Gizmodo

Automata is a classic story of two hardened detectives solving crimes and scoring ladies in Prohibition-era New York City. Except this time, one of them’s a robot, played by Doug Jones.

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

Consumer DNA testing is going to the dogs. A Canadian testing company has been accused of sending back supposedly human ancestry results on a faux sample that actually came from a chihuahua named Snoopy, CBC News reported Wednesday. Remarkably, it’s the second company reported to have been fooled by doggy DNA in…Read more...

MoviePass is a runaway train that relentlessly burns through cash to keep itself going. But the head of its parent company is doing a lot of press to insist that everything’s fine. In fact, he claims the theater subscription company is 2 million subscribers away from breaking even. An upcoming family plan could help…Read more...

The US Government Accountability Office released a scathing report in May claiming that NASA’s most expensive projects have “deteriorated” significantly in the past year both in terms of added costs and scheduling delays. Earlier today, NASA had to explain itself in front of a Congressional subcommittee, where it…Read more...

Google, seemingly aware that people are unnerved by just how much ad networks know about us, today said it’s refining how it lets you control what ads you see. The company has updated its ad personalization settings page, and in the process, has kindly reminded us that it’s easy to turn off personalized ads altogether.Read more...

When a star meets the gravity of a black hole, chaos ensues.

My eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures watchers, get hype. An El Niño Watch is in effect.

By now, you’ve probably seen the satirical posts where someone claims to have “forced a bot” to watch thousands of hours of video and then write their own script. The posts are funny, but if you haven’t realized, they’re jokes that don’t quite encapsulate how artificial intelligence works.Read more...

Aquaman is Warner Bros.’ latest entry into the ever-expanding DCEU, but it’s also something much more fascinating on a technical level. It’s an action movie that takes place mainly underwater, something that could either be brilliant or absolutely terrible. While the first images from the film don’t give us an idea of…Read more...

House Democrats are working to keep a flame to Facebook’s feet ahead of the company’s anticipated responses to lingering concerns over the handling of user data, as well its ongoing efforts to weed out foreign-bought political ads targeting American voters.

It’s good to have options, especially when it comes to ergonomics on the job. That’s why standing desks have become a hallmark of the modern workplace (or co-working space) despite their unclear health benefits. Still, if the man in charge wants ‘em, that means everyone’s getting ‘em, which is what happened at Apple.Read more...

All around the globe, human activity is driving mammals to become more active at night, according to new research. Likely driven by a fear of people, many animals shift their schedules toward nocturnality to avoid running into us.Read more...

You probably spend more time than you realize copying, moving, renaming, and otherwise organizing files on your Windows hard drive—so knowing how to do all of this faster and smarter can claw back a serious amount of time. Here are 20 of our favorite hacks and tricks for mastering File Explorer and file management in…Read more...

If you’re arachnophobic, I hate to tell you this, but spiders can fly.

The wide assortment of flavorings used to spice up your vaping experience could be damaging your cardiovascular system, suggests new research released Thursday. The study, published in the journal of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, found that several common e-cigarette flavorings can directly harm…Read more...

On Thursday, about 400 staffers at the Washington Post signed an open letter to their newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, politely suggesting that he’s being a cheapskate in their union’s ongoing contract negotiations. From the letter:Read more...

Wireless carriers have already demonstrated an inability to understand what “unlimited” actually means, offering phone plans that habitually throttle customers who use more than 26GB or so of data every month. However, with the release of its new Above Unlimited plan, Verizon is pushing the mental gymnastics carriers…Read more...

What was the best thing your parents ever built for you? A treehouse? Maybe a go-kart? I’m afraid their efforts pale in comparison to the jet-powered scooter Colin Furze built for his son who finally has a definite answer to the question, “which parent do you love the most?”

Snap Inc. announced Thursday that it’s releasing a new developer kit that embeds Snapchat’s signature features like bitmoji and stickers into other apps. Reports of Snap Kit leaked last month, but this is the official confirmation.Read more...

Our addiction to fossil fuels is unrelenting, which means that the skies will continue to fill with carbon dioxide for the foreseeable future. Efforts to scale back coal and oil consumption are underway, but once the trigger has been pulled, it’s hard to put the bullet back into the chamber: conventional wisdom states…Read more...

If your personal data gets hacked, then why not file a lawsuit? That’s what Vermont librarian Jessamyn West did by successfully suing Equifax over its 2017 hack, which exposed the personal data over 140 million people.Read more...

Two campers are to blame for a fire that has consumed more than 500 acres in Nevada’s Voltaire Canyon as of Wednesday night, according to Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong.Read more...

Steve Bannon has been keeping a relatively low profile since he was excommunicated from the warm glow of Donald Trump’s love. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been busy. He’s reportedly been working to make cryptocurrencies great again and is even considering launching his own token: The “Deplorables Coin.”Read more...

This week, Media Rights Capital revealed it commissioned a 10-episode adaptation of crime thriller The Outsider by an author who has seemingly become the most desirable man in Hollywood lately: Stephen King. A lot of King’s work is currently in the process of being remade for television and film—so here’s a reminder…Read more...

Both Google and Apple have started the long tease ahead of new software updates in the fall, with Android P and iOS 12 now available to users who are brave enough to take the plunge (and have a developer account, in Apple’s case). So which beta software looks most promising and gets us most excited? Here’s how they…Read more...

The Expanse’s alien protomolecule has always been a game-changer. It’s unpredictable, it makes people do weird things, and it reshapes reality and logic according to its own strange agenda. But this week, on “Dandelion Sky,” it didn’t just change the game—it rewrote all the rules.Read more...

