Gizmodo

For the first time ever, scientists have spotted hydrogen chloride on Mars. The source of this colorless gas remains unclear, but going theories include volcanic activity or a previously undetected chemical cycle tied to the Red Planet’s epic dust storms.

The seashell has been collecting dust on a museum shelf in Toulouse for the past 80 years, and before that, it had spent all of recorded history, plus a few millennia, on the floor of a cave in the Pyrenean foothills of Southern France. Now, the Marsoulas conch has been dusted off and played—and you can hear its eerie…Read more...

Last October, security researchers warned that the Qiui Cellmate Chastity Cage had a serious security flaw that could allow hackers to turn a chastity device into a dick jail. Now, the device’s European distributors are saying the problem’s been fixed and your dicks are safe.

Amazon has been making a mint during the pandemic. That business has resulted in multi-billion dollar pay days for the company’s soon-to-be former CEO, and millions of the company’s iconic cardboard boxes being left on doorsteps, and in lobbies and mailboxes every day. And when those piles of boxes climb higher, the…Read more...

Features familiar to the Waze crowd are coming soon to Apple Maps.

As rumors about Apple’s augmented reality efforts continue to heat up, a new report claims Apple has partnered with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to develop and produce sophisticated micro OLED displays for use in a future AR headset.

Good morning my old nemesis, the ghost of the TikTok ban past.

Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. | $47 | AmazonRead more...

A new study has found that after a mysterious increase in the 2010s, an ozone-depleting chemical is once again in decline. It’s a rare bit of good news, showing that previous research tracking the increase has likely had an impact.

Quarantined meme-makers and beleaguered graphic designers can quietly rejoice in the fact that Adobe’s making it easier to work together in some of its flagship products.Read more...

Up to 20% off Men’s Toys | Lelo

If you don’t already own a Peloton machine, you may be outta luck for awhile due to the company’s logistical issues. But regardless of whether you have a Bike or Tread in your home, you can still take advantage of the newest feature in the Peloton app. That is, if you own an iPhone or iPad.Read more...

As the pandemic drags on, some residents of the Bay Area faced a different kind of health emergency on Tuesday: an oil spill. Around 600 gallons of an oil-and-water mixture spilled from a Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California into the San Francisco Bay, the company told local health authorities.Read more...

Tom Holland unsurprisingly denies those big Spider-Man rumors. Superman & Lois has found its Jor-El. Plus, what’s to come on the sophomore season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, and get a sneak peek at filming on the final season of The Walking Dead. To me, my spoilers!

With all the advanced health features that smartwatch makers keep rolling out, it’s easy to forget that many people aren’t looking for anything more than notifications, good battery life, and basic fitness-tracking. Unfortunately, if that’s all you want, your options are either bland fitness trackers or chintzy…Read more...

Twitter has blocked the accounts of at least 500 people and groups involved in the current protests by farmers in India at the request of the Indian government, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. Some of the accounts have even been permanently deleted.

New research released Wednesday underscores the role of obesity in type 2 diabetes. It suggests that obesity plays a major factor in up to half of new diabetes cases that occur annually in the U.S.Read more...

Another app bites the dust on older Apple TVs.

Hopeful Starlink users no longer have to wait for a magical beta invite to use the service. SpaceX has officially opened pre-orders to everyone currently in its service area, reports The Verge.Read more...

Confirming what we pretty much already knew, cloud-based business software company Salesforce said on Tuesday that the 9-to-5 workday is “dead,” and also announced plans to allow its employees more freedom in choosing how to structure their work lives going forward.

Few things about the PlayStation 5 are better than the DualSense controller. It feels terrific to hold, somehow just as solid as it is light. The haptics are truly dynamic, at least for games that offer such support. It’s beautiful. But even the mighty DualSense reportedly isn’t immune to the Achilles’ heel of modern…Read more...

In a sign of America returning to a state of regular-level dystopia, lawyer Rod Ponton is taking the internet by storm after he accidentally left on a Zoom filter during a court hearing, making him appear to as a large, watery-eyed cat.

Apple’s latest software update will fix an issue the company said has been affecting some older MacBook Pro models.Read more...

Parler, the social media utopia for people born too late to sign up for Vichy France, reportedly tried to entice Donald Trump into joining by offering him a hefty taste of its operation. Now the House Oversight Committee is investigating.

As long as devices with smudge-magnet screens have existed, so have styluses to interact with them. But even the Apple Pencil is an ugly white plastic stick that’s more about function than form. Accessory maker Adonit has brought the aesthetics of a fine writing instrument like a Montblanc pen to a stylus, its new …Read more...

