Gizmodo

This week, Democrats on the House Select Committee for the Climate Crisis put out their big ol’ climate plan. There’s plenty in the report to show Democrats’ priorities on climate should they retake the White House and Senate this fall, including how they would approach a controversial topic.

It’s safe to say that white America’s general image of police officers has taken a bit of a nosedive. A role that some folks respected more than members of Congress just last year has, in the span of about a month or so, become one that they’re terrified of, if not actively fighting to abolish altogether. And rather…Read more...

With so many people now video-conferencing while working from home, webcams have suddenly become hard to find—a number of top models are sold out or have seen massive price hikes. So to help make video calls a little easier to setup, today Olympus is introducing a new app that can turn your mirrorless camera into a…Read more...

Korolev crater on Mars—the largest ice skating rink in the solar system, basically—has never looked more enthralling than it does in this impressive new visualization.

The Great Barrier Reef has been having a rough year. Warm waters have led to record coral bleaching this year and could hasten the reef’s die-off. But while surface corals are suffering, nearly a mile beneath the surface, deep-sea corals near the Great Barrier Reef are thriving.Read more...

Facebook is facing new allegations of racial discrimination by an African American manager and two Black job applicants whose qualifications reportedly exceeded the requirements but were nevertheless rejected, according to the Washington Post.

For a long time, different people would typically give you different answers about which Silicon Valley giant is, definitively, The Worst. Recently though, Facebook seems to be the name that comes up first in a lot of people’s minds, for any number of reasons. Maybe it’s the way the company’s CEO just stood there…Read more...

When news broke earlier this year that Apple had snapped up Dark Sky, the weather app said at the time that while the app would continue working for iOS users, it would be shut down for Android and Wear OS users and subscribers beginning July 1.

If you’ve got a mountain of digital data to store but don’t necessarily need to access it every day, tape cartridges are the way to go. Twelve terabytes of storage will set you back about $100 these days, but in the coming years, Fujifilm believes it can push the technology to 400TB capacities in a single cartridge.

New research this week describes some of the harrowing and possibly long-term neurological complications that can happen in children who develop a mysterious condition linked to covid-19. They can suffer everything from headaches to muscle weakness, along with visible signs of damage to the brain.Read more...

Cue up “Mad World” and reflect on the folly of having more money than sense: Facebook confirmed today that it’s shitcanning Lasso and Hobbi, two sad products you’ve probably never heard of.Read more...

At least 40 school administrators in Santa Clara County, California—the heart of Silicon Valley—have been forced to self-quarantine following an in-person meeting last month attended by someone who later tested positive for covid-19. Ironically, the subject of the meeting was how to safely reopen K-12 schools in the…Read more...

The Pixel 3a has been one of our favorite phones over the past year, but it seems its time has come to an end as Google has confirmed that the Pixel 3a has been officially discontinued.Read more...

Hello. My name is James. I am ostensibly an adult. And, like The Mandalorian’s Din Djarin before me, I am the proud adoptive father of Baby Yoda. And Baby Yoda. And the other Baby Yoda. In fact, I have seven of them so far and have no intention of stopping.

A new bird song is spreading like wildfire among Canadian white-throated sparrows, at a scale not seen before by scientists.

Are you a frontline worker dealing with new stresses or irresponsible management? Is working (or not working) from home starting to take a psychological toll? How are you coping with reopening? Submit a story using this Google form or send me an email with the subject line “My Covid Story” and provide as…Read more...

The wildfire crisis in Siberia continues unabated. This year’s blazes have smashed records, including the northernmost fires on record and the highest total of Siberian carbon emissions. If you want to know what a climate emergency looks like, this is it.

Earlier this week, MIT permanently pulled its 80 Million Tiny Images dataset—a popular image database used to train machine learning systems to identify people and objects in an environment. The reason? It used racist, misogynistic, and other offensive terms to label photos.Read more...

Cheap smartwatches have come a long way in the last few years. If you wanted a good-looking watch with a color AMOLED touchscreen and built-in GPS-tracking, it would’ve once set you back at least $300. Now, there’s a whole slew of devices that offer a range of basic smartwatch features for under $200. Timex’s new…Read more...

As movie theaters struggle to re-open and attract patrons again, even while the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, they’ll be facing yet another obstacle to financial recovery this summer as Walmart has revealed plans to turn its parking lots into drive-in movie theaters starting in August.

Jason Momoa is the reason for the season in Warner Bros.’ new... Frosty the Snowman movie? The Conjuring 3 might just conjure itself out 2020 entirely. Power Rangers’ new showrunner discusses adapting Ryusoulger for the west. Plus, what’s to come on the next Agents of SHIELD, and Lovecraft Country sets a start date.…Read more...

Pre-order Cyberpunk 2077 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) | $50 | AmazonRead more...

New Zealand’s top health official stepped down on Thursday following a relatively minor scandal that shows the enormous difference in how the U.S. and other wealthy countries are dealing with the covid-19 pandemic.Read more...

Cinemark will, in fact, require you to wear a face mask in its theaters after first releasing a murky policy that encouraged—but did not require—face coverings. That policy naturally received blowback as we have been, and continue to be, in the midst of a deadly pandemic.Read more...

A new review out Wednesday paints a sorry picture about the state of antibody tests meant to find out whether you’ve ever had covid-19. It suggests that these tests range wildly in accuracy from manufacturer to manufacturer, with tests that quickly return results at the doctor’s office faring so badly that they…Read more...

