Gizmodo

Wisdom, a 68-year-old Laysan albatross and the world’s oldest known wild bird, has successfully hatched a chick, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. You know what that means: She still fucks.

A 52-million-year-old fossil found in Wyoming is now the earliest known seed-eating perching bird in the scientific record, a discovery that’s shedding new light on the history and early eating habits of these now-ubiquitous birds.Read more...

As long as there have been laptops, people have been shoving them in bags. Incredible advances have occurred since that first big honking computer got shoved into a slighter bigger honking bag decades ago. Fabrics have grown more durable, straps more comfortable, and bag design itself has diverted into a wide number…Read more...

The research vessel Falkor has recently completed a three-week mission off the coast of Costa Rica, during which it gathered data, discovered new species, and took more incredible pictures of the life at the ocean floor.

Director Woody Allen is suing Amazon Studios for $68 million after the company withdrew from a five-picture deal in response to the sexual abuse allegations made against Allen by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. Farrow first came forward against Allen in 1992, when she was 7 years old.Read more...

The relatively modest 859 piece count of this LEGO set belies its ambition. It’s actually a functional pop-up book that opens and reveals one of two fairy tale-inspired LEGO dioramas. It even includes a bunch of unique minifigs that were new to the LEGO family when this set came out last November: Little Red Riding…Read more...

Losing weight is definitely tough. So tough, in fact, that scientists have tried to whip up drugs that trick us into feeling full and suppress our appetite. But these concoctions might not just work in people, suggest the authors of a new study out Thursday in Cell. They found that some of these same drugs could also…Read more...

Apple just started rolling out an update to iOS 12 and MacOS 10.14 that fixes a very scary Group FaceTime bug. This widely reported bug enabled callers to hear and even see recipients without the person on the other end of the line actually picking up the call. This is something you don’t want on an iPhone or iPad, so…Read more...

Three high-profile faculty members at Stanford University are under investigation for alleged ties to He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who claimed to use CRISPR to produce genetically modified human babies last year, MIT Technology Review reports.

New research seems to demonstrate that a fish called the cleaner wrasse has passed the famous mirror test for self-recognition—and the results have ignited discussion about animal intelligence and the meaning of the test itself.

On a recent night this winter, I found myself considering two new additions to my kitchen that promised to help me cook a proper Sunday night meal with little effort or opportunity to mess things up. On one end of the counter was the Instant Pot my mother got me for Christmas; on the other was another multi-tasking…Read more...

Recent flight delays at airports in the U.S. and UK have given us a glimpse at the threats and the headaches that drones can cause. In the days leading up to the recent Super Bowl, the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI warned the public repeatedly against flying drones near the stadium because the…Read more...

A new study published in BMJ Open has called for over 400 scientific papers on the subject of organ transplantation to be retracted because they did not comply with international ethical standards designed to ensure the organ donors freely consented, the Guardian reported this week.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—Between the pasta and deli counters in the middle of a Whole Foods is the last place you’d expect to find a contraption that simultaneously evokes a rave and a forest floor, let alone a brand-new way of farming. Yet Smallhold’s Minifarm is all of these things.Read more...

The image of a lab rat is an iconic symbol of scientific research, and for good reason: These rodents are remarkably good stand-ins for human subjects because of how closely their physiology and genetic make-up resemble ours. Because of this, mice and rats are used to study everything from cancer to diabetes to…Read more...

This trick is getting old.

Sometimes, the most effective hacks are the simplest hacks. The technique of targeting users’ email accounts with malicious links that gather personal data is one of the oldest and most successful hacks around. And now, you should be on the lookout for phishing emails that are using Google translate to mask their…Read more...

Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple move more money than many medium-sized nations. Their extraordinary profits are won through extraordinary reach—this is not a secret. That a few companies are afforded unprecedented and shamefully unregulated access into our homes is now an unremarkable fact of living…Read more...

Week 6: Blocking them allRead more...

We now have a better idea of just how many people use Twitter’s cursed microblogging service on a daily basis. In its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings, Twitter revealed it has 126 million “monetizable” daily users, up from about 115 million a year ago.Read more...

The first draft of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s hotly-anticipated Green New Deal proposal has finally arrived—and it’s demanding rapid action to confront the threat of climate change.Read more...

When I reviewed the $2,000 Devialet Phantom speaker two years ago, it blew my mind. The company just came out with a shrunken-down version for about half the price called the Phantom Reactor. It is also quite impressive, mainly because it’s so little and so loud. That doesn’t mean the Phantom Reactor the best-sounding…Read more...

An image captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Chang’e 4 landing site from a distance of over 200 miles, revealing both the probe and the desolate lunar landscape around it.

Early rumors tease that the fifth Mad Max might finally be getting started. An Olympian joins the cast of American Horror Story’s ninth season. Boom Studio’s Talent might be coming to TV. Plus, new pictures from The Walking Dead’s return, meet the heroes of Doom Patrol, and say hello to Birds of Prey’s Black Canary.…Read more...

AMD’s fighting competitors on all fronts. It’s battling Intel in the CPU space, with each company advertising more cores and tacking on more features to woo users (and manufacturers) away from the other. Yet its battle against Nvidia in the GPU space is different. While Nvidia comfortably dominates the high-end space,…Read more...

