Gizmodo

The day is finally here: season five of The Expanse has begun. Since Amazon dropped three episodes at once—“Exodus,” “Churn,” and “Mother”—our first weekly recap is a three-parter. We tried to be succinct, but honestly, we’re excited as hell and these episodes are epic. Here comes the juice!

Google officially launched iOS compatibility for Stadia via the Safari browser today. Good news if you are a Stadia and iPhone or iPad user! Just navigate to the Stadia website, log in, and off you go. Stadia’s new compatibility with iOS now puts it in the same league with GeForce Now, Shadow, and Luna, with Microsoft…Read more...

One of the few disappointments with this year’s iPhones are their lack of support for displays with high refresh rates. Based on new reports, it seems that could change for at least two versions of iPhone 13 next year.Read more...

Two years of PlayStation Plus and the Amazon Echo Dot lead Wednesday’s best deals.

When I was younger I owned a handheld TV that had a mode where you could listen to broadcasts with the screen off, letting me secretly enjoy shows I wasn’t actually allowed to watch. According to Android Police, a similar feature is now being introduced for Netflix, essentially turning your favorite shows into…Read more...

It’s been almost three years to the day since the price of Bitcoin was close to breaking the $20,000 ceiling and came crashing down. On Wednesday, the arbitrary milestone of hodlers’ dreams was finally achieved.Read more...

Tacklife Snowblower | $135 | Amazon | Clip coupon

Ben Wheatley’s new sci-fi thriller sets a Sundance 2021 debut. Studio Ghibli’s next movie finds its English voice cast. M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop are ready for more creepy baby action. Plus, a live-action Yu Yu Hakusho is headed to Netflix. Spoilers now!Read more...

Carbon emissions from buildings reached an all-time high, according to a new United Nations report. In 2019, buildings were responsible for 9.95 gigatons of carbon—up from 9.7 gigatons in 2018—accounting for 38% of the world’s output of the planet-warming gas.

Much to the dismay of my fellow coworkers, I admit I’ve got a soft spot for gadgets with RGB lighting. I prefer keyboards that light up like a disco ball (after all, you can always turn the lights off), and I pay extra to make sure that all the smart lights in my house can go full RGB instead of being limited to just…Read more...

Cramming a full terabyte of storage onto a microSD card the size of a baby fingernail is a remarkable feat, but when it comes to cost and reliability, magnetic tape is still the preferred method for archiving data for decades. And even as hard drives continue to swell in size, magnetic tape storage still holds a solid…Read more...

A coalition of states is reportedly readying a new antitrust lawsuit against Google that will claim that the company changed its search infrastructure to the disadvantage of certain rivals that offer specialized search results.Read more...

President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly tapped Gina McCarthy — the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and current chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council — as his White House climate coordinator.Read more...

If you’re anything like me, your unmanageable luddite tendencies will have, by now, made you the proud owner of probably well over 100 notebooks. Spiral-bound, composition, Moleskine; the type doesn’t really matter, but what DOES matter is your unfettered ability to tote these notebooks around from apartment to…Read more...

With the help of an extra graphics processing chip inside the cartridge, Star Fox did the impossible by bringing 3D graphics to the 16-bit Super Nintendo. The decision to engineer the SNES’ hardware to allow for this upgrade was a clever one on Nintendo’s part, and 29 years after its debut, Ben Carter has used a…Read more...

Decades before cloud computing was invented, the government decided it should have the power, after 180 days, to read anyone’s emails, and that it shouldn’t need a warrant to do this. While no lawmaker today would seriously suggest passing such an incredible invasive law, Congress has found itself incapable of closing…Read more...

Livestreaming app Periscope, beloved by far-right conspiracy theorists and child predators alike, will be put out of its misery by the end of this coming March, Twitter announced on Tuesday.Read more...

Happy holidays, everybody! Now with that out of the way, I need to talk to you about this “Worst Episode Ever” featuring the Super Mario Bros.Read more...

It’ll take a lot to transition the U.S. off fossil-based energy: money, political will, labor. But a new report shows it won’t take new technological innovation. The study, published in the journal Joule last week, shows U.S. electricity demand can be met with currently available carbon-free tech, like solar panels…Read more...

Children are wonderful miracles. The way they go from babies to chaos to creatures with genuine personalities and feelings all their own is remarkable. But youngest kids of a multi-child household are another story. They are nightmare hellions with little regard for others, an incredible capacity to care only about…Read more...

Special Edition Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch | $300 | AmazonRead more...

It looks like coffee beans in a grinder, but it’s actually bits of dust and pebbles scooped up from the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The Japanese space agency confirmed the presence of these precious samples earlier today, following the recent return to Earth of its Hayabusa2 spacecraft.

We might have seen a shortage of new movies in 2020, but one thing we still got a lot of was television shows. This was a year of saying goodbye to many beloved series while introducing some new ones into the fold. Some sparked, others fizzled. Here are the TV series the io9 staff felt stood out as the best and worst…Read more...

Generally speaking, budget smartwatches tend to keep things simple. You usually get one advanced feature, cheaper materials, a fuzzier display with big bezels, and a barebones companion app—basically, a fitness tracker in a smartwatch form factor. The affordable Amazfit GTR 2, however, blows up that formula.

In a long year where everything was, generally, not great, the one questionably-bright star in our collective galaxy was TikTok—an app with an addictive quality that consumed hours of our valuable leisure time. For every bout of Sunday Scaries that hit hard during 2020, TikTok was there for us, serving story ideas,…Read more...

