Gizmodo

There are gadgets you like, and then there are gadgets you love. For many, the Pebble smartwatch fell into that latter category. It was simple, affordable, and the first smartwatch that made everyone realize smartwatches weren’t just a gimmick. The company deserved better than having its corpse picked apart by Fitbit,…Read more...

On Wednesday, TikTok announced a series of extensive changes to the way teens—particularly younger teens—can interact with other users on the platform.Read more...

Researchers in Ohio say they’ve discovered two new variants of the coronavirus local to the U.S. that may be of concern. One variant appears to contain a mutation found in other troubling variants, while the other has started to spread fast in Columbus, Ohio over the last month and carries its own unique mix of…Read more...

In a disturbing move, Google is apparently experimenting with hiding links to some news sites from search results in Australia.Read more...

Using a signal from dozens of rapidly spinning, dead stars, astrophysicists have gotten closer to realizing their goal of detecting a background rumble of gravitational waves in the universe.

In a troubling press release that reads like a news bulletin from the first five minutes of a zombie movie, Airbnb has announced a unilateral cancellation of all bookings for Washington, DC during inauguration week, acknowledging reports that “armed militias and known hate groups” are expected to make an appearance.

Intel, the beleaguered CPU designer, is moving onto its third CEO in three years. Today Anandtech reported the departure of CEO Bob Swan and the hiring of Pat Gelsinger as his replacement.Read more...

This week, Lucasfilm announced an overhaul of its video game licensing efforts with a rebranding of Lucasfilm Games (a re-re-branding, going back to the studio’s original gaming name back in the 1980s), indicating the impending end of its current exclusivity deal with EA Games to create Star Wars titles. Hopefully,…Read more...

Believe it or not, Disney’s software for kids used to be top-notch. In the early 2000s there were no bizarre CoCoMelon videos on YouTube or hundreds of phone-based apps to educate younger users, but there was high-quality edutainment software, and Disney (as well as several others) excelled at reaching the little…Read more...

Look, there’s nothing wrong with big, beastly 17-inch gaming monsters, but for my money, I like a gaming notebook that can balance performance and portability, and the MSI Stealth 15M has just taken that principle to a whole new level.

Dire wolves menaced Pleistocene landscapes for tens of thousands of years, eventually going extinct at the end of the last ice age. Despite the long success of this species, very little is known about them, including their origins and reasons for their demise. New research is helping to fill these gaps.

The Trump administration has a parting gift for the climate, and it’s atrocious. In an unexpected move, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that will limit future greenhouse gas standards under the Clean Air Act to applying only to industries whose emissions account for more than 3 percent of the…Read more...

Samsung Galaxy is now the exclusive mobile partner of Twitch Rivals, a year-long agreement that will see the companies collaborate on exclusive events and Twitch content.Read more...

Controlling an object with a hand gesture sounds more like Jedi wizardry than a real-life possibility. But after watching a CES 2021 demo of the Mudra Brand, I have to admit that perhaps this tech isn’t as far-fetched or gimmicky as I previously thought.

Usually when a company introduces new features or updates for an existing gadget, they tend to be a bit...lacking. You may get one small update, two or three if you’re lucky. Well, buckle up GoPro fans: Today, the company is launching seven new experimental features, because why the hell not?Read more...

Amazon submitted a new filing in federal court on Tuesday in response to an emergency motion by Parler to restore its hosting services through Amazon’s AWS. Parler was kicked offline early Monday after Amazon said the social media company had violated its terms of service and Parler couldn’t find another company…Read more...

YouTube has deleted President Donald Trump’s latest video over concerns that it could inspire violence, the video sharing site announced late Tuesday. Comments are being blocked on all of the president’s remaining videos and his account has been suspended for at least the next seven days. Notably, the inauguration of…Read more...

Capcom, the legendary Japanese video game developer and publisher behind such classics as Street Fighter and Resident Evil, has been recovering since a November ransomware hack saw a “customized attack” on the company’s internal networks.Read more...

