Gizmodo

After Amazon informed its customers last week that a “technical error” had inadvertently exposed their email addresses, the e-commerce giant is now reportedly offering gift cards as restitution to victims of the breach.Read more...

On Wednesday Jezebel wrote about a viral story, written by the James Beard-award winning food critic Kevin Alexander in Thrillist, that appeared to be either an act of shoddy journalism or a self-serving acceptance of a single unreliable narrator’s statement of fact. The truth, Jezebel has learned, is that it was a…Read more...

The price of cryptocurrencies may be steadily going down the tubes, but true believers are still hanging on to the blockchain dream. Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, is still all in. After buying BitTorrent for $150 million this summer, he now says that he’s investing $100 million to build video games on the…Read more...

A Microsoft exploit made public last year after being pinched from the National Security Agency has now been used by hackers to compromise more than 45,000 internet routers, according to researchers.

The past year has seen its fair share of largely indistinguishable cryptocurrency scams. Think of a noun. [Noun]Coin and its founders were probably charged with fraud in the past 16 months. Most of these boneheaded grifts bleed together into one long, libertarian migraine—but only one of them can claim to have cost DJ…Read more...

If you own the Philips OneBlade—and we know a lot of you do—you can grab two replacement blades for an all-time low $20 (or $19 with Subscribe & Save) on Amazon right now, the best price we’ve ever seen. Philips claims they last about four months, but I went nearly a year with my first one.

A project claiming to have produced the world’s first gene-edited babies has been stopped by the Chinese government, which is declaring the work of scientist He Jiankui as being both unlawful and unethical, according to the Associated Press.

The discovery of 2.4-million-year-old stone tools and butchered bones at a site in Algeria suggests our distant hominin relatives spread into the northern regions of Africa far earlier than archaeologists assumed. The find adds credence to the newly emerging suggestion that ancient hominins lived—and evolved—outside a…Read more...

NASA announced the names of companies who’d be able to bid on contracts for lunar exploration projects as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services at a press conference today.

Amnesty International on Thursday said it had submitted a formal request to Israeli authorities two weeks ago asking that the export license of a Herzliya-based hacking firm be revoked over reported efforts to sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated surveillance software.Read more...

The year is winding down, and it’s very unlikely Microsoft will announce another major product, so naturally, we need to look forward to 2019 and beyond. Brad Sams of Thurrot has plenty of delectable rumors in his new book Beneath a Surface. Some of his claims about Microsoft’s product roadmap reinforce things we’ve…Read more...

Capturing a rhino is no easy task. In fact, capturing one female Sumatran rhino on the Indonesian section of the island of Borneo took seven months.

Late in July, lawmakers sent a letter seeking details on Rekognition, Amazon’s in-house facial recognition software. Amazon wrote back, blandly, in August, but according to this increasingly impatient group of congresspeople, the company “has failed to provide sufficient answers.”Read more...

The world of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is a dystopia that just won’t go away. On the heels of the Titan’s recently-announced Blade Runner comics series, Adult Swim has just revealed its plans for a new animated series set before the events of the recent sequel film, Blade Runner 2049.Read more...

Jumping spider mothers provide milk to their spiderlings far into development, according to a new study that might turn your understanding of invertebrate parenting on its head.

This’ll surely give anyone concerned about privacy the creeps. More than 200 manufacturers—including Volkswagen, Ford, General Motors, BMW, and Tesla—submit precise locations of vehicles to the Chinese government, according to an eye-popping story from the Associated Press.Read more...

Without the internet instantly dispersing images to millions of people, it was probably a lot easier to keep video game prototypes under wraps in the ‘80s. Just a handful of photos backed up rumors about the possible existence of a miniature version of the ill-fated Vectrex console, but it’s a rumor no more now that…Read more...

The health of the United States remains in decline, according to a series of new reports released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy in the U.S. has once again declined from the previous year, extending a years-long slide the likes of which we haven’t seen since the World War I…Read more...

Between Mozambique and Madagascar lies the island of Mayotte. Since May 10, the French Geological Survey has been keeping an eye on a collection of earthquakes taking place just off the island’s eastern shores, which peaked with a magnitude 5.8 shake. This swarm was curious enough all by itself—and then, on November…Read more...

In April, Mark Zuckerberg told a congressional hearing, “I can’t be clearer on this topic: We don’t sell data.” But just because Facebook doesn’t currently sell data, it doesn’t mean they didn’t actively mull it over. Improperly redacted court documents from February 2017 show that Facebook explored charging companies…Read more...

Security researchers have issued a warning that two pieces of support software for Sennheiser headphones contain a severe vulnerability that leaves systems open to man-in-the-middle attacks. But Sennheiser has a fix.Read more...

A closer examination of a fossil found more than four decades ago has led to the identification of a new species of whale—a 33-million-year-old cetacean featuring neither teeth nor baleen. Its discovery could solve a longstanding mystery about the origin of filter-feeding whales, but some scientists say the new…Read more...

While the jury is still out on how practical bendy phone screens will be, the tech behind them is still one of the most lucrative trade secrets in the industry. So it probably doesn’t come as a surprise to hear that the CEO of a Samsung supplier and eight employees have been charged by South Korean officials for…Read more...

Godzilla marches into action in a new still from King of the Monsters. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ Dracula adaptation has found its Count. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina adds some intriguing guests for its holiday special. Plus, a new Toy Story 4 poster, and details on the CW’s big DC Elseworlds crossover. Spoilers…Read more...

