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Snapchat received widespread criticism Friday for its Juneteenth filter that prompted users to celebrate the anniversary of the end of slavery in the U.S. by smiling to break chains. By mid-day, Snap quietly pulled the tone-deaf filter and the company has since issued a public apology. Apparently, this Lens was a beta…Read more...

Don’t you just love it when you’re doing something as stress-free as traveling during a pandemic and a fellow passenger decides that it’s that moment to exercise his right to be a pain in the ass?Read more...

Two years ago, musician Stuart Hyatt had no idea that the endangered species called the Indiana bat would be such a huge part of his life. But then in 2018, he chaperoned his 10-year-old son on a weekend school trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. On the final night of the trip, the group took a walk into the woods to…Read more...

From the evil android Ash to the quirky hobbit Bilbo, Ian Holm was as versatile an actor as one could ever imagine. He could do it all, and did so for decades, even earning an Oscar nomination in 1982. However, we’re sad to report that the incredible actor passed away this week at the age of 88 from complications with…Read more...

Apple’s Mac computers have gone through just two major CPU architecture transitions in their entire history: moving from Motorola 68k to PowerPC processors in 1994, and then switching from PowerPC to Intel x86 chips in 2005. Based on recent reports (and nearly half a decade of rumors), it appears Apple is on the…Read more...

Besides President Donald Trump, there’s no Republican who environmentalists are more keen to unseat this autumn than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Two primary challengers have very different ideas of how to do so.Read more...

Pick up a Fire TV device or an Amazon Fire tablet, and the on-board operating system is only loosely based on Android: You’re actually dealing with a modified OS, cut off from Google’s apps and services, but it’s not particularly clear exactly what that means for your choice of apps and options. Allow us to add some…Read more...

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Big Oil has spent decades perfecting the art of lying and pursuing a strategy to divide the public so it can continue its polluting ways. It’s been a successful model that has run into a brick wall that is the new climate movement.

Britain swore an oath of sovereignty against Apple and Google earlier this year, resolving to devise a workable contact-tracing app that didn’t have to cave to Apple and Google’s user privacy demands. After numerous warnings from experts that the app simply wouldn’t work, the rollout has been delayed from May to…Read more...

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were a no-show as top officials from Facebook, Google, and Twitter testified and answered questions about their companies’ efforts to safeguard voters from the spread of disinformation concerning the 2020 presidential election.Read more...

First came the memes about the PlayStation 5's swooped design, and now people are wondering just how big Sony’s next-generation console is going to be. From everything we’ve seen so far, the PS5 certainly looks like it will be a behemoth—it may even put your old DVD player and the original Xbox to shame. Sony hasn’t…Read more...

Pack your bags with as many winter clothes and things to bludgeon giants with as you can, adventurers: Wizards of the Coast has unveiled the latest adventure module for Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition. We’re heading off to Icewind Dale to uncover grand mysteries and sinister secrets.

This is your captain speaking. Dweeb alert! This is not a drill. Dweeb alert! That’s right, folks, there is a dweeb alert in effect on this aircraft.

We’ve been hearing rumors about all the devices—including a brand new smartwatch—that Samsung might show off at its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event. But new leaked photos may have just given us the first look at the Galaxy Watch 3.Read more...

The ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic forced San Diego Comic-Con to go entirely digital this year. But voting for the annual Eisner Awards was meant to go rather smoothly as people could participate through an online portal put together with SDCC’s organizers. Just as the deadline for voting was seemingly extended,…Read more...

Measured against its peers, Facebook has been particularly soft on Donald Trump and his administration’s penchant for spewing violent rhetoric, misinformation, and outright lies. It seems, after no shortage of pressure, the social media company has found where it draws the line for a sitting president: the…Read more...

Facebook released a stand-alone gaming app in April, but, try as it might, the company can’t convince Apple to allow it in the iOS App Store. Facebook has submitted the app five times, in fact, according to the New York Times. The reason? Apple doesn’t allow apps that are essentially storefronts for distributing…Read more...

Science fiction has a rich history in countless cultures, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And Netflix has been getting in on the action for a while now. Here are our five picks for international sci-fi shows you should definitely check out on the streaming platform.Read more...

Apple users will now be able to trade-in their old Macs in physical Apple Stores rather than having to use the company’s online system for these devices.Read more...

The U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels. Yet the carbon footprint of warfare hasn’t been a central focus of the U.S. climate movement. Even the game-changing Green New Deal resolution that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey introduced last year—the most…Read more...

The U.S. tick problem is not getting any better. And, unfortunately, we’re doing a dreadful job at tracking their movements, let alone keeping them in check, according to a new study out Wednesday.

The West Coast is preparing for a future where giant diesel transport trucks go electric. Utilities and state agencies in California, Oregon, and Washington announced a plan to transform highway infrastructure that would speed the transition.Read more...

Darkseid Is, and most importantly, Darkseid is here.

The world of Thra is full of incredible beings and creatures, from major civilizations like the Gelfling and the Skesis, to humble landstriders and adorable (and occasionally horrifying) Nurlocs. Now, a new book wants to detail Thra’s grand bestiary—and io9 has an exclusive look inside shows.

