or to fund a different purchase. There’s a range of options on how to do this, but whether you go for eBay or Craigslist, these are the mistakes to avoid making…Read more...

Three days after a 9-year-old Connecticut boy started to hear a strange buzzing sound in his ear, his parents took him to a doctor at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital.

By 2020, researchers estimate that the world’s digital archive will weigh in at around 44 trillion gigabytes. That’s an astounding amount of data that isn’t necessarily being stored in the safest of places. Most storage mediums naturally degrade over time (if they’re not hacked or accidentally destroyed) and even the …Read more...

Right now MSI’s MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GDRR6 256-bit VR Ready Graphics Card is down to $800 on Drop (formerly MassDrop.) This latest-generation unit offers a ton for not very money.Read more...

Back in December 2017, I was innocently catching a late-night screening of I, Tonya when somebody in the theater screamed, “He has a gun!” What ensued was mass panic as the entire theater stampeded toward the exit. In the confusion, I lost my coat, backpack, shoes, and most devastatingly, my iPhone.Read more...

Laura Dern talks about the possibility of her returning to the Dinosaur Kingdom for Jurassic World 3. The villainous plans of Toy Story 4's new big bad (little bad, given she’s a doll?) have been revealed. Don Mancini says the Child’s Play TV show is still on the way. Plus, more footage from Detective Pikachu and …Read more...

360 cameras were an expensive novelty not that long ago, and you could argue that they’re still a novelty, but at least they’re an affordable one.Read more...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had his second court date of the week this morning where he formally declined extradition to the U.S. to face charges brought by the Justice Department. The WikiLeaks founder was sentenced in a British court to nearly a year in prison yesterday for jumping bail in 2012.

On Tuesday, parts of downtown Davenport, Iowa dramatically flooded after temporary flood barriers failed to stave off the gushing Mississippi River—which has crested to near record-setting levels in parts of Iowa and Illinois after hard-hitting snowfall this winter and heavy rain (such as that bomb cyclone in March).…Read more...

Semiconductor and telecommunications equipment manufacturer Qualcomm said on Wednesday it will take home a one-time payment of between $4.5 billion to $4.7 billion from its settlement with tech giant Apple over the next quarter, the New York Times reported.

Honestly, gorgeous Star Wars art is a dime a dozen. It’s everywhere, from the original theatrical one-sheets up to the most recent limited edition offerings and more. And yet, we can’t get enough of it. It’s just so damned pleasing to look at, and these new posters by John Guydo certainly fit that bill.Read more...

Amazon recently came under fire when the Verge revealed it used a system that automatically determines the productivity levels of its warehouse workforce, and terminates laggards if they’re too slow to move packages. It was yet another sign that automation was taking over at the retail giant, and a particularly…Read more...

Writer Samuel R. Delany professes confusion at the kinds of titles his audience has sometimes attributed to him—in a Facebook post last year, he mentioned that some considered him a sort of Grand Marshall of Sci-Fi, and wondered what it meant.

Lyft’s lawsuit to overturn New York City’s minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers failed after a ruling by Judge Andrea Masley on Wednesday.

After announcing its pivot to podcasts, Spotify appears to have kind of a wonky idea for how to get you to listen to them.Read more...

Scientists found a radioactive signature of atomic bomb blasts in crustaceans living in the ocean’s depths, according to a new paper.

More than 700 cases of the measles have been reported in the United States this year, according to federal health officials, with hundreds in quarantine. It’s been characterized as the largest outbreak of the preventable disease since 2000, the year that it was declared eliminated from the country. But it’s continuing…Read more...

Apple engineer Walter Huang was driving his 2017 Tesla Model X on U.S. Highway 101 in Mountain View, California, the morning of March 23, 2018, when the car steered left into a concrete median, killing Huang in the resulting crash.

The archaeology world is abuzz today with news of the first Denisovan fossil found outside of Siberia. The 160,000-year-old jawbone was uncovered by a Buddhist monk in a Chinese cave nearly 40 years ago—an aspect of this story that’s as intriguing as it is frustrating.

Knowing that our apps gather boatloads of information about us—some for years—can be unsettling. Google’s various apps are chief among these, and the company said it has heard user requests to make managing their data a simpler process. The company announced Wednesday that it’s rolling out a new feature to allow users…Read more...

In 2017, observatories around the world observed a high-energy collision between a pair of dense objects, each slightly more massive than the Sun but only the size of a city. A similar collision closer to home could have been responsible for producing some of the heaviest elements in our own solar system—and…Read more...

There’s a scene about a third of the way into Avengers: Endgame that has three levels of surprise. Two of them, everyone gets. But the third one is only for a very select group of people: fantasy football players.

New research seems to show encouraging progress in helping treat the complex neurodevelopmental disorder autism. Two unrelated clinical trials, involving men and children with autism, suggest that using drugs to interact with a hormone called vasopressin could improve the social functioning of people living with the…Read more...

Everyone makes a bad tweet now and then. And sometimes a tweet is so bad, that the user has to delete it forever. But the internet never forgets.

In 2010, archaeologists found evidence of a previously unknown hominin, the Denisovans, in a Siberian cave. Researchers are now reporting the discovery of a 160,000-year-old Denisovan jawbone pulled from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau. The fossil is now the first evidence of this mysterious human species outside of…Read more...

A public Slack channel that offered up cash prizes of $1,000 to guess a random word—yes, you read that right—has been shut down by the company, which said the game violated its rules.Read more...

TCL’s affordable 6-series TVs are a favorite of ours since they offering every form of HDR (including top-shelf Dolby Vision), local dimming zones for better contrast and black levels, and Roku software.Read more...

While space agencies simulate an asteroid impact this week at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference, there’s a real asteroid they’re monitoring that will make a close appearance in just 10 years.

The Nintendo Switch is better with friends, and you can add an extra player by picking up an extra set of Joy-Con for $48 if you’re okay with refurbished. Woot’s price is a $20 less than buying new, and a few bucks off of Amazon’s refurbished price.

Dungeons & Dragons is, dare I say it, cool now? Or at the very least, trendy. If you’re curious to try it out for yourself, but don’t know how to get started, this starter set is down to $8 on Amazon, a new all-time low.

When Apple kills a piece of tech, it’s typically gone for good. That’s how things went for the FireWire and USB Type-A ports on old MacBooks, along with the “courageous” removal of the headphone jack back on the iPhone 7. However, if a new patent obtained by Apple is any indication, it’s possible that we might see the…Read more...

In the future, we were promised flying cars and fake meat. While the flying car part hasn’t panned out, fake meat appears poised to make inroads in Americans’ lives, particularly through fast foods. And in the process, it could end up being a big deal for the planet.