Gizmodo

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So you’ve decided to treat yourself (or maybe you were treated) to a brand new Xbox Series X or Series S and immerse yourself in the next generation of consoles—but are you getting the most out of your Microsoft-made box? These quick tips and tricks for your new console will help, covering everything from automatic…Read more...

Nearly three weeks after the abrupt exit of Black artificial intelligence ethicist Timnit Gebru, more details are emerging about the shady new set of policies Google has rolled out for its research team.Read more...

Driverless delivery service Nuro has been cleared for California’s first Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit, meaning the company could soon launch a fleet of autonomous commercial vehicles on city streets around the state.Read more...

Medical experts are begging, warning, and bargaining with us to hault the holiday parties. One epidemiologist likened a Thanksgiving gathering to gasoline on the fire, and run-down California health officials have made a potential Christmas transmission surge sound like a reactor meltdown.

Apple is getting ready to remove thousands more video games from its App Store in China due to pressure from the Chinese government, reports the Wall Street Journal. The company had previously warned Chinese video game developers that premium gaming apps were at risk of removal from the App Store, but the Chinese…Read more...

Dating apps are usually cutesy, at best. The questions they ask are always geared toward the agreeable and the design is chipper and romantic. Taste, a new dating app, isn’t that.

You. Yes, you, with your finger poised over the download button of some kind of diet or calorie-counting app. Stop it. I know January, a prime time for weight loss resolutions, is right around the corner, and that some of you might be feeling not-so-great about extra pounds gained during quarantine. Others might feel…Read more...

The Libyan government released a suspected Russian intelligence agent, Maxim Shugaley from prison, in part because someone paid actors Dolph Lundgren, Charlie Sheen, and Danny Trejo to endorse his release on video app Cameo.

Apple TV+ had a rough launch over the course of the past year, perhaps in part because of repeated meddling by Apple execs in creative decisions. It’s starting to turn the ship around with a stronger slate of programming and is hoping to win an award or two over the next few months.Read more...

In just 57 days, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt a landing on Mars. Mission controllers say it’ll be “seven minutes of terror,” as this new depiction demonstrates in dramatic fashion.

Health care costs in the U.S. are rising most everywhere, and a new study out Wednesday suggests that people seeking care for neurological problems are no exception. The study found that people with private insurance are increasingly paying out-of-pocket for services like MRIs, and that these costs have risen over the…Read more...

Anyone who has sat through an interminable panel discussion on a random topic and thought to themselves, “I wish this would never end,” will find a lot to like on Clubhouse. But due to the closed beta nature of the audio-focused social network, most people will have to make do with reading trend pieces about how much “…Read more...

Substack, the popular mailing list platform that is purported to be the next big thing in media, is talking about content moderation and bias, and it’s going about as well as you’d expect.Read more...

Disappointments are a natural part of life. Sometimes you buy a new game that doesn’t live up to the hype, or you end up with a new gadget that, while cool in concept, is actually kind of useless. In my case, that meant (possibly) breaking a playlist-roasting bot that my coworkers and colleagues were raving about.Read more...

When Gilad Shtienberg began digging on an Israeli beach in August 2018, the last thing he expected to find were seashells. Boring some 30 feet below the sandy surface, Shtienberg, a geomorphologist at the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology in California, was excavating a doorknob-shaped cove called the Bay of Dor.…Read more...

On January 7, 2020, I wrote about a mysterious, pneumonia-causing viral illness making people sick in Wuhan, China. It was the first Gizmodo article about what eventually became known as covid-19, the second pandemic to strike humanity in the 21st century. It’s eerie to look back at those early days and weeks, when it…Read more...

The weather forecast for South Florida is sunny with a chance of stunned iguanas. Miami faces its coldest Christmas in more than 20 years, and the National Weather Service has issued a warning that chilly temperatures could send ectotherms plummeting from trees or curling up on sidewalks and roadways.

First Microsoft and Google incorporated classic Zoom features like breakout rooms into their own video-conferencing services. Now Zoom is reportedly challenging the tech titans by developing its own email and calendar apps, according to a report from The Information.

Carbon fiber, the high-tech material that now makes up everything from car hoods to iPhone cases, is light and strong. When Bowers & Wilkins designed a Carbon Edition of its PX7 headphones, the goal was to create a pair of headphones that were rugged and streamlined with solid audio quality. They pulled it off.Read more...

Scientists have released an analysis of a meteorite fragment gathered after a 2008 asteroid near-collision with Earth. They show the parent asteroid was huge, and the results suggest that special, water-holding type of asteroids can be larger and have different mineral compositions than previously thought.

Telegram, the encrypted messaging app and longtime drug-dealer haven, is planning to monetize in 2021, founder Pavel Durov said on Wednesday.Read more...

Samsung’s mobile chief recently said the Korean electronics giant wants to bring the Galaxy Note experience to more phones, and now a new FCC filing seems to have confirmed that at least one model of the Galaxy S21 is getting S-Pen stylus support.Read more...

Once, there was an app called Yo. All it did was send your friends the message, “Yo.” It was one of the best mobile apps ever made, and while it still exists, everyone deleted it years ago and there’s no one to Yo anymore. Now, a new app, Honk, would like us to Yo again, but this time we’ll say, “Honk.”Read more...

Americans will have more opportunities to get their hands on the authorized covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. On Wednesday, the companies announced having reached a deal with the U.S. government with an additional 100 million doses by July 31, up from the initial 100 million doses ordered already. The…Read more...