Somehow, not everything was bad this year.

A new scientific report out Tuesday concludes that plastics and the chemicals they leave behind in the environment are a major threat to human health. It identifies over 140 chemicals readily found in plastic products that can harm our bodies, particularly through interfering with the endocrine system.Read more...

The first 10 minutes of Wonder Woman 1984 moved me to tears. Part of it was the long-awaited return to Themyscira, seeing a young Diana (Lilly Aspell) battle her fellow Amazons in an epic action scene set to an incredible new score by Hans Zimmer. But another part was just that after a year of delays and uncertainty,…Read more...

I’ve tried way too many distraction-free writing devices, from the Freewrite to an old Brother typewriter. As a glutton for punishment, however, I may just build the FeatherQuill while I’m trapped at home.Read more...

The debate over which is the better gaming system—a console or a PC—may never be resolved, but it’s hard to argue against the benefits of gaming with a keyboard and mouse, including improved accuracy. You can have the best of both worlds, however, as this clever hack that grafts a computer mouse onto a console gamepad…Read more...

Signal, the encrypted messaging app beloved by tech privacy enthusiasts around the world (including Edward Snowden), is taking on the world of group video calls. The company rolled out a new video-based group chatting feature on Monday alongside its latest app update, promising these chats will have the same end to…Read more...

A scary situation is developing in the southern Atlantic Ocean, as iceberg A68a is now within striking distance of South Georgia island. Alarmed by the turn of events, a team of scientists is heading out to investigate the ways in which this gigantic iceberg might affect the local wildlife.

In March, Exxon CEO Darren Woods whined that other oil companies drafting climate plans were simply engaging in a “beauty match.” Now, Exxon has a climate plan of its own. But it’s the ugliest and most craven of the bunch because it actually says nothing about reducing emissions.Read more...

Debuting back in 2017, the Google Home Max was a hi-fi alternative to the original Google Home smart speaker, promising better sound but still providing access to Google Assistant. It was big, kind of pricey at $400, and from our testing, not as loud or booming as you’d expect, so Google has done what Google does best…Read more...

The Gita by Piaggio Fast Forward is the weirdest product (project?) I’ve ever reviewed. Created by a skunkworks associated with Italy’s Piaggio Group—makers of the Vespa—the Gita is a mobility tool designed for cities of the future.Read more...

The director of White House security, Crede Bailey, became sick with covid-19 back in September and has kept a low profile during his health struggles since being hospitalized in early October. But a new report from Bloomberg News contains new details about Bailey’s medical hardships, including the fact that Bailey…Read more...

An abandoned tanker carrying 1 million barrels of oil is at risk of spilling its toxic cargo into the Red Sea, a group of concerned scientists is warning.

California regulators slapped Uber with a $59 million fine on Monday after they determined that the company had failed to adequately respond to questions about a report detailing thousands of sexual assaults that occurred during trips taken with the company’s ride-hailing platform.Read more...

The re-analysis of an old fossil has revealed features never seen before in a dinosaur, including a long, fur-like mane along its back and a pair of stiff structures jutting out from its shoulders. Scientists say these elaborate decorations were likely used for display, in what is a very early version of peacocking.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday asked a Sacramento County Superior Court judge to intervene in what he claims is now six months of Amazon failing to comply with investigative subpoenas over how its warehouse workers were treated during the covid-19 pandemic.

Voting systems manufacturer Smartmatic has sent legal letters to conservative news network Fox News, as well as its ultra-right cousins Newsmax and One America News Network, demanding they retract coverage spinning baseless conspiracy theories about the company’s role in the 2020 elections or face legal action.

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced it was issuing orders to nine of the most popular social media and streaming platforms in the U.S., requiring them to offer up intel on business practices ranging from data collection to advertising, to the way that user engagement gets tracked overtime.Read more...

As the first covid-19 vaccines roll out across the U.S., some of us are chanting “inject me now!”, while others are anxious about potential side effects. I reached out to two dozen scientists and public health experts to see how they’re feeling about these vaccines. I asked them if they’re planning to get a vaccine…Read more...

To a certain degree, using smartwatches and fitness trackers to quantify the body’s response to external factors makes a lot of sense. For instance, researchers are studying to see if wearables can identify infectious diseases, and on a more personal level, you can measure the effects of your own fitness routine. But,…Read more...

Many of the things we see on TV or movies can often only be explained with the word “magic” (or, your know, visual effects.) What would it be like if the magical inventions we see on our screens existed in real life? Now, at least one does, and you apparently don’t have to be a wizard in order to use it.Read more...

Collab—the jam-session app that’s also the latest project from Facebook’s experimental New Product Experimentation (NPE) team—is finally out of its beta.Read more...

With ray tracing on, Cyberpunk 2077 is hungry. You could call it the new Crysis. Even Nvidia’s RTX 3080 is almost no match for the game when settings are cranked to the max, yet a high-end, current-gen GPU is crucial if you want the absolute best visual effects possible. For most people, that’s out of the question.…Read more...

In an attempt to push one more iPhone and iPad update out before the end of the year, today Apple released iOS and iPad OS 14.3. Fitness+ is now live.Read more...

The crew of the Rocinante has long been a solid unit, traveling the galaxy to save humanity from evil spores and, well, itself. But in season five of Amazon Studios’ The Expanse, these crew members are doing something they’ve avoided until now: they’re going their separate ways.