Gizmodo

New research documents the fastest-spinning brown dwarfs on record. The objects are rotating so rapidly that, should they rotate any faster, they’d likely tear themselves apart. The finding could mean that these so-called “failed stars” have a built-in speed limit.Read more...

It’s a climate cliché to say the world is on fire, but it is. Right now, wildfires are burning across the Midwest in a major spring burn. The spring flames there are a warning sign of what could be an active fire season out in the coming months.Read more...

In 1997, Mike Nelson and his robot friends, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, watched a bad sci-fi film called The Thing That Couldn’t Die. We might as well rename the beloved TV series Mystery Series Theater 3000 with the same title, because the fan-favorite show looks like it’s almost certainly going to be resurrected…Read more...

A federal court has sentenced a Missouri man who tried to buy the deadly poison dimethylmercury, a notoriously toxic substance that can kill in just a few drops on the skin, on the dark web to 12 years in prison.

Five years ago, NASA researchers experimented with an object called the EmDrive (or electromagnetic drive), a Y-shaped metal chamber in which, they reported, thrust could be produced without propellant. Such a contraption would refute core principles of physics as we know them and eliminate a huge barrier to deep…Read more...

Now you can use Apple’s Find My app to track down items that aren’t made by Apple.

T-Mobile would really like to bring you aboard the 5G train. As part of its latest Un-carrier initiative, the company announced it’s letting customers upgrade their smartphones to a 5G phone for “free,” offering a $60 home internet plan, and promising unlimited data for all.Read more...

Eagles are majestic, beautiful, and full of toxins that we’ve pumped into the environment. A new study finds that 82% of dead eagles examined between 2014 and 2018 had detectable levels of rat poison in their systems.

Scientists say they’re one step closer to showing that their experimental hydrogel technology—more plainly known as “brain glue”—can help people with traumatic brain injuries. In a recent study, they found that their brain glue helped prevent long-term damage and tissue loss in the injured brains of rats, while also…Read more...

Apple’s offering a bit more clarity surrounding the anti-tracking tech that’s going to debut this spring. On Wednesday, a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that Apple’s so-called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) protocol will crack down on all identifiers an app might use to track you—not just identifiers…Read more...

Following Apple’s WWDC announcement and Microsoft’s Build reveal, Google has announced a date for its own developers conference, Google I/O 2021, which will kick off virtually on May 18.

One of the unique challenges of 3D printing is that models that feature structures hanging in mid-air, like the spout of a teapot, also need temporary structures to support the soft extruded plastic until it hardens. This can result in a lot of wasted material, because those supports are just discarded afterwards. A …Read more...

So-called pirating apps have been around for years—and they have likely gained popularity since covid-19 put us all indefinitely on the couch, phone in hand, awaiting a reason (that never comes) to stop streaming.Read more...

HBO’s sci-fi fantasy series The Nevers arrives this Sunday to reveal a Victorian London where a mysterious event bestows strange powers on people—mostly women. The show has a lot of characters, but one who definitely stands out from the crowd is the viciously wild Maladie, played by Amy Manson.

“Remember this?” Budweiser asks, in a new commercial promoting covid-19 vaccines. What follows are a series of snapshots of the before times, when we swigged at the barbeque, sloshed around at the bar, flung beer all over each other at the frat. Jimmy Durante croons, with nostalgic record cracking, the World War…Read more...

A genome sequenced from a modern human skull has been dated at approximately 45,000 years old, making it the oldest discovery of its kind. It’s a significant archaeological discovery, but the use of an unconventional dating method leaves the result in doubt. In a related study, scientists also show that intermixing…Read more...

Texas’ blackouts were, experts agree, the result of multiple failures in the energy system, including failures of oil and gas infrastructure. Yet in late March, one of Texas’s most powerful oil and gas regulators, Christi Craddick, told the Texas legislature that oil and gas operators “were not the problem.” In fact,…Read more...

For anyone who has been looking for an instant film camera that produces nostalgic prints and has the retro styling to match, Fujifilm’s new Instax Mini 40 might be right up your alley.Read more...

Reviews of the Sonos Roam might’ve taken the spotlight yesterday, but it appears the portable speaker isn’t the only thing the company’s been working on. Two Ikea FCC filings and a cheeky Instagram story all but confirm that two new Symfonisk speakers are likely on the way.Read more...

Inside a locked cabinet, an envelope held a number that was poised to rock the physics community, regardless of its contents. The value, a clock measurement deliberately hidden to keep physicists’ data analysis unbiased, would be used in a calculation that could either bring one of particle physics’ foremost…Read more...

I did not need the sight of an army of Stay Puft mini-marshmallow men committing very sugary cannibalism this morning. And yet, any yet! You delivered, Ghostbusters: Afterlife.Read more...

Yesterday, the sun was shining bright, and birds were chirping outside my window, and the buds were really starting to coming out on the trees. It was a stupidly perfect day really, and I had to go ruin it all by watching Seaspiracy.Read more...

THX is a brand synonymous with sound, best known for its eardrum-tickling deep note trailer played before movies in theaters. For years, THX has partnered with hardware makers, lending its expertise in sound to improve the audio capabilities of everything from smartphones to laptops, and now the company is finally…Read more...

Samsung left a few details out when it announced the latest generation of its budget and mid-range Galaxy A-series phones last month. Now the company has finally returned to reveal all the details about which makes and models are officially coming to the U.S., including a few phones that didn’t get much attention back…Read more...

