Gizmodo

Facebook’s twitter account was temporarily taken over Friday night by a group of hackers that, mostly according to rumor, may be Saudi teens.

If you read a lot of tech news, the mind wanders every so often to billionaire SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Is he sitting at his desk, the blackened banana peel of a detonated booby cigar still dangling from his lips, since SoftBank’s multi-billion-dollar gamble on WeWork spectacularly blew up in his face? Or is he…Read more...

New research out Friday is the latest to paint a depressing picture of the U.S. health care system. The study found that nearly half of older Americans are worried about their ability to afford health insurance by the time they retire, while one-fourth aren’t sure they’ll have insurance within a year’s time.Read more...

Facebook—a company notorious for its bizarre defense of allowing rampant misinformation to spread like wildfire on its platform—has found itself under fire again after a mother whose 4-year-old son reportedly died of the flu this week turned to an anti-vaxxer group on the site for treatment recommendations for her…Read more...

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President Trump thinks Democrats fried their votes on computer, he told reporters on Friday.

Cars are bad, especially the ones that run on gas, which are most of them. The average car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year (that equals roughly one shitload), and the transportation sector is responsible for 29 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions. All those emissions not only…Read more...

The vast majority of woolly mammoths went extinct at the end of the last ice age, but small, isolated populations managed to hold out for a little while longer. New research uncovers the extent to which at least one of these final mammoths suffered due to its many mutations.

Driverless cars may someday look less like haunted minivans, thanks to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s approval of the zero-occupant food delivery robot R2. It looks like if EVE had a baby with a lunchbox and glides like an electric dream at no more than 25 mph:

The wireless industry’s biggest event of the year, Mobile World Congress, is still on the books for the end of February, but now the trade show’s future is in doubt after one of its largest exhibitors just pulled out due to the spread of Wuhan coronavirus.Read more...

The Nevada State Democratic Party has gotten a glimpse of the nightmarish fate that befell their counterparts in Iowa and will no longer be using an app to manage their upcoming primary caucuses, the Nevada Independent reported.

Mandatory injury reports Amazon submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have thus far painted a broad picture of its operations as unusually dangerous, well above the warehousing industry average. New logs obtained by Gizmodo for one of the company’s oldest warehouses in Texas show a meaningful…Read more...

Doctors are finding yet more men with strange episodes of vision problems after taking the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil citrate, better known by the brand name Viagra. A new case study this week from Turkey details 17 men who took sildenafil and developed light sensitivity, blurred eyesight, and even…Read more...

Rich white dudes have a storied history of making aesthetically-challenged vehicles that look like jigsaw puzzles of stainless steel panels as demonstrated by a Toronto-based visual effects studio who seamlessly replaced the time-traveling DeLorean in Back to the Future with a 3D replica of Musk’s Cybertruck.Read more...

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After years of attempting to chase after the successes of Marvel Studios with an all-in, all-connected cinematic universe, at this point it seems Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment are willing to admit the rush to an interconnected movie slate was not its particular strength. But in acknowledging that, the studio has…Read more...

On Sunday, the European Space Agency hopes to launch its Solar Orbiter in order to better understand a star we know far too little about: the Sun. The launch is scheduled for 11:03 p.m. ET on February 9 (live stream from NASA TV is embedded below).Read more...

Sidestepping the need to obtain a search warrant, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reportedly been accessing phone location data belonging to millions of Americans by buying it straight from private marketing firms. The data is drawn from seemingly ordinary phone apps, including mobile games and weather…Read more...

Motorola seemed poised to hit a home run with the rebooted Razr, which taps into early 2000s nostalgia while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of foldable display technology in ways Samsung only dreamed of doing. When I saw the Razr in person at a briefing in Los Angeles last November, I fell in love.Read more...

It’s positively balmy in Antarctica. The National Meteorological Service of Argentina announced on Twitter that its Esperanza weather station recorded a new high for the continent: 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit).Read more...

If you assumed that Nintendo was the only company still making handheld gaming devices, you’re missing out on some excellent hardware coming out of China. The New Pocket Go might not be as polished as the Switch or the 3DS, but for its price, it’s a fantastic little handheld that puts decades worth of emulated gaming…Read more...

Back in 2017, Apple admitted to throttling older iPhones with new software updates. It sparked the ire of iPhone users everywhere and a number of lawsuits, leading Apple to offer discounted battery replacements. Today, the DGCCRF, France’s consumer watchdog group, has slapped Apple with a €25 million ($27.4 million)…Read more...

Gareth Edwards is returning to sci-fi for New Regency. John Krasinski definitely wouldn’t mind being considered to lead the Fantastic Four. Doctor Who recruits some guest stars for its major two-part finale. Plus, what’s to come on Katy Keene, a taste of Locke & Key, and a new look at the return of zombie thriller …Read more...