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. This week, everything changes when the fire nation rolls for initiative, Magic: The Gathering celebrates Black History Month, and Games Workshop figures out another way to ease you into the worlds of Warhammer.

It can be difficult to distinguish a flesh-and-blood human’s face from one generated by artificial intelligence. (Telltale signs are misshapen eyes under spectacles, non-dermatological blemishes on the skin, and hair that looks as if it’s been thatched atop the head, though your experience may differ). But what about…Read more...

An analysis of coelacanth DNA suggests its genome has experienced some significant changes in recent evolutionary history, potentially dispelling the popular image of these iconic fish as being “living fossils.”

This week, group of economists released an analysis that attempts to answer how much the average American drives their electric vehicle. While it shows people drove electric cars fewer miles than gas-powered ones, the results might not reflect the rapidly changing electric vehicle landscape.Read more...

GameStop’s stock has fallen back to something like a reasonable price and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy claims he lost about $700,000, but the future of meme stocks is not yet written. And at least one New York-based quantitative fund seems to think there’s still a glimmer of gold to be found in the brain trust…Read more...

As we continue to transition from LTE to 5G, Qualcomm just announced the world’s first 5G modem capable of reaching data speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second.Read more...

Have you heard? The old Myspace is back. Sort of.

Few 1-year-olds are as intrepid explorers as NASA and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter. The space probe is already 138 million miles from Earth and is about to take baby’s first trip behind the Sun.Read more...

If you’re using a different password for all the sites and apps you’re signed up for (and you really should), there are only so many combinations of letters and numbers you can hold in your head at once. The good news is there are plenty of tools out there to remember your passwords and secure them for you, and we’ve…Read more...

If you’ve ever wished your Echo device was a control panel, well, good news: Amazon’s Lab126 hardware division is purportedly designing a wall-mounted Echo that can control your smart home and media, as well as host video chats.Read more...

As Apple prepares to launch its anti-tracking update for iOS, Facebook and other companies that have built their business on invading users’ privacy are nervous about the future. But there’s always a new vulnerability waiting to be discovered. For instance, researchers now claim that a website’s favicon can be used to…Read more...

Alexander Freed’s Alphabet Squadron trilogy has given us a window into the complex political landscape left behind after Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, through the lens of damaged fighter pilot veterans of the galactic civil war. Now things are coming to a head in its last chapter, and the Imperial Remnant is making a…Read more...

We can’t go to bars or restaurants, but for a romantic night out during the pandemic, consider laying out a picnic blanket in a park to count the stars. As an added bonus, your little date could help see if covid-19 lockdowns have impacted light pollution.Read more...

Scientists assembled by the World Health Organization to investigate the origins of the covid-19 pandemic have announced their early findings. They concluded that the first known cases traced to a seafood market in Wuhan, China in December 2019 likely don’t represent the original source of the outbreak. At the same…Read more...

While Google typically waits until much later in the spring to officially show off new updates and features, some leaked screenshots may have just given us an early look at changes coming to Android 12.Read more...

... Huh.

Usually, a city government handles things like traffic and mass transit, public works like roads and sewers, and emergency services. In the first trailer for the dark romantic comedy Happily—which we’re appropriately happy to debut on io9—apparently, the city also makes sure that couples aren’t too much in love.

Instead of gasoline and diesel, it might one day be possible to just unload a cartridge of gray, goopy paste into the fuel tank of your e-scooter, motorcycle, or even potentially your car. At least, that’s what researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials (IFAM) are…Read more...

Last week, the House voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments in large part because of what the new Georgia congresswoman posted on social media.

Mars is about to receive its next visitor from Earth—the Mars Hope probe. It has the makings of a historic day, as the United Arab Emirates seeks to become just the fifth country to reach the Red Planet. You can watch the action live right here.

Donald Trump is a real jack of all noxious trades. It turns out that as he was rolling back environmental policies and overseeing an endless stream of noxious climate misinformation as president, one of our dear former leader’s hotels has also been ignoring clean water protections. A multi-faceted pollution king!

What was the internet like in the 1970s? It was an incredibly small community of university researchers, government employees, military contractors, and more than a few spies. But those people all built and tinkered with the earliest technologies to create something that would transform the lives of everyone reading…Read more...

Peter Dinklage has signed up for the next animated adventure from Wolfwalkers’ Will Collins. Kevin Smith reacts to the soundtrack for Masters of the Universe: Revelations. Plus, Riverdale continues to Riverdale all over the place in a new glimpse at its timeskip episode. Spoilers now!

Quip would like to upgrade your mouthwash experience. But do you need to?

Anker Soundcore Bluetooth Speaker | $22 | Amazon