Gizmodo

Vice President Mike Pence, a man at least partially responsible for the deaths of over 310,000 Americans from covid-19, will get vaccinated for the coronavirus live on camera today. Here’s how to watch!

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Members of Congress will be able to get vaccinated for covid-19 in the first round of inoculations currently being rolled out by Pfizer and BioNTech, according to the physician to Congress and a new report from Reuters. Meanwhile, those same members of Congress are still debating whether to give Americans $600 each in…Read more...

The social media company that brought you the Fleet began testing its take on audio-0nly chat rooms on Thursday. In a thread announcing the private beta tests, Twitter said a small group of users would be able to create Spaces, as the feature is now being called, and invite any of their followers or other Twitter…Read more...

OnlyFans creators and sex workers have seen TikTok delete their accounts en masse in recent months for violating the platforms sex and nudity policies, Rolling Stone reports. Of the half a dozen creators the outlet spoke with, all of them said their videos didn’t violate TikTok’s policies and believe they were banned…Read more...

Twitter and the White House have both denied reports that a Dutch security researcher was able to log into Donald Trump’s infamous Twitter account with the impossibly easy to guess password “MAGA2020!” But it turns out that really did happen, at least according to Dutch prosecutors.

Among all of the antitrust probes facing Google right now, the case dropped on Wednesday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stands out for a few reasons. First, it focuses on the tech giant’s dominance in digital ads, rather than focusing on search the way that the Justice Department and more than 30 states have in…Read more...

Facebook has taken out its second round of full-page ads in two days seeking to have Apple... not roll out a privacy update or something.

Yes, Apple and Epic are still in a legal battle over in-app transactions in Fortnite. And apparently, a judge has now ordered both Apple CEO Tim Cook and Craig Federighi, Apple’s perfectly coiffed senior vice president of software engineering, to testify.Read more...

After suspending the program back in 2017, today Twitter announced that it’s bringing back its verification process supported by an updated policy beginning next month in January 2021.Read more...

Back in March, when working at an office wasn’t something we all took for granted, we marveled at Thanko’s bento box rice cooker that made a single serving of rice at a time. But, realizing that eating nothing but rice every day for lunch would get tiring, Thanko’s released an updated double-decker version of the…Read more...

It’s been yet another long 24 hours for Twitch—the latest in what’s shaped up to be an agonizingly long year for the company (and also everybody on Earth). Yesterday afternoon, Twitch held a live town hall with the goal of illuminating recent policy changes and features around DMCAs, sexual harassment, ads, and other…Read more...

Apple products weren’t exactly allowed in my house growing up. My school had a lab filled with Apple computers, so I got exposed to the basic ins and outs of macOS. But inside my home it was Microsoft-Microsoft-Microsoft. My dad was a computer hardware engineer, and he worked with Windows, so it’s not surprising.

We’ve waited years to see antitrust action taken against Google, and now there’s too much to keep up with. On Thursday, more than 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the search giant claiming that its search giant-ness has become too giant.Read more...

The first man to embody the most notorious Bounty Hunter in Star Wars history, influencing the franchise’s direction even to this very day, has passed away at 75.

Top Pick: Celeste (Nintendo Switch) | $20 | AmazonRead more...

For the first time in 44 years, a spacecraft has brought lunar samples to Earth. With the Chang’e 5 mission complete, China now joins a very exclusive club, reinforcing the country’s role as a major player in space exploration.

This year, California’s record-breaking fires caused untold suffering and destruction, and future wildfire seasons are expected to be even worse. New findings show that poorer communities of color aren’t receiving as much funding to prepare for future fires as their wealthier, white counterparts.Read more...

Just in time for the winter sports season, GoPro just released an updated remote designed to help you control the company’s action cams even if they are far away or mounted somewhere hard to reach.Read more...

Giancarlo Esposito is having a moment. The acclaimed television and film actor has recently starred in some of the biggest franchises around, including The Mandalorian, The Boys, and Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. But with almost 200 acting credits to his name, there’s so much more to love.

The bloom is off the rose for Robinhood’s self-styled image as a champion of the little guy. The stock brokerage has agreed to pay a $65 million penalty to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it misled customers with its claims of being a commission-free method of trading stocks. The state of…Read more...

Last year, Google announced it was going to acquire Fitbit for a whopping $2.1 billion. Immediately, the news raised privacy concerns as Google is a tech giant with a lot of ad data on the cusp of absorbing another company with a hoard of health data. The deal itself has been under some intense scrutiny from…Read more...

Like most New Yorkers, I woke up this morning to lift my blind and see if the snow forecast had busted or not. Unlike in recent years, the reveal did not disappoint.

In a groundbreaking decision on Wednesday, a UK court ruled that polluted air was a contributing factor to the 9-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah’s untimely, tragic passing in 2013. She is the first person in the world to have a death certificate that lists air pollution as a cause of death. The declaration could…Read more...

A trove of elephant tusks found in the cargo hold of an old Portuguese shipwreck is yielding new insights into the 16th-century ivory trade and lost African elephants.

The Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet and a Sandisk 512GB microSD card lead Thursday’s best deals.

Several years ago, at an independent South Jersey movie theater that would later be overtaken by AMC corporate, I saw The Secret Life of Bees. My mother and I had read the bestseller it was adapted from just a few years before and growing up in the kind of family that went to the movies at least once, maybe twice per…Read more...

