Gizmodo

Do all food bloggers secretly want a book deal? Because without fail, every time I look up a new recipe to make, I end up scrolling past a thousand-word essay about some food blogger’s beloved, great-great-grandmother whose culinary insights have endured generations after she personally back-stroked across the…Read more...

What astronomers believed to be the most distant object in the Solar System, “Farout,” has lost its title after just two years. That crown now goes to “Farfarout” (zero points for creativity, you guys), a planetoid that is more than 130 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.Read more...

Happy Valentine’s Day, my little internet lovebugs. I got you a folded Lisa Frank paper valentine with a temporary tattoo inside, because I love you.Read more...

It’s also living in a society. Yes, they went there.

Ever since I was a little girl, one of my favorite things about Valentine’s Day has been the cards. I would love to decorate my little shoebox every year and check out all the Valentines I would get from my classmates. The best ones were, of course, the ones that were not like the others. Thumbs up if they were both…Read more...

Maryland decided to take a chunk of Big Tech’s advertising dollars on Friday, successfully passing legislation that would place a maximum tax of 10% on revenue from digital ads. Analysts estimate that the tax will generate about $250 million in its first year, money that the Maryland says will go to schools.Read more...

The House Financial Services Committee will hold a virtual hearing on Feb. 18 as part of its investigation into the coordinated effort by Reddit’s stock-trading community to drive up the price of GameStop stocks as a big middle finger to hedge fund managers.Read more...

In a move straight out of our fanfic dreams, Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Childish Gambino himself Donald Glover will executive produce and star in a new series based on the 2005 movie Mr. and Mrs Smith for Amazon Prime.Read more...

The covid-19 vaccination effort is finally achieving liftoff in the U.S. In the days since we highlighted the case for optimism about the pandemic ending, data collected by Bloomberg shows 2 million more Americans have received a shot.

Failure could take on many forms next week when NASA’s next-gen rover, Perseverance, reaches the surface of the Red Planet. Here’s what needs to go right—and how things could quickly go sideways—when Perseverance tries to make its much-anticipated landing.

Insignia 5-qt. Analog Air Fryer Stainless Steel | $40 | Best BuyRead more...

In case you haven’t noticed, Bitcoin’s having a bit of a moment. The cryptocurrency’s value reached record heights in recent weeks, you’ll soon be able to buy a Tesla with it, and, as of Friday, you can now spend Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) via Apple Pay.Read more...

Apparently unsatiated by hoovering up users’ personal data on its platforms, Facebook’s hoping to get its mitts on their health data as well. The company’s reportedly building a smartwatch as its next foray into hardware, and the device could debut as soon as next year, according to a Friday report from the InformationRead more...

Reports indicate that Americans are clearly interested in both SpaceX’s Starlink and 5G broadband as potential home internet services. But so far it’s unclear which option has more appeal compared to traditional cable broadband. Some reports show Americans are more interested in Starlink, while others indicate most…Read more...

A newly released report says Rex Tillerson’s State Department responded in a slow, disorganized fashion to the “Havana syndrome”—the mysterious rash of neural disorders that has plagued U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba and other locations since 2016.Read more...

As the global pandemic rages on, we’ve been seeing a slew of tech companies consider making remote work an option for their employees even after covid. Now Spotify is on board: On Friday, the company announced the rollout of its Work From Anywhere program, which will give the thousands of Spotify employees around the…Read more...

On Friday, the Minneapolis City Council approved a new ordinance that prevents the city from buying or using face recognition technology without specific permission. Local police immediately began whining about it.Read more...

MSI is one of several laptop makers to update its line of gaming laptops with Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPU—and yet that’s the least impressive part of its GP66 Leopard. Not content to just stuff new components into the same old chassis and call it day, MSI has given its Leopard model a total overhaul from its previous…Read more...

Syncing all of your Apple data and files to devices that aren’t made by Apple isn’t the exercise in futility that it once was. There are now several signs that Apple is ready to cautiously welcome users of other hardware to its services, including tools for Chrome, Windows, and Android. Here’s how to get your…Read more...

Facebook has pledged to restrict the widespread distribution of content from Myanmar’s military regime following a successful coup that toppled the democratically elected government on Feb. 1. The pledge comes from a new blog post at Facebook’s website that seems to implicitly acknowledge the potential for…Read more...

Microsoft would like the U.S. government to adopt media rules that would force big tech companies to share profits with newspapers when they link to news content, according to a new blog post by Microsoft president Brad Smith. And the entire concept is controversial, to say the least.

Data breaches have a tendency to grow past initially reported figures. Organizations don’t always know how screwed they are right away, investigations take time, and new victims are discovered amidst the wreckage. This is certainly proving to be the case with Accellion, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based cloud provider that…Read more...

Starting next week, you should start seeing new labels on more government-run Twitter accounts as well as the personal accounts of heads of state. It’s part of Twitter’s latest expansion of its policy on government-affiliated accounts, with the idea being that this additional context should help users “have a more…Read more...

The Biden administration plans to take steps to address the global chip shortage affecting automakers, laptop makers, and other manufacturers that rely on the semiconductor industry, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

If you regularly use Apple’s Safari browser, you’re probably familiar with its “Fraudulent Website Warning,” which gives you a heads up if the site you’re about to visit might be, say, an elaborate phishing scam. What you probably didn’t know is that until now, this safety feature relied on an obscure Google database…Read more...

