Gizmodo

When a company announces a new product it can often take a while before all of its features are revealed. Now that Apple’s new AirPods Max are finally available, users are uncovering its deepest secrets, including a nifty feature where you can manually put a $550 pair of wireless headphones into a low power mode…Read more...

The Borderlands movie finds another member of its party. James Cameron shares more snaps from the last bit of Avatar filming in 2020. Matthew Rhys is set to star in the adaptation of Dark Horse Comics’ Wyrd. Plus, new looks at The Stand and teaser pics from The Witcher season 2. Spoilers, away!

“Don’t try to understand it,” a scientist tells the protagonist of Tenet, as she briefly explains the physics of Christopher Nolan’s $205-million, time-traveling spy thriller. Sure, the physics is often unrealistic and confusing, but it’s fascinating. And with its many Easter eggs, Tenet sets up some nice jumping-off…Read more...

Peloton is a cult. I say that lovingly and without judgment, because I am now part of it, and if you buy one, you will almost certainly become part of it, too. I didn’t realize how much I loved it until I recently found myself on Peloton Reddit trying to figure out the best combination of classes for the perfect…Read more...

Last week’s Star Trek: Discovery laid the groundwork to a question that has lingered in the background since the climax of its first season. This week, it answers: albeit with a response that puts one hell of an onus on Michelle Yeoh more than it does with what Discovery has ever done with her character, the…Read more...

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The U.S. reported precisely 3,400 deaths from covid-19 on Wednesday, a new record in a long list of new records this month. And there’s not much more to say that hasn’t already been said about this avoidable tragedy—the greatest failure of American political institutions to protect human life in recent U.S. history.Read more...

Depending on the sport, different athletes rely on different exercises during their fitness routines and while fitness trackers have gotten smarter, they can generally only recognize a handful of motions like swimming, riding a bike, or running. Bosch has developed a new self-contained chip that can be taught to…Read more...

Joining the national pile-on of entities suing Google for antitrust is Genius Media Group, which announced a lawsuit on Wednesday night related to the search giant’s ad exchange practices.

Warehouse workers in an Alabama Amazon facility could soon become the first unionized workers employed by the retail giant after federal regulators greenlit a National Labor Relations Board election on Wednesday.

As part of an ongoing process of retooling its policies around harassment and hateful conduct, Twitch announced on Wednesday that the words “simp,” “incel,” and “virgin” will no longer be allowed on the platform as long as they are used by streamers and commenters as insults. If they are used in a friendly way, the…Read more...

One of the largest satellite internet providers to rural America, HughesNet, has entered a $250 million, three-year contract with UK-based OneWeb to develop and manufacture ground system technology for its satellite LEO constellation, which will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink system.

The Substack newsletter hype-cycle hit a fever pitch this fall when a bunch of high profile journalists defected to the platform in search of a new business model, which increasingly resembles a bunch of old business models balled up, Katamari-like, into a product without much of an identity.

Months after HBO Max launched, it’s finally coming to one of the largest smart TV platforms around. Today Roku announced that HBO Max would finally be available on December 17 and timed (of course) with the release of HBO Max’s biggest original content to date, Wonder Woman 1984.

As the famous X-Files poster declares, “I want to believe.” This wanting, however, often leads us astray. When confronted with shocking and inexplicable celestial phenomena, we tend to see intelligent design. This jumping to conclusions is a sin for which we can be forgiven—we have an insatiable need to know if…Read more...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Wednesday that his state is spearheading a new antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of “illegally” abusing its market power to pocket money from publishers across the web. Paxton is joined by other Republican state AGs from Idaho, Indiana, Utah, …Read more...

A new theoretical exploit called Air-Fi can turn a secure, air-gapped computer into a wifi transmitter that can help a hacker exfiltrate secure data.Read more...

In its closing five weeks, the Trump administration is making some bold governance moves. No, it hasn’t suddenly decided to work to stem the tide of record covid-19 deaths, hospitalizations, and deaths. Instead, it’s focusing on what really matters: making sure every showerhead can deliver 2.5 gallons of water per…Read more...

While 2020 posed more than its fair share of significant challenges for virtually everyone working within the entertainment industry, comics in particular stood as an example of creative teams adapting on the fly—and doing their damndest to keep telling compelling stories at a time when people needed them the most.Read more...

In a new wrinkle in the still-unfolding SolarWinds saga, it seems that some of the company’s top investors sold off close to a collective $280 million dollars in stock just days before the news of its role in a far-reaching federal cyberattack became public.Read more...

Waterborne illnesses like swimmer’s ear, norovirus, and Legionnaires’ disease sicken over 7 million Americans, hospitalize more than 100,000, and kill nearly 7,000 each year, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. The germs also rack up billions in health care costs.Read more...

Ridiculously expensive speakers, headphones, and soundbars are nothing new. But there are “normal” levels of expensive, followed by the “are you serious?” levels of expensive (cough, AirPods Max), and then there’s whatever the hell this Tidal for Bugatti collaboration is.Read more...

The Chromecast with Google TV is simply one of the best streaming devices you can buy right now (especially at just $50), and now Google is plugging one of the only holes in its flagship streaming video device thanks to upcoming support for the Apple TV app.Read more...