Even though there’s only one Amazon Go location so far, it seems the existence of Amazon’s cashier-less, checkout-free convenience store has left some of the company’s biggest competitors wondering how they, too, can get in on futuristic retail.Read more...

Summer is finally here, which means it’s finally time to replace that drone you crashed on Christmas Day. Here’s some advice. Don’t buy an expensive drone if you don’t know how to fly. Cheap drones have gotten really good, and there’s no better way to hone your skills without exploding money into the side of a tree.Read more...

Every summer, amusement parks across the country compete to lure visitors with bigger, faster, and more terrifying thrill rides. This year, Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey is hoping that people will actually line up to ride its new Cyborg Cyber Spin that churns stomachs along three different axes.Read more...

James Wan reveals the wonderfully simple way people will talk under water in Aquaman. Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly can never escape questions about where they were during the events of Infinity War. Plus, our best look yet at the new Predator design, and more footage from Preacher’s return. Spoilers get!Read more...

The extraordinary discovery of four small frogs preserved in amber is providing the earliest evidence of these now-prolific amphibians living in tropical rainforests.

Elon Musk’s underground transportation business, The Boring Company, has won a bid to create an underground high-speed rail line from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport. The company beat out at least four other developers for the project, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to make an official…Read more...

If you’re ready to make the leap to a projector-based home theater, you won’t find a better deal to get you started than this $1,000 4K ViewSonic projector.

Fresh off finally completing the goal of killing net neutrality protections, Ajit Pai’s Federal Communications Commission is onto its next attempt to destroy longstanding rules that have protected American consumers. According to Bloomberg, the FCC is planning on sneaking in a vote to change limits on how many…Read more...

The state of Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma LP, the company that developed the semisynthetic opioid OxyContin in 1995 and aggressively marketed it while downplaying the risk of addiction. It’s part of a growing backlash to Purdue, a pharmaceutical giant the New Yorker characterized as an …Read more...

Google’s laptop-tablet hybrid Pixelbook has been given high praise by critics and users for its functionality and design, but the device suffers from one critical flaw: It runs Chrome OS, Google’s own, underpowered operating system. New reports suggest that may change soon, as Google is supposedly exploring the…Read more...

Tech giant Apple is reportedly planning to prevent anyone who wants to gain access to a encrypted iOS device via techniques like Cellebrite’s GrayKey phone-hacking box by introducing an option to lock USB data access an hour after it’s locked, essentially turning iPhones, iPads, and iPods into sealed black boxes.…Read more...

The first thing that happened when I drove a Tesla on Autopilot was an instant, unsettling feeling of not being comfortable in the car at all, thinking it’s always a moment away from crashing. Slowly, I got used to it and calmed down, just like everyone else I’ve talked to who has used Autopilot. This video from a…Read more...

The Chinese government, in its ongoing pursuit to create the dystopian police state dreamed up in many a science fiction tale, is reportedly readying a new vehicle identification system that will be capable of monitoring the movement of citizens.

Scott Free is an escape artist. And a superhero. And the owner of the DC universe’s best T-shirt collection. But those are beside the point, which is that he’s known for escaping things. You could say he gets out of them, well... scott free. But this week’s Mister Miracle #9 might have given him, at last, a trap that…Read more...

What happened to Danny Torrance after his father tried to kill him in The Shining? Stephen King tackled that very question in his 2013 novel Doctor Sleep—and now, Ewan McGregor is in talks to play Danny in the film version of the story.

After being fired by the attorney general in March, a former top FBI official requested records from the bureau citing the federal freedom of information law. However, he was quick to discover that the agency he led for a brief period last year isn’t really that into transparency or the rule of law after all.

If you were hoping to see all of your favorite Marvel characters under one roof, we have some bad news. If you didn’t like the idea of Disney owning the whole Marvel universe, well, it can always get worse. Comcast is backing a dump truck of cash up to 21st Century Fox’s doorstep, besting Disney’s previous offer to…Read more...

Despite the best efforts of a Republican-led Congress over the past two years, the Affordable Care Act has largely stayed intact. A recent study published in Health Affairs offers the latest bit of evidence that the sweeping health care law, flawed and incomplete as it might be, has been a net good. In California, the…Read more...

As more reports detailing Stan Lee’s recent financial woes and allegations of elder abuse have surfaced in past weeks, it’s become increasingly clear that the 95-year-old comics legend has been in desperate need of someone to protect him from those seeking to take advantage.Read more...

Bitcoin now hovers around $6,300, but not long ago it had spiked to nearly $20,000 per coin. Skeptics have wondered how such a rise was even possible, and a paper authored at the University of Texas suggests a fairly reasonable answer: price manipulation!Read more...

Since the 1990s, scientists have detected thousands of exoplanets orbiting distant stars, but the discovery of baby protoplanets embedded within stellar expanses of gas and dust has proven to be a challenge. An international team of astronomers has used a new technique to finally discover not one, but three infant…Read more...

An update to Microsoft’s well-received line of Surface devices is no doubt already in the works, but news from Thurrott’s Brad Sams suggests we may see more than a few additions to the lineup as a whole. And if the showcase from Microsoft’s competition is any indication, one of them, a second attempt at a dual-screen…Read more...

I can’t recall the last time I didn’t install an extension from the Google’s Chrome Web Store. However, developers—up until now—have been allowed to offer their extensions as inline downloads. In other words, they could drop a download button on a website, you’d click on it and see a typical installation confirmation…Read more...