The long-standing controversy over the so-called “Apple tax” the company imposes on apps in its App store has resurfaced in a new standoff with recently launched email management app Hey, a dispute that brings into sharp focus the unchecked dictatorial power Apple wields over apps and their creators—and one that’s…Read more...

FBI agents used online evidence including an Etsy shop and profiles on LinkedIn and fashion website Poshmark to identify and charge a woman they say set fire to two police cars during recent protests in Philly, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Apple Watch has always been able to shrug off some amount of water, but since the Series 2 it’s been able to survive being completely submerged, accidentally or not. The only caveat is that water can get trapped in the smartwatch’s speaker, a problem Apple has solved with a clever water-eject feature that is…Read more...

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 much…Read more...

Your friends who refuse to read the lengthy articles you send no longer have an excuse. Google’s created a new extension that lets you create URLs that link to a specific section of text on a website, regardless of formatting.

Hurricane season has begun with a roar. The West is threatened by wildfires. Arizona is blanketed in a heat wave. Rains overwhelmed unmaintained dams in Michigan. At the same time, we are living through a combined health, political, economic, racial, and climate crisis.

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I have never been the runner who simply laces up their sneakers, pops in their headphones, and zips out the door. I’m the runner who laces up some smart sneakers, pairs their wireless earbuds, opens up a running app, straps on a chest strap heart rate monitor, starts a workout on one smartwatch, quickly starts another…Read more...

The extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans was first discovered in 1956 at Oregon State University, where it was busy ruining a gamma ray experiment designed to sterilize a tin of ground meat. The “sterilized” meat spoiled, thanks to D. radiodurans and its preternatural durability in the face of radiation: The…Read more...

Ewan McGregor discusses the tech powering the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ show. Legends of Tomorrow promotes another regular for its next season. Get a look at Netflix’s new The Grude show. Plus, what’s to come when Hanna returns to Amazon, and the Jeff Lemire/Dustin Nguyen comic series Descender could be coming to TV.…Read more...

Ice in the polar regions has been under assault from rising ocean and water temperatures. While human-driven climate change is driving widespread weirdness, natural patterns can also lead to chaos.

If everything in your peripheral vision suddenly changed from color to black and white, would you notice? There’s a good chance you wouldn’t—in a new study involving virtual reality, most people never realized that their surroundings had abruptly desaturated. The results add to a large body of research suggesting we…Read more...

Video chat service Zoom will finally add end-to-end encryption to calls placed by users on the free version of its service, weeks after announcing it would only be available to premium users who shelled out for the privilege.

Shitty tablets helped screw up California’s March 3, 2020 primary election in big time, according to a previously unpublicized Los Angeles County report flagged by Politico on Wednesday.

Much as the Candyman film franchise focuses on the stories of people foolish enough to summon a murderous ghoul into their midst by chanting his name, the films have always been, at their cores, gruesome reflections on the American legacy of anti-Black racism that led to the lynchings of thousands over the centuries.Read more...

The world is facing a make-or-break moment for climate policy. Without unprecedented action, we’re all but guaranteed to see catastrophic climate breakdown by the end of the decade.

You remember the Segway, the two-wheeled device that required a gymnastics-level of balance to ride standing upright? Its inventor is currently working on an incredibly ambitious project to create a massive lab for growing human organs—once the FDA approves lab-grown organs for human transplant, of course. There’s…Read more...

After weeks of watching hypnotoad Mark Zuckerberg attempting to smush logic to accommodate a threatening conspiracy theorist, meanwhile allegedly firing critics, Facebook has produced an offering that could maybe take some of the heat off without fixing any of the aforementioned problems. In a rare USA Today op-ed…Read more...

The World Health Organization has, for the second time in less than in a month, decided to suspend its clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine for covid-19 patients. The decision was made following a review of the latest evidence as well as its own preliminary data, which concluded the drug would likely not help save…Read more...

Next Monday, Apple is kicking off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where, as usual, the company will reveal the features coming to iPhones, Macs, and more this fall. But things are a little weird this year due to [gestures at everything]. Instead of showing off demos to excited developers in a San Jose…Read more...

The Last Great Time War. Those five words have hung over Doctor Who ever since it was revived in 2005: an earth-shattering conflict that saw the Doctor’s people, the Time Lords, pitted against the Daleks. It’s been started, ended, revived, and discussed across Who media for years, and will be explored once more this…Read more...

Sen. Josh Hawley, one of Facebook’s most vocal critics on Capitol Hill, introduced new legislation on Wednesday that would purportedly chip away at the limited liability shield that protects social media giants from being sued for content moderation decisions.

Last Friday night, thousands defied New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s curfew order and marched in the rain, the fifth evening in a week marked by beatings and mass arrests after dark. It was now common for police to leapfrog ahead of the crowd, assemble a chokepoint, and ambush with mass…Read more...

Before Doom Patrol’s Danny the Street was reduced to a single brick, the extradimensional being used to delight in throwing wildly extravagant parties for their friends—all of whom were social outcasts in need of a compassionate community. Danny might not be at their full power just quite yet, but in the latest…Read more...