Gizmodo

As part of the Connect America Fund Phase II grants in 2015, the FCC awarded CenturyLink and Frontier a combined total of $789.1 million in federal funds to expand broadband services to rural Americans. Dec. 31 was the deadline for CenturyLink to roll out 10Mbps/1Mbps broadband to 1.17 million homes and businesses in…Read more...

Federal authorities have brought their first-ever case under a 2016 anti-bot law to crack down on ticket scalpers. Three New York-based ticket brokers were ordered to pay $3.7 million in fines after allegedly making millions of dollars through bot-powered ticket reselling schemes, the Federal Trade Commission …Read more...

What if the most significant measure of your life’s labors has nothing to do with your lived experiences but merely your unintentional generation of a realistic digital clone of yourself, a specimen of ancient man for the amusement of people of the year 4500 long after you have departed this mortal coil? This is the…Read more...

Amazon has a message for its workers: if you want to unionize so badly, you’ll need to risk catching the coronavirus to do it.Read more...

Like it or not, Facebook Messenger can be inescapable, especially if your friends and family have settled on the app as their main messaging service. I know folks who have retained Facebook accounts solely to continue using Messenger. But even if you’re all in with Facebook with no qualms whatsoever, there are a few…Read more...

This week, most of the world took a collective sigh of relief as Joe Biden was inaugurated as president without something incredibly terrible happening. That doesn’t include the most die-hard loyalists on the Trump Train, who spend Wednesday freaking out.

Only the French would pass a law that is so poetically existential. While conservation efforts in most countries tend to focus on saving endangered animals or plant life, France is going further in an effort to preserve the sensory experiences of its rural areas.

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On Wednesday, Anthony Fauci trotted out to the White House briefing room podium, prompting a stream of memes to rival Bernie at inauguration. We had a how it started/how it’s going Fauci comparison under Trump and Biden. We had Fauci walking in slow motion set to the “Welcome Back, Kotter” theme song. And there was a…Read more...

The same week recently poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was taken into police custody in Moscow, Russia’s youth and adults began preparing for unsanctioned protests that will take place across the country on Saturday, January 23. Some of this preparation has been aided by the video-sharing platform…Read more...

A former employee of prominent home security company ADT has admitted that he hacked into the surveillance feeds of dozens of customer homes, doing so primarily to spy on naked women or to leer at unsuspecting couples while they had sex.Read more...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an unsettling announcement on Friday about B 1.1.7, the variant of the coronavirus first found in the UK last fall that’s become widespread in the country and elsewhere. According to data newly analyzed by UK scientists, B 1.1.7 is not only more transmissible than earlier strains,…Read more...

The Exorcist is legendary. The Exorcist III is fascinating. The dueling fourth parts of the Exorcist saga are odd enough to be interesting, and the Exorcist TV show was criminally underrated. And then somehow there’s Exorcist II: The Heretic, easily one of the most mystifying horror sequels ever made.

This is the decade oil and gas must begin their decline. To avoid warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) without overly relying on unproven technology, world oil and gas use must drop 37% and 25%, respectively, by 2030 before declining even further in the following decades. End of story.Read more...

As a watch lover, I look at the new MB&F Horological Machine N°9 ‘Sapphire Vision’ with equal measures of lust and anger. Boutique manufacturer MB&F first launched this version of its Horological Machine line in 2018 and claimed the oddly-shaped and gold-bedecked timekeeper was inspired by 1950s “aerodynamic…Read more...

Thirteen years ago, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was orbiting Saturn, not yet through its first mission, when a set of telescopes on board observed an unknown ultraviolet signal. The intriguing data was only recently inspected, though, and an international research team now suspects it may indicate the presence of…Read more...

Every meme has a lifespan. Sure, you can share any meme you choose at any time you’d like, but I’d guess that if you were to reach into your meme rolodex and pull out a Laughing SpongeBob or Grumpy Cat in 2021 that you’d be flexing some weak, unstudied game.

Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey is no stranger to taking what you can call some, uh, pretty controversial stances on things like abortion access, gay rights, and police brutality. Now you can add Bigfoot to the list. This week, Humphrey filed an official bill calling for the creation of a yearly Bigfoot hunting…Read more...

Cobra Kai season three ended with a not so subtle tease. John Kreese, the returning sensei of the once again villainous Cobra Kai, looked at a photo from his days in Vietnam, picked up the phone, and called an old war buddy. With that, Karate Kid obsessives knew exactly who to expect in season four.Read more...

Teespring, a Silicon Valley e-commerce site that lets people create and sell customized T-shirts, sweaters, and other apparel, is having a heck of a month.Read more...

For the first time in a long while, there appears to be some hope on the horizon, even as the U.S. official death count flies past 400,000. The winter peak of the pandemic is finally turning downward, as daily new cases and total hospitalizations continue to slowly decline. Unfortunately, we’re still very much in the…Read more...

One of the most requested features people wish Apple would bring back is the MagSafe charging system that used to come on older MacBooks. Which is why no one was surprised when Bloomberg reported it might be coming to the next iteration of the MacBook Pro. Now Bloomberg is saying that it could be coming to a totally…Read more...

Adobe’s Flash, the web browser plug-in that powered so very many crappy games, confusing interfaces, and animated icons of the early web like Homestar Runner is now finally gone, after a long, slow, protracted death. For most of us, this just means that some goofy webgame you searched for out of misplaced nostalgia…Read more...

