Gizmodo

DC Comics’ long-awaited The Other History of the DC Universe from Oscar-winning writer John Ridley is set to debut next month. io9 spoke with Ridley recently about what it’s been like figuring out how to give fresh voices to an expansive cast characters who, while well-known in certain circles, have been historically…Read more...

Arctic ice is seasonal. It melts down in the summer sun and relative warmth, then freezes back up when fall’s chill comes. Or at least, it should be that way. But right now it’s late October, and the ice in Siberia’s Laptav Sea still hasn’t refrozen. It’s the latest ice-free date the sea has seen in recorded history…Read more...

Halloween is a time for horrors, haunts, and movies with a lot of blood. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the most terrifying films out there are the ones that are considered “safe” for all ages. Here are our picks of the 10 scariest G-rated movies in modern history.Read more...

The second U.S. presidential debate of 2020 was more sedate than the first, with its whining, braying, and general frothing at the mouth. We all remember how the human moderator at the first rumble struggled to cut through to the actual issues that people care about, such as jobs, the environment, and stopping the…Read more...

Big news, everyone: NASA says it will reveal “an exciting new discovery about the Moon” on Monday. Any guesses as to what it will be?

Joe Hill would love to tack a crack at remaking Maximum Overdrive. Lena Headey, Luke Wilson, and Anya Chalotra are lending their voices to a new animated take on an obscure Marvel title. There’s good news for Archer’s future. Plus, what’s to come on Star Trek: Discovery and Dolly Parton is here to save Christmas.…Read more...

What’s the best VPN? Great question—and one for which you’re probably never going to get a good answer. Virtual private networks can be a great way to add a layer of privacy to your online life. Unfortunately, VPNs are also, in many ways, black boxes: You have to trust them to do the right thing with your data.Read more...

Minecraft (Nintendo Switch) | $24 | AmazonRead more...

The space robotics manufacturer Astrobotic Technology unveiled its new 47,000-square-foot headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this week. The massive facility will serve as mission control for its lunar payload delivery services and upcoming NASA contracts, and I for one think they’re missing a huge opportunity by…Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration has approved remdesivir to treat hospitalized covid-19 patients. The antiviral drug, which is manufactured and sold by the pharmaceutical company Gilead under the brand name Veklury, is the first to be approved for treating the virus in the U.S.

I’m sorry to report there is no good news for you here, sports fans. Fox regional sports programming is disappearing from yet another streaming service—this time, it’s Hulu.Read more...

Here it is, folks, the worst take on video game livestreaming that the internet has to offer.

Two members of Congress have introduced legislation that would prevent the president from taking action to restrict the U.S. public’s access to the internet, the Preventing Unwarranted Communications Shutdowns Act (PUCSA).

Facebook users who were not searching for information on QAnon were redirected to an extensive primer on the conspiracy theory due to a “glitch” in a system designed to fight it, according to Facebook.Read more...

Every time you think you’ve seen it all as a climate reporter, the crisis throws something new at you. The latest point in case: the aptly-named East Troublesome Fire has traversed the continental divide in the Rocky Mountains at a time when snow is usually beginning to settle into the hinterlands.Read more...

What’s better than dual streams on a single screen? Four streams, obviously.Read more...

Since the 1990s, astronomers have catalogued more than 3,000 exoplanets using a fairly basic detection technique known as the transit method. But what if aliens are using the same technique to spy on us? A team of astronomers is now exploring this very exciting—if not totally terrifying—possibility.

When the idea behind ClipDrop first appeared a few months ago, it seemed like magic: You could point the app at any object and then clip it out its background, creating a standalone image of anything from a plant to a coffee mug. It’s basically like copy and paste, but for anything. The app is now available in beta…Read more...

Last Friday, Xbox Brazil video host Isadora Basile announced that Microsoft had severed ties with her. In a tweet, she said she’d been regularly harassed by members of the local Xbox community since being hired in early September, and that that mistreatment was part of the decision to end her contract.Read more...

Jony Ive is a mythic figure in gadget design. He’s the mastermind behind the aesthetic of Apple’s most iconic products, and is internet famous for his Gwyneth Paltrow-esque descriptive phrasing. He’s also got pretty good taste in shoes. Last year, he consciously uncoupled from Apple, and now, Ive is apparently…Read more...

A Dutch security researcher is claiming that he was able to gain access to President Trump’s Twitter account last week. Allegedly, the only vulnerability he discovered was Trump’s total lack of concern for security. The researcher says that all he had to do was guess that the password was “MAGA2020!”Read more...

The petrochemical industry produces more than 88 million tons of polyethylene, making it the most common plastic in the world. Scientists have found a new way to upcycle it, according to a study published in Science on Thursday. It could help deal with the growing plastic pollution crisis.Read more...

Everyone has a Weird Al memory—whether it was hearing a song of his while you were growing up, watching a video on MTV, or just a general knowledge of his persona, Weird Al Yankovic is undoubtedly an icon. But if you start comparing memories, one man has more than anyone...besides maybe Al himself. It’s Jon Schwartz,…Read more...

New research from Japan suggests that a rare brain-destroying disease caused by rogue prion proteins may be becoming more common—likely due to an aging population.Read more...

The novel coronavirus pandemic has reshaped the entertainment industry as we know it, with 2020 seeing countless movies and TV shows delayed. It can be hard to keep track of them all, so we’ve created this list of movie release changes (and delays) due to covid-19.Read more...

