Gizmodo

Former New York City mayor, billionaire, and longshot presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg—who is definitely, totally not just a clueless rich guy running a widely unpopular vanity campaign—is pouring a considerable portion of his gratuitous wealth into a digital advertising firm he founded this year, CNBC reported.

This past weekend, Geralt of Rivia got moody, got on his horse, and “hmmed” his way onto Netflix for the first season of The Witcher. While our review got into a few of the things that worked or didn’t over the first five episodes, with the full season out, we took a spoiler-filled look at a few of our biggest likes…Read more...

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is here, which means it’s over.Read more...

CES typically isn’t a major show for smartphones, but this year could be different now that a Korean newspaper is reporting that Samsung will announce two new phones at CES 2020.Read more...

Even for the best of us, running a marathon can be hellish. But for one 37-year-old man running his first 100-mile ultramarathon in California, the experience became a downright nightmare when he vomited so hard that he tore a hole in his esophagus.Read more...

A Chinese hacking group believed to operate on behalf of the Beijing government has learned how to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) in attacks on government and industry targets, ZDNet reported on Monday.

President Donald Trump is determined on ensuring the Keystone XL Pipeline becomes a reality, including trying to squash lawsuits against him and the project. A court ruled Friday, however, against his motion to dismiss an ongoing lawsuit that could stop the 1,184-mile-long crude oil pipeline.Read more...

North American coyotes don’t live in South America, but new research suggests that could change, should deforestation in Central America continue.

A group of U.S. lawmakers on Monday raised concerns about the proposed sale of the .org top-level domain to a private equity firm by the organization created to manage it, a deal that has drawn significant scrutiny from digital rights groups and nonprofits since it was first announced last month.

So many great (and occasionally terrible) movies came out this year (more on them as a whole later this week), but within the genre films of 2019, there were individual moments that delighted or disappointed us. Allow us to share them with you.Read more...

A 22-year-old boss backed by a gangster cabal of “internet buddies” has been thwarted and convicted in their attempt to blackmail Apple, the UK’s National Crime Agency reports. In 2017, London-based Kerem Albayrak made Apple an offer they couldn’t refuse: deliver $100,000 in iTunes gift cards or $75,000 in…Read more...

Winter is upon us, the cold and dreary season where the fall’s big games go to get delayed. The weather outside may be frightful, but games are hopefully delightful. Let’s turn those lights way down low and see what the wintertide has in store.Read more...

It may have taken until the last week of the last month of 2019, but I think we’ve found the photo that most defines the year and quite possibly the decade.

Just a couple weeks ago, Google announced its first Pixel feature drop that added a bunch of new software upgrades including automatic call screening, better quality video calls in Duo, and more. But now that the update has finally arrived, it appears Google has snuck in three more new updates to the Pixel 4.Read more...

Federal health officials are finally confident enough to single out a primary culprit for the wave of acute lung illnesses linked to vaping: an additive called vitamin E acetate often found in unregulated THC products.Read more...

Corsair Harpoon Wired RGB USB Optical Gaming Mouse | $10 | Best BuyRead more...

If you’re on the hunt for a new 4K flatscreen TV to hang on the wall, you’re thinking far too one-dimensionally. YouTuber Theremin Hero (aka Greig Stewart) rightfully realized that four screens are better than one, and hacked together this spinning LED-wrapped cube that provides a dizzying way to play classic retro…Read more...

Despite mobile devices in our pockets that deliver arcade-quality graphics any time you need a gaming fix, pinball machines, a seemingly antiquated form of entertainment, are still thriving, thanks in part to companies like Stern Pinball whose Stranger Things table introduces new features like video projections and a…Read more...

Boeing has fired its CEO, Dennis A. Muilenburg, and will replace him with its current chairman, David L. Calhoun. A new press release from the company claims that Muilenburg had resigned, but that same press release also says that it was the board’s decision. In short: Muilenburg got fired.

Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 cast an intriguing new addition. Sony’s Bloodshot movie is arriving a touch later than previously planned. FX may try to bring Carrie to the small screen. Plus, a tiny sneak peek of Locke & Key, and Kristen Stewart and Jessica Henwick fight a monster in a sealab for the aptly-titled …Read more...

We hope you’re all diligently backing up your phones and laptops these days, but our lives are filled with so many gadgets and gizmos that it can be easy to lose track of where all your data actually is and what gadgets actually need a regular back up. Here’s a quick check-up for some of the other gadgets you might…Read more...

The first thing to realize is that new-year resolutions are a self-defeating sham inimical to the process of real and lasting change. The second thing to realize is that you will never change. But you can, maybe, eat a bit better. We all know, basically what that entails—willpower, produce, maybe some kind of…Read more...

$100 iTunes Gift Card | $85 | eBayRead more...

President Donald Trump said a bunch of bizarre shit about windmills over the weekend at a conference in Florida for conservative college students, ranting about the size of the universe and saying “I know windmills very much.” It’d be almost funny if it wasn’t coming from the most powerful person in the world—a man…Read more...

While, yes, your messaging apps are indeed spying on you, to argue that they were developed specifically for that purpose might seem like a stretch. But life is stranger than fiction in the year of our lord 2019, and now you can thank ToTok for making your worst dystopian surveillance state nightmares come true.

Apparently taking a page from the Army’s playbook, the U.S. Navy recently announced that it considers TikTok a “cybersecurity threat” and has banned the popular short-form video app, once a controversial staple of the military’s recruitment strategy, from all government-issued mobile devices.

