Gizmodo

We live in a robocall hell with an epidemic of 26.3 billion fraudulent calls made to U.S. numbers in 2018. Tired of con artist robots, no one picks up the phone for strangers anymore. My voicemail is filled with Chinese-language scammers using my area code and telling me that I’m about to be deported. I already got…Read more...

The problem with a gaming platform that relies entirely on the internet is that it relies on the internet. Stadia, Google’s new streaming game platform, will require that users have a robust internet connection to work, and that’s a big problem. “It’s what has plagued game streaming from the beginning,” said Pat…Read more...

At 18W, this Aukey power brick isn’t the most powerful USB-C Power Delivery charger we’ve seen—a 12" MacBook’s charger puts out 29W, for example—but it is certainly the smallest, and one of the cheapest to boot. Just use promo code FLI5HVBI at checkout to save.

The two tragic crashes of Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max planes increasingly look to be caused in part by a malfunctioning automated system—and the pilots’ lack of training around how to deal with it—that was designed to keep the aircraft from stalling out. The final reports aren’t in yet, but the similarities between…Read more...

Camel’s milk. B12 lollipops. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers. “Ion-cleansing” foot baths. Chelation therapy. Gluten-free diets. Casein-free diets. Massive doses of nutritional supplements. All of these products and services have two things in common. First, mainstream (and widely trusted) medical bodies don’t recognize…Read more...

Yesterday, Peloton got a nasty surprise in the form of a $150 million lawsuit from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). The suit alleges that for years, the high-end fitness tech company has neglected to pay royalties to songwriters behind more than 1,000 songs for the music heavily featured in its…Read more...

Doctors have started to come around to the idea that hidden bacteria and viruses in the body can affect our mental health and, over the long term, contribute to diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s. But a case study out this week is the latest to suggest that certain germs can cause much more immediate and…Read more...

A dolphin post-mortem may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Many people have a soft spot for the highly intelligent cetaceans, so watching a recently deceased one get comprehensively dissected by tools including a pair of rudimentary garden shears can be tough.

At Gizmodo, there are few things more rewarding than eating your own words. So here I am. It’s been six months since I reviewed the apparently boring new Google Chromecast, a gadget I said “falls short” and called “a bummer.” New Google has effectively turned the Chromecast into the video game console of the future.…Read more...

The second generation of AirPods just appeared in the Apple Store, and they sure look a lot like the first generation, save for some key upgrades.Read more...

When last we caught up with Stranger Things’ heroes of Hawkins, they’d successfully managed to fend off yet another inter-dimensional threat seeking to breach the divide and enter our world. For about a few seconds it seemed as if Eleven and her friends were going to be able to enjoy their childhoods in peace. This…Read more...

European regulators fined Google €1.49 billion (or $1.7 billion) on Wednesday for abusing its dominance in the online advertising business by imposing restrictive and anticompetitive contracts on its European customers.

If you take your home WiFi coverage seriously, Netgear’s Orbi mesh routers are some of the best you can buy, and Amazon’s running a great deal on their WiFi router and 2 satellite (or RBK33) permutation.

Federal prosecutors have charged an 80-year-old California man named John Pierre Dupont with bilking donors out of more than $250,000 by setting up fake websites and political action committees (PACs) falsely purporting to raise money for Texas politician Beto O’Rourke, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former…Read more...

Tim Armstrong, onetime Google executive and former CEO of AOL and its successor, Verizon’s troubled, digital media-focused Oath group, departed Verizon in 2018 just months before the corporation took a $4.5 billion accounting charge on Oath. According to a Tuesday report in the Wall Street Journal, he’s walking away…Read more...

Glossier, a company that has never successfully marketed makeup to me (but give it time), is now a unicorn.

Russian cybersecurity firm Kapersky Labs has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in Russia, claiming that latter firm used its monopoly over the App Store to force the company to remove app control and Safari browser blocking from the iOS version of its Kapersky Safe Kids app, ZDnet reported on Tuesday.

Sometimes you look at a piece of fan art and think, “No, that has to be professional.” This is one of those times.Read more...

Today was the big coming out party for Stadia, Google’s upcoming game streaming platform that promises to let you play games over the internet on practically any device, and hopefully lag-free.Read more...

The FCC’s public comment system is a bloody mess. Over the past two years, it’s become apparent that political lobbyists, usually acting on behalf of the telecom industry itself, are prepared to manipulate the agency’s rulemaking process and impersonate everyday Americans just to create the illusion of public support…Read more...

NASA scientists have released a boatload of data from OSIRIS-REx, the spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Bennu. There are lots of interesting results—and some potential unforeseen challenges when it comes to collecting a sample.

MoviePass has launched a new unlimited plan, and the company seems to think it has fixed what it screwed up with its original unlimited plan. First and foremost MoviePass has learned that it needs to charge more money. It’s also included plenty of options for it to impose some limits if a user gets a little too…Read more...

Why did it take a lawsuit, multiple investigations, and three years of promises for Facebook to change its ways?

Scientists with the New Horizons mission gathered together in Texas yesterday to discuss the latest findings about MU69. This distant Kuiper Belt object—which bears a striking resemblance to a flattened snowman—is turning out to be even weirder than we imagined.Read more...

Employees at Kickstarter, the decade-old crowdfunding platform, are planning to unionize—potentially making them the first organized labor force among major tech firms.