Some familiar faces are returning to Child’s Play. Borat 2's breakout star is teaming up with A24 for some slasher horror. Plus, what’s to come on Supergirl and The Flash. To me, my spoilers!

Imagine if your parents were famous superheroes...and then the time came for you to follow in the family business. That’s the premise of Jupiter’s Legacy, a new Netflix series that just dropped an action-packed first trailer today.Read more...

At this point, laptop makers that don’t support some kind of AMD-based config are kind of trolling, and now Alienware is finally back on board with its first AMD-powered gaming laptop in more than a decade.Read more...

As the Biden administration puts the federal government’s muscle behind widespread electrification, one fact has becoming increasingly clear: The electric vehicle revolution is coming. But states have a lot of catching up to do if they want to make sure everyone is included, a new report shows.Read more...

The UK government launched a new watchdog agency on Wednesday that will be tasked with keeping an eye on Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook, according to an announcement published online. The stated goal of the new watchdog is to police the “concentration of power among a small number of firms” in the world…Read more...

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, released a statement late Tuesday saying that he generally supports President Joe Biden’s desire to invest in infrastructure, along with a rise in the corporate tax rate. But some of the things Bezos doesn’t support in the statement are conspicuous in their absence.

With unemployment at formidable levels and the economy doing weird, covid-related reversals, I think we can all agree that the job hunt is a pretty hard slog right now. Amidst all that, you know what workers really don’t need? A LinkedIn inbox full of malware. Yeah, they don’t need that at all.Read more...

Clubhouse, which led a round of investment in January at a reported valuation of around $1 billion, now believes it is worth four times that, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

In the aftermath of bombshell reports of a massive data breach that may have compromised the personal information of as many as 533 million users, Facebook has committed absolutely to trying to spin the leak as old news, no big deal, definitely nothing to see here, no need to even think about this too much at all,…Read more...

Starlink opened up pre-orders for its service in February for a $99 deposit, but it doesn’t appear that the company plans to offer any kind of tiered plan to folks who were hoping for some options.

We know Apple’s AirTags must surely exist, because credible rumors and leaks about them have been trickling into our news feeds for what seems like forever. The latest rumor, however, provides a glimmer of hope that we might see these things in our lifetime.Read more...

Most of us might be familiar with Signal as the privacy-preserving messaging app of choice, but the company is expanding into a new frontier: payments.

A new series of reports from BuzzFeed News shows the wide net cast by shadowy surveillance firm Clearview AI. Individuals at 1,803 public agencies—many of which are police departments—have used its facial recognition software at some point over recent years, according to data reviewed by the news outlet.Read more...

Corporations have long vied to cultivate brands that consumers will—at the very least—perceive as “socially responsible.” Since the 1980s, these efforts have forced companies, with seeming no way of reversing the trend, to stake out positions on politically divisive issues. As concern for Earth’s climate swelled in…Read more...

A federal grand jury is indicting a 22-year-old guy over accusations that he tampered with a public water system. Dude allegedly hacked into a computer system that controls a rural water utility in Ellsworth County, Kansas, then messing with the virtual processes that affect procedures for cleaning and disinfecting…Read more...

Apple’s rumored experiment to use its content offerings to cross-promote its services now includes two new non-fiction series titled The Line.Read more...

Joe Caswell’s knife-making process starts with popsicle sticks, and his latest knife, called the Provoke, looks like something out of a Klingon fever dream. He based the design on an Indonesian karambit, a work knife curved like a talon. His idea? To allow users to flip the utility knife open with one hand using a…Read more...

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. This time, Games Workshop returns to Warhammer Quest, an April Fool’s that’s actually worth checking out, and a visit to the world of nuclear-irradiated Americana with the arrival of the Fallout RPG. Check it out!

The U.S. Navy still has no idea who sent a swarm of drones to buzz warships off the coast of California in July 2019, or really even what kind of drones they were or what they were doing, NBC News reported on Monday.

None of the 109 expeditioners and crew onboard the MPV Everest were hurt when a fire broke out in an engine room, but the beleaguered Antarctic resupply vessel still has 2,000 miles to go in its long journey back home to Australia.

As the U.S. speeds ever closer toward mass vaccination against covid-19, a curious trend has started to emerge on social media and elsewhere: well-intentioned people downplaying the benefits of vaccination, often by arguing that vaccinated people still pose a major transmission risk and that they shouldn’t do things…Read more...

We use the cliched term “glacial pace” to describe something that moves really slowly. But new research shows that Greenland’s glaciers may actually be moving more rapidly than we thought thanks to rushing rivers on their surface.

An update on the metastasizing horrors from the ongoing saga of U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican reportedly under investigation for sex trafficking: It’s not looking great.

There’s one phrase I’ve been using a lot, as I’ve been promoting my young adult space-opera Victories Greater Than Death: “Save all the worlds.” Because I love the idea of a group of kids who are mostly LGBTQIA+ and come from cultures all over the world get to be the ones to help “save all the worlds.” And I love …Read more...

A Czech 3D printing company called Fillamentum has released the first ostensibly biodegradable filament, the stringy plastic used to extrude printed objects. Called NonOilen, the filament is made of a biologically based polylactic acid and polyhydroxy butyrate blend.Read more...

Overpriced connected face masks are a thing now—a side effect of the pandemic. The latest person to hop on the smart mask train is Will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas rapper with a penchant for developing tech that falls flat on its face.