Vicious Saudi autocrat Mohamed bin Salman has a new vision for Neom, his plan for a massive, $500 billion, AI-powered, nominally legally independent city-state of the future on the border with Egypt and Jordan. When we last left the crown prince, he had reportedly commissioned 2,300-pages’ worth of proposals from…Read more...

Microsoft-owned GitHub is facing employee backlash after it reportedly terminated a Jewish worker for warning in a corporate Slack channel that there were “nazis” present at the U.S. Capitol riot.

Recycling is important but it’s also a pain. Separating glass from plastic from paper isn’t a terrible task but what wouldn’t it be nicer if a robot did it instead? That’s why one inventor built the Lasso, a robot that claims to accept, indentify, and prepare recycling for proper reuse.Read more...

One of the internet’s largest forums for criminal activity, has been seized and the man believed to be its operator has been arrested, European authorities announced Tuesday.Read more...

Folks with kids or other snoops in the house will appreciate the Trova Home. This $550 box can be opened with your phone via Bluetooth, wifi, or NFC and is designed to look like an art piece. Which is a nice change of pace from the ones that look like they should be left in your closet or hidden under the bed out of…Read more...

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury | $60 | Amazon, Walmart, Target

A man’s experiment with psychedelic mushrooms went disastrously wrong and nearly killed him, according to his doctors. In a new case report released this week, they detailed how the man injected a “tea” made from the mushrooms into his body and developed a life-threatening infection that had them growing in his blood.…Read more...

Yelp has made a highly risky, wildly optimistic gambit: the company announced that it’s rolling out a feature whereby users can report businesses for not following covid-19 safety protocols, which will be reflected in notifications on the business’s page. Will people prove themselves measured arbiters of justice? Yelp…Read more...

Y’all. Former Michigan governor and certified monster Rick Snyder will catch charges for his role in the Flint water crisis, according to the Associated Press. You absolutely love to see it.Read more...

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a triple-star exoplanet located 1,800 light-years from Earth. Planets parked in multi-star systems are rare, but this object is particularly unusual owing to its inexplicably weird orbital alignment.Read more...

Samsung and LG both showed off new refrigerators at this year’s CES that feature one of the best innovations we’ve seen in years: better ice. LG introduced a fridge that can make the spherical ice that perfectly complements a strong pour of fine whiskey, and Samsung’s latest can make pebble ice.Read more...

At least several users of the far-right social network Parler appear to be among the horde of rioters that managed to penetrate deep inside the U.S. Capitol building and into areas normally restricted to the public, according to GPS metadata linked to videos posted to the platform the day of the insurrection in…Read more...

It just wouldn’t be CES (even a virtual one) without a couple far-out concept gadgets from Razer, and this year the company has dreamed up two devices designed to combat some of 2021's biggest issues in the most Razer way possible.Read more...

One of the few non-shitty things to happen in the recently-deceased (see you in hell) year 2020 was that the next generation of Mars rover, Perseverance, was launched, and is currently on its way to the Red Planet, where it will land on February 18. If my local CVS feels comfortable putting up Valentine’s Day crap…Read more...

The fight to bring full employment protections to gig workers in California seemed all but doomed by November’s passage of Proposition 22—a historically expensive ballot measure funded by Uber, Lyft, and others, which rolled back hard-won rights for app workers in the state. Today, workers revealed they had one last H…Read more...

AT&T appears to be killing its AT&T TV Now packages, directing new customers to its similarly titled AT&T TV product. Yes, those are two different things.Read more...

At-home fitness is having a moment due to the global pandemic, and connected gym equipment makers are struggling to keep up with demand. While you probably know NordicTrack best for its treadmills, the company is launching one of a smart workout mirrors—sort of like the Lululemon-owned Mirror, but with a slight twist.Read more...

