Gizmodo

Digital life is easier now that we’ve got services like iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox to fall back on—not least because if you accidentally delete a file or folder from one of these platforms, you’ve got a few days before it’ll be erased for good. Here’s how to bring back deleted data, or—for more…Read more...

Sony First-Party Game Sale | Amazon

Yesterday brought the tragic news that the famous 1,000-foot radio dish at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will have to be demolished after the failure of two support cables. It’s the end of an era, but a good excuse to revisit some of the most important scientific contributions made possible by the famous…Read more...

The U.S. reported 1,971 deaths from covid-19 on Thursday, the highest death toll since May, according to the Covid Tracking Project. The country also recorded over 182,000 new cases and more than 80,000 Americans are currently hospitalized, both grim new records for the U.S. during the pandemic. Public health experts…Read more...

Facebook filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a website owner who allegedly operated a network of Instagram clone sites using information from more than 100,000 public profiles. This complaint marks the social media giant’s latest crackdown on organizations both large and small for violating its terms of service.Read more...

I’ll admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of boba tea even before the pandemic brought my social life to a grinding halt. Tapioca pearls just taste gross to me, as does bacon, avocado, and a slew of other oft-hyped food that the internet goes crazy over, so I realize I’m very much in the minority here. Though if it…Read more...

Since his loss in the Nov. 3 elections, Donald Trump has largely dipped out of public view and occupied his time in some gold-plated panic room, issuing a ridiculous series of tweets claiming victory in various states and ordering his cartoon parody of a campaign legal team to sally forth and step on rakes while…Read more...

A fix for a number of reported iPhone 12 troubles has arrived—at least for some of them, that is.

Rudy Giuliani on Thursday took one of the last, desperate laps of the fifth-or-so act of a storied career.

In what seems to be the latest sign of government officials acting independently of the Trump administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered a simple message in its first media briefing since October: Stay home this Thanksgiving.Read more...

As a political weapon, Section 230 is becoming a mutually assured destruction device.Read more...

With iOS 14, iPhone users finally got a taste of the sweet, sweet widget life anyone who’s used an Android phone in the last decade was already familiar with. I’ve shied away from most of the early widget apps and largely avoided using most widgets in general (and maybe you should, too!). It is not 2009 and I’m not…Read more...

The U.S. Secret Service has some 700 pending investigations centering on Paycheck Protection Program and the Unemployment Insurance Relief fraud, CNBC reported on Wednesday, and a large number of them involve money laundering via Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and other payment apps.

Retail Ecommerce Ventures, a company that buys and resurrects old brands as e-commerce sites, has bought a number of RadioShack’s global assets, rocketing the defunct brand back into the spotlight once again.Read more...

Did somebody say Gmail widget?

Black Friday Ads: GameStop | Walmart | Best BuyRead more...

“All living beings are on Earth for a reason, from the tiniest insects to the greatest mammals.” That’s what Agora, a free photography app, said they aimed to show with their photography contest, #Animals2020.

The Boeing 737 MAX will soon be back in the sky, following a 20-month grounding. American Airlines is expected to be the first U.S. airline to return the troubled aircraft to service, with flights starting December 29. However, passengers may not be able to easily tell which plane version they’re flying on, as some…Read more...

Amazon’s Echo Frames smart glasses aren’t invite-only anymore. That’s right, baby, the plebes can now preorder the Alexa-enabled glasses for $250.Read more...

A new fur-raising study about covid-19 is making the media waves, suggesting that walking your dog will raise your risk of catching the viral pandemic by a whopping 78%. But there’s plenty of reason not to take the study at face value, and your worry is better spent on other, more pressing risks.

Apparently, rotting vegetables can be good for something other than fertilizer. Instead of literally going to waste, they can be upcycled to create a material that absorbs stray ultraviolet rays and turn it into renewable energy.Read more...

Galaxy Tab A7 32GB | $150 | Samsung

GeForce Now is on iOS. Luna is on iOS. Stadia and xCloud are coming to iOS in the not too distant future. Ideally, this would have been through a stand-alone app and not the Safari browser, but hey, when Apple says you have to submit every individual game on your cloud gaming platform for review to get it on the App…Read more...

The new Lego Star Wars Holiday Special is earnest, silly fun. It’s a festive special, about Star Wars, made in Lego—what else would it be but a joyful, irreverent lampooning of Star Wars’ more serious side? However, its underlying message of friendship and mutual understanding (in the spirit of Life Day, of course) is…Read more...

Not content to be left off the iOS bandwagon, Google announced today that, like Nvidia, it too will be bringing its cloud gaming platform to iPads and iPhones. The news comes hot on the heels of Nvidia’s GeForce Now announcement earlier today, and similarly to Nvidia, Google is developing a Stadia web app for iOS…Read more...

This week, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was unfurled in all its floppy, haggard glory. As many a Twitter user were quick to point out, its appearance was a metaphor for this year of pandemic, a slapdash coup attempt, and a general drubbing of American exceptionalism.Read more...

The recent failure of two support cables at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has destabilized the structure such that it cannot be repaired without placing construction workers at significant risk, according to officials with the National Science Foundation. As feared, the beloved 1,000-foot telescope will have…Read more...

