Gizmodo

Americans don’t exactly have a stellar voting record—even 2018's record-setting turnout barely cracked 50 percent—but Lyft’s working to eliminate at least one excuse for not getting out to the polls: Lacking a ride.

It’s a rough time to be a Harry Potter fan, what with JK Rowling being a TERF and all that. But we needn’t let that fully mar what good the books have done to the world, or what the depth of that fandom has meant to a lot of people.Read more...

In the new status quo of Picard’s modern timeline, the Borg, for our protagonists, at least, aren’t an immediate threat. But they are certainly a presence. Meet the Artifact.Read more...

This fight between Fox and Roku has a happy ending, for football fans at least. The two companies reached a last-minute deal that will allow Roku owners to use Fox apps on the platform, which means that users can watch the Super Bowl on FOX Now and FOX Sports.Read more...

Any one of The Good Place’s throwaway gags would be a delight to see played out in its entirety. From Chidi actually forcing himself to eat the Peep’s chili to seeing Tahani ruin one of many celebrity relationships, they’re all tantalizing. But I doubt any of them would be quite as fun to watch as William Jackson…Read more...

After getting back from CES and having a chance to think about all the fancy new gadgets, there’s one question that keeps popping back into my head: How far is the push for displays with faster refresh rates really going to go?Read more...

Science Kindle Books Gold Box | AmazonRead more...

As the deadly coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in China and around the world, several social media kingpins are fighting the outbreak on a different front: By curbing the spread of misinformation and fake claims online amid a public health emergency.

A new set of documents obtained by the Washington Post and other media outlets reveal the turmoil that shook the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last September when President Donald Trump mistakenly tweeted that Hurricane Dorian posed a threat to Alabama. Dorian was not, in fact, a threat to the…Read more...

Alan Harris was one of the most decorated extras and stand-ins in all of Hollywood. He doubled for Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and for Terence Stamp as Supreme Chancellor Valorum in The Phantom Menace. He was a Stormtrooper in Return of the Jedi. He even modelled in the early screen tests for Boba Fett’s armor.Read more...

The creation of sound to use in films is always fascinating. What in the real world made the sound that became a lightsaber, or a phaser, or a dinosaur? What real, adorable, precious little thing gave birth to Baby Yoda? In that latter case, it is about as cute as you’d imagine.Read more...

Apple announced that it would close its official stores, corporate offices and contact centers in mainland China until Feb. 9 due to the coronavirus outbreak. The company stated that it was taking this action “out of an abundance of caution.”Read more...

One of the titles with a lot of energy coming out of Sundance this past week is Bad Hair, a new horror film from Dear White People creator Justin Simien. The satirical shocker, about an ambitious career woman in 1989 who gets a weave to succeed on TV only to find that the weave may, in fact, be haunted, has had a lot…Read more...

The new decade has brought along a SARS-like, pneumonia-causing coronavirus that’s already sickened at least 9,000 people and killed over 200 worldwide. If you’re scared about threats like the Wuhan virus, then there’s one very easy thing you can start doing for the sake of your health and others—stop touching your…Read more...

An Amazon supplement sale, Anker wall adapter, Chrome Industries Clearance, and an AOC monitor lead off Saturday’s best deals from around the web.Read more...

AOC C27G1 27" Curved Frameless Gaming Monitor | $170 | AmazonRead more...

Semi-Annual Sale | BackcountryRead more...

While e-voting still has a lot of the U.S. nervous and fretting about cybersecurity concerns, West Virginia is planning to roll out the mobile voting technology to even more residents. Governor Jim Justice aims to sign a bill next week requiring that all counties provide an online ballot option to voters with…Read more...

Ring has begun pushing out an update to its phone app with the aim of consolidating all of its security settings, a likely response to general privacy concerns, as well as more specific ones about “hackers” who’ve hijacked in-home camera feeds in recent months.

After going live on iOS and Android last week, Vine’s successor, Byte, has dropped some more information that “partner program” it’s been teasing since launch, basically its plan to get users paid. None too soon, I’d wager, given the app—a video platform for six-second looping clips—has already become overrun with …Read more...

Top Trump ally and consistent encryption scaremonger Senator Lindsey Graham is working on a bill that could coerce tech companies to stop providing end-to-end encryption by threatening them with massive legal liability, The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2019 (or EARN IT…Read more...

Social media companies tend to take up copyright issues only when a) mitigating the pain in the ass of takedown notices and b) ensuring users keep reposting memes. Instagram has erred cautiously on the side of supporting potential infringers for the latter reason, so we found it curious when TorrentFreak reported that…Read more...

In letters addressed to oversight lawmakers on Friday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that his agency’s nearly two-year investigation into the unauthorized sale of consumers’ phone location data had finally come to an end.

Despite deserved outrage for paying effectively $0 in federal income taxes two years running, Amazon would like us to believe it has become a model corporate citizen. They even blogged about it!Read more...

Sharks typically don’t come to mind when you think about landlocked Kentucky, but as fossil evidence from the state’s Mammoth Cave National Park shows, this place was once chock-full of the carnivorous fishes.

