Gizmodo

Diet fads often make the lofty claim that adjusting food habits one way or another will produce the dieter’s desired results. More specifically: Eat this, not that, and watch the pounds fall off. But diets are hard to sustain, and it seems like diet debunking is constantly calling into question what and how much we…Read more...

The Department of the Treasury announced today that they will sanction the 17 individuals who were involved in the killing of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul this October. The move from the Trump Administration will freeze any assets the individuals have in the U.S. and…Read more...

Following recent research that found U.S. telecom companies were throttling video streaming services like Netflix and YouTube, three Democratic senators are now calling for a response from those major mobile carriers in letters to their respective company heads.

Last year, consulting megafirm Accenture inked a nearly $300 million contract with Customs and Border Protection to help the agency recruit around 7,500 staffers over a period of five years. The tech industry’s complicity with CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—agencies widely criticized as helping…Read more...

We barely know what the Force is in Star Wars. Pushing, sensing, lifting rocks, projecting yourself across millions of miles—it just scratches the surface of that mysterious ephemeral energy that binds us all together. But the latest arc of Darth Vader might have opened a bonkers new door. Hell, it might have blown…Read more...

Android 9 Pie was released more than three months ago, but Samsung phones, including the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9, still aren’t running the latest software. As Samsung works on updating its devices to Android 9 in the coming months, today we learned there’s one really annoying change in policy that will be waiting…Read more...

Turo is, in theory, brilliant. If you’re not using your car, you can rent it out to other people. Make some money on the side. If you own two cars, that’s even better. You can make twice the money, in theory. But a lot of people in Chicago are mad at one man, who rented an astounding 38 cars on Turo, and parked a…Read more...

We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.

On Thursday, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey announced formal charges against the three people involved in a viral GoFundMe campaign that raised $400,000 last year to help a homeless man get on his feet. Authorities said that “the entire campaign was predicated on a lie.”

The Federal Communications Commission just made a move to make global location positioning even more global by opening the doors to Europe’s system.Read more...

Sony is skipping next year’s E3, ditching its traditional booth and press conference in a move that will have a significant negative impact on the video game industry’s annual trade show.Read more...

One of the best aspects of Insomniac’s most recent Spider-Man game is the dozens of alternate costumes from Marvel’s Spider-Man comics that you can equip in order to gain special abilities and give Peter Parker a new look. You’ve got your Spider-Punk, and your vintage comics Spidey, but let’s be honest here. The most…Read more...

Today, Facebook set up a press conference addressing a bombshell report from The New York Times that alleged, among other things, that the company contracted a Republican opposition research firm called Definers to run interference on the company’s image, a job which reportedly included leaning on George Soros…Read more...

It can be hard to know if and when you might have been impacted by a data breach. That is, unless you’re a Firefox Quantum user. Today, Mozilla announced it’ll alert desktop users when they stumble upon a site that’s recently reported a breach.Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration has taken its hardest swing yet against teen vaping—though not as hard as we were expecting. On Thursday, FDA chief Scott Gottlieb unveiled a series of steps aimed at forcing the e-cigarette industry to work harder at keeping its products out of the hands of minors. Chief among them is…Read more...

Alas, this fake mailman has reached the end of his post-apocalyptic road. But for this final installment, it’s a Giant-Sized Edition of “Postal Apocalypse”—although you guys packed my mailbag so full that I still couldn’t answer all of them! (I tried. Seriously, guys, this is really long.) Enjoy, my brilliant,…Read more...

Vaping is a popular activity, one that has a real a 21st-century twist to it. The technology behind vaping is relatively new. The consequences of doing it are mysterious and potentially very dangerous. And yet, vaping seems better than what people in the 20th century did to their bodies—namely smoking cigarettes. If…Read more...

Artificial Intelligence researchers used a neural network to create fake fingerprints that could be a hacker’s dream tool.Read more...

Earlier this year, Google revamped its search engine on mobile devices, adding tabs for “the most common and relevant subtopics” to the top of results. Search for, say, The Grinch, on your phone, and you might see a suggested tab listing upcoming showtimes. Or, until yesterday, one called “fanfiction” that surfaced…Read more...

After not experiencing any meaningful amounts of precipitation for at least 500 years, Chile’s Atacama Desert is finally getting some rain. Quite unexpectedly, however, these rains—instead of fostering life—are doing the exact opposite.

When GOES-17 launched, meteorologists’ hearts skipped a beat. The satellite offered a chance to view all of the U.S. in exceedingly high resolution, and with it, the weather forecasting possibilities were endless.Read more...

Since its introduction in 2012, Dolby Atmos has been a dazzling new audio technology that you could basically only experience in fancy movie theaters. But recently, high-end soundbars have started supporting the standard, which was cool if you wanted to spend north of $1,000 on a system. Vizio did what Vizio often…Read more...

In the war of notches and bezels, Sharp has landed firmly on Team Notch with its upcoming Aquos R2 Compact. Yup, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a phone with two notches.

The strange case of a couple in New Jersey who raised $400,000 on GoFundMe for a homeless good Samaritan appears to be skidding into a surprise ending.Read more...

For a limited time (probably very limited, as it’s capped at 50,000 uses), new customers can save $10 on any $35 Walmart.com order with promo code ELLEN10.Read more...

There’s a new way to cut the cord, and for do-it-yourself nerds like me, it might be the best way, too. SiliconDust is best known for its series of HDHomeRun DVR devices that you hook up to a hard drive or NAS you already own to record TV content and stream it anywhere in the home. Now, for $35 a month you can stream…Read more...