When a company announces a new product it can often take a while before all of its features are revealed. Now that Apple’s new AirPods Max are finally available, users are uncovering its deepest secrets, including a nifty feature where you can manually put a $550 pair of wireless headphones into a low power mode…Read more...

The Borderlands movie finds another member of its party. James Cameron shares more snaps from the last bit of Avatar filming in 2020. Matthew Rhys is set to star in the adaptation of Dark Horse Comics’ Wyrd. Plus, new looks at The Stand and teaser pics from The Witcher season 2. Spoilers, away!

“Don’t try to understand it,” a scientist tells the protagonist of Tenet, as she briefly explains the physics of Christopher Nolan’s $205-million, time-traveling spy thriller. Sure, the physics is often unrealistic and confusing, but it’s fascinating. And with its many Easter eggs, Tenet sets up some nice jumping-off…Read more...

Peloton is a cult. I say that lovingly and without judgment, because I am now part of it, and if you buy one, you will almost certainly become part of it, too. I didn’t realize how much I loved it until I recently found myself on Peloton Reddit trying to figure out the best combination of classes for the perfect…Read more...

Last week’s Star Trek: Discovery laid the groundwork to a question that has lingered in the background since the climax of its first season. This week, it answers: albeit with a response that puts one hell of an onus on Michelle Yeoh more than it does with what Discovery has ever done with her character, the…Read more...

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The U.S. reported precisely 3,400 deaths from covid-19 on Wednesday, a new record in a long list of new records this month. And there’s not much more to say that hasn’t already been said about this avoidable tragedy—the greatest failure of American political institutions to protect human life in recent U.S. history.Read more...

Depending on the sport, different athletes rely on different exercises during their fitness routines and while fitness trackers have gotten smarter, they can generally only recognize a handful of motions like swimming, riding a bike, or running. Bosch has developed a new self-contained chip that can be taught to…Read more...

Joining the national pile-on of entities suing Google for antitrust is Genius Media Group, which announced a lawsuit on Wednesday night related to the search giant’s ad exchange practices.

Warehouse workers in an Alabama Amazon facility could soon become the first unionized workers employed by the retail giant after federal regulators greenlit a National Labor Relations Board election on Wednesday.

As part of an ongoing process of retooling its policies around harassment and hateful conduct, Twitch announced on Wednesday that the words “simp,” “incel,” and “virgin” will no longer be allowed on the platform as long as they are used by streamers and commenters as insults. If they are used in a friendly way, the…Read more...

One of the largest satellite internet providers to rural America, HughesNet, has entered a $250 million, three-year contract with UK-based OneWeb to develop and manufacture ground system technology for its satellite LEO constellation, which will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink system.

The Substack newsletter hype-cycle hit a fever pitch this fall when a bunch of high profile journalists defected to the platform in search of a new business model, which increasingly resembles a bunch of old business models balled up, Katamari-like, into a product without much of an identity.

Months after HBO Max launched, it’s finally coming to one of the largest smart TV platforms around. Today Roku announced that HBO Max would finally be available on December 17 and timed (of course) with the release of HBO Max’s biggest original content to date, Wonder Woman 1984.

As the famous X-Files poster declares, “I want to believe.” This wanting, however, often leads us astray. When confronted with shocking and inexplicable celestial phenomena, we tend to see intelligent design. This jumping to conclusions is a sin for which we can be forgiven—we have an insatiable need to know if…Read more...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Wednesday that his state is spearheading a new antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of “illegally” abusing its market power to pocket money from publishers across the web. Paxton is joined by other Republican state AGs from Idaho, Indiana, Utah, …Read more...

A new theoretical exploit called Air-Fi can turn a secure, air-gapped computer into a wifi transmitter that can help a hacker exfiltrate secure data.Read more...

In its closing five weeks, the Trump administration is making some bold governance moves. No, it hasn’t suddenly decided to work to stem the tide of record covid-19 deaths, hospitalizations, and deaths. Instead, it’s focusing on what really matters: making sure every showerhead can deliver 2.5 gallons of water per…Read more...

While 2020 posed more than its fair share of significant challenges for virtually everyone working within the entertainment industry, comics in particular stood as an example of creative teams adapting on the fly—and doing their damndest to keep telling compelling stories at a time when people needed them the most.Read more...

In a new wrinkle in the still-unfolding SolarWinds saga, it seems that some of the company’s top investors sold off close to a collective $280 million dollars in stock just days before the news of its role in a far-reaching federal cyberattack became public.Read more...

Waterborne illnesses like swimmer’s ear, norovirus, and Legionnaires’ disease sicken over 7 million Americans, hospitalize more than 100,000, and kill nearly 7,000 each year, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. The germs also rack up billions in health care costs.Read more...

Ridiculously expensive speakers, headphones, and soundbars are nothing new. But there are “normal” levels of expensive, followed by the “are you serious?” levels of expensive (cough, AirPods Max), and then there’s whatever the hell this Tidal for Bugatti collaboration is.Read more...

The Chromecast with Google TV is simply one of the best streaming devices you can buy right now (especially at just $50), and now Google is plugging one of the only holes in its flagship streaming video device thanks to upcoming support for the Apple TV app.Read more...