As part of T-Mobile’s contentious mega-merger with Sprint, one of the Federal Communications Commission’s stipulations was that new T-Mobile would have to sell off some its holdings, including Boost Mobile. And today, in a deal worth $1.4 billion, Boost Mobile’s new owner Dish has finally begun its attempt to become…Read more...

Fellow film streamers, should you find yourself looking for something to stream amid the muck of the overwhelmingly mediocre titles available on Netflix, I strongly advise against relying solely on the algorithmically driven top 10 trending carousels to inform your viewing options. If you do, you may find yourself…Read more...

Democrats in Congress are calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to support a coronavirus relief package that’ll bring the U.S. closer to a clean energy economy. There’s never been a better time than now to make the leap.

If DC Universe and HBO Max’s Doom Patrol were a comic book—not that comic book, but rather a comic based on the live-action series—one might safely assume that the consequences of season one’s gloriously demented finale would be dealt with off-panel, in the narrative void. Even though the show has prided itself by…Read more...

After the proposal received unanimous support from the city council, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan last Friday signed in local ordinance 119799, the seemingly unimpeachable purpose of which was to impose “premium pay” for gig workers delivering groceries during the ongoing pandemic. Not even a week later, the city is…Read more...

While Samsung still hasn’t officially announced the Galaxy Note 20, Samsung’s Russian website may have just let the cat out of the bag by inadvertently posting photos of the Note 20 featuring an enchanting copper finish.Read more...

In honor of the Tenth Anniversary of Social Media Day, influencers have issued a declaration of independence and the formation of an autonomous trade association, hereby known as the American Influencer Council. Founding members—most with over one million followers, all casually flawless—influence in such areas as …Read more...

In recent builds of Chrome for Android, Google provided a hidden option that allowed users to force dark mode onto websites that would normally feature bright white backgrounds. Sadly, based on updated settings from the Canary build for next version of Chrome (86), it appears Google is dropping support for forced dark…Read more...

With the announcement that HBO Max would be bringing some version of Zack Snyder’s take on Justice League to the streaming service, actors involved with the production have become increasingly frank about the movie’s troubled path to box office and critical disappointment. But in recent days, Ray Fisher has made those…Read more...

Gold mining is becoming an increasingly dangerous threat to the Amazon. A new study has found that barely any trees or plants grow where mines once sat. This is bad news for the wildlife that depends on vegetation for habitat. Without trees or vegetation, though, the Amazon also can’t store as much carbon to prevent…Read more...

A month after Amazon released its flagship third-person shooter/MOBA/battle royal/what the heck even is this game, Crucible, the company has unreleased it due to copious amounts of negative feedback. “Starting tomorrow, Crucible is moving to closed beta,” said the Crucible team in a blog this morning. All current…Read more...

A right-wing social media app that’s billed itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter is quickly proving itself to be even more restrictive than the alternative apps its users routinely accuse of censorship.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has assured us that things are going to get a lot worse for everyone if certain states don’t start taking the pandemic seriously. “I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 [cases] a day if this does not turn around,” he testified to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and…Read more...

A new U.S. government-led study has found that common materials such as cotton can effectively filter particles as small as the coronavirus, especially when layered. The findings offer more evidence that homemade masks can slow the pandemic’s spread and possibly provide some personal protection against covid-19,…Read more...

Before the coronavirus pandemic threw the U.S. into recession, the Navajo Nation was already dealing with a recession of its own. With the closure of a giant coal plant last year, the tribal nation had lost more than $40 million in revenue. Now, the pandemic is exacerbating an already-tough situation for the Navajo…Read more...

For better or worse, there’s a good chance your current love life owes something to automation. Even if you’re just hooking up with the occasional Tinder fling (which if you are, no judgment), you’re still turning to Tinder’s black-box algorithms to pick out that fling for you before turning to more black-box…Read more...

For the last three years, YouTube TV has been the affordable alternative to pricier live TV streaming services, such as Hulu and AT&T TV. But that price gap just vanished. YouTube TV is jumping from $50 a month to $65 due to the “rising cost of content,” the company announced in a blog post.

Months of free time and loads of untapped ingenuity has resulted in competitively-challenged hackers coming up with clever ways to use technology to dominate various sports. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if Cornhole officially falls into that category, but either way, Michael Rechtin’s managed to upgrade the game…Read more...

It seems like Facebook is really trying (for real this time, guys!) to get a handle on its fake news problem. Today the company announced a major change to the way it prioritizes news articles in your feed. Instead of prioritizing news content that has the most engagement, the social media giant will now show users…Read more...

After months of rumblings from the Trump administration claiming the use of Chinese networking equipment posed a risk to the U.S., today the Federal Communications Commission officially designated both Huawei and ZTE as threats to national security.Read more...

Streaming is more important than ever. As huge numbers of people stay home during the global pandemic, many have turned to the plethora of services for a much-needed escape. At the start of each month, most streaming services do a little shuffle, adding new movies and taking some off, and we’re here to help with your…Read more...

Last Friday, it was reported that Canadian smart glasses startup North was on the verge of being snapped up by Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Today, it’s official.Read more...

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Researchers in China are sounding the alarm over strains of the influenza virus that have become common among some farm pigs—strains that have the potential to erupt into an easily transmissible pandemic in people, they warn. But while the threat is serious and worth keeping an eye on, it’s not an urgent risk of doom.Read more...

Amazon’s streaming service is introducing a co-viewing option to stream movies and TV shows with up to 100 other Prime Video account holders, a nifty feature that’s already officially available on platforms like Hulu and HBO.Read more...