Gizmodo

Word emerged Wednesday of a new project, called Insignia, that aims to recreate the original Xbox Live service, potentially restoring online play to many dozens of classic Xbox games that fell offline when the original Xbox Live service (hereafter, “Xbox Live”) closed on April 15, 2010.Read more...

The U.S. Copyright Office has released a long-awaited, 192-page report that could give the music and movie industry an opening to fight for stricter enforcement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

No matter how they may make you feel, licking your gadgets and electronics is never recommended. Unless you’re a researcher from Meiji University in Japan who’s invented what’s being described as a taste display that can artificially recreate any flavor by triggering the five different tastes on a user’s tongue.Read more...

It seems that the European Union’s digital privacy protections aren’t just a handy way to keep the Facebooks and Googles of the world from snooping into your personal life. According to a recent court ruling in the Netherlands, these same protections can apply to overly invasive family members, too.

Earlier this week Google announced that the Google App was finally getting an official dark mode on Android and iOS, which is something that would normally make me happy, but I’ve suffered not one, but two rants from my colleagues complaining about dark mode. So consider this piece a direct rebuttal to my colleagues’…Read more...

Ohio legislators have approved plans to build North America’s first-ever freshwater offshore wind farm. On Thursday, the Ohio Power Siting Board unanimously approved the Icebreaker wind project, a six turbine project slated to be constructed off the Lake Erie shore near downtown Cleveland. The wind farm would include…Read more...

Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling from 2018, most of the evidence that might be hidden on a suspect’s phone is only accessible with some sort of warrant. Now, a Seattle judge is extending these protections even further.Read more...

Here’s our roundup of the latest developments and research into covid-19, including more insight into its deadly effects on the body, how ready U.S. states are for reopening, and a massively disappointing result for two potential treatments that were once hailed as “game-changers” by President Trump.Read more...

In spite of growing federal demands for transparency regarding the number of covid-19 exposures among the second-largest U.S. workforce, Amazon’s stance so far can be largely characterized as “fuck you, make me.” Unsurprisingly, this disdain is extending to local-level concerns, too—now most urgently in Kenosha,…Read more...

A man in Morrow, Georgia, has been charged for allegedly submitting a fake medical letter for a positive covid-19, defrauding his company and causing an estimated $100,000 in damages after his employer was forced to close and unnecessarily quarantine several of the man’s colleagues.Read more...

You’ve seen Night of the Living Dead, Psycho, and Rosemary’s Baby. But have you seen a pre-Star Trek William Shatner being chased by a succubus in a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto? Or a made-in-Japan (with a non-Japanese cast) alien creature feature with the grooviest theme song ever? Read on!

This story will provide important context for the headline, and I encourage you to read it—but really, the headline tells you what you need to know: It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit above the Arctic Circle this week.Read more...

Despite recently having to announce the lay off of 1,000 employees, it would now appear that Magic Leap has somehow pulled a $350 million miracle out of its ass.Read more...

Incredible video taken last night in Australia shows what was likely the late-stage of a Russian rocket burning up on re-entry, in a light show that was seen across the southeast portions of the country.

After shutting down its US-based repair centers over two months ago as a result of the pandemic, Nintendo is starting to reopen them again, which is good news for Switch owners still dealing with Joy-Con drift. Hacker Matteo Pisani came up with a different solution: a Switch without joysticks is a Switch that never…Read more...

When stay-at-home orders were first issued, wearing the Muse S headband, a smart headband intended to help you practice mindfulness and meditation, seemed like a good idea. I am an overly anxious person with too much brain poisoning from Twitter and I’m weathering lockdown in a cramped studio apartment with my partner…Read more...

Earlier this year, Airbus unveiled a sleek new concept aircraft with a blended wing that looked incredibly futuristic. And while it looks like it could have been ripped out of a sci-fi movie from the 2010s, the plane concept also has many elements of retro-futurism. Specifically, the plane looks similar to the…Read more...

Alan Menken has joined Skydance’s new fantasy musical. Mike McMahan discusses the dynamics between the hapless stars of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Scooter and Skeeter are coming to the Muppet Babies reboot. Plus, Shudder taps a new western-horror film, bad news for Emergence, and what’s to come on The 100. Spoilers now!

Alabama is running out of ICU beds to treat coronavirus patients, according to the mayor of Montgomery, the second largest city in the state. The dire news comes as Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, continues to lift restrictions put in place last month to slow the spread of covid-19.

In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google’s adding a long-overdue feature to its Maps app that puts details about a location’s accessibility facilities front and center.

Facebook is the latest tech giant to broaden its telecommuting policies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In a livestreamed employee townhall Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to “aggressively” ramp up hiring for remote workers and begin taking applications for permanent remote work among…Read more...

But only some. You know how Christopher Nolan is.

Earlier today, Cult of Mac posted the most egregious rumor: Apple is apparently crafting a pair of special edition augmented reality glasses that will look like Steve Jobs’s moderately iconic ones. Apple will then reportedly sell these glasses for money. The claim comes from Jon Prosser, a YouTuber who has made waves…Read more...

Fitbit owners wear their watches and fitness trackers day and night, which gives the company tons of data about their health. Fitbit is now launching a study to determine whether all of that data can be used to diagnose covid-19 before any noticeable symptoms—including fever and cough—even begin.Read more...

Cluck, cluck, cluck, puk puk pukaaak—that’s the sound a Ford makes, apparently.

