Gizmodo

Retail colossus Walmart just patented a new technology meant to monitor employee productivity via audio surveillance of checkout counters. The technology, which Walmart calls “listening to the frontend,” aims to increase employee efficiency by using sensors to monitor sounds that can indicate how long lines are, how…Read more...

It’s one of the greatest showdowns in recent movie history, and now it’s a “Great Showdowns” print by artist Scott Campbell.Read more...

Night after night, a father has terrible dreams. Dreams of death. Invasion. Destruction. Then, those dreams start to become reality and he’ll stop at nothing to save his family. That’s the plot of Extinction, a new Netflix sci-fi film that just got its first trailer.Read more...

Facebook is apologizing after its algorithms tagged 65,000 Russian users as “interested in treason.” Facebook algorithmically tags users based on their behavior, making it easier for advertisers to target people interested in specific topics. In this case, however, the tag “treason” may have put users under the threat…Read more...

Elon Musk has been taking a good bit of criticism lately, much of it deserved. After enduring quite a bit of roasting over his ineffective efforts to help kids trapped in a cave in Thailand, he’s now pledged to help every single person in Flint, Michigan, who is still affected by the water crisis.Read more...

Much like climate change, the growing emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial superbugs is a ticking time bomb that threatens our very way of life. It’s also a very expensive problem to tackle, and Big Pharma has struggled to find any promising solutions. On Wednesday, yet another major pharmaceutical—the…Read more...

In a poorly-lit corner of a former Polish wedding venue in Brooklyn, New York, Giovanni “ShinG” Nieves took a screwdriver to a GameCube controller as a crowd of customers waited. Nieves, in a red bomber jacket and a fade haircut, was reverse-engineering a Super Smash Bros. 4 competitor’s controller at a tournament…Read more...

Between 2013 and 2015, the FCC reportedly spent close to $3 million overhauling its comment system. But after being flooded with millions of fake comments during a docket to overturn net neutrality last summer, the agency is now planning another total makeover.

For decades, the idea that a bacteria or virus could help cause Alzheimer’s disease was dismissed as a fringe theory. But not so much anymore. On Wednesday, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School reported in the journal Neuron the latest bit of evidence suggesting herpesviruses can spark the cascade of…Read more...

Smack in the middle of the World Cup semi-finals, YouTube TV totally fucked over fans of England and Croatia alike.

On Tuesday, the remaining five boys were rescued from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex where 12 members of a soccer team and their coach were trapped for more than two weeks. The rescue mission spanned three days, and, according to new details, involved drugging the boys prior to the extraction.

When horses are happy, they snort, according to new research published today in PLoS One. The finding could help improve treatment of these domesticated animals, the authors say.

ARM, the incredibly successful developer of CPU designs, appears to be getting a little nervous about an open-source rival that’s gaining traction. At the end of June, ARM launched a website outlining why it’s better than its competitor’s offerings and it quickly blew up in its face. Realizing the site was a bad look,…Read more...

After its somewhat premature announcement of Airplay 2 support, Sonos is finally updating a few of its speakers to actually support Airplay 2. That means your iOS device can now bring the music management and multi-room audio feature to a few more of its smart speakers, including its newest Beam soundbar. With Airplay…Read more...

Security researchers discovered that, for just $10 on the dark web, it appears someone could essentially buy their way into an international airport’s security system. This finding from McAfee’s team of researchers signals how a weak link can undermine systems that may otherwise seem thoroughly secured, even as …Read more...

An electrical engineer secretly uploaded onto his personal Dropbox account thousands of files containing sensitive information about the unmanned underwater vehicles his company was developing for the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research.Read more...

A former Tesla technician accused by the automaker of stealing reams of confidential data and leaking it to outside sources now has an attorney, and he’s doubling down on his allegation that Tesla made misstatements to investors about placing punctured batteries into Model 3s that were shipped to customers.Read more...

Bird turds can tell you a lot about an island. For instance, is it smelly or not? But also, how are the coral reefs doing?

Archaeologists working in the Shangchen region of China have uncovered dozens of stone tools, the oldest of which date back 2.1 million years, making them the earliest known evidence of a human presence outside of Africa.Read more...

The Police Foundation doesn’t want the police to call drones “drones.” Because of the public’s association with “military-style weapons like the Predator,” the organization’s 311 page report reads, the term “drone” is “a major obstacle to law enforcement’s ability to convince the public” that police drone programs…Read more...

One of the most interesting gadgets I’ve tested in the past few years was the Matrix PowerWatch: a fitness-tracking timepiece powered only by the wearer’s body heat. The battery-free technology was neat, but the watch’s limited functionality wasn’t. Matrix Industries’ new PowerWatch X promises to be a more useful and…Read more...

IBM Security on Wednesday released its latest report examining the costs and impact associated with data breaches. The findings paint a grim portrait of what the clean up is like for companies whose data becomes exposed—particularly for larger corporations that suffer so-called “mega breaches,” a costly exposure…Read more...

Despite the fact that we’ve seen set pictures of it, Zachary Levi’s defense of it, and terrible-quality Instagram pictures, this is finally our first official look at Warner Bros.’ latest cinematic DC Comics superhero... and his love of cola, apparently.

Eleven light-years from Earth, orbiting a dim red star, there’s an exoplanet called Ross 128b that, as we recently reported, has some the best prospects for life of any known distant world. New results may help astronomers figure out what the planet is made of—and they offer more evidence that it might be inside its…Read more...