Much as audiences might long for Hollywood to change its approach to superhero movies, studios are loathe to let go of the genre’s established hallmarks. So things like glowing MacGuffins and overstuffed’s crossovers are utilized for a variety of reasons—including the simple fact that a lot of people genuinely like…Read more...

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Thursday night he will be give a $100 million prize for the “best” carbon capture technology. Very exciting!Read more...

Nobody likes Joy-Con drift. In fact, Joy-Con drift sucks so hard that Nintendo has been pummeled with numerous lawsuits over the widespread, well-documented problem. Well, Nintendo can add another lawsuit to the pile. A Canadian law firm, Lambert Avocat, has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking compensation for anyone…Read more...

According to the Guinness World Records, Germany’s Niels Herbrich flew a rocket-powered remote control plane to a record-breaking speed of 465.544 MPH back in 2018. Three days ago, California’s Spencer Lisenby shattered that record by piloting an RC plane to an astounding speed of 548 MPH, but their plane lacked one…Read more...

Despite the ongoing pandemic, there’s much to be excited about in space this year. NASA’s Perseverance rover is less than a month away from landing on Mars; the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch on Halloween; and the Space Launch System—NASA’s most powerful rocket ever—could see its inaugural launch…Read more...

Xbox Live Gold, Microsoft’s online service for Xbox, is about to get more expensive. The company announced this morning that subscriptions will go up by $1 to $11 a month in the coming weeks. The cheapest options for 12 months access also goes up from $60 to $120.

The EF12 checks a lot of boxes for on-the-go projector needs, but it costs about as much as some OLED TVs. So, is it worth it?Read more...

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Google threatened to block its search engine for all users in Australia if a controversial new profit-sharing proposal from the federal government moves forward, according to testimony Friday by Google’s top executive in the region. Google is upset about a plan by the conservative government—strongly backed by Rupert…Read more...

While WandaVision’s double feature of a premiere dropped us right into the swing of a warped, in-universe television reality with no real explanation or context to make it easier to grasp what the hell is going on, the series’ sudden jump into a new era started to paint a more nuanced, vibrant picture of the Visions’…Read more...

A federal judge on Thursday refused Parler’s motion for a preliminary injunction to force Amazon to immediately restore web services for the far-right social network.Read more...

Instacart is reportedly firing nearly 2,000 in-store shoppers, including all of its workers who voted to unionize last February in a historic first for the grocery delivery platform.Read more...

It looks like things might be improving—at least a little—when it comes to closing the digital divide in America. The latest quarterly report from BroadbandNow highlights several small achievements that have closed the internet gap a little bit more, but also reveals the massive amount of work still ahead.Read more...

The chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee has asked the FBI to investigate Parler, the largely unmoderated conservative social media hellhole implicated as one of the sites involved in organizing the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

The Raspberry Pi is one of the smallest and cheapest mini computers you can buy. It has an HDMI port, USB ports, and runs Ubuntu or other open-source operating systems like a champ. The new Raspberry Pi Pico, on the other hand, is like the CPU of a more complex machine. By itself, it can’t do much, but with a few…Read more...

Whenever Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes bursts into the camera’s focus on Disney+’s WandaVision, the show’s laugh track usually kicks in as the archetypical sitcom neighbor interrupts whatever odd thing Wanda and Vision happen to be doing. But the more time WandaVision spends following Agnes around, the more you see that, out…Read more...

The harms of the covid-19 pandemic go well beyond the illnesses and deaths directly caused by the virus. One particular repercussion, according to a new study out Thursday, has been more kids getting hurt from alcohol-based hand sanitizer ending up in their eyes.

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Earlier this month, WhatsApp announced some changes to its privacy policy that sent users scrambling to move their mobile social life to a new network. Signal got an influx of richly deserved new users, and Android users bemoaned the fact that they can’t switch to Apple’s iMessage. All of that’s a long way of saying…Read more...

In recent years, vertical farming has emerged as a futurist’s solution to the world’s agricultural problems. The growing trend seeks to use controlled environments to boost food production, leveraging indoor labs where temperature, light, and nutrients can be mechanically controlled.Read more...

Don’t want Targaryens fighting Targaryens? How about...another Targaryen, actually?

Facebook has handed the keys locking Donald Trump off its platforms over to its Oversight Board, which will decide whether the former president can once again spew his thoughts on a major social network.

On Thursday, French authorities finally accomplished the impossible: getting Google to agree to pay news outlets the licensing fees they’ve spent more than half a decade begging for.Read more...

Twitter restricted the ability of the Chinese Embassy to the U.S. to post tweets after it deemed one of its posts dehumanizing to the Uighur people, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that the Chinese government has reportedly subjected to dystopian surveillance, detention camps, and forced abortion and sterilization.

The glee is palpable when you peruse gaysovercovid, as many have in the past few weeks; its follower count has ballooned in the wake of mass partying in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and an ensuing sinking party boat. The delight characterizing the Instagram account, which posts pictures of groups of gay (and mostly white)…Read more...

One of the longest-running jokes in the smartphone industry is that anytime Oppo puts out a new phone, OnePlus will release something very similar a few months later. But now, the two companies along with Realme are making that kind of cooperation official by merging parts of their research and development.Read more...