A brewing fight in the U.S. House of Representatives over the future of internet privacy came to head on Thursday during a Democratic caucus call in which party leadership allegedly misportrayed the position of one of their most senior members.

Netflix is planning to purge its service of subscribers whose accounts are no longer actively being used—but you may have a chance to save your precious streaming data if you resubscribe before it’s wiped.

It’s neither an asteroid nor a comet but something in between. It’s also parked within Jupiter’s orbit, making this object the first of its kind to ever be detected.

Vivo teased some pretty ambitious tech with its Apex 2020 concept phone, but now it’s putting one of those far-out innovations into something you might actually be able to buy.Read more...

Community platform Nextdoor is courting police across the country, creating concerns among civil rights and privacy advocates who worry about possible conflicts of interest, over-reporting of crime, and the platform’s record of racial profiling, per a Thursday report by CityLab.

Yesterday afternoon, Apple and Google’s highly anticipated contact-tracing tech was officially rolled out, with Apple already baking it into the backend of its latest update. The question now is whether it’ll be the godsend for public health that both of the tech giants initially pitched, or if doubts surrounding the…Read more...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with several states, are muddling the statistics on covid-19 testing, according to reporting from The Atlantic and other media outlets. They have combined the results of two different types of tests in their tallies released to the public, only one of which is…Read more...

A joint poll between University of Maryland researchers and the Washington Post released this week found most consumers, for a variety of reasons, are either unable or unwilling to download the proposed contact-tracing tech Apple and Google are developing to track the spread of the coronavirus. While some consumers in…Read more...

I was minding my own business last night, gaming real hard like I do, when I took a break from blasting away grubs in Gears Tactics to check Twitter. It didn’t take long before for the powers that be punished me for my poor choices by forcing me to look at an old PlayStation controller with all of its buttons missing.Read more...

The dam failures that flooded entire swaths of Michigan on Wednesday didn’t just happen by chance. Boyce Hydro, the company that owns the two dams, has a history of ignoring federal regulations designed to prevent disasters like the floods from happening.Read more...

Yesterday, Twitter announced that it was testing a new feature that allows users to limit who can and can’t reply to their tweets. While this will make it more difficult for people to harass others on the platform, this feature could prevent constituents from replying to publicly elected officials. A Twitter…Read more...

In the wake of school closures necessitated by the current covid-19 crisis, the College Board—the organization that oversees Advanced Placement Exams—is being sued by a group of students who claim that it knew of and even acknowledged issues with at-home testing that could disproportionately affect some students and…Read more...

Have you been laid off or furloughed? 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? Submit a story using this Google form or send me an email with the subject line “My Covid Story” and provide as much…Read more...

Prophecies, ancient sisterhoods, a bible that’s orange for some reason. Religion in Dune can be a bit confusing. To help, io9 parsed the main, spoiler-free stuff you need to know before Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation arrives this December.

A lake on the outskirts of Portland, Maine, became a highly unusually scene last summer when a kayaker happened upon a dead bald eagle floating face down, pierced through the heart.

Scams and creepers abound on Facebook Messenger. To combat them, Facebook is now turning to artificial intelligence. A new AI-powered safety feature for Messenger will now help people, particularly kids, identify bad actors and notify them about suspect accounts—all without reading the actual messages themselves.

A team working to restore a historic building at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland have stumbled upon numerous items hidden by prisoners inside a chimney.Read more...

One can spend hours combing through the web looking up his or her next procurement and it can get a little lonely when there aren’t meets to attend and fellow fans to hang out with. Luckily for Mike and Amanda Kieler, they’ve found solidarity in collecting togther, even if their collections are wildly different.

Samsung Galaxy Buds+ | $120 | eBayRead more...

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back has been around for so long, it’s easy to forget how much it changed Star Wars. In the 40 years since its release, all of the sequel’s characters, planets, ships, and ideas, have become core pieces of the franchise. But upon release, no one knew what a Force Ghost was. Or who Lando…Read more...

If you’re going to put a smart speaker in your home that disregards your privacy and functions only to rake in profits from you in any way possible, it might as well be a disembodied interactive version of Futurama’s Bender instead of Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. “Bite my shiny metal ask me anything.”Read more...

Lifehacker Managing Editor Joel Cunningham had a quirky quarantine-inspired question the other day: His three-year-old keeps on mashing the brightly colored buttons on his MacBook’s Touch Bar, prematurely ending his participation in various video chats. Cute as that might be [Managing editor’s note: IT’S NOT CUTE], he…Read more...

No matter what kills the heroes of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s upcoming adaptation of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández’s comic book The Old Guard, their inexplicable ability to heal ensures that they always rise back up from the dead ready and willing to take out anyone dumb enough to fight them. The movie’s first trailer…Read more...

It Follows’ David Robert Mitchell is taking on the superhero genre. Steven Soderbergh believes Bill & Ted Face the Music is the perfect movie for our current moment. Don Mancini teases Chucky’s goals in the Child’s Play TV show. Plus, a new look at Doom Patrol’s return, and what’s to come when Harley Quinn takes on…Read more...

Four months after AMD announced SmartShift, we’re finally getting a taste of the new technology that will feature in a whole lot of gaming laptops going forward—as well as Sony’s PS5 later this year. Today, Dell launched the G5 15 SE, a new laptop equipped with the brand new Ryzen 4000 series CPU and the Radeon RX…Read more...