Framing the move as an effort to make giving easier during the rough holiday season ahead of us, PayPal announced on Thursday that it’s launching its own crowdfunding network for charitable giving.Read more...

Right now, we’re spending more time at home than ever before, and many of us may be investing more in our home entertainment systems than we have in the past. If you’ve been considering upgrading to a better TV setup or snapping up a new smart speaker to help you control your connected home, now is definitely the…Read more...

Samsung T5 1TB Portable SSD | $130 | NeweggRead more...

Nvidia just announced that its cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, is coming to Safari on iOS platforms. GeForce Now is already on MacOS, PC, Shield TV, Android, and as of recently ChromeOS. iOS has been the holdout as Nvidia hasn’t been able to get GeForce Now onto the App Store. That’s likely because of Apple’s …Read more...

Earlier this summer, Fitbit threw down the gauntlet with the ambitious Fitbit Sense and a revamped Versa 3. But while these gadgets launched a few months ago, some of the marquee features teased in August were still MIA. Well, not anymore. Fitbit OS 5.1 is landing today for U.S. users and the updates included are some…Read more...

We could all use a little more time in the day—and probably a little more time away from the computer, too—so we’ve collected together our favorite time-savers for Macs. Apply just a few of these to your various workflows and you’ll find yourself powering through everything on your to-do list faster than ever before.

Managers and supervisors at a Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, allegedly forced employees to work in unsafe conditions during the coronavirus pandemic and even took cash bets on how many workers would get sick from covid-19, according to new filings in a lawsuit brought against Tyson by the son of…Read more...

In an update to its Terms of Service on Wednesday, YouTube announced that it will now run advertisements before videos created by users who are not already members of its Partner Program, but will not share the new revenue it receives with those users.Read more...

In 2018, the Trump administration fired a White House speechwriter after he was revealed to have spoken at an annual far-right conference in 2016 attended by white supremacists, pseudoscientific quacks, contrarian academics, and other racists. This week, the White House nominated the same guy to a three-year term on a…Read more...

The holidays are saved, Charlie Brown! Well, kind of.Read more...

In May of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic fully underway, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would allow most of its employees to continue working from home until at least the end of the year in an effort to “contain the spread of Covid-19 so we can keep our communities safe and get back up and…Read more...

Younger readers might not know, but there was once an annual tradition in which Apple would release a new iPhone, old iPhones would suddenly start performing poorly, and users would speculate about a conspiracy to get them to buy the shiny new thing. It turned out that a conspiracy, of sorts, did exist, and Apple has…Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first rapid coronavirus test kit that can be performed at home, issuing an emergency use authorization to manufacturer Lucira Health late on Tuesday.Read more...

In spite of coronavirus cases continuing to climb around the world, Facebook’s legions of contracted content moderators are still required to work out of offices “to maintain Facebook’s profits during the pandemic.” This is according to an open letter published on the company’s internal Workplace communication…Read more...

Growing up in New England, I used to spend winter weekends skating on ponds and the occasional drainage ditch in the middle of a six-lane road (it was the suburbs, OK?). Millions of other people around the world have similar memories of skating, ice fishing, and other wintery outdoor activities.Read more...

Every six years, an alien comes to Earth looking for a fight. This has happened for generations. As a result, every six years, a team of expert martial artists must face him, using techniques this alien himself passed down centuries ago. If they don’t, everyone on Earth will die. Is Nicolas Cage up to the task?Read more...

Google has just completely redesigned its Google Pay app in a bid to make managing your money easier than ever by giving you a bird’s eye view of your financials and spending habits. But it also wants to do this by becoming a banking middleman and turning your transaction history into a kind of Hangouts feed with…Read more...

Not unlike Twitter’s new Fleets, the company’s time is rapidly expiring. The platform, which is now dedicated to dunking on the earnest, yelling about conspiracies, and sharing bad memes, is on its way to the big social media cemetery in the sky to join MySpace, Plurk, and (hopefully soon) Facebook.

In 2004, astronomers spotted a unique celestial feature that, when observed in ultraviolet, bore the appearance of a glowing eye staring directly back at Earth. Unbeknownst to them, it would take 16 years to figure out what caused the Blue Ring Nebula to form.Read more...

In a year that feels like Captain Trips has started creeping on the real world, the timing of CBS All Access’ new adaptation of Stephen King’s plague-apocalypse epic feels eerily appropriate. But Josh Boone and Ben Cavell’s take on The Stand has some big cloven hooves to fill: the hit 1994 miniseries.Read more...

I see you, fellow lazy people. While password managers are an absolute must for digital security, they are freaking annoying to set up, and occasionally, annoying to use. But now that macOS Big Sur is here, popular password manager 1Password is adding several new features, including the ability to unlock the app with…Read more...

Just 1% of the global population was responsible for half of the world’s commercial flight emissions in 2018, a new study found. Those elite “frequent fliers” travelled about 35,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) that year.

On Wednesday, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced even more encouraging results from its now-completed covid-19 vaccine trial. The experimental vaccine appears to be 95% effective at preventing illness overall and seems nearly as effective in people over the age of 65, a key population. Despite the very…Read more...