Yoshitaka Sakurada, Japan’s new cybersecurity minister, has never used a computer. Not even once. But he insists that his lack of real-world experience doesn’t have a negative impact on his job. Seriously.

Is there still hope for a Ghostbusters 3? Tom Hanks joins Miguel Sapochnik’s new post-apocalyptic project. The CW wants in on the world of fairytales. Plus, Felicia Day returns to Supernatural, Godzilla vs. Kong just keeps on casting half of Hollywood, and more snippets from Mary Poppins Returns. Spoilers, away!

I’ll say one thing about the new Microsoft Surface Headphones. They’re pretty, especially if you like the color grey. I’ll tell you a few other things. The Cortana features are frustrating. The noise-canceling tech is basically fine. The ear cups aren’t super comfortable. And the headphones just don’t sound that…Read more...

Scientists have learned more about ‘Oumuamua, the hunk of matter that is the first known interstellar object to ever be detected by scientists within the boundary of the solar system. Specifically, observations performed by researchers using the Spitzer Space Telescope and published in The Astronomical Journal have…Read more...

Following recent reports that two masked perpetrators were raising alarm in a town in West Virginia, police say they have reason to believe the troublemakers had just gotten wrecked.

The Open Society Foundations (OSF), a international philanthropic and grantmaking organization, has responded to a bombshell report that senior management at Facebook including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and chief lobbyist Joel Kaplan were involved in hiring a Republican opposition…Read more...

A judge has ordered Amazon to turn over any data it has pertaining to a New Hampshire double homicide that happened in January of 2017, saying the court has probable cause to believe an Echo may have created recordings that could be useful to the case. But Amazon doesn’t seem eager to fork over audio it may have on…Read more...

Thanks to the latest trailer for Tim Burton’s live-action remake of Dumbo, you’ll still believe a horribly depressed elephant can fly! He will also be ripped away from his mother and be forced to wear clown make-up, among other cruelties.Read more...

Nearly a week after the Camp Fire devastated an entire town, destroying 7,600 homes and at least 260 commercial properties, officials say dozens of people are still missing—possibly hundreds—and many among them are senior citizens.Read more...

Facebook has been exposed as utter garbage yet again. The company allegedly hired a political research firm to spread a conspiracy theory about its critics. And yes, the conspiracy theory reportedly involves George Soros.

Scientists this week released a conceptual design report for a next-generation particle accelerator in China, which would serve as a “Higgs boson factory,” as its proponents have called it.Read more...

It’s nicknamed the “humongous fungus”—an unusually large fungal growth belonging to a single genetic individual. An updated analysis of this gigantic fungal beast shows it’s substantially larger and older than scientists initially thought.

Comcast will cancel the debts of more than 20,000 customers and pay back $700,000 in Massachusetts as part of a settlement with the state’s Attorney General over deceptive advertising. Back in 2015 and early 2016, the cable giant advertised a $99 lock-in rate for plans that didn’t include equipment costs and had…Read more...

Long Island City—Hundreds gathered this afternoon at Gordon Triangle, smack dab in the middle of a newly proposed campus for Amazon employees. Ringed by local news crews, a coalition of local politicians led by City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and State Senator Michael Gianaris stated their intent to stop Bezos’s…Read more...

Pedro Pascal has a new companion in the wings. MMA fighter-turned-actor Gina Carano has been cast in Jon Favreau’s live-action Star Wars television show, The Mandalorian.

DeepMind’s health app Streams is being consumed by its sister company, Google, and some privacy advocates see the move as a violation of patient trust.Read more...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday it plans to better regulate the pollutants spewing out of heavy-duty trucks. Yes, this is the same EPA that wants to keep coal power plants alive, plans to scrap regulations on mercury emissions, and does not care about fuel efficiency.Read more...

Heart disease has long been the number one killer in the United States. But a new study out this week is the latest to suggest that it’s only a matter of time before the second leading cause of death—cancer—becomes more commonly fatal for the average person. On the bright side, though, that’s largely because we’ve…Read more...

An unusually large asteroid crater measuring 19 miles wide has been discovered under a continental ice sheet in Greenland. Roughly the size of Paris, it’s now among the 25 biggest asteroid craters on Earth.

The standalone tablet is all but dead. It’s been supplanted by 2-in-1s like the Surface Pro, which promises the excellent content consumption powers of a tablet, crossed with the actual productivity of a real laptop. Still, Apple has defiantly continued to make a tablet—both the budget iPad that was refreshed in March,…Read more...

Scientists have spotted strong evidence of a super-Earth orbiting the second-closest star system to the Sun, according to new research.

For the first time since Doctor Who returned in 2005, there won’t be a special episode airing on Christmas Day...but you seemingly won’t have to wait too long to get another slice of adventures in Time and Space.

The hunt for a truly great and iconic Wear OS smartwatch is still on—but in the meantime, you could do a hell of a lot worse than the Fossil Sport. Thanks to the newer Snapdragon 3100 processor, the Sport finally has most of the features you expect a 2018 smartwatch to have. Namely, heart rate monitoring, standalone…Read more...

The stereotype of a typical Neanderthal life is that it was extraordinarily difficult, violent, and traumatic. But a comparative analysis of the remains left behind by Neanderthals and contemporaneous humans is finally overturning this unwarranted assumption.