One of the biggest issues with the subway, at least here in New York, boils down to cold hard cash. Even more than the busking, the rats, and the ooze, last year’s subway fare hike caused many NYC residents to lose their damn minds. But what if—y’know, instead of reducing the fare—we just got advertising to pay for…Read more...

A question for you: When you are aware of your own consciousness—meaning your own individual scattershot thoughts, like what to make for lunch, whether to cross the street, or when it’s time to go hit the pillow—what do you hear? That is, do you “hear” your own voice in your head? Or do you hear nothing at all?Read more...

Coal is dead, gone, fin. RIP, right? Well, not if Republicans have their way.Read more...

Check out this incredible photo of a streaking fireball, which appeared over England last week.

The FBI is investigating shady cyber-intelligence company NSO Group and the possible use of its phone-hijacking tools in several high-profile hacks, Reuters reported on Thursday.Read more...

East Africa is currently plagued with locust swarms of biblical proportions, but these swarms aren’t the act of an angry god. According to UN scientists, they may be a result of the human-caused climate crisis.

Folks, we don’t need to tell you the internet is bad. But what if we told you that the internet’s inherent badness could... be used to pay for children’s education.Read more...

Scientists have observed a spinning star dragging space-time along with it, according to a new paper.Read more...

Online dating is a hellscape, but the U.S. House Oversight and Reform subcommittee is fed up with just how shitty apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Grindr have been with regard to their users’ safety and privacy. Yesterday, it launched a new investigation into dating apps for doing an inadequate job of screening for…Read more...

Delta, American, and United airlines will cancel all flights to and from mainland China as the confirmed death toll from the new coronavirus hits 213 and the number of confirmed cases reaches almost 10,000 worldwide, with over 100,000 more patients under medical observation.

Roku says that a “distribution agreement” with Fox is ending today, meaning that users hoping to watch the Big Game via Fox apps this weekend may be screwed.Read more...

Ha ha ha. Donald Trump’s impermeable wall ain’t so impermeable, after all. Not even these high walls of racist fury can withstand good ol’ Mother Nature: The Washington Post reported Thursday that the president’s beloved border wall between the U.S. and Mexico would need to leave portions wide open every summer to…Read more...

After a debate that had raged on for more than 10 years, the European Parliament has finally voted in a landslide 582-40 decision to create a standard charging solution for all phones and other small to medium-sized mobile devices.Read more...

Up to 25% Off Select Power Tools and 20% Off Air Compressors | Home DepotRead more...

I need your help. When I get anxious, I like to buy things. I’ve been good about it for the last few years. I buy a couch—because I need a couch. Or I buy a new computer case because my old one is too big for the space where I’m putting the computer. Sometimes, I’ll blow money on a much pricier and more useless item.…Read more...

Your phone can do it all. It’s a portable music player, diary, digital camera, communication device, calculator, and just about everything else. But you might not have considered that it can also replace your measuring tape. With the right sensors on board and the right apps installed, you can measure more data with…Read more...

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the last pristine landscapes in America. Tucked along the northern border of Alaska and Canada, the nearly 20 million acres of wilderness is home to a variety of wildlife species, including the Porcupine caribou herd, which visits the refuge’s coastal plain every summer…Read more...

Transformers Generations 35th Anniversary Megatron | $15 | WalmartRead more...

YouTuber Josh Pieters has revealed that he pranked far right British commentator Katie Hopkins by flying her to Prague and presenting her with a fake award. Hopkins, who is frequently retweeted by President Trump and was recently suspended on Twitter, was awarded with the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy,…Read more...

Evil had a great holiday season: Amazon now has over 150 million Prime subscribers, the company announced in Q4 2019 numbers released on Thursday. The massive growth numbers sent the company’s market cap surging to over $1 trillion and made CEO Jeff Bezos an estimated $13.2 billion in a matter of minutes.

Jellyfish are the most efficient swimmers in the ocean, albeit fairly slow ones. Researchers at Stanford University made a jellyfish swim three times faster by sticking a motor to it, creating a biohybrid robot with the jellyfish as the “scaffold.”Read more...

Commerce Department ghoul Wilbur Ross gloated about his belief the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in China is good for JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! in an appearance on Fox Business on Thursday morning, even as the confirmed number of cases and deaths keep rising and experts worry of sustained global spread.

Wanting to make a show about Lego is one thing. Actually making a show about Lego is something else. You’d need an expert. Someone to make sure you were doing things right and had everything you need. You’d need someone like Nathan Sawaya.

The “global leader” in cybersecurity—Avast—announced today it would be shutting down its analytics arm Jumpshot that was recently found harvesting the data of the hundreds of millions installing Avast’s free browser extension. Apparently, the optics of a company that prides itself on privacy-forward approaches and…Read more...

Thwaites Glacier is one of the most remote parts of the Antarctic (which is saying a lot) and yet its fate is intimately tied with millions of people around the world. The glacier is the bulwark against ice stored on West Antarctica. If it collapses, it could destabilize the region’s ice and send sea levels spiraling…Read more...