Gizmodo

The emergence of a vast number of streaming services in recent years seems to be catching up to the companies who’ve launched platforms intended to take on industry titans like Netflix and Disney.

Customs and Border Protection used facial recognition tools to scan over 23 million travelers’ faces at 30-plus points of entry in 2020, and failed to turn up a single example of an individual impersonating someone else at an airport, per a Wednesday report by OneZero.

For people who have been debating about whether to pay Google for extra cloud storage or not, today Google just sweetened the deal by giving new photo-editing tools to Google One subscribers.Read more...

At 1.2 billion years young, the galaxy ALESS 073.1 should have the chaotic look of a youthful galaxy—a fledging, diffuse group of stars and gas suspended in the early universe. Instead, this primordial starburst galaxy has a central bulge and rotating belt that makes it look billions of years older. This odd corner of…Read more...

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Some whale songs can give scientists valuable information about the ocean’s geography, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. What’s more, their songs can be used as a form of seismic testing, which uses blasts of sound to map out the ocean floor. Forms of this technology can be harmful to…Read more...

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already mastered the skill of counting. But just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable, so the makers of a documenting-scanning app for smartphones has added a new AI-powered feature that can automatically count up similar objects in a photo for you. This is truly…Read more...

Pretty soon, you might be able to tip your favorite tweeters. Why you’d want to is anyone’s best guess.

Epic’s Unreal Engine is making it easier for game developers to create and customize realistic human-like characters with its new MetaHuman Creator, which gives devs the ability to fine-tune facial features, skin complexion, and work from preset body types, hair, clothing, and even teeth. Watching it in action, I…Read more...

Love a song and want to share it with a pal? You can do it with your Alexa device now.

Alex Birsan, a Romanian threat researcher, recently made over $130,000 by virtuously breaking into IT systems at dozens of major tech companies.

There’s a new type of livestream building steam: It’s called VTubing, and for many people, it might only exist as thumbnails in YouTube’s recommended videos section. But VTubing is way more involved than just clips that feature kawaii anime avatars. It’s an important evolution of our social media landscape.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released new guidance about the best ways to use masks to help prevent transmission of covid-19. One key recommendation highlights the added benefits of using a more snugly fitting mask or pairing a cloth mask with a surgical mask. Experimental data collected by…Read more...

So, you’ve got an HBO Max subscription. Maybe you got it to watch Wonder Woman 1984 and are gonna hold on to it until Godzilla vs. Kong comes out. Maybe you’ll keep it going until the fourth Matrix or the new Dune. But what can you watch in the meantime? Is there more than just all of HBO’s old shows and some upcoming…Read more...

A small-scale nuclear reactor at a government neutron research facility was shut down last week after it began to spew elevated amounts of ionizing radiation. No employees received dangerous doses of radiation, according to officials, who are now devising a plan to determine the cause of the leak.

Donald Trump’s account is dead, kaput, slain, slaughtered, drawn and quartered, left out to rot and never coming back, according to Twitter.

There aren’t many gaming mice that incorporate a joystick into the design. The Razer Naga Trinity and Corsair Scimitar include multiple buttons on the left side, but those are designed for games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends. Binding abilities to those buttons can be more convenient for some, but…Read more...

No one wants their gadget to have crappy battery life, but it’s particularly annoying with wearables. If that new fitness tracker needs to be recharged too often, it’s going to collect dust in a drawer somewhere. Well good news, everyone. Scientists have figured out how to build a wearable thermoelectric generator…Read more...

For the first time ever, scientists have spotted hydrogen chloride on Mars. The source of this colorless gas remains unclear, but going theories include volcanic activity or a previously undetected chemical cycle tied to the Red Planet’s epic dust storms.

The seashell has been collecting dust on a museum shelf in Toulouse for the past 80 years, and before that, it had spent all of recorded history, plus a few millennia, on the floor of a cave in the Pyrenean foothills of Southern France. Now, the Marsoulas conch has been dusted off and played—and you can hear its eerie…Read more...

Last October, security researchers warned that the Qiui Cellmate Chastity Cage had a serious security flaw that could allow hackers to turn a chastity device into a dick jail. Now, the device’s European distributors are saying the problem’s been fixed and your dicks are safe.

Amazon has been making a mint during the pandemic. That business has resulted in multi-billion dollar pay days for the company’s soon-to-be former CEO, and millions of the company’s iconic cardboard boxes being left on doorsteps, and in lobbies and mailboxes every day. And when those piles of boxes climb higher, the…Read more...

Features familiar to the Waze crowd are coming soon to Apple Maps.

