Gizmodo

If you’ve been curious to give YouTube TV a try, and you could use a new streaming dongle, Walmart’s running a particularly enticing deal today. $59 gets you a month of YouTube TV (a $40 value, new accounts only), plus $15 in VUDU content, meaning the Stick itself is basically tossed in for about $4.

New year, new you and if that happens to be someone who catches fish, you’re in luck. Today, Amazon is discounting everything you need to start reeling in a rainbow trout, including tackle boxes, rods, and, well, reels.Read more...

IMDB has launched a free streaming service called Freedive that features dozens of movies and TV shows. And while it doesn’t have new releases, the selection isn’t half bad, with movies like Drive, Adaptation, Gattaca, True Romance, Last Action Hero, Legends of the Fall, and Panic Room as well as TV shows like Fringe,…Read more...

The so-called Uber of dog-walking apps, Wag, has found itself in the dog house after one of its walkers appeared to physically assault a dog under his care in security footage. The dog’s owners are now raising concerns over the vetting process behind the platform and others like it, Fox-affiliated KTVU reported…Read more...

Folks, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is concerned about UFOs.

It shouldn’t be the case that inviting smart technology into our homes to safeguard against potential threats might instead lead to serious breaches of individual privacy, and yet reports of such violations of user trust are increasingly common. Now, Amazon’s Ring security cameras have come under fire for just that.

As the shutdown drags on, President Trump’s ideas about how to secure funding for his absurd border wall are becoming more and more villainous. His newest strategy? Using $13.9 billion in Army Corps to build a segment of the wall, according to NBC. That money would otherwise go to fund projects in Puerto Rico and…Read more...

The calendar flipping to 2019 officially marked the end of the 10-year anniversary of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—but, screw it, the celebration goes on.Read more...

Last May, T-Mobile promised to stop selling its subscribers’ location data after reports surfaced that it was being funneled to law enforcement officers who’d otherwise need a warrant to get it. But that hasn’t happened so far.

Red Dead Online didn’t have a great launch. The multiplayer mode of Red Dead Redemption 2 was made available to players last year in late November via a staggered release window. Once players had access to RDO, they found overpriced guns, a broken economy, and a lack of content. Some player also encountered griefers…Read more...

They’re two of the first words we ever learn. We use them every day and, in many cases, probably don’t even think about it. They can be used to agree to life-changing events or get out of horrible situations. They can also be used to hilarious effect when edited and counted in all 10 Star Wars movies.Read more...

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is facing heat for reportedly including images of child pornography in its search results. The issued was described on Thursday by TechCrunch, which said it commissioned a study on the images propagated by Bing from AntiToxin Technologies, an Israeli startup focused on online safety, in…Read more...

As recent industry reports show that nearly half of U.S. calls this year could be scams, there’s finally a glimmer of hope. A major carrier has begun to deploy one of the most effective tools at fighting the plague of illegal calls—but so far, it works on just a single phone model.Read more...

A perfect return date for a perfect TV show, frankly. Plus, the CW has revealed a few others...

Amazon has a well-deserved reputation for taking over whatever industry it gets itself into, but its record of success is far from flawless. The online retailer has spent years hesitantly flirting with the gaming business with little to show for it. But as the wide-open field of game streaming picks up steam, it…Read more...

Scientists have measured a fundamental property of a supermassive black hole—how fast it spins—by measuring a star slamming into it.

A bombshell report by the New York Times in October revealed that Google, like many companies, was willing to bury inconvenient sexual harassment complaints against its executives. In the case of Andy Rubin, a veteran associated deeply with the creation of the Android operating system, his fall from grace was…Read more...

Moscow Mules are already my favorite drink, but I have a feeling that they would taste even better when sipped out of one of these cool stainless steel mugs with a gunmetal finish from Pier 1 — and not just because they’re on sale for $2 each. Wait. Actually, yeah, that’s why. What can I say? Deals are delicious.

In a bizarre decision on Wednesday, Joshua Tree National Park reversed course on closing its gates, despite clear evidence visitors are destroying the park’s namesake trees, illegally camping, and off-roading.Read more...

There’s a lot wrong with women’s fashion, but torn stockings rank pretty high on the list of annoying quirks I’ve just learned to shut up and deal with. Seriously, anything will tear pantyhose. Is your toenail hideously long? Tear. Did you walk too close to a sharp table edge? Giant hole in your thigh. Did you simply…Read more...

You’d barely even know it, but CES just happened this week. In the last couple years the big technology trade show was very much a car show, where automakers and startups alike showed off the latest in hopeful self-driving systems always billed as just “a few years away.” In 2019? Barely a peep from anyone, and that…Read more...

At some point, Acer is going to have to give up its yearly quest to make the Swift 7 just a little bit slimmer, but that time hasn’t come yet, because at CES 2019 Acer has once again triumphed over physics to create something stupendously skinny.Read more...

AMD CEO Lisa Su sat down with press, including Gizmodo, yesterday to chat about the company’s CES announcements. The conversation started with a bang, addressing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s criticisms of AMD less than an hour earlier, then moved to a broad discussion of AMD’s business. Of particular note was the…Read more...

There are some huge 40th anniversaries coming up this year for horror fans; as you’ll see (and probably already realized), 1979 was a mighty big year for the genre. But that’s not all. As long as you’re planning one party, might as well recognize these other spooky classics that are marking milestones in 2019.

Climate change seems to be leading to more fatal conflict between a pair of bird species, according to a new study. The research demonstrates an important indirect consequence of a warming globe.Read more...

