Gizmodo

Google and Apple rolled out their covid-19 contact-tracing APIs months ago for state officials to use in developing their own covid-19-tracking apps, but adoption has proceeded at a snail’s pace. Just 15 states and Washington, D.C. are currently employing the tech giants’ “exposure notification” tech while a handful…Read more...

What do Paris, Disney, and sprawling nuclear fallout shelters have in common? Catacombs!Read more...

Cue “The Boys are Back in Town.” Channing Tatum is reuniting with his very funny former directors on 21 Jump Street, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, for another film. A monster movie.Read more...

From the mind behindChernobyl and some of the folks at gamedeveloper Naughty Dog, The Last of Us,the hit PlayStation series about a fungus-based zombie apocalypse, isofficially making its way to television.Read more...

Starting next year, you won’t find HBO among Amazon’s Prime Video Channels selection anymore, CNBC reports. That was apparently one of WarnerMedia’s conditions in the months-long negotiations to bring its subscription streaming service, HBO Max, to Amazon Fire TV devices.Read more...

Way back at the very beginning of Marvel’s Dawn of X, the Fantastic Four and members of the newly founded mutant nation of Krakoa crossed paths in a fateful, chance encounter that underlined just what it is about this new mutant age that scares the rest of the world so much. That subsequent tension between the…Read more...

The eldest Trump spawn, Donald Trump Jr., has reportedly contracted the coronavirus. Honestly, given the rate at which the virus has spread among the president’s staff and associates in recent weeks, is anyone really surprised?

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is using a “standard, paid Google workspace network” with only limited support from the federal government thanks to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 elections and efforts to hobble the inbound Democratic administration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

It’s Barack Obama book week. The former president’s new book, The Promised Land, dropped on Tuesday, and there’s a lot to pour over.

Earlier this year, human rights and privacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch wrote to Apple, asking why it was delaying the introduction of a feature that would force apps to receive explicit opt-in from iPhone users before tracking them. Apple responded, according to BloombergRead more...

Friday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

Well, this is horrifying.

Android power users already know that you’ve been able to customize your home screens for, well, ever. But that level of personalization is often overlooked by many Android owners. I don’t know a single Android user—and I know many!—who actually deck out their home screens with custom icons, skins, or launchers. But no…Read more...

The Merc with the Mouth may finally be making his way to Disney’s Marvel Studios.Read more...

I will not knock a person for eschewing bras, particularly in the summer months when they join forces with the underside of your boobs to create a miasma of sweat and good intentions. I will especially not knock a person for eschewing sports bras, which attempt to turn your double outies into innies through the sheer…Read more...

Chapter 12 of The Mandalorian saw our hero return to a familiar planet, meet some old friends, and go on an old-fashioned Star Wars adventure. Along the way, he learned some crucial information about the Child, the Empire, and reignited an old rivalry that’s sure to shape the second half of the second season.

Climate scientists have been warning about the dangers of using oil and gas for decades. Now, one U.S. city is slapping those warnings where they’ll be seen all the time.Read more...

When Apple released the second-gen iPhone SE earlier this year, I thought it was pretty good for the price. But what I longed for, I wrote in my SE review, was an iPhone 12 Pro Mini: an almost bezel-free, pint-sized phone with incredible cameras and an in-display fingerprint sensor for $400. Apple checked some of…Read more...

Looking like a cross between a ferret, a skunk, and a porcupine, the African crested rat may be adorable, but it packs a poisonous punch. New research explains the remarkable way in which these mammals acquire their toxin, and how these rats—once thought to be loners—tend toward monogamous relationships and even…Read more...

So far, we don’t know too much about Stranger Things season four, other than the fact that Hopper is really, really far away from Hawkins thanks to the events of season three. But some exciting casting news announced today sheds a little more light on what to expect—and who to expect, for that matter.Read more...

One of the most awful elements of the devastating August 4 explosion in Beirut, which killed over 200 people and injured more than 6,500, was that it could have easily been prevented. Using videos of the event that were shared on social media, forensics researchers have been able to reconstruct exactly what happened,…Read more...

Last year, the climate movement found new vigor in a young Swede named Greta Thunberg. She began a solo strike and quickly caught global media attention for her sharp tongue and truth telling. Too often, however, her words have fallen on deaf ears as politicians continue to ignore the climate crisis. In one of her…Read more...

On Friday morning, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they would be seeking an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration today for their jointly developed covid-19 vaccine. If granted, that would make this vaccine likely the first to reach the public in the U.S., followed closely by Moderna’s…Read more...

Late last month, the UK banned carriers from locking smartphones. Now, Wired is reporting that the same thing might happen in the U.S. in 2021, as consumer activists push legislators to do away with some pesky regulations that allow for locked phones in the first place.Read more...