Disney recently unveiled its slate of upcoming animated films, including a brand-new musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Charise Castro Smith, and Zootopia’s Jared Bush and Byron Howard. Encanto might be coming just a few years after Miranda’s previous work with Disney on Moana but it’s a whole new experience for him.Read more...

After more than three years of drifting through the Southern Ocean and taking a run at an biodiverse island, iceberg A68 is beginning to fall apart. The latest satellite imagery shows massive cracks forming along the surface of the biggest iceberg on Earth in what could be a sign of the iceberg finally losing its…Read more...

My biggest beef with Fossil’s latest smartwatch, the Gen 5E, was that it felt like a filler for the holiday season—something to pad out Fossil’s extensive catalog of Wear OS watches until it could release a new army of wearables powered by the new Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform. Now, a recent FCC filing hints that we…Read more...

Last week, President-elect Joe Biden nominated Michael Regan, who now heads North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the top issues he grappled with in North Carolina could also be prominent at the EPA as the Biden administration tries to reduce…Read more...

A Russian TV station is hoping to beat Tom Cruise in the space movie race. The last season of Lucifer launches with a scandalous episode title. Plus, a new look at Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. To me, my spoilers!

A few years back, a lot of major laptop makers began quietly paring down the number of 17-inch laptops they made (aside from monstrously large gaming rigs), with Apple and Dell dropping the 17-inch MacBook Pro and XPS 17 respectively. However, thanks to improvements like smaller bezels and improved energy efficiency,…Read more...

Battery life is a priority for most of us, whether it’s on a phone we picked up three years ago or a brand new handset. The older your phone (and its battery), the more difficult it is to squeeze out extra time between charges, but if you just bought a new iPhone 12, there are a few ways to make sure the battery lasts…Read more...

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Electric car maker Tesla is soaring high, with a $606.9 billion market cap and a stock price that’s up 813% this year. But Elon Musk really wanted to sell the company to Apple back in the days when Tesla was struggling. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple since 2011, wouldn’t even sit down for a meeting with Musk to discuss…Read more...

Lawmakers in China are considering new legislation that would impose fines against anyone who creates videos where people eat large quantities of food or binge drinks, according to a new report from Chinese state media outlet China News. The proposed media rule, part of broader legislation to discourage food waste,…Read more...

The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Tuesday that it plans to sue for information related to the FBI’s shadowy and relatively new ability to break into encrypted devices at will.

The FBI joined with other law enforcement agencies from around the world on Tuesday to take down the web domains and server infrastructure of three VPN services, stymying efforts by cybercriminals who had long favored them for their “bulletproof hosting” services.Read more...

For 25 years, I’ve held a long, deep-seated grudge against the New York Times Crossword puzzle. It started when a family friend gifted me a daily calendar of NYT Crossword puzzles because I was a “smart kid.” I don’t know what possessed this woman to think a 7-year-old would enjoy the NYT Crossword—a puzzle famed for…Read more...

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. ‘Tis the holiday season, and with it comes an exciting set of Unmatched Marvel games, a brand-new Root expansion, and some possibly good news about Gen Con 2021.

AmazonSmile, which launched in 2013, would seem to be one of the mega-corporation’s less overtly awful functions: it’s a simple service that adds a surcharge to Amazon purchases and donates it to a participating charity of a shopper’s choice. However, UK-based media organization openDemocracy has found among those…Read more...

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the Department of Justice accused Walmart of being a reckless drug peddler who put profits over the nation’s health and said the retail giant was a key player in the opioid crisis that resulted in 50,000 overdoses in 2019 alone.Read more...

Holidays mean happiness. Whether that’s a chance to laugh with your friends and family in a normal year, or just be as safe and healthy as you can in 2020, everyone can use a little extra joy as we reach the end of any year. Movies can absolutely help with that, but sometimes it’s hard to pick one that hits the right…Read more...

Here’s a big fuck you from Congress to everyone else: The coronavirus relief bill passed this week removes a requirement that employers provide at least two weeks of paid sick leave at full salary if their employees contract the coronavirus.

It only took 15 years after the now-infamous World of Warcraft raid for someone to Frankenstein a PC and a fried chicken warmer together, but if anyone was going to do it, I’m glad it was KFC. Bless Colonel Sanders—the KFConsole is going to be an actual thing!

If you’re reading this, you might have read the juicy piece that Elle dropped this weekend chronicling how a former Bloomberg reporter torched her entire career after falling for the longtime subject of her reporting—professional-tool-turned-convicted-securities-fraudster Martin Shkreli. And if you know about that…Read more...

It’s a good time to be a Mac user. The MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro all have a stellar new processor that’s pretty damn zippy with native ARM apps for the same price as their entry-level Intel predecessors. I do all my work and play on PC, but Apple’s M1 processor has me wondering if I really need a Windows…Read more...

The virus responsible for covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, has now reached all seven continents on Earth, with Antarctica reporting its first batch of cases.Read more...

Back in January 2019, as I huffed and puffed on the Peloton Tread (now Tread+), I thought to myself, “This thing is really nice, but I don’t know in what world the average person would fork over $4,000 for this.”Read more...

U.S. government scientists have shown in the lab, for the first time, that pigs can become severely sick from a particular species of the Ebola virus, called Reston ebolavirus (RESTV). The virus is known for being the only species of Ebola not to sicken people so far. But the discovery suggests that it can still pose…Read more...

In July, Harry “hbomberguy” Brewis shared a video on his popular YouTube channel called “RWBY Is Disappointing, And Here’s Why.” The two-and-half-hour video — a sharp, detailed critique of the cartoon RWBY — was the result of a lot of work by Brewis and his producer, Kat Lo. It also took an extra week and a half of…Read more...