Gizmodo

We’re all just going to have to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back from the comfort of our own homes.

It may not be immediately clear why a cyber libel case from the Philippines matters in the U.S., but the guilty verdict for Maria Ressa, the chief executive of an independent news site called Rappler, has serious implications for the free press and free speech worldwide.Read more...

The Lanmodo Night Vision system won’t turn your car into the Batmobile, but it definitely has that halo of techno-magic worthy of a Batman comic. It’s a night vision system in color for your car. It literally turns night into day and is so easy to use that you don’t even have to professionally install it. Which is…Read more...

All wings, report in.

Scientists in the United Kingdom have discovered a rare bone, called the os cordis, in chimpanzees with a common heart condition. The implications of this finding could extend to humans, who share a close genetic relationship to chimps.

Book-loving kids in Christiansburg, Va., are about to get a special delivery to ease the boredom of summer quarantine (and months of being stuck at home). Google will soon start dropping books to kids via its drone delivery service, Wing, according to the Washington Post. Now they can get their hands on a copy of The…Read more...

Addressing climate change will require massive investments in everything from shoring up dams that aren’t ready for future rainstorms to wind farms and workers. It’s a huge shift that will require reorienting the economy and the way the world works.Read more...

Brother Monochrome Laser Printer | $190 | Amazon

On Sunday, there were 453 covid-19 deaths reported in the U.S., according to the Covid Tracking Project—the lowest daily toll recorded since late March. Yet unfortunately, there are signs in several parts of the country that the pandemic is getting worse, including in states that have reopened businesses and public…Read more...

During a trip to Glacier National Park in Montana last year, scientist and amateur photographer Gaurav Agrawal simply wanted to capture a beautiful sunset. Unfortunately, after sharing his pic on Flickr, people discovered that Agrawal’s lovely work was crashing certain Android 10 phones.Read more...

A Canadian man is charged with drug possession, smuggling and violating immigration laws after admitting to using a Bond-style submersible to speed across the Detroit River. Surprisingly, it didn’t go as smoothly as he planned.Read more...

After adding screencasting support with Apple AirPlay last month, short-form streaming service Quibi says users can now cast its bite-sized shows to Chromecast devices as well.Read more...

Even before HBO Max launched, there was understandable confusion at just how Warner Bros. attempt to board the “everyone gets their own streaming platform now!!!” bandwagon would align with its prior attempt at doing that with its DC output in DC Universe. At launch, HBO Max’s offerings were sporadic. And now a month…Read more...

Intel first unveiled a new kind of processor designed for slim PCs like 2-in-1s, foldable tablets, and dual-screen devices a year and a half ago at CES 2019. Now the first devices using the new processor, codenamed “Lakefield,” are on their way.

A major diesel spill from a power plant in Siberia has reached a fragile freshwater lake that leads to the Arctic Ocean, according to regional officials. That could create an ecological catastrophe.Read more...

A large crowd of protesters packed the first and second floors of Seattle City Hall after sundown on Tuesday at the invitation of City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. For more than an hour, the group listened to speeches advocating for the removal of Mayor Jenny Durkan, whom many of those gathered blame for the extreme…Read more...

Less than a week ago, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian made news when he announced he was resigning from the website’s board, urging the company to replace his seat with a Black candidate. Now, it would appear Reddit has honored his request by appointing Michael Seibel, a venture capitalist investor and entrepreneur…Read more...

Oh, the GoBots. That poor, ridiculous, terrible toyline and animated series that somehow managed to be a crappy knock-off of the Transformers, despite the fact that both the toys and the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon came out before Transformers. While I’ve talked about how the action figures sucked before, it’s…Read more...

Science fiction makes flying cars and hoverbikes seem like the ultimate way to get around town, and one day they might be. But for now, the limits of technology mean you really want to avoid climbing aboard a flying bike, as this unfortunate crash of the Russian Hoversurf Scorpion demonstrates.Read more...

On Wednesday, a new report United Nations report urged governments to pour money into renewable energy to pull us out of economic depression driven by the coronavirus and jumpstart the transition away from fossil fuels.Read more...

With everyone clamoring to get into the streaming wars—from tech titans to industry veterans to Silicon Valley newbies with stupid amounts of funding to pump into something new that nobody asked for—one thing has become very clear: The big tech dweeb contenders are fucking it up, specifically by micromanaging the…Read more...

Production on Into the Spider-Verse 2 has officially begun. Kenneth Branagh teases the spy-fi action of Artemis Fowl. Jonathan Frakes will be back behind the camera for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Plus, what’s to come on Stargirl and The 100, and Rick Riordan has high hopes the Disney+ Percy Jackson will outdo the…Read more...

It’s rare for a company like Nintendo to release a console that isn’t at least popular amongst its fans—even the Wii U sold over 13 million units. But the Virtual Boy was one of the company’s biggest flops, delivering a disappointing 3D experience that left gamers seeing red: literally. Despite its bizarre hardware…Read more...

Troubleshooting your wifi can be an exercise in frustration. Why aren’t you getting the speeds you promised? Why does your phone lose connection behind the fish tank? Just how much of a difference is your new mesh router making? To answer these and more questions, you need to install a wifi analyzer app on your phone.Read more...

Samsung Galaxy Buds | $90 | Amazon Gold Box

The Department of Justice has brought charges against the president of a Silicon Valley-based pharmaceutical firm, Arrayit, alleging a scheme to profiteer off the coronavirus pandemic with a shoddy covid-19 test it tried to bundle with an expensive, unrelated allergen finger stick test. The DOJ said the charges are…Read more...