Asus’ ROG line of gaming laptops have always stood out thanks to their flashy RGB lighting and aggressive aesthetic. Asus isn’t afraid to try something new, either. Last year, it released the well-received ROG Zephyrus G14, one of the first ROG gaming laptops powered by an AMD processor, as well all the Zephyrus Duo…Read more...

Responding to the public backlash over Twitter and Facebook’s decision to boot President Trump from their platforms, an internet service provider in rural Idaho told customers that it would block the popular social media networks by default. But that decision sparked a separate mini-backlash, and the company is now…Read more...

Extreme weather disasters are costing the country billions of dollars in damages each year. A new study from Stanford shows that over the past three decades, the U.S. has seen nearly $75 billion in damage from floods fueled by the climate crisis.

At first glance, Razer’s refreshed line of 15-inch Blade and 17-inch Blade Pro laptops might not look much different than last year’s models, but inside is a different story—this year we get faster displays and GPUs, along with a subtly revamped design.Read more...

While Alienware hasn’t given its gaming laptops a full overhaul for 2021, like other gaming laptop makers the company is kicking off the year by refreshing its 15 and 17-inch notebooks with new Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs. The larger m17 R4 is also getting a huge display upgrade that could make it the laptop for gamers.

Acer given most of its laptop lineup a major refresh at CES 2021 and there seems to be something for every budget, from entry-level machines like the Acer Aspire 5 that cost just $550, to the high-end Predator Triton 300 SE, which costs a surprisingly reasonable $1,400. It also appears to have been totally re-imagined…Read more...

Like clockwork, Nvidia announced this morning that its wildly fast discrete desktop graphics will be coming to laptops everywhere in the months ahead. This probably surprised no one, as Nvidia always has the same GPUs on laptops, but if the popular reception of its RTX 30-series desktop cards were any indication,…Read more...

The extinct thylacine had the stripes of a tiger, the body of a canid, and the pouch of a kangaroo. These ill-fated, predatory marsupials are a classic example of convergent evolution, in which species independently evolve the same traits, and a new study breaks down just how remarkably similar Tasmanian tigers’…Read more...

AMD’s Ryzen series of CPUs seem to be getting better with every iteration, and the Ryzen 5000 series launched in the fall of 2020 was perhaps the most impressive series yet. And now it’s coming to laptops.

Like a well-oiled machine, the Trump administration is focusing on what really matters in this time of democratic crisis and pandemic: publishing climate denial “flyers” from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, including two authored by Trump hires, and then disavowing those papers and saying it “does not…Read more...

A new report released Tuesday by the American Cancer Society provides some good news: Americans who had cancer in 2018 were less likely to die from it than they were a year earlier, continuing a steady decline in cancer mortality over the past 30 years. As hopeful as this trend is, though, there are still lower…Read more...

If you’ve been keeping up on your Windows updates, odds are good that you installed Microsoft’s October 2020 series of tweaks and fixes—assuming you weren’t blocked from doing so. One big change that power users likely noticed is the removal of the old-school System window from your Control Panel.Read more...

Despite its retro charms, for $50 the Nintendo Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. handheld felt like it could benefit from a few more games: an upgrade some talented hackers made possible before the device was even released. But Nintendo doesn’t like consumers messing with its hardware, and today it appears it started…Read more...

Andy Samberg and Ben Stiller are headed to Apple TV for a new sci-fi comedy. Vin Diesel is staying quiet about Fast & Furious 9's space-bound potential. Another familiar Marvel face is confirmed for What If? Plus, Cobra Kai co-showrunner Jon Hurwitz teases some big ramifications for the next season. Spoilers get!Read more...

Wearable devices have become more sophisticated in recent years, with the ability to track everything from abnormal heart rates and atrial fibrillation to stress and even blood oxygen levels. However, monitoring blood pressure is a challenge for a wrist-worn device. Wearable components maker Valencell says it’s…Read more...