There’s a growing, bewildering movement of folks who reject the most basic learnings of science in favor of conspiracy theories and hocus pocus—as a science journalist, I regularly get emails from people who firmly believe the Earth is flat, as shocking as that may seem. I recently chatted with Brian Cox, host of BBC…Read more...

Taking to the skies with a rocket strapped to your back is still a dangerous idea, despite how Hollywood typically portrays the stunt. So a product design student in the UK created a safer way to fly—under water—with a jetpack that can propel a swimmer at speeds of up to eight miles per hour.Read more...

You too can have better cybersecurity than the U.S. military just by properly setting up your router.Read more...

A regular old manual toothbrush can easily cost less than a dollar. You might have one in your bathroom right now, ready to tackle the plaque, and the coffee stains, and the bad breath that make its existence integral for modern living. But in our 21st-century society, it’s easy to spend much more on an electric…Read more...

It was a year ago at this time that Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf gave birth to Iceberg A-68, one of the largest chunks of ice ever recorded. A new timelapse video made from satellite imagery shows the rift, calving, and subsequent journey of the iceberg over the past 12 months.Read more...

In the 1980s, scientists learned that all humans living today are descended from a woman, dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve,” who lived in Africa between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. This discovery, along with other evidence, suggested humans evolved from a single ancestral population—an interpretation that is not standing…Read more...

A snake is still stranded in the United States after airline security refused to allow it to board a plane to the Caribbean.Read more...

One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous mansions, known as the Ennis House, is up for sale in east Los Angeles. And even if you don’t know the house, you certainly know the movies that the famous building has appeared in, including Blade Runner (1982), The House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Replacement Killers…Read more...

One of the members of Insane Clown Posse has teamed up with his 12-year-old daughter to create a new power duo: The Snake Busters.Read more...

Don’t let a long flight or a loss of signal get in the way of your music and video streaming: Just about all the popular services let you cache downloads for offline use, and Netflix just upgraded its download mechanism to be smarter—downloading the next episode of shows you are watching and automatically deleting the…Read more...

Dwayne Johnson has another update on just where the Black Adam movie is at. The UglyDolls film is still happening. The Russo brothers’ Valiant Comics show has found a home. Jason Momoa joins Apple’s ginormous and vague slate of genre shows. Plus, new footage from Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and Stranger Things set…Read more...

A new image of star cluster RCW 38, an area strewn with young, hot, massive stars, is providing an unprecedented glimpse into a tumultuous region of space located 5,500 light-years from Earth.

Ajit Pai and the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission successfully rolled back Barack Obama-era net neutrality guidelines earlier this year, but they’re not done screwing with consumers yet. According to the Verge, the FCC is now mulling a plan that could ensure its staff will only review complaints…Read more...

E-payments company Paypal sent a deceased customer an email more or less stating that the cessation of life functions—and thus an inability for the customer in question to clear their remaining account balance—was a violation of site policy.

As if the family separation horror show couldn’t get any more dystopian, the Daily Beast reports that the Trump administration has told at least four women separated from children at the border that they have to fork up the money for DNA tests so they can be reunited with their kids, according to an advocate.

Facebook, the social media giant that recently clocked in at a total valuation of nearly $600 billion, may soon face the maximum penalties UK authorities have available to punish the company for its role in the Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal. And—drumroll, please—it’s $664,000.

There’s no shortage of beautiful posters when it comes to the Alien franchise. From the original one-sheets and fan art, up through the work by Mondo and others, it’s a series bustling with great visual representations. And yet, these may be two of the best.Read more...

The company behind Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering is adding another card game to its tabletop roster, only it’s slightly less weird than fantastical loot-happy heroes or elemental-plane-hopping monsters summoners. It’s about those giant robots in disguise that you know and love.Read more...

What once was rumored is now actually happening. Joaquin Phoenix has closed a deal to play the Joker in a spinoff origin film that’s separate from the other DC Universe films.Read more...

Imagine being an engineer at Apple, one of the most coveted positions in tech. On top of it, you work in the ultra-secret autonomous car division. And you blow it all by leaving for a startup in China and stealing Apple’s trade secrets on the way out the door. That’s what authorities believe one man did this past…Read more...

Today Snapchat announced its newest feature, Lens Explorer, which makes the social network a little more communal by letting users easily access Snap’s repository of user-created Lenses. While the variety is nice, incorporating user-generated content has its downsides: More often than not, it sucks.

Contrary to earlier reports, Orlando police confirmed Monday they will renew a contract with Amazon to pilot its controversial face recognition software, Rekognition—a move that is sure to reignite concerns of privacy and civil liberties advocates who have pushed back against law enforcement’s use of the technology.Read more...

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to use a Windows laptop, I’d absolutely choose the Dell XPS 13. Microsoft today is selling one with an edge-to-edge 4K touchscreen, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a Core i5 processor for $899, or bump up to an i7 and 256GB of storage for $1199, which is a fantastic bargain for…Read more...

Sound and light have way more in common than you think, which is why it’s easy to turn light data, like radio waves, into sound. This can make for some pretty incredible science communicating tools—just look up Jupiter’s whistlers, falling bomb sounds caused by the planet’s lightning; or the chirp of LIGO’s…Read more...

As expected, Indiana Jones 5 has now officially been moved to a 2021 release date. But that’s just one of several premiere shifts Disney announced today, which include a Marvel movie, live-action adaptations, and more.Read more...

Weeks of extreme heat and drought have baked Welsh fields to a crisp. But amidst the desiccated remains of crops, bizarre circles of green have emerged. While I would like to tell you it’s aliens, it’s definitely not aliens. It’s the remains of ancient settlements emerging from centuries of slumber.