Archaeologists in Britain have discovered the site of a former stone circle in west Wales, which they believe was taken apart and later rebuilt as Stonehenge.

The findings from a new clinical trial released Wednesday may point the way to an elusive goal: a safe and effective drug that helps reduce obesity in people.

Apparently some PlayStation 5 scalpers aren’t happy with their public image, Forbes reports. The press has treated them unfairly and misrepresented them, they claim. I’m not sure what rock these scalpers have been living under, but news flash: People hate scalpers for legitimate reasons. They screw people out of…Read more...

With today’s news that workers at Medium have overwhelmingly voted to form a union, it’s hard not to get a little mushy about the labor rights zeitgeist. From Amazon warehouse pickers to developers, workers are collectively deciding that they’re over the techno-utopian bullshit that’s taught us building things online…Read more...

I am unashamed to say that I don’t handle breakups well. I handle being dumped even worse. But you’d never know that from looking at my social media. The thing is, I’ve been dumped so many times I have a bonafide playbook on how to survive the social media minefield with your dignity relatively intact. During my last…Read more...

QAnon, the sprawling far-right internet conspiracy theory that asserts the entire Trump presidency was secretly dedicated to waging a shadow war against an omnipresent cabal of Satan-worshipping, pedophilic Democrats, celebrities, and bankers, hasn’t exactly been the belle of the ball lately.

The tale of the magically created sellsword and would-be assassin Alias and her boon companion, the saurial paladin Dragonbait, continues in the second volume of the Finder’s Stone trilogy—which, wait a minute…uh…doesn’t actually feature Alias or Dragonbait? At all. But I’ll tell you what The Wyvern’s Spur does…Read more...

The emergence of a vast number of streaming services in recent years seems to be catching up to the companies who’ve launched platforms intended to take on industry titans like Netflix and Disney.

Customs and Border Protection used facial recognition tools to scan over 23 million travelers’ faces at 30-plus points of entry in 2020, and failed to turn up a single example of an individual impersonating someone else at an airport, per a Wednesday report by OneZero.

For people who have been debating about whether to pay Google for extra cloud storage or not, today Google just sweetened the deal by giving new photo-editing tools to Google One subscribers.Read more...

At 1.2 billion years young, the galaxy ALESS 073.1 should have the chaotic look of a youthful galaxy—a fledging, diffuse group of stars and gas suspended in the early universe. Instead, this primordial starburst galaxy has a central bulge and rotating belt that makes it look billions of years older. This odd corner of…Read more...

Lovers, this is not the content you seek. Everyone else, please step right in.

Some whale songs can give scientists valuable information about the ocean’s geography, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. What’s more, their songs can be used as a form of seismic testing, which uses blasts of sound to map out the ocean floor. Forms of this technology can be harmful to…Read more...

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already mastered the skill of counting. But just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable, so the makers of a documenting-scanning app for smartphones has added a new AI-powered feature that can automatically count up similar objects in a photo for you. This is truly…Read more...

Pretty soon, you might be able to tip your favorite tweeters. Why you’d want to is anyone’s best guess.

Epic’s Unreal Engine is making it easier for game developers to create and customize realistic human-like characters with its new MetaHuman Creator, which gives devs the ability to fine-tune facial features, skin complexion, and work from preset body types, hair, clothing, and even teeth. Watching it in action, I…Read more...

Love a song and want to share it with a pal? You can do it with your Alexa device now.

Alex Birsan, a Romanian threat researcher, recently made over $130,000 by virtuously breaking into IT systems at dozens of major tech companies.

There’s a new type of livestream building steam: It’s called VTubing, and for many people, it might only exist as thumbnails in YouTube’s recommended videos section. But VTubing is way more involved than just clips that feature kawaii anime avatars. It’s an important evolution of our social media landscape.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released new guidance about the best ways to use masks to help prevent transmission of covid-19. One key recommendation highlights the added benefits of using a more snugly fitting mask or pairing a cloth mask with a surgical mask. Experimental data collected by…Read more...

So, you’ve got an HBO Max subscription. Maybe you got it to watch Wonder Woman 1984 and are gonna hold on to it until Godzilla vs. Kong comes out. Maybe you’ll keep it going until the fourth Matrix or the new Dune. But what can you watch in the meantime? Is there more than just all of HBO’s old shows and some upcoming…Read more...

A small-scale nuclear reactor at a government neutron research facility was shut down last week after it began to spew elevated amounts of ionizing radiation. No employees received dangerous doses of radiation, according to officials, who are now devising a plan to determine the cause of the leak.

Donald Trump’s account is dead, kaput, slain, slaughtered, drawn and quartered, left out to rot and never coming back, according to Twitter.

There aren’t many gaming mice that incorporate a joystick into the design. The Razer Naga Trinity and Corsair Scimitar include multiple buttons on the left side, but those are designed for games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends. Binding abilities to those buttons can be more convenient for some, but…Read more...

No one wants their gadget to have crappy battery life, but it’s particularly annoying with wearables. If that new fitness tracker needs to be recharged too often, it’s going to collect dust in a drawer somewhere. Well good news, everyone. Scientists have figured out how to build a wearable thermoelectric generator…Read more...