Gizmodo

What, you thought Star Wars would leave something about a character’s backstory unexplained?

A ransomware attack on the Los Angeles branch of Planned Parenthood has compromised data on approximately 400,000 patients, the organization revealed this week. The breach, which involves highly sensitive information, has come to light just as a legal drama over women’s reproductive rights unfolds in the Supreme…Read more...

A team of researchers has observed a never-before-seen state of matter called a quantum spin liquid by toying with the spins on supercooled rubidium atoms using a quantum simulator. The discovery has implications for the way quantum computers work and, perhaps someday, the environments in which materials can be…Read more...

Microsoft Edge was once a good alternative to Google Chrome, and now it seems the browser is spiraling.

The Advent Calendar is the perfect movie to watch in December—if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t mind a few buckets of blood added to their wholesome holiday traditions. Excellently plotted and acted, with tension that builds to near-unbearable heights, it’s a must-watch for horror fans.Read more...

Zoom is adding in a new feature that may make it more difficult for you to casually coast your way into a meeting without your boss noticing. The new “Attendance Status” tool, first spotted by TechRadar, allows Zoom hosts and co-hosts to use calendar integration from Google and Microsoft to easily see whether or not…Read more...

Another day, another chance for Congress to maybe finally figure out what a bitcoin is: cryptocurrency CEOs are heading to the House to testify on digital assets on Dec. 8, according to an announcement by Representative Maxine Waters.

The world has a data problem. Each day, we created another 2.5 million gigabytes of data, and each year, the amount of data produced globally increases exponentially. This puts us on a collision course with a serious problem: the rate at which we produce data is outpacing our ability to store it.

The federal government has restarted a search for towns that will volunteer to be temporary homes for thousands of tons of nuclear waste.Read more...

If HBO Max’s Summer Camp Island were a person, it’d be the sort that understood how, as generally unpleasant as the winter months can be, they become much more enjoyable when you look at them as the precursors to spring, when the world will blossom open and the outdoors become wonderful again. Wintery as it may be in…Read more...

It may be winter in the U.S., but it’s always a good time to refresh your innate fear of the creepy crawlies that make us sick. In a new paper this week, John Hopkins researchers have detailed the creation of their Lyme and tickborne disease dashboard. The project provides an easy-to-navigate map tracking the spread…Read more...

One possible answer to the growing plastic problem could come from a weird place: salmon jizz. In a study published recently in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers from China detail how they’ve created what they call “DNA plastics,” a plastic material made from strands of DNA.Read more...

So we heard this rumor that some of you out there like this thing called, *checks notes,* Halo? The Chief is about to be back in action in Halo Infinite, and if you’re eagerly awaiting the next chapter—or playing a part of it already—the folks at Mondo are teaming up with Xbox to release some really striking posters…Read more...

In a move just about anyone could have predicted, a federal judge has blocked Texas’ controversial social media law that would have restricted the way companies moderate content, claiming such efforts violate the First Amendment.Read more...

You’d assume a store packed from floor-to-ceiling with toys would have no problem attracting a coveted demographic, but Toys R Us has had a tough time rising from the ashes after going under in 2018. Several Toys R Us stores and pop-ups have opened and closed since then, but the brand’s current owners are hoping a new …Read more...

In last week’s mission to investigate Star Trek: Discovery’s latest galaxy-ending Threat of the Season, the exhaustingly extensive high stakes adventure gave us a chance to see the series’ heroes find their friends and family and decompress with each other. This week feels much the same, and the story finds great…Read more...

Karen Gillan gets ready to face her clone in a new look at Dual. Guillermo del Toro teases when to expect his Netflix Pinocchio series and expands the cast for his Cabinet of Curiosities anthology. Plus, The Witcher gets us caught up on Geralt and Yennefer’s relationship, and AMC sends its plans for Anne Rice’s Lives…Read more...

Knowing the history of their hardware is often as important to keyboard enthusiasts as the feel and sounds of the keys they’re pounding away on all day. But it’s hard to imagine a keyboard having a more interesting backstory than this bizarre layout that was salvaged from a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.Read more...

This article is co-reported with The Markup.

The expansion of digital record-keeping by police departments across the U.S. in the 1990s ushered in the era of data-driven policing. Huge metropolises like New York City crunched reams of crime and arrest data to find and target “hot spots” for extra policing. Researchers at the time found that this reduced crime…Read more...

It’s not always comfortable to talk about, but the statistics don’t lie: 100% of people are still, eventually, one way or another, dying. That inevitability raises some tough questions: Who gets your material possessions? Who will take care of the loved ones you leave behind? And who will have access to your digital…Read more...

DeWalt’s Jobsite Pro Wireless Earphones have been recalled because users report some units have burst into flames, according to a new press release from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Over 300,000 have been sold in the U.S. since December 2019.Read more...

Now more than ever it’s crucial to have access to power when and where you need it. EcoFlow has got you covered, with an array of convenient, powerful, and fast-charging portable power stations on sale for Christmas, with savings in the hundreds. Whether you’re trekking off grid into the great outdoors, or just…Read more...

As a whole, the Android operating system is a more open platform than its iOS rival. But that doesn’t mean third-party app stores on Google devices always play nice.

Making a follow-up to one of the biggest fantasy shows ever has been a journey worthy of Westeros’ mightiest heroes. When Game of Thrones ended back in 2019, HBO already knew it wanted the world to continue. Several ideas were batted around with one eventually rising to the top. A script was written, the show was…Read more...

Not like it’s that big of a secret, but Maria Hill is coming to Disney+. Cobie Smulders will reprise her role as the former SHIELD operative and Nick Fury’s right hand woman on the upcoming Disney+ Marvel show Secret Invasion.Read more...

