Gizmodo

Last week, Microsoft announced that the on-premises version of its widely used email and calendaring product Exchange had several previously undisclosed security flaws. These flaws, the company said, were being used by foreign threat actors to hack into the networks of U.S. businesses and governments, primarily to…Read more...

A new estimate suggests it’ll cost somewhere between $30 million and $50 million to clean up the mess created by the collapse of the iconic Arecibo Observatory dish late last year, according to an NSF report detailing the aftermath of the disaster and possible next steps.

Tricking a terminator into not shooting you might be as simple as wearing a giant sign that says ROBOT, at least until Elon Musk-backed research outfit OpenAI trains their image recognition system not to misidentify things based on some scribbles from a Sharpie.

If we can hit the most aggressive targets set by the Paris Agreement, we could stave off the worst health impacts for people living in one of the most climate-vulnerable areas on Earth. A study published Monday in Nature Geoscience projects that the tropics will stay habitable to humans if we can keep warming below…Read more...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have come out with new guidelines for people who are vaccinated against covid-19. Chief among them is the reassurance that fully vaccinated people can safely spend time indoors unmasked with other vaccinated people and even unvaccinated people in certain situations. It…Read more...

Space Jam: A New Legacy has “canceled” Pepé le Pew. You might assume a kids’ movie dropping a character whose sole characteristic is his desire to molest female characters without their consent is an unequivocally good thing, but it’s actually more complicated than you might think.Read more...

Whether it hails from Pixar or Disney Animation, an animated feature film from Disney is never the same at the end as it is at the beginning. The production model is such that, in the years it takes to make a movie like Raya and the Last Dragon, anything and everything can change—as long as that change makes it…Read more...

Google TV is bringing new parental controls to its streaming device.

A nearly vanquished infectious disease looks to be making a comeback. In a new paper this week, scientists warn that cases of diphtheria have gradually increased in recent years, while there are signs that antibiotics and vaccines against the bacteria could be in danger of losing their potency as the germ continues to…Read more...

If the Texas power crisis taught us anything, it’s that the state has some serious infrastructure issues that not even the state’s regulators are prepared to fix. Thankfully, everyone’s favorite high-profile Twitter troll, Elon Musk, might have a plan: a giant battery ready to plug more than 16,000 homes’ worth of…Read more...

That magical spot in Jezero crater where NASA’s Perseverance rover made its historic landing last month has been named “Octavia E. Butler Landing” in honor of the late sci-fi author.Read more...

WandaVision spent the majority of its season referencing and revering 70 years of sitcom history, including Bewitched, Family Ties, and Full House, among others. But there were other classic TV series considered to serve as inspiration for Wanda’s magical reality—and one wasn’t a sitcom at all.

After essentially creating a show made of pure Spielberg-King fanfic, Matt and Ross Duffer will go from honoring their heroes to working with them.Read more...

Unless you’re living in Huntersville, North Carolina, you may be blissfully unaware that the U.S.’s biggest gasoline spill since 1997 happened this past summer. The slowly-unfolding, little-reported-on saga in the state involves a company controlled by special interests like the Koch brothers and Shell, and a pipeline…Read more...

Divoom Tivoo Max Bluetooth LED Speaker (Red) | $120 | Amazon

Crushing a starry-eyed startup’s hopes and dreams can be a pain, but now you can outsource that emotional labor to a heartless AI instead. Because rejection doesn’t have to hurt...err, not you at least, I mean.Read more...

Microsoft announced this week that another one of its email products, Exchange, had been compromised by a hacking campaign. This recent hack is actually totally unrelated to the “SolarWinds” one, in which Microsoft has also played an outsized role.Read more...

Pour one out for all the horny folks in Utah, y’all. The state’s legislature has passed its baffling “porn filter” bill, which would mandate a default filter for “material that is harmful to minors” on all tablets and smartphones sold in the state beginning in 2022.Read more...

SITA, a data firm that works with some of the world’s largest airlines, announced Thursday that it had been the victim of a “highly sophisticated cyberattack,” the likes of which compromised information on hundreds of thousands of airline passengers all over the world.Read more...

You no longer need to splurge on a gigantic Galaxy Note to use a stylus with your Samsung phone. The Galaxy S21 Ultra, which launched in February, also supports Samsung’s S Pen—though you’ll have to buy one and store it separately, because unlike the Note, the S21 Ultra doesn’t have a built-in stylus slot.Read more...

About 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the Californian coast, the 10,500-pound (4,7630-kilogram) remote submersible Doc Ricketts swept its strobe lights and sonar pulses across the seafloor like a transient silent disco. The vehicle wasn’t just putting on a show for the deep-sea denizens of the Pacific. It was mapping the…Read more...

There were as many ways that Marvel’s WandaVision series finale could have ended as there are different ways to process grief. Each of the season’s nine episodes teased this out—new plot twists that threw audiences for loops all meant to obscure, but not erase, the reality that despite all the strength she’s put on…Read more...

Featured Deal: Hitman 3 (Digital) | $30 | Eneba | Use code HITMAR3Read more...

After spending more than a decade building up massive profits off targeted advertising, Google announced on Wednesday that it’s planning to do away with any sort of individual tracking and targeting once the cookie is out of the picture.Read more...

CBS All Access is no more and in its place has emerged Paramount+, the latest service to vault into the streaming fray as a paid subscription offering. But Paramount+ also arrives at a tough time for smaller services, which are competing—whether they admit it or not—against much larger giants like Disney+ and Netflix.…Read more...