No one:

Most TVs these days can be improved with a soundbar—even a budget bar. But a soundbar that also doubles as a premium streaming device will check multiple boxes for people looking for both, particularly if their older sticks or boxes are no longer getting software updates that support newer streaming services. If this…Read more...

Right now it’s not a stretch to say that a lot of mainstream phones end up sporting very similar glass brick designs, but with Huawei’s new flagship phones—the Mate 40 and Mate 40 Pro—the company ditched the familiar camera bump for a head-turning “Space Ring.”

There’s a lot we don’t really know about Facebook. Why is the company always beefing with Apple? Is CEO Mark Zuckerberg actually unsettlingly thicc, or are we just catching him at weird angles? And in the latest stumper thrown in our direction, we also have to ask: What’s the deal with that cryptic blank blog post…Read more...

The Skyline franchise is delivering on the promise other sci-fi franchises have not. Aliens invaded Earth and we won. But now, humans are heading to the alien planet to end things once and for all.

Images captured by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx show the spacecraft’s sample head touching the surface of asteroid Bennu, which then became enveloped in a cloudy burst of dust and rock. The team now has to figure out how much surface material was collected, if any, but these images are being taken as a very positive sign.

On a sunny September afternoon in Portland, volunteers pour into a Zoom conference room. They’ve come for a weekly update from Oregon’s Yes on Measure 109 campaign—a measure which would create the world’s first market for psilocybin-assisted therapy. The pandemic prevents them from knocking on doors to reach voters.…Read more...

Five environmental and human rights groups in Oregon are suing the Department of Homeland Security for its use of tear gas at recent anti-police brutality protests in Portland, saying the agency created “potentially grave health and environmental hazards.”Read more...

“BIG victory that didn’t look possible even 24 hrs ago,” Senator Josh Hawley tweeted on Thursday morning. The senator was celebrating the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to drag Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for a hearing on why they hate conservatives so much.Read more...

Drake’s deception! I’m seeing two Drakes!

Popping a random chili into your mouth is the culinary equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Some are mild and packed with flavor, while others will make you feel like you’ve just bitten into the surface of the sun. Without knowing where a chili is from it’s hard to know how hot it is, so researchers from Thailand …Read more...

President Donald Trump’s environmental rollbackapalooza has been well-documented, as has the Environmental Protection Agency’s transformation into the Environmental Pollution Agency (please clap). But a new report chronicles what that means on the ground, including the local impacts in districts and states of…Read more...

Scream 5 could be doing something very interesting with its classic Ghostface iconography. Star Trek: Picard might go back to back to produce its next two seasons. Elizabeth Olsen says WandaVision will tackle mental health and trauma. Plus, new set pictures from The Witcher’s second season. Spoilers now!

A former boss of mine, someone who worked at a legacy cable TV channel that starts with F and ends with “-ox News,” first told me about Quibi last February.Read more...

If Steam on Windows is your gaming platform of choice then you’d be forgiven for wanting to dive straight into the action and start playing whatever games are in your library. But the Steam client has a few under-the-radar features and settings that are worth diving into, so you can make sure your gaming setup is as…Read more...

If last week’s Discovery premiere was about Michael Burnham learning to share the hope on her shoulders with the people around her, season three’s sophomore episode is much the same for the crew of the Discovery itself. But there’s an inherent difference that plays a huge part in “Far From Home”—the crew already has…Read more...

Last week, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) rejected electronics maker Foxconn’s tax subsidy application for failing to not only hire the number of employees it promised, but to build a Gen 10.5 LCD factory. The company had instead built a Gen 6 facility to manufacture phone screens instead of a…Read more...

After spending years promising Congress that the data it collected from third-party sellers wasn’t used to beef up its private-label products, today Amazon decided to roll out a product meant to do exactly that. The Amazon Shopper Panel, as it’s called, promises to pay Amazon customers that offer intel to the…Read more...

In honor of the launch of the original scroll wheel iPod on Oct. 23, 2001, let’s look back on some notable iPod models and what they say about you as an early tech consumer. Every iPod tells a story, and some of the stories they told were pretty darn rough. Rip. Mix. Burn.Read more...

Back in June, Boston Dynamics made more than 150 units of its robotic dog Spot available for sale to outside companies and research facilities. The idea was to see what type of real-world applications those companies and facilities would use it for, and get feedback on the capabilities of Spot itself. While Boston…Read more...

Four beautifully preserved llamas have been discovered at a ritual sacrifice site in Peru. The llamas, still wearing their colorful adornments, serve as the first archaeological evidence linking the ancient Inca to the practice.

It’s only taken about a week for Twitter to become the ultimate symbol of Big Tech (Big T) censoring conservative speech in the minds of Republican politicians. And the GOP outrage has manifested in a telling blunder.Read more...

Monkey Punch’s beloved gentleman thief has been an animated icon for decades, giving us oodles of cinematic and small screen escapades. But Lupin’s latest heist is an epic unlike anything he’s done before, and not just because he’s been stunningly realized in a whole new medium.

The “Empire of Pain” and the family that profited from it scored a sick joke of a settlement with the Department of Justice on Wednesday, evading accountability for their role in the nationwide opioid epidemic.

After several tumultuous months during which each new week brought more bad news for Quibi, it appears the streaming service is throwing in the towel.