If you’re worried about losing the respect of your co-workers with a collection of die-cast miniature Batmobile toys parked on your desk, don’t worry, Swarovski’s got your back. This $600 crystal Batmobile replica is described as a totally acceptable and normal “decoration object” on the Swarovski website and is…Read more...

The Winklevoss twins—the brothers Mark Zuckerberg allegedly stole the idea for Facebook from—are making a movie about themselves, Deadline reported this week. If that doesn’t seem masturbatory enough, rejoice: said film is about how they amassed a net wealth of more than $1 billion by getting really into Bitcoin.

The covid-19 pandemic has many of us working and learning from home, which means access to fast internet is more important than ever. Unfortunately, despite being the richest country in the world, the U.S. has fallen out of the top 10 list for the countries with the fastest broadband speeds.Read more...

As cities are making big pledges for police reform, the viral #8CantWait campaign has become city officials’ go-to atonement manual. When Campaign Zero launched it on June 3rd, they initially made the striking claim that the proposed set of eight policies could reduce police killings by 72 percent, by, among other…Read more...

This week, the EFF announced it’d be partnering with the California-based branches of the ACLU in filing a joint lawsuit against the entire city of Los Angeles for collecting “detailed trip data,” along with the “real-time locations and routes” for the tens of thousands of scooters that LA residents ride each day.Read more...

For many fans of Bon Appétit’s wildly popular Youtube channel, its bustling kitchen filled with bickering and highly collaborative chefs and editors can feel like a food utopia: junk food is turned into gourmet delicacies, carbonara pasta is experimented with, and Snoop Dogg recipes are reverse-engineered via smell…Read more...

A 1,700-year-old board game, including rare elongated dice, dating back to the Roman Iron Age has been unearthed in Norway. Found near an important sea route, the game was likely used to forge relationships among long-distance traders.Read more...

As theaters in California near reopening after weeks of lockdown, we finally have a clearer idea of what a post-pandemic theater experience might look like in more densely populated cities. And it’s not going to look or feel like the movies did before—not for a while, at least.Read more...

In the wake of protests following George Floyd’s death, Los Angeles has become a flashpoint for the country’s anger against racism and police brutality, leading to further police misconduct. The LAPD has violently beaten protestors, shot them with rubber bullets, and allegedly arrested over 2,600 peaceful protesters.…Read more...

Yes, I know. Starting a blog by paraphrasing Obi Wan’s famous words isn’t very imaginative, but put down your torches and give me a few minutes to explain why, for once, this phrase is appropriate. I also didn’t know that I was looking for a Mavic Air 2…until I tried it out.

In the first episode of “Danny’s Diary,” a new segment in Gary Whitta’s star-studded in-game talk show Animal Talking, see the power of Animal Crossing: New Horizons transform one of Hollywood’s toughest, most intimidating actors into an adorable butterfly-collecting islander.Read more...

The Trump administration is finalizing a rule that will put animals in Alaska’s national preserves—including black bears, wolves and coyotes—in danger. The change will allow hunters to use cruel tactics, including luring hibernating bears out of their dens with bacon and donuts and entering wolf dens with artificial…Read more...

This has been the year of murder hornets, massive locust invasions on two continents, and a sudden start to Atlantic hurricane season, among other oddities (not to mention the deadly pandemic). So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Lake Superior is set to see its first post-tropical cyclone ever recorded, and yet…Read more...

As mask-wearing becomes the new norm around the world, researchers from the EPFL and Empa in Switzerland have come up with a way to improve at least one of the many challenges of wearing face protection with a new transparent design that no longer completely hides and obscures the wearer’s mouth.Read more...

Warner Bros. might be willing to look the other way while Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling continues to support transphobic views, but Harry Potter isn’t having any of that shit.Read more...

The World Health Organization held a press conference on Tuesday to clarify a surprising announcement it made a day earlier, in which an epidemiologist said that asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus was “very rare.”Read more...

Titan is migrating away from its host planet at a rate 100 times faster than the previous estimate. The discovery is shaking our understanding of Saturn and the origin of its natural satellites.

The question was never if but when, and while some thought it might not happen for another couple years, based on a new report, it appears Apple could announce the first Mac computer powered by an ARM-based chip at WWDC 20 later this month.Read more...

Acer Nitro VG240Y 24" Gaming Monitor | $120 | NeweggRead more...

I’d think that even casual dorks interested in humanity’s actual space programs would be aware of the very first joint mission between two spacefaring countries: the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project of 1975, where an American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked in Earth’s orbit, allowing the crews to have…Read more...

Back in April, Nintendo confirmed that approximately 160,000 users had their accounts hacked. At the time, the company encouraged people to enable two-factor authentication and emailed individual customers who had been affected that it was resetting their Nintendo Network IDs (NNID). Now, after further investigation,…Read more...

In 2011, Rodney Brossart, a cattle rancher from Lakota, North Dakota was accused of stealing six cows. The cows, he said, simply wandered on to his 3,000-acre farm, and by his estimation, they, therefore, belonged to him. When the cops came, he and his family were prepared. Armed with high power rifles, they engaged…Read more...

President Donald Trump, a longtime white supremacist and neo-fascist, sent out a bizarre tweet Tuesday morning accusing an elderly man who was shoved by police in Buffalo, New York on June 4 of being “antifa”—the decentralized anti-fascist movement—and more or less faking his fall to the ground. Trump even claims that…Read more...

Halloween Kills could include a very interesting flashback sequence. Could The Batman add the Dark Knight’s most infamous foe after all? Geoff Johns discusses forming a new generation of the Justice Society on Stargirl. Plus, what’s to come on What We Do in the Shadows, and Greg Nicotero hypes up The Walking Dead’s…Read more...