Over the past few years, Qualcomm has been expanding its chip development to cover laptops and PCs. But today at its annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm announced another new venture, this time in gaming: the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 platform.Read more...

Qualcomm has lofty dreams of making PC chips that will rival Apple’s M-series processors by 2023, but in the meantime, the company is introducing its latest ARM-based laptop chips: the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 and Snapdragon 7c+.Read more...

Apple reportedly wants to replace the iPhone with augmented reality glasses in 10 years, a transition that would fundamentally change the way we interact with the digital world. Before you get excited about becoming Tony Stark, we should caution that these ambitions border on fanciful.

Without electricity, life can come to a screeching halt. This Black Friday, stock up on EcoFlow products meant to help power your world, whether you’re spending time in the great outdoors or vacationing off-grid. From November 15, you can save up to $650 during EcoFlow’s Blackout Free Friday Sale on some of the…Read more...

About two weeks ago, Russian authorities conducted a massive missile test that blew up one of its own orbiting satellites, sending at least 1,500 pieces of dangerous debris showering across space and forcing both astronauts and nearby spacecraft to careen out of their path. Now, the Biden Administration is calling for…Read more...

The world’s excitement for the 2003 release of The Matrix Reloaded was quantifiable. When the original Matrix opened in 1999, it grossed a respectable $28 million on its opening weekend. Four years later, Reloaded grossed almost three times that to the tune of about $92 million, one of the biggest opening weekends…Read more...

The Denisovans, a mysterious group of extinct hominins closely related to Neanderthals, didn’t leave much fossil evidence behind. A fresh dig at their former stomping grounds in Siberia has now yielded three new fossils—the oldest yet found of this species.Read more...

If you’re going to try and move against not just any lord of the night, but Nic goddamn Cage’s lord of the night, you’re going to need a team—and Universal’s latest spin on its monstrous world is starting to build one.

Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population now have the opportunity to waste away their life online just like you. Specifically, around 2.9 billion (or 37%) of the world’s population have still never used the internet, with the vast majority of those people residing in developing countries. Those figures are part of…Read more...

A team of engineers has built a camera about the size of a salt grain that’s capable of taking images of similar quality to an ordinary camera 500,000 times its size. The super-small camera takes advantage of a combination of flat optic technology and artificial intelligence to produce its images.Read more...

Climate change is the latest combatant in the war on Christmas. This summer’s record-smashing heat wave in the Pacific Northwest was an all-out assault on Christmas trees, and the impacts could reverberate not just this winter but for years to come.Read more...

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has officially reached the United States. This afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case of the worrying variant, involving a California resident who recently returned from South Africa, where the variant was first identified. The patient…Read more...

Unpatched, years-old vulnerabilities in networking devices have allowed a noxious malware to infect thousands of AT&T customers in the U.S., a new report from a Chinese cybersecurity company claims. The malware basically functions as a backdoor, one that could allow an attacker to penetrate networks, steal data, and…Read more...

The third episode of Disney+ and Marvel’s Hawkeye peaked before Clint Barton or Kate Bishop were ever on screen. Titled “Echoes,” the episode began with a flashback origin story of sorts for Maya Lopez, the character we met at the very end of the second episode and who has her own Marvel Studios series called Echo on…Read more...

New research this week finds that people hospitalized with severe covid-19 often pay a heavy price afterward. The study concluded that these survivors were more than twice as likely to die in the subsequent 12 months compared to people who had tested negative for the virus. This relatively increased risk of death was…Read more...

The results of a Roscosmos investigation into a hole in the International Space Station have been handed over to “law enforcement authorities,” Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti claims. The incident happened three years ago, when a leaky drill hole was detected in the Russian Soyuz MS-09 module. Further…Read more...

Amazon’s awful treatment of warehouse workers is in law enforcement’s crosshairs yet again. This time, New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the e-commerce giant requesting that the state’s courts mandate it take better protocols to protect its workers—and…Read more...

Oil companies haven’t acted alone in deceiving the public and stopping climate action. They’ve had a major assist from some of the world’s most profitable public relations companies, a relationship that has gone largely unexamined until now. A study released Tuesday in the journal Climatic Change is the first to…Read more...

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Buying gadgets this year has been a nightmare. Products are out of stock, bots are reselling them at exorbitant markups, and there is no firm timeline for when the chip shortage—the major cause of this entire disaster—will improve.

Facebook has rescinded its block on searches for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenaged gunman who killed two and wounded another with an AR-15-style rifle during Black Lives Matter protests and civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020. The decision comes after Rittenhouse was found not guilty of two counts of murder…Read more...

Though Searchlight Pictures’ upcoming feature Nightmare Alley from Guillermo del Toro definitely looks and sounds like an otherworldly thriller, del Toro’s insisted from the jump that his latest project is a straight-up classic noir as drenched in ennui as it is (ordinary) thrills to terrify you.Read more...

The thought of picnics or snacks at the park will no longer bring up dreaded images of fingers covered in crumbs and sticky goo thanks to a clever new product called the Monchi, which is a snack container that integrates a set of finger-operated silicone tongs into the lid. Genius.Read more...

The internal skirmishes between the new and old guards of conservative political power continue, this time colliding over the future of a Democratically controlled Federal Communications Commission. Though Republican lawmakers have spent months opposing Biden’s efforts to fill two open FCC seats with Democrats, at…Read more...

Computer processors across Amazon Web Services recently hummed into gear to create 30 simulations of what Earth could look like by the middle of this century. Normally, climate models run on supercomputers. But this effort on Amazon’s servers represents one of the first attempts to do modeling on the cloud and could…Read more...