You whined and you complained and you moaned. And no, you’re not getting your “Edit Tweet” button, but Twitter is testing something nearly as good. Will it make you happy?

The reign of telecoms shills meddling in internet regulations seems to be coming to a close, at least for now. The New York Times reports that Joe Biden has chosen Tim Wu, who’s credited with defining foundational concepts like net neutrality, to serve on the National Economic Council in a new role as a special…Read more...

For those of us who’ve gone a while without flexing our sheet music-reading muscle, or even for those who are looking to give piano a go for the first time but are limited by space (or budget), Lumi wants to help you learn the basics on a funky illuminated keyboard that gamifies the process. For the most part, it gets…Read more...

The covid-19 pandemic had a surprising effect on road fatalities in 2020, new data released this week suggests. Despite people staying at home more and driving less overall, more than 42,000 Americans were estimated to have been killed during a car crash last year—a higher death toll than seen in 2019. It’s likely…Read more...

John McAfee, founder of the giant antivirus and cybersecurity firm that bears his name, has been indicted in federal court in Manhattan for charges related to securities fraud and money laundering, the Department of Justice announced Friday.Read more...

I know big and shouty gaming phones aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you still have to appreciate it when a company goes all-in on performance. That’s precisely what Nubia has done with the new Red Magic 6.Read more...

Here’s something that you’d normally see in a post-apocalyptic, zombie TV show, only instead of a mysterious radio message luring Rick and the gang to a group of cannibals, it’s a road closure notice from Obama’s second presidential inauguration. According to The Drive, the same AM radio station in Washington, D.C.…Read more...

Backroom deals, undemocratic processes, shutting out local voices in favor of industry interests. There’s soap-opera level drama happening in an unlikely space: the world of building codes. But the issues at hand are more than made-for-TV drama, and the outcome could have devastating effects on energy efficiency and…Read more...

NGC 2336 was discovered over a century ago, but the big, blue spiral galaxy has never looked better, thanks to an eye-catching image obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope.

There are two kinds of smart bulbs in this world—those that work well, and those doomed to languish in drawers with all of your other bitter regrets. If you haven’t done your research, or just failed hard a lot, you have probably come to the same conclusion many of us have: Just buy the friggin’ Philips Hue bulbs.…Read more...

The chairman of space tourism company Virgin Galactic, Chamath Palihapitiya, has sold his entire personal stake in the company for $211 million, according to a new regulatory filing with the SEC made public on Friday and first noticed by Bloomberg News. Palihapitiya still indirectly owns millions of shares through an…Read more...

The Italian government has blocked a shipment of AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine to Australia in the first case of a country stopping vaccine exports in order to make sure it has enough for its domestic population. Italy consulted with the European Commission before halting the shipment of 250,000 vaccine doses,…Read more...

Meltwater from Antarctic glaciers is changing the makeup of the region’s oceans more than previously known, a new study finds. The measurements that made these findings possible were collected by an unusual group of researchers: seals.Read more...

Griddy, the Texas power supplier that’s made headlines recently for customers’ sky-high energy bills in the wake of widespread winter storm outages, has racked up another lawsuit. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the company for “false, misleading, and deceptive advertising and marketing practices” that he…Read more...

I know, I know. Another pair of open-ear audio smart glasses? Were the Bose Frames, Echo Frames, and JLab JBuds not enough? Nope. Not according to Razer, which just announced its Razer Anzu Smart Glasses.Read more...

Virtual private networks can be great for folks wary of how their data is tracked online, but what happens when a VPN provider directly markets itself to those who would use that promise of anonymity to break the law?Read more...

What appeared to be one of the most exciting features of iOS 14.5 turns out to work a little differently than it originally seemed.

A young teen boy’s years of nasal congestion and other bizarre symptoms had an unusual culprit. His doctors say that the boy unknowingly had a BB gun pellet lodged in his nasal cavity for nearly a decade, which eventually caused him to give off an awful odor every time he blew his nose. Fortunately, they were able to…Read more...

China’s ByteDance, is planning on launching its own version of audio chat app Clubhouse for the Chinese market, Reuters reported on Thursday.

In the latest in a string of “hits” on Russian dark web forums, the prominent crime site Maza appears to have been hacked by someone earlier this week.Read more...

Right now, Calandra Davis’ water pressure is too low to take a shower. When she turns on her sinks, the water comes out at a slow trickle. For weeks, she’s had to bathe herself and her 6-year-old son with water from store-bought bottles. Like all residents of Jackson, Mississippi, she’s also been on a boil-water…Read more...

In a letter to the FCC Thursday morning, several senators called for the federal agency to redefine the current minimum speeds that internet service providers can call “high-speed” broadband from 25/3 Mbps to 100/100 Mbps. That’s not only four times higher than the minimum download speed, but senators are also calling…Read more...

An asteroid with a small chance of hitting Earth in 2068 will swing past our planet in the coming days, providing a rare opportunity for astronomers to observe this potentially hazardous object.

As the industry continues to transition to wireless audio, Qualcomm has a plan to make the audio quality on Bluetooth headphones sound a little more like the sound you hear on wired ones.

Butterflies play essential role in pollinating wild plants and crops. Which makes a new study published in Science on Thursday such bad news. It shows the climate crisis is posing an existential threat to their survival, particularly in the American West.Read more...