The day is finally here: season five of The Expanse has begun. Since Amazon dropped three episodes at once—“Exodus,” “Churn,” and “Mother”—our first weekly recap is a three-parter. We tried to be succinct, but honestly, we’re excited as hell and these episodes are epic. Here comes the juice!

Google officially launched iOS compatibility for Stadia via the Safari browser today. Good news if you are a Stadia and iPhone or iPad user! Just navigate to the Stadia website, log in, and off you go. Stadia’s new compatibility with iOS now puts it in the same league with GeForce Now, Shadow, and Luna, with Microsoft…Read more...

One of the few disappointments with this year’s iPhones are their lack of support for displays with high refresh rates. Based on new reports, it seems that could change for at least two versions of iPhone 13 next year.Read more...

Two years of PlayStation Plus and the Amazon Echo Dot lead Wednesday’s best deals.

When I was younger I owned a handheld TV that had a mode where you could listen to broadcasts with the screen off, letting me secretly enjoy shows I wasn’t actually allowed to watch. According to Android Police, a similar feature is now being introduced for Netflix, essentially turning your favorite shows into…Read more...

It’s been almost three years to the day since the price of Bitcoin was close to breaking the $20,000 ceiling and came crashing down. On Wednesday, the arbitrary milestone of hodlers’ dreams was finally achieved.Read more...

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Ben Wheatley’s new sci-fi thriller sets a Sundance 2021 debut. Studio Ghibli’s next movie finds its English voice cast. M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop are ready for more creepy baby action. Plus, a live-action Yu Yu Hakusho is headed to Netflix. Spoilers now!Read more...

Carbon emissions from buildings reached an all-time high, according to a new United Nations report. In 2019, buildings were responsible for 9.95 gigatons of carbon—up from 9.7 gigatons in 2018—accounting for 38% of the world’s output of the planet-warming gas.

Much to the dismay of my fellow coworkers, I admit I’ve got a soft spot for gadgets with RGB lighting. I prefer keyboards that light up like a disco ball (after all, you can always turn the lights off), and I pay extra to make sure that all the smart lights in my house can go full RGB instead of being limited to just…Read more...

Cramming a full terabyte of storage onto a microSD card the size of a baby fingernail is a remarkable feat, but when it comes to cost and reliability, magnetic tape is still the preferred method for archiving data for decades. And even as hard drives continue to swell in size, magnetic tape storage still holds a solid…Read more...

A coalition of states is reportedly readying a new antitrust lawsuit against Google that will claim that the company changed its search infrastructure to the disadvantage of certain rivals that offer specialized search results.Read more...

President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly tapped Gina McCarthy — the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and current chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council — as his White House climate coordinator.Read more...

If you’re anything like me, your unmanageable luddite tendencies will have, by now, made you the proud owner of probably well over 100 notebooks. Spiral-bound, composition, Moleskine; the type doesn’t really matter, but what DOES matter is your unfettered ability to tote these notebooks around from apartment to…Read more...

With the help of an extra graphics processing chip inside the cartridge, Star Fox did the impossible by bringing 3D graphics to the 16-bit Super Nintendo. The decision to engineer the SNES’ hardware to allow for this upgrade was a clever one on Nintendo’s part, and 29 years after its debut, Ben Carter has used a…Read more...

Decades before cloud computing was invented, the government decided it should have the power, after 180 days, to read anyone’s emails, and that it shouldn’t need a warrant to do this. While no lawmaker today would seriously suggest passing such an incredible invasive law, Congress has found itself incapable of closing…Read more...

Livestreaming app Periscope, beloved by far-right conspiracy theorists and child predators alike, will be put out of its misery by the end of this coming March, Twitter announced on Tuesday.Read more...

Happy holidays, everybody! Now with that out of the way, I need to talk to you about this “Worst Episode Ever” featuring the Super Mario Bros.Read more...

It’ll take a lot to transition the U.S. off fossil-based energy: money, political will, labor. But a new report shows it won’t take new technological innovation. The study, published in the journal Joule last week, shows U.S. electricity demand can be met with currently available carbon-free tech, like solar panels…Read more...

Children are wonderful miracles. The way they go from babies to chaos to creatures with genuine personalities and feelings all their own is remarkable. But youngest kids of a multi-child household are another story. They are nightmare hellions with little regard for others, an incredible capacity to care only about…Read more...

Special Edition Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch | $300 | AmazonRead more...

It looks like coffee beans in a grinder, but it’s actually bits of dust and pebbles scooped up from the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The Japanese space agency confirmed the presence of these precious samples earlier today, following the recent return to Earth of its Hayabusa2 spacecraft.

We might have seen a shortage of new movies in 2020, but one thing we still got a lot of was television shows. This was a year of saying goodbye to many beloved series while introducing some new ones into the fold. Some sparked, others fizzled. Here are the TV series the io9 staff felt stood out as the best and worst…Read more...

Generally speaking, budget smartwatches tend to keep things simple. You usually get one advanced feature, cheaper materials, a fuzzier display with big bezels, and a barebones companion app—basically, a fitness tracker in a smartwatch form factor. The affordable Amazfit GTR 2, however, blows up that formula.

In a long year where everything was, generally, not great, the one questionably-bright star in our collective galaxy was TikTok—an app with an addictive quality that consumed hours of our valuable leisure time. For every bout of Sunday Scaries that hit hard during 2020, TikTok was there for us, serving story ideas,…Read more...

Somehow, not everything was bad this year.