As rumors about Apple’s augmented reality efforts continue to heat up, a new report claims Apple has partnered with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to develop and produce sophisticated micro OLED displays for use in a future AR headset.

Good morning my old nemesis, the ghost of the TikTok ban past.

Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. | $47 | AmazonRead more...

A new study has found that after a mysterious increase in the 2010s, an ozone-depleting chemical is once again in decline. It’s a rare bit of good news, showing that previous research tracking the increase has likely had an impact.

Quarantined meme-makers and beleaguered graphic designers can quietly rejoice in the fact that Adobe’s making it easier to work together in some of its flagship products.Read more...

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If you don’t already own a Peloton machine, you may be outta luck for awhile due to the company’s logistical issues. But regardless of whether you have a Bike or Tread in your home, you can still take advantage of the newest feature in the Peloton app. That is, if you own an iPhone or iPad.Read more...

As the pandemic drags on, some residents of the Bay Area faced a different kind of health emergency on Tuesday: an oil spill. Around 600 gallons of an oil-and-water mixture spilled from a Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California into the San Francisco Bay, the company told local health authorities.Read more...

Tom Holland unsurprisingly denies those big Spider-Man rumors. Superman & Lois has found its Jor-El. Plus, what’s to come on the sophomore season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, and get a sneak peek at filming on the final season of The Walking Dead. To me, my spoilers!

With all the advanced health features that smartwatch makers keep rolling out, it’s easy to forget that many people aren’t looking for anything more than notifications, good battery life, and basic fitness-tracking. Unfortunately, if that’s all you want, your options are either bland fitness trackers or chintzy…Read more...

Twitter has blocked the accounts of at least 500 people and groups involved in the current protests by farmers in India at the request of the Indian government, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. Some of the accounts have even been permanently deleted.

New research released Wednesday underscores the role of obesity in type 2 diabetes. It suggests that obesity plays a major factor in up to half of new diabetes cases that occur annually in the U.S.Read more...

Another app bites the dust on older Apple TVs.

Hopeful Starlink users no longer have to wait for a magical beta invite to use the service. SpaceX has officially opened pre-orders to everyone currently in its service area, reports The Verge.Read more...

Confirming what we pretty much already knew, cloud-based business software company Salesforce said on Tuesday that the 9-to-5 workday is “dead,” and also announced plans to allow its employees more freedom in choosing how to structure their work lives going forward.

Few things about the PlayStation 5 are better than the DualSense controller. It feels terrific to hold, somehow just as solid as it is light. The haptics are truly dynamic, at least for games that offer such support. It’s beautiful. But even the mighty DualSense reportedly isn’t immune to the Achilles’ heel of modern…Read more...

In a sign of America returning to a state of regular-level dystopia, lawyer Rod Ponton is taking the internet by storm after he accidentally left on a Zoom filter during a court hearing, making him appear to as a large, watery-eyed cat.

Apple’s latest software update will fix an issue the company said has been affecting some older MacBook Pro models.Read more...

Parler, the social media utopia for people born too late to sign up for Vichy France, reportedly tried to entice Donald Trump into joining by offering him a hefty taste of its operation. Now the House Oversight Committee is investigating.

As long as devices with smudge-magnet screens have existed, so have styluses to interact with them. But even the Apple Pencil is an ugly white plastic stick that’s more about function than form. Accessory maker Adonit has brought the aesthetics of a fine writing instrument like a Montblanc pen to a stylus, its new …Read more...

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. This week, everything changes when the fire nation rolls for initiative, Magic: The Gathering celebrates Black History Month, and Games Workshop figures out another way to ease you into the worlds of Warhammer.

It can be difficult to distinguish a flesh-and-blood human’s face from one generated by artificial intelligence. (Telltale signs are misshapen eyes under spectacles, non-dermatological blemishes on the skin, and hair that looks as if it’s been thatched atop the head, though your experience may differ). But what about…Read more...

An analysis of coelacanth DNA suggests its genome has experienced some significant changes in recent evolutionary history, potentially dispelling the popular image of these iconic fish as being “living fossils.”

This week, group of economists released an analysis that attempts to answer how much the average American drives their electric vehicle. While it shows people drove electric cars fewer miles than gas-powered ones, the results might not reflect the rapidly changing electric vehicle landscape.Read more...

GameStop’s stock has fallen back to something like a reasonable price and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy claims he lost about $700,000, but the future of meme stocks is not yet written. And at least one New York-based quantitative fund seems to think there’s still a glimmer of gold to be found in the brain trust…Read more...

As we continue to transition from LTE to 5G, Qualcomm just announced the world’s first 5G modem capable of reaching data speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second.Read more...

Have you heard? The old Myspace is back. Sort of.