In the old Star Wars expanded universe, lightsabers weren’t the first laser-sword weapons wielded by Jedi and the Sith. No, that honor went to the protosaber, the hilariously clunky version of the lightsaber that, instead of using an internal power cell, had an external wearable power supply. Like a wearable vacuum…Read more...

No single film has been as emblematic of the fallout of the Disney/Fox deal as New Mutants, a semi-troubled X-Men spinoff production that went from “mostly finished” to “absolute development hell” as soon as Marvel Studios got its crossover-hungry fingers on the X-Men license. While random rumors about the movie have…Read more...

If endlessly scrolling through Twitter on your phone is part of your daily ritual, you’re going to want to update the app as soon as you can if you’re an Android user. This week, Twitter confirmed a vulnerability in its Android app that could let hackers see your “nonpublic account information” and commandeer your…Read more...

Recently, we all lost our collective shit over the wild treatment Jonathan Hickman and a few collaborators gave to the X-Men side of Marvel comics with House of X and Powers of X. For anyone wondering what the author’s next trick would be, here you go: it’s a new series at Image.Read more...

Cats, Tom Hooper’s memetic hazard of a musical, is receiving unprecedented treatment from its distributors at Universal. As shared by the Hollywood Reporter, the company is sending theaters an updated version of the Ozymandias-like monument to hubris and toxoplasmosis. This new version of the film, according to a memo…Read more...

Bird ES1-300 Electric Scooter | $349 | AmazonRead more...

For many years, Star Wars nerds everywhere have understood time in a specific way. Now, thanks to the newest Star Wars Visual Dictionary, that might change. And it’s giving me a headache.Read more...

Garfield, the daily comic strip about a cat who does nothing and believes in nothing, has been going on for over 40 years. Now, the first three decades and change of strips, from the beginning of the orange cat’s lasagna fetishist ways in 1978 all the way to 2011, are going up for sale in a series of weekly auctions.Read more...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: The time when you get to tackle a year’s worth of tech troubles in just one visit to the home of a relative. If you’re the designated IT expert in your branch of the family, here’s how to pass on the most useful advice in the quickest time possible, so you can get back to…Read more...

If you’re lucky, the holiday season means a few days away from work and the office—but the soothing, calming effect of that break can be quickly undone when you return to an inbox overflowing with hundreds of emails. Before you head off to spend some time with friends and family, here’s how to make sure you come back…Read more...

Nerf, Play-Doh, and Hasbro Games Gold Box | AmazonRead more...

Are you ready to be stuck in traffic behind armies of autonomous delivery robots? No? Well good news: if you live in California you can soon stay home and have all your stuff delivered by autonomous delivery robots. Starting January 17, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles will start approving permits for…Read more...

As part of a push to bolster deportation efforts, the Trump administration took steps this month to blur the lines between ICE and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), an agency responsible for unaccompanied migrant children, according to six current and former administration officials who spoke with the …Read more...

For the last month, I’ve been struck with a problem I fear far too few people have been struck with. I’ve been confusing my sharply written sci-fi shows that use alternative history to explore the ways we marginalize whole groups of people. Watchmen has explored the travesties America has committed against black…Read more...

Apple is opening its bug bounty program to all security researchers as well as expanding the systems they can be reported for. And hoo buddy, Apple is willing to slide them a pretty significant chunk of change for it, too.Read more...

Facebook has put an end to the brainwashing of innocent Trump supporters who have been told to support Trump by a Chinese spiritual group. And thus, it puts a bow on 2019.

A Virginia jury ruled on Thursday that Cox Communications must pay a whopping $1 billion to several music publishers because the telecom company didn’t take enough action to stop its customers from pirating music.Read more...

A new ProPublica report out Friday confirms what many people already suspect about Big Pharma’s influence on health care: Doctors who get money from a pharmaceutical company related to a specific brand name drug are more likely to prescribe that same, often expensive drug to their patients.Read more...

The new foldable Razr seems like the perfect reboot, capturing the style and spirit of Motorola’s iconic mid-2000s phone, but with clever upgrades based on more modern tech. Unfortunately, less than a week before pre-orders were scheduled to go live, Moto has just announced that the Razr’s launch is getting delayed.Read more...

The discovery of a 5,000-year-old skeleton of a young adult who had serious physical limitations suggests a form of social support existed in Neolithic China, but only to a point, as this individual may have met an untimely death.

When domestic terrorists took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in early 2016, the face of the takeover was rancher Ammon Bundy. But it turns out a good chunk of the planning going on behind the scenes was done by someone with a little more power: Washington State Representative Matt Shea.

I hate to say it, but the Federal Trade Commission was right. We’re not going to see anything near that piddly $125 we were hoping to get out of Equifax’s massive data breach. But you know who will be seeing a pretty payday in the case? The attorneys who represented consumers.Read more...

Cawfee cups. Disposubuhl coolahs. Those little trays wit da lids the good halal cart puts ya lamb ova rice in. Whaddathey got in common, besides containin’ some-a life’s most precious food items fer consumin’ after a long day in da Big Apple? Nine times outta ten, they’re freakin’ styrofoam. And not fuh nothin, but…Read more...

New York Times reporters working on an investigation into the sprawling location data business—in which the paper obtained a three-year-old file containing 50 billion location pings for over 12 million Americans—were able to track the movements of a member of Donald Trump’s Secret Service security detail. And thus,…Read more...