Over the past few years, Ossia has impressed us with demonstrations of its over-the-air power delivery system which promises to make charging cables and pads obsolete. But it’s always been just demos of prototypes, which feels like a constant tease of a future we want right now. For CES 2019, however, Ossia worked…Read more...

There’s one thing that’s clear from visiting the set of Syfy’s new comic book series, Deadly Class: This is Rick Remender’s show.

The U.S. government may be in partial shutdown mode, but operations to configure instruments critical to NASA’s InSight mission on Mars are right on schedule—and things are going swimmingly, as the latest mission update attests.

CES is a physically taxing event. So far, according to my trusty Fitbit Versa, I have walked upwards of 50,000 steps while carrying a 15-pound backpack. I busted my knee, I’m fighting a cold, and I don’t remember what the loving embrace of a human feels like.Read more...

It’s hard to imagine CES without TVs, and this year that almost happened. This is not to say there weren’t any TVs in Las Vegas. There were a lot! There were 8K TVs, OLED TVs, QLED TVs, big TVs, small TVs. But it’s hard to explain how they’re meaningfully different than the fancy TVs we were excited about at CES last…Read more...

Stuffing our bodies into a metal tubes to fly miles above the ground is already a pretty dehumanizing experience. And “jokes” about bombs can make it a lot worse, as a teenager’s lawyer seemed to acknowledge, calling a recent incident in New Zealand the “grossly stupid event of the century.”Read more...

California’s devastating wildfires are now simply a way of life for residents—and things will likely only get worse. Since the president’s solution for combating these climate change-fueled disasters is to threaten to cut FEMA funding for the state, local governments are taking matters into their own hands. The plan:…Read more...

Google is not responsible for protecting people’s “right to be forgotten” in any countries outside of the European Union, according to a preliminary opinion from the European court of justice.Read more...

I don’t have my swim trunks or my flippy-floppies, and there aren’t any dolphins anywhere, but you can’t stop me ‘cause I’m on a boat.Read more...

I don’t have any plans to die, ever. But if I do eventually eat it for some unseen reason, having my 6,000-year-old corpse loaded onto a canoe and immolated at sea by a perfectly aimed flaming arrow would be the way to go, in my humble opinion. As with many dreams of mine, it turns out this is illegal—at least under U.…Read more...

The Hubble Space Telescope team has temporarily suspended operations of Wide Field Camera 3 following a hardware glitch.

The Disney nerd community recognized a sad anniversary yesterday. It’s been 20 years since the ride Horizons closed at the Epcot theme park in Walt Disney World. But there was one bright spot. People were able to share home videos of the beloved “extinct attraction” on YouTube.

Home robots had a bad 2018, and compared to previous years, they’re not as visible on the ground at CES 2019, too. The robots that haven’t bit the dust tend to be of the “teach kids how to code” variety, or conceptual bots like the laundry folding FoldiMate that at this point are more CES perennials than likely…Read more...

Karen Gillan could be leading her own assassin movie universe. Adam McKay says he’s talked to Marvel about bringing the Silver Surfer to the big screen. A few more Toho classics could appear in a potential Godzilla 3. Plus. Chris Pine teases Steve Trevor’s demeanor in Wonder Woman 1984 and what’s to come on The Flash.…Read more...

In the future, cyborg birds may help monitor ocean currents and help ground-truth satellite data. It may sound like an odd prognostication, but a study released on Thursday in Scientific Reports lays the groundwork.Read more...

If you’re still listening to your computer through its built-in speakers, stop torturing yourself and buy Logitech’s MX Sound 2.0 audio system for an all-time low $60, or $40 less than usual.

Yesterday I spent two hours listening to the CEOs of rival companies talk trash about each other. It reminded me of my parents right after their divorce. Nvidia was shit talking AMD, and AMD politely responded with just enough bite for you to take notice.

Following increased pressure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Juul Labs is taking a notably different approach from its ad campaigns of yore—the ones accused of making its e-cigarette products widely appealing to kids. The company unveiled new TV spots this week as part of its “adult education campaign”…Read more...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday officially nominated Andrew Wheeler—former coal lobbyist and man with little tact on social media—to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Wheeler, who has been serving as acting chief following the ouster of former EPA leader Scott Pruitt, could be confirmed to…Read more...

Given the nightmarish hustle of Donald Trump’s administration, it’s hard to believe that it was less than a year ago when Trump met North Korean totalitarian strongman Kim Jong Un for a historic nuclear summit in Singapore in June 2018. The two men described each other in glowing terms, watched a bizarre “Destiny…Read more...

A 26-year-old Seattle man who described himself online as both a member of the far-right Proud Boys group and a believer in the sprawling QAnon conspiracy theory, Buckey Wolfe, is in custody after allegedly stabbing his brother in the head with a sword on Sunday, the Seattle Times reported.

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon is a comically evil man, so logically, he apparently tried to get a job lobbying for the vape company Juul, according to a new report from The Daily Beast.

The Philadelphia Police Department said Wednesday that Johnny Bobbitt Jr., the homeless man linked to an alleged GoFundMe scam that raised more than $400,000, was arrested after he failed to appear in court in New Jersey the previous day.

Senate Democrats called on federal agencies Wednesday to investigate the practice by major telecommunications companies of selling location data generated by subscribers’ mobile devices following an undercover investigation by a security reporter that shed new light on a black market trade.

Twitter will be rolling out beta updates including “conversational”-style speech bubbles and indented/color-coded replies based on whether you follow another user in the coming weeks, the Verge reported on Wednesday. Other features under consideration, but which will not be available in the forthcoming beta, include…Read more...