Last year, thanks to phones like the Google Pixel 3a and Samsung Galaxy A50, Motorola lost its long-held title as the king of budgets phones. So for its next batch of budget handsets, Motorola is ditching its traditional numbering system and instead its making two different versions of the Moto G for 2020: the Moto G…Read more...

The world wastes trillions of dollars every year on fossil fuel direct and indirect subsidies. Trillions! The U.S. alone spends hundreds of billions of dollars on them, ten times as much as it spends on education.Read more...

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Apple is co-hosting tonight’s Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire and even soliciting questions from the public through Apple News. It’s the first time that Apple has hosted a debate, joining the ranks of previous co-hosts like Facebook in an effort to become established as a serious player in the digital…Read more...

Cleaning up your feed just became a little less daunting thanks to a new Instagram update that singles out accounts you forgot you ever followed in the first place.

As part of the Trump administration’s latest siege on national monuments, government contractors have started blowing up a mountain on protected lands in Arizona as construction continues on a hallmark of Trump’s presidency: the infamous border wall.

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We’ve known for years that the Federal Communications Commission—or FCC, for short—has ignored rural communities seeking at-home internet. And now, we can finally quantify how shitty the FCC is actually being.

Chinese authorities have reportedly imposed mandatory temperature checks for all residents in Wuhan, the Hubei province city at the center of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, and plan to move all infected into quarantine facilities as the death toll continued to rise to 563 and the number of confirmed cases rose to…Read more...

One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of…Read more...

Netflix hasn’t killed autoplaying videos entirely, but in a tweet today it announced the ability to at least turn off the autoplay trailers and next episode “features”.

OneWeb, a UK-based telecommunications firm, is set to launch 34 satellites into space. These satellites will join an internet constellation that could soon consist of 648 satellites, in a system that will rival Elon Musk’s Starlink. We’ve officially entered into a new race for space—one that threatens astronomy and…Read more...

Well, well, well. After Apple—a company notoriously hostile to independent repair shops—appeared to cede part of its monopoly on Apple product repairs through its Independent Repair Provider (IRP) program, a new report has found that Apple is still very much on its bullshit.Read more...

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Google Play may not be the dominant Android app store for much longer if China’s largest smartphone makers have anything to say about it.

A little more than two years after dramatically shrinking two national monuments in Utah, the Trump administration has finished off its plans to exploit the land it cut out. I, for one, will rest easy knowing that formerly pristine wilderness and land held sacred by local tribes is finally in the hands of prospectors,…Read more...

For years, scientists have hoped to use the gene-editing technology CRISPR to help treat all sorts of diseases, including cancer. Now for the first time in the U.S., researchers say they’ve shown that CRISPR-edited immune cells can be safely given to cancer patients and survive for up to nine months—a finding that…Read more...

We know that the bees ain’t doing too well due to pesticides and even whack-ass bee houses! A new study, however, shed light on a whole new threat to bees: extreme weather. Turns out bumblebees are (unsurprisingly) another casualty of climate change, and that can be devastating to the ecosystems that rely on these…Read more...

Engineers at Boeing have discovered a new software issue with the 737 Max plane, which has been grounded worldwide for almost a year over technical issues. The new problem, first reported by Bloomberg News, involves the trim system, which regulates whether the nose of the aircraft is pointed up or down. A light for…Read more...

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Beaked whales are elite when it comes to their deep diving, but their echolocating clicks expose them to a dangerous predator: orcas. New research shows that groups of beaked whales can reduce predation risk by coordinating deep dives and stealthy ascents.

Patents are a thorny issue between tech giants, especially with regard to who pays who licensing fees for using revolutionary technologies. The latest brouhaha involves Huawei and Verizon, with the former suing the U.S. telecom firm for allegedly using 12 patents without authorization.Read more...

Folks, we’ve got a real dilemma on our hands, and that dilemma is whether or not we should ban fracking. It’s a very complex issue, you see.

Does George Miller finally have the green light for the next Mad Max? Chris Chibnall teases Doctor Who’s Cybermen-packed season finale. Star Trek: Picard teases more Romulan mystery. Plus, what’s to come on Riverdale and Nancy Drew, and Vin Diesel is already talking about Fast 10. Spoilers get!

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Picard have carefully laid the groundwork for a future where the Federation, tired and beaten back by tragedy after tragedy, is embroiled in an existential crisis. Now, one of its most tireless advocates, the veil lifted from his eyes, is ready to do something about it—and has…Read more...

A high school math teacher in Australia who recently visited China has found a novel way to keep his students engaged while he sits in self-imposed quarantine over concerns that he visited a country with high concentrations of the new coronavirus. He’s conducting his class through videochat while sitting 5 miles away…Read more...

It’s tough for most of us to recall what life was like before the invention of Google Maps. Remember printing out your MapQuest directions and trying to read and drive at the same time? Totally safe! For its 15th birthday, Google Maps is getting a fresh look on iOS and Android, along with more information for public…Read more...