Motorola has made some of the best budget and mid-range phones for years. But Moto’s previous lineup of inexpensive devices was a bit confusing, as its offerings were split between the Moto G6 and G6 Play, and the even less expensive E5 Plus and E5 Play. In 2019, Moto is trimming down its G7 portfolio down to just…Read more...

The U.S. launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base on February 5 in what’s shaping up to be a busy week of missile tests around the world. Much like other recent launches, the U.S. military insists that this latest test has nothing to do with current events, as…Read more...

Facebook was slapped with a ruling in Germany today that limits how the social media giant can collect data across its multiple platforms, like WhatsApp and Instagram. And Facebook is not happy about it, to say the least. The company says it’s collecting all of that data for your own good. They’re simply using their…Read more...

The good news is that Flickr has extended the deadline for users to download their images from its servers before it starts mass deleting photos. The bad news is that this is definitely still happening in mid-March, so really, really make it a priority this time if you want to save your stuff.Read more...

Nothing is quite as unnerving as learning that the things we do on our phones aren’t private—even if we are regularly reminded that nothing is really sacred. On Wednesday, a TechCrunch investigation revealed that apps using analytics companies called Glassbox are not only recording the minutiae of how you use those …Read more...

Unstoppable online dating giant Match Group, a subsidiary of holding company InterActiveCorp, has acquired so many dating sites that some critics have wondered why it isn’t facing antitrust concerns. But the prize jewel in its empire is the Tinder app, which last year added 1.2 million subscribers and pulled in nearly…Read more...

Amazon has consistently faced ongoing outcry over its contentious Rekognition software, but that apparently isn’t stopping the company from testing out facial recognition technology on its sellers.

It’s already been a good time for the King of Wakanda lately, with the Black Panther movie earning some historic Oscar nominations, and heading back to theaters to celebrate. But Marvel’s keeping the celebration going, and highlighting Black History Month, with a sweet deal on some of the best comics Wakanda has to…Read more...

The popular traffic app Waze gathers user-submitted feedback to alert drivers to possible inconveniences they might experience on the road—inconveniences like getting stuck at DWI traffic point. Now, the NYPD reportedly has a message for Waze and its parent company Google: Snitches get stitches.Read more...

It took a growing mountain of home hacking horror stories going viral, but Google on Wednesday finally took action by telling their customers to stop messing everything up.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent in California is accused of illegally selling guns since at least 2014, according to recently unsealed federal court records.Read more...

Slobs of the world, don’t work too hard KonMari-ing your apartment or office ahead of your next important Skype call. The video conferencing service is introducing blurred backgrounds so you can obscure your mess with dignity.Read more...

The first substantive claim President Donald Trump made in his second State of the Union address concerned what is perhaps his favorite non-Wallean topic: blue-collar jobs. If there are two professions that Trump has awkwardly and effusively embraced during his tenure as president, it’s coal and manufacturing—you…Read more...

Most of the time, it’s easy to tell when someone is consciously aware. But there are many tragic cases when it’s unclear whether a person who is unresponsive after a serious brain injury is truly no longer conscious. That ambiguity can raise ethical questions about how to manage or ultimately end such a person’s…Read more...

Do Not Track is apparently dead, and Apple is now taking steps to shed itself of the failed privacy project.Read more...

Instacart has repeatedly come under fire for the working conditions its contractors labor under. Today it finally agreed to stop engaging in what critics called tip theft, and all it took was a public shaming.

On Tuesday, NOAA and NASA released their much-anticipated analyses of global climate trends for 2018. As we expected, the agencies confirmed it was the fourth-warmest year on record for planet Earth. But the reports also highlighted just how striking a year it was for the U.S. specifically, with most of the country…Read more...

All your faves are back in the first set of photos from the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones.Read more...

A new study suggests honeybees inherently understand the rudiments of addition and subtraction, a finding that highlights the remarkable cognitive abilities among even the tiniest of creatures. Critics, on the other hand, say the new research proves nothing of the sort.

If you’ve experienced terrible pain after negative experiences online, you’re not alone. New research from Microsoft suggests that such agony is widespread, with over a third of global internet users reporting “moderate or severe pain” from online experiences, including 5 percent of survey respondents who said they…Read more...

A pair of small satellites that joined the InSight mission on its way to Mars haven’t been heard from in over a month—but the experimental mission is still an important success for NASA.Read more...

Someone added images of child sexual abuse to an immutable blockchain ledger, the BBC reported. The images were added to the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) core ledger through the payment processing app Money Button.

A FaceTime bug that allowed virtually anyone to listen in on others when using the Group feature has drawn the interest of federal lawmakers who want to know more about what Apple is doing to secure its users’ privacy.

Attention-grabbing patents tend to fall into the category of “that’s totally ridiculous and will never happen.” But on Monday, Samsung was granted a patent for cramming a camera with an optical zoom into what sure looks like its S-Pen stylus—and it actually seems like a great idea.Read more...

Who really thinks about where the money is coming from as long as you get the money?