Even if you get the flu shot, a cold winter spent hiding indoors with the means at some point you’re going to get sick. But just how sick are you? For just $20, iHealth’s new no-touch digital thermometer can help you figure that out, without requiring you to probe anywhere unpleasant.Read more...

‘Tis the season and Google is feeling generous. Today it rolled out a bunch of new Google Assistant features, including improvements nifty to-do list functionality and a new feature that encourages you to be polite to your inanimate, question-answering bot.Read more...

Bad news for those of you with small hands or small pockets (or both): It looks like phones are staying big for the foreseeable future. But owning a handset with a big screen doesn’t mean you can’t operate it with just one hand if you need to—these are the software tricks and apps you need to familiarize yourself with.Read more...

The American Civil Liberties Union wants to know how and why, exactly, a joint federal-state task force tracking the MS-13 gang tried to order social giant Facebook to build a backdoor into its Messenger app for surveillance purposes, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday.

Starbucks has reportedly decided to pull the plug on viewing explicit imagery in its stores following pressure from an anti-pornography activist group.Read more...

Twitter has banned an account first registered in 2012 that purported to be the official English-language channel of Russian President Vladimir Putin but was, in fact, that someone else entirely. Archived versions show the account had over one million followers and had previously popped up in news reports.

Microsoft has secured a $479 million-plus contract with the U.S. Army for Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) prototypes, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, expanding its relationship with the military and beating out a slew of other companies competing for the contract.

The Trump administration will move to ban bump stocks in the coming days, sources tell CNN. The new federal rule will outlaw the attachments that make semi-automatic guns fully automatic.

Ground Control to Mr. Trump

Just a few weeks after it originally aired, Goodbye Kansas Studios has shared a behind-the-scenes video of its work on The Walking Dead episode “What Comes After,” where Rick, with some help from a pile of dynamite, blows up a bridge full of approaching zombies. Creating one of the series’ most complicated shots…Read more...

Look, when a decidedly Dad-ish Peter Parker becomes your Spider-Mentor, there are going to be certain things that you learn as you go along. Like, say, how to avoid death from calamitous falls/angry scientists with laser guns through the power of webs.

For people with visual impairment, Instagram just got a bit easier to use. The photo-heavy social media app announced two new features today that will let screen readers read photo descriptions generated through artificial intelligence as well as custom text written by users.Read more...

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Dell has announced its online marketplace experienced a “cybersecurity incident” and the company has reset all Dell.com customers’ passwords.Read more...

Parasites that control the behavior of their hosts for their own benefit are a well-documented natural phenomenon, but the discovery of a previously unknown relationship between a parasitic wasp and a social spider is particularly upsetting.

Hundreds of military service members reportedly got caught up in a sextortion scam run by prison inmates using cellphones, according to a release issued on Wednesday by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).Read more...

Physicists have created atomic clocks so precise that they can measure deformations in spacetime itself, according to new research.

Urban Massage, a wellness app that connects users with professional massage therapists, reportedly left a database open to public access, potentially exposing sensitive user and employee data—including complaints alleging sexual misconduct by “dangerous” users alongside their names and other personal information.Read more...

After three years, Google’s finally decided to expand Project Fi to more handsets beyond the few phones that have supported it, such as Google’s Pixel and Nexus series, as well as a handful of LG and Moto phones. Crucially, the service is now (mostly) compatible with iPhones, and to celebrate the change, Google is…Read more...

I don’t care that Otto Bathurst’s Robin Hood played so fast and loose with history it basically exists in an alternate universe. On the contrary, it was one of the things I enjoyed the most about it. The movie was great when it was just having a good time, instead of trying too hard to make us take it seriously. But…Read more...

Budding cinematographers and Instagram influencers alike will probably love the Osmo Pocket. This new DJI camera system shoots 4K video and features a three-axis gimbal attached to a handle the size of a small cigar. It’s adorable.Read more...

Coral reefs are facing a crisis thanks to an ever-growing list of threats, from climate change to ocean acidification to pollution. In an effort to stem the rising tide of damage, the National Academy of Sciences released a major report on Wednesday chronicling the high-tech interventions we might have to use to save…Read more...

Speaking at a genetics conference in Hong Kong earlier today, embattled Chinese scientist He Jiankui said he was “proud” to have created the world’s first genetically edited babies, despite receiving near-universal condemnation from his peers. Speaking publicly today for the first time, the scientist offered new…Read more...

The Federal Trade Commission says it is investigating loot boxes, a controversial video game mechanic that can allow players to spend real money on randomized goods.

The 2018 midterms were a mixed bag for the environment, with some key ballot initiatives failing but several environment-friendly candidates winning their elections. One of those candidates hails from Orange County, California, long considered to be a center of Republican power. In CA-49, previously held by …Read more...

Even though LG has put out a respectable line of phones in 2018, sales for the company’s mobile division continue to struggle. So in an effort to rejuvenate its business, alongside an increased focus on robotics and autonomous vehicles, LG announced today that LG Home Entertainment President Brian Kwon will also be…Read more...

It’s one of the most common hardware hacks you’ll find online, but for those who don’t know the first thing about soldering, there’s now an upgraded version of the Big Mouth Billy Bass that can respond to voice commands right out of the box, courtesy of Amazon’s Alexa.Read more...