Apple just announced that its iMac lineup will get a meaningful update thanks to 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processors and a Vega graphics option. This is a big deal for iMac power users, but for me, an almost iMac power user, I’m feeling sheepish. Is Apple just going to keep stuffing new chips into its…Read more...

Last year, an English child protection worker was assigned a case where a mother was deemed a high risk to her baby’s safety. It’s the worker’s job to protect the child and, if necessary, separate the mother from her kid.Read more...

30 years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee penned his original proposal for what would become the World Wide Web. At the time, he was working at CERN, the high-energy physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland best known these days for operating the Large Hadron Collider. In many histories of the web, this fact is treated as a…Read more...

So, Google’s Stadia game streaming service is here. Along with it comes the all-new Stadia-specific controllers. And on that nifty controller is a button that allows you to launch Google Assistant. What?

Today, Google announced its new Stadia game streaming platform that lets gamers play games on pretty much anything with an internet connection. Laptops, desktops, phones, and even TV’s with a Chromecast Ultra attached are all supported. That means there’s no need to go out and buy a new console to get access to…Read more...

For years now, scientists have sounded the alarm about a potential nightmare for astronauts on the International Space Station: antibiotic-resistant superbugs that could be even more dangerous in space than they are on Earth. This week, research say they’ve found a way to better prevent such hardy bacteria from…Read more...

Google is taking on the big guys. In a keynote at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today Google announced a new service, Stadia, that will allow gamers to play the biggest games on any Android or Chrome-based device (including any device with a Chrome browser).

There’s no perfect way to manage massive quantities of emails, but everybody has their preferences. Some people are Gmail purists, who might be sad to know that the Google’s free supercharged email management app Inbox will stop working on April 2. Others are Outlook devotees, who probably get the app free through…Read more...

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 mission has released its first batch of scientific results on asteroid Ryugu—and it’s revealed a bunch of surprises about the small, spinning rock.Read more...

Netflix’s next step in interactive storytelling brings the format closer to bridging the gap between film and video games, as it will allow viewers to decide how the adventurous character gets through each level before moving on to the next chapter. Now, the company’s latest news has us wondering: Will the next…Read more...

In the pantheon of climate change solutions, some are more fraught than others. Reducing carbon emissions? Not so risky. Blocking the sun or banking on sucking carbon out of the air? Pretty dicey.Read more...

Yes, Patreon is making adjustments again—as some creators have suspected and feared. The recurring crowdfunding site agonized over a relatively small change in how it does business, and in doing so it’s setting an example few other platforms live up to.

Trailblazing mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck from the University of Texas at Austin has been awarded the 2019 Abel Prize—regarded as one of the highest accolades in mathematics. She is now the first woman to receive the illustrious award.

A pair of bills that limit speech online were signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, promising harsh penalties for those who criticize the nation and its officials or post fake news.

When Samsung announced the Galaxy Watch Active smartwatch at its Unpacked Event a few weeks ago, I was cautiously optimistic. Sure, it did away with the company’s signature rotating bezel, but otherwise, it was sleek, had all the right specs, and honestly, Samsung has consistently put out some of the best…Read more...

An 18-year-old man who shared a video of Friday’s terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand has been charged with distributing the video and inciting violence. The man allegedly posted a photo of one of the mosques targeted in Friday’s attacks with the words “target acquired.” He faces up to 28 years in prison,…Read more...

If you’ve ever browsed through your Instagram feed and thought “Oh that shirt is cute but haha, thank god that’s way too much effort for me to actually leave this app and buy it”—bad news, friends. Instagram announced that starting today, it’s introducing an in-app checkout feature.Read more...

The VR revolution hasn’t swept the world like a lot of people thought it would, and though I still have confidence in the medium as a whole, modern VR also has a lot of room for improvement when it comes to comfort, optics, and affordability. Enter the Reverb. Designed for both commercial and home use, while HP’s…Read more...

The Dune remake finds a familiar composer. Get a look at the twin threat of Men in Black: International’s new villains. More Avengers: Endgame images give us a look at the team’s new looks. Try not to be surprised about Star Trek: Discovery’s upcoming exits. Plus, Lex Luthor’s plans unfold on Supergirl, and what’s…Read more...

The toys are back in town—and the world beyond bedrooms has only gotten weirder and more wonderful since their last adventure.

On November 11, 2018, a deep rumble ricocheted around the world, one that humans couldn’t feel but that registered quite clearly on seismometers. A new pre-print paper about the event is now suggesting that it was caused by the largest offshore volcanic event in recorded history.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave a powerful speech in that country’s parliament today expressing solidarity with the victims of Friday’s terrorist attack that left 50 dead and dozens injured. Ardern also had strong words for the social media companies that enabled the shooter to broadcast his…Read more...

In a dusty plastic bin under my bed lies at least four laptops, six cellphones, and a half-dozen hard drives. I have no idea what’s on any of them. Most of these devices predate the cloud-storage era, and so likely contain solitary copies of photos, texts, and emails, among other confidential files (porn?) that I’d…Read more...

The pro-Donald Trump National Enquirer obtained nude and other intimate photos of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez—which Bezos says it used as leverage in a blackmail attempt—by paying $200,000 to Sanchez’s brother Michael Sanchez to hand over text messages between the two, the Wall Street…Read more...

Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent out a baffling tweet saying that he had “funding secured” to take the company private at a share price of $420 (which some readers may recognize as the weed number). It turned out no such deal had been finalized, the Securities and Exchange Commission slapped Musk with fraud…Read more...