Gizmodo

As soon as you start up a new Android phone, you get prompted to sign in with your Google account—but what if you don’t want to do that? Maybe you want to take advantage of Android but limit what Google knows about you, or maybe you just prefer the alternative apps; whatever the case, here’s how to live a Google-free…Read more...

The straw lobby has lost the capitalists. Just a few weeks after Starbucks announced it was eliminating plastic straws, Disney has said it’s doing the same.

In the 1990s, archeologists in Mexico City unearthed a 500-year-old skeleton near an ancient Aztec temple—a victim of human sacrifice. A grisly discovery, yes, but perhaps even more chilling was what the beheaded skeleton was holding: two small whistles, one in the shape of a skull. When a researcher blew into one of…Read more...

Last week, at the height of San Diego Comic-Con, Fox dropped a bombshell that a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer was in the works, starring a black woman in the lead role. The initial report said the show would be a reboot of the ‘90s television series but showrunner Monica Owusu-Breen has made a statement which sounds…Read more...

Keeping multiple voice assistants in your home can lead to the occasional misfire, causing a far-flung device in the bedroom to react while you’re attempting to extract the weather forecast from the one in your living room. Amazon addressed this quirk with its own Echo devices in 2016, and now it’s bringing that…Read more...

23andMe customers might just play a role in helping create one of Big Pharma’s next blockbuster drugs. On Wednesday, the genetic testing company announced it was entering a partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to develop new drugs and therapies. As part of the collaboration, the company will…Read more...

Bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle isn’t terribly challenging for someone with even a modicum of hand-eye coordination, but what if you were blindfolded and had to only rely on your ears? That makes the challenge almost impossible, but unexpectedly it turned out to be an effective approach for this ball-juggling contraptionRead more...

Honestly, you had me at “Tilly.”

Despite Amazon having a two-year head start versus Google in the smart speaker wars, earlier this year, sales of Google Home devices surpassed all of Amazon’s Echoes for the first time ever. And while Amazon still holds the overall lead in market share, it’s not hard to see why Google is catching up fast. Compared to…Read more...

Until the Super Soaker came along in 1990, water guns hadn’t changed much in over a century. But the Super Soaker was 28 years ago, and a group of German engineers and designers think it’s finally time for water guns to evolve again. They’ve created the self-filling Spyra One that fires quick bursts of water instead…Read more...

You can get comprehensive lists of everything coming to streaming services anywhere. But half of those titles you don’t care about, and the other half are terrible. Where’s the good stuff? io9 is here to help.Read more...

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 has made some of its closest approaches to asteroid Ryugu yet, returning breathtaking images. Here you can see the an image of the asteroid from just six kilometers (3.72 miles) away. One pixel in the image is around 60 centimeters (1.9 feet).Read more...

Amazon’s controversial face recognition software, called Rekognition, misidentified more than two dozen members of Congress as people arrested for crimes. The false identifications were made when the ACLU of Northern California tasked Rekognition with matching photos of all 535 members of Congress against 25,000…Read more...

Casting for Disney’s Lady and the Tramp live-action reboot begins. Silver and Black’s Gina Prince-Bythewood is directing another comic book adaptation. Timothy Zahn discusses the unlikely possibility of Mara Jade appearing in Episode IX. Plus what’s to come in the final episodes of The Originals. Spoilers now!

Chip manufacturer Qualcomm confirmed in a conference call on Wednesday that it does not believe Apple, with whom it has been locked in a vicious, escalating court battle over royalties and patents since 2017, will use its modems in its next generation of iPhones.

While at a conference alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin at a high-profile conference in Helsinki this month, Donald Trump took some time out of relentlessly praising his counterpart—a former KGB foreign intelligence officer and currently suspected U.S. election-meddler—to accept a gift of one Adidas AG soccer…Read more...

Windows 10, Microsoft’s current version of its operating has long tormented users with a hard-to-bypass policy of forced updates. It will soon try to take the edge off by using machine learning to determine whether a user is actually using a computer when it updates.Read more...

Pacific Rim Uprising may not have lived up to its predecessor, but it’s still a fun movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots that, sorry to break it to you, weren’t actually so giant before the film’s visual effects artists worked their magic.Read more...

The long, strange road for IDW’s comic book Locke & Key may finally have its conclusion. For the first time ever, the property has been picked up to series with Netflix ordering 10 hour-long episodes.

Few couples in comic book history come close to the stature of Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker. Even though they haven’t actually been a couple in the comics for over a decade—something that could be about to change—Pete and MJ’s relationship has been one of the most dramatic and beloved in comics. Given that their…Read more...

Earlier this month, adult film star Stormy Daniels was arrested while performing at a strip club in Columbus, Ohio. She was accused of touching patrons while performing, which is illegal under Ohio law. The next day, the charges were dropped.

Investors are fleeing Facebook’s stock in after-hours trading after the company’s first real post-scandal earnings report missed expectations. Investors are maniacs. Facebook is massive, it’s making massive amounts of money, and it’s practically gobbled up every user it could potentially have.Read more...

For most people, resigning from your job doesn’t necessitate the invention of any new computer characters, just a new Twitter bio. But as The Guardian reports, when Emperor Akihito, Japan’s current ruler, abdicates the Chrysanthemum Throne next year, that’s exactly what the country will need. Currently, there’s no…Read more...

I’m not sure if lizards can experience PTSD, but if they can, I have every reason to believe this science experiment induced it.Read more...

Smart clothes are fine.Read more...

Deadspin National Anthem Controversies Don’t Get More Soul-Sucking Than This | Jezebel Marine Biologist Melissa Cristina Márquez Was Bitten and Dragged by a Crocodile...and Lived to Tell Her Story | The A.V. Club Uber can’t keep down accusations of “vomit fraud” against its drivers | Splinter Soledad O’Brien Brutally…Read more...