When the gods of Crunchyroll’s new anime-inspired series Onyx Equinox decide that the fate of humanity should be determined by an epic game, a young boy named Izel’s life takes a turn for the divine and dangerous. He’s tapped to become the one person capable of keeping the living from being sucked into the underworld.Read more...

Adobe’s Flash died many deaths, but we can truly throw some dirt on its grave and say our final goodbyes because it’s getting the preservation treatment. The Internet Archive announced on Thursday that it has begun cataloging Flash animations and games for us all to visit and remember the good stuff with none of the…Read more...

The government of Vietnam is threatening to shut down Facebook within the entire country over the social media company’s refusal to censor more local political content, according to a new report from Reuters. Facebook had previously censored some political speech on the platform to appease the Vietnamese government,…Read more...

The Pink Panther returns in a new movie from the mind behind the Sonic the Hedgehog film. Joe Manganiello teases Deathstroke’s return in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Katee Sackhoff discusses the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Plus, more Walking Dead casting, and a teeny new teaser for Batwoman’s return. To me, my…Read more...

Digital life is easier now that we’ve got services like iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox to fall back on—not least because if you accidentally delete a file or folder from one of these platforms, you’ve got a few days before it’ll be erased for good. Here’s how to bring back deleted data, or—for more…Read more...

Sony First-Party Game Sale | Amazon

Yesterday brought the tragic news that the famous 1,000-foot radio dish at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will have to be demolished after the failure of two support cables. It’s the end of an era, but a good excuse to revisit some of the most important scientific contributions made possible by the famous…Read more...

The U.S. reported 1,971 deaths from covid-19 on Thursday, the highest death toll since May, according to the Covid Tracking Project. The country also recorded over 182,000 new cases and more than 80,000 Americans are currently hospitalized, both grim new records for the U.S. during the pandemic. Public health experts…Read more...

Facebook filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a website owner who allegedly operated a network of Instagram clone sites using information from more than 100,000 public profiles. This complaint marks the social media giant’s latest crackdown on organizations both large and small for violating its terms of service.Read more...

I’ll admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of boba tea even before the pandemic brought my social life to a grinding halt. Tapioca pearls just taste gross to me, as does bacon, avocado, and a slew of other oft-hyped food that the internet goes crazy over, so I realize I’m very much in the minority here. Though if it…Read more...

Since his loss in the Nov. 3 elections, Donald Trump has largely dipped out of public view and occupied his time in some gold-plated panic room, issuing a ridiculous series of tweets claiming victory in various states and ordering his cartoon parody of a campaign legal team to sally forth and step on rakes while…Read more...

A fix for a number of reported iPhone 12 troubles has arrived—at least for some of them, that is.

Rudy Giuliani on Thursday took one of the last, desperate laps of the fifth-or-so act of a storied career.

In what seems to be the latest sign of government officials acting independently of the Trump administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered a simple message in its first media briefing since October: Stay home this Thanksgiving.Read more...

As a political weapon, Section 230 is becoming a mutually assured destruction device.Read more...

With iOS 14, iPhone users finally got a taste of the sweet, sweet widget life anyone who’s used an Android phone in the last decade was already familiar with. I’ve shied away from most of the early widget apps and largely avoided using most widgets in general (and maybe you should, too!). It is not 2009 and I’m not…Read more...

The U.S. Secret Service has some 700 pending investigations centering on Paycheck Protection Program and the Unemployment Insurance Relief fraud, CNBC reported on Wednesday, and a large number of them involve money laundering via Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and other payment apps.

Retail Ecommerce Ventures, a company that buys and resurrects old brands as e-commerce sites, has bought a number of RadioShack’s global assets, rocketing the defunct brand back into the spotlight once again.Read more...

Did somebody say Gmail widget?

Black Friday Ads: GameStop | Walmart | Best BuyRead more...

“All living beings are on Earth for a reason, from the tiniest insects to the greatest mammals.” That’s what Agora, a free photography app, said they aimed to show with their photography contest, #Animals2020.

The Boeing 737 MAX will soon be back in the sky, following a 20-month grounding. American Airlines is expected to be the first U.S. airline to return the troubled aircraft to service, with flights starting December 29. However, passengers may not be able to easily tell which plane version they’re flying on, as some…Read more...

Amazon’s Echo Frames smart glasses aren’t invite-only anymore. That’s right, baby, the plebes can now preorder the Alexa-enabled glasses for $250.Read more...

A new fur-raising study about covid-19 is making the media waves, suggesting that walking your dog will raise your risk of catching the viral pandemic by a whopping 78%. But there’s plenty of reason not to take the study at face value, and your worry is better spent on other, more pressing risks.

Apparently, rotting vegetables can be good for something other than fertilizer. Instead of literally going to waste, they can be upcycled to create a material that absorbs stray ultraviolet rays and turn it into renewable energy.Read more...

Galaxy Tab A7 32GB | $150 | Samsung