Are you always careful to apply sunscreen before a day outdoors, but find yourself getting burned anyway? It might be due to your application technique. Dermatologists say that most people don’t put on a thick enough layer sunscreen, and new research—in which scientists put varying amounts of sunscreen on volunteers’…Read more...

As companies race to employ facial recognition everywhere from major league ballparks to your local school and summer camp, we face tough questions about the technology’s potential to intensify racial bias; Commercial face recognition software has repeatedly been shown to be less accurate on people with darker skin,…Read more...

Google really, really wants you to use physical security keys to protect yourself from hackers. After announcing that its 85,000 employees have managed to go more than a year without getting phished because of mandated security devices, Google now has its own physical security key to sell you.Read more...

A disease spread by sandflies seen as an exotic nuisance in the U.S. might not be solely a traveler’s disease after all. A new study published Wednesday in JAMA Dermatology suggests that most American cases of leishmaniasis are actually spread by native bugs, not caught while traveling. And thanks to climate change,…Read more...

As someone who’d never watched any of the various Teen Titans animated series, I had no idea what to expect sitting down for Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. Was this going to be a film made only for kids? Would it warrant its cinematic release? How funny or clever could it really be? The answers were both quick and…Read more...

Internal company documents from IBM show that medical experts working with the company’s Watson supercomputer found “multiple examples of unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations” when using the software, according to a report from Stat News.Read more...

If you already rely on ridesharing services to run errands or grab groceries, a self-driving car that shuttles you to pick up your pre-bagged tailgate party snacks may sound like a no-brainer. And that’s essentially what Waymo is up to: In Phoenix, Arizona, Waymo is expanding its self-driving car program by targeting…Read more...

HBO has been hard at work figuring out how it’s going to continue the Game of Thrones legacy. This included commissioning a whopping five potential spinoffs set within the A Song of Ice and Fire universe. Now that one has been approved, it looks like the other ones have gotten the Ned Stark treatment.

In what was essentially a foregone conclusion after this teaser video popped up yesterday, earlier this morning Nikon confirmed it is working on a new, full-frame mirrorless camera.Read more...

TiVo finally joined the voice-controlled future with the Bolt VOX, which includes a voice remote and Alexa compatibility, so you can record, replay, and pause your favorite shows from anywhere with nothing but your voice.

There was a grim moment this spring when Syfy announced that The Expanse’s third season would be its last on the network—and the future of the beloved sci-fi series was in serious doubt. But with Amazon stepping in, The Expanse will be back, and last week at San Diego Comic-Con, we got a chance to talk to showrunner…Read more...

Over-the-top Nerf battles are a fun and (mostly) painless way to determine who in the office has to buy the donuts this week. What’s not so fun is having to hunt down every last missing dart afterwards. Hasbro’s eliminated that hassle with its new Laser Ops Pro blasters; an updated version of laser tag that might feel…Read more...

In what appears to be a sweeping new campaign to enforce its policy prohibiting impersonation, Twitter now auto-locks any non-verified account that attempts to change its display name to “Elon Musk.” But the Tesla founder isn’t the only one whose name is off limits.Read more...

If you’re in the northern hemisphere then summer is already underway, which means your various gadgets and gizmos are going to be lying on beach towels, sitting in hot cars, sweating on the subway and generally getting hotter than they normally would. Here’s why that’s dangerous—and what you can do to keep them…Read more...

We all know you shouldn’t leave pets, infants, or the elderly in your car on a sunny summer day. But giant parabolic mirrors also deserve a spot on that list, a lesson a teacher in residence at a San Francisco science museum learned the hard way last week when he accidentally melted his Subaru Outback’s interior.Read more...

Facebook has signed an agreement with Washington state to retool its advertising platform after a Pro Publica investigation found it could be used to abet housing discrimination. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson led a year-long investigation into Facebook’s targeted advertising feature, which lets advertisers…Read more...

In a way, cities are giant science labs, providing an environment for organisms that’s unlike anywhere else on the planet. Even though cities have been around for thousands of years, the way that humans are urbanizing our planet in recent decades has become radically transformative for entire ecosystems. Urban living…Read more...

After decades of debate, scientists have spotted hints of liquid water trapped beneath the planet’s south polar ice cap.

Emma Thompson is returning for Men in Black’s spinoff sequel. Jude Law dances around discussing his role in Captain Marvel. Christopher McQuarrie still wouldn’t mind directing the ephemeral, intangible Man of Steel 2. Plus, Peter Dinklage hits the post-apocalypse of I Think We’re Alone Now, and what’s to come on the…Read more...

Early risers on Wednesday are eligible to observe a rocket launch double header, with multinational company Arianespace planning to launch an Ariane 5 rocket carrying four Galileo GPS satellites for European customers at 7:25am ET and a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch carrying 10 Iridium satellites 15 minutes later at 7:39am…Read more...

The mainland Chinese government has demanded U.S. airlines change their websites “to reflect China’s claim on the island territory” of Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, and they pretty much plan on doing that rather than risk any kind of retaliation.

Facebook’s departing chief information security officer Alex Stamos, whose upcoming exit has been known for months, wrote a note to staff in March amid the Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal urging them to reconsider the site’s approach to privacy, BuzzFeed News reported on Tuesday.

In the Year of our Lord 2018, we are what must be 8,000 years from the original start of Dieselgate. A bunch of Volkswagen executives got arrested, everyone agreed to finally make some electric cars, done. Right? Wrong. You thought it was getting better, but instead it’s just getting dumber.Read more...

Have you heard? Disgraced former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has a book out!