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Mark Rober really loves to build things. So when this home electronics tinkerer discovered that some neighborhood thieves were ripping off Amazon packages from his porch, he did what any self-respecting former NASA engineer would do: He built a glitter bomb made to look like a boxed-up Apple HomePod, and he built it to capture…
Starting today, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is calling for users to log out of Facebook and other Facebook-owned social media and chat apps like Instagram and WhatsApp. The weeklong boycott is in response to two reports released on Monday detailing how Russian hackers specifically targeted African Americans in the 2016…
In 1974, Bruce Lee had just passed away and the popularity of kung fu films was exploding. Nervous lawmakers in New York foresaw an urban hellscape terrorized by teenaged street toughs swinging nunchucks and decided to ban the ancient weapons. Now, a federal court has ruled that ban unconstitutional. Since he was arrested for possession…
Good news for fans of getting stuff fast—all of us, then—because a new version of wifi is just around the corner. Wi-Fi 6 is going to be better than current wifi in every regard, and the body behind it just published a paper extolling its virtues, emphasizing that, yes, we will still need good old…
Nine months after Amnesty International called on Twitter to be more transparent about abuse on its platform, the organization has published another study indicating that—brace yourself—Twitter still has a damning online abuse problem, and it overwhelmingly affects women of color. While the findings are hardly surprising if you’ve even half-tuned into the platform’s discourse over…
Alas, Sphero’s BB-8, R2-D2, and other Disney-licensed robots will bleep and bloop no more. The Verge reports that Sphero has decided to clear out its remaining inventory of licensed toys—and no, it won’t be restocking any more. In a statement to The Verge, Sphero CEO Paul Berberian said that while the toys did well soon…
Today Twitter alerted select users affected by a November bug with one of its support forms. So far the company has declined to provide an estimate for how many accounts potentially had data exposed. Unlike that big Facebook breach, and the Facebook photos bug, and the Google+ bug, and then the second Google+ bug, and…
Of all the controversies surrounding the FCC this year, Chairman Ajit Pai’s appearance in a Daily Caller video dancing alongside a woman who had pushed Pizzagate conspiracy theories was perhaps the easiest to avoid. Despite Pai’s failings, it always seemed unlikely that he would intentionally position himself next to someone who advanced the theory that,…
According to Tumblr, its new adult content ban doesn’t effect images of “female-presenting nipples” that involve medical situations, are related to political speech, or appear in artwork. Tumblr itself, however, apparently can’t come up with four examples of this its porn filter actually allows. On Monday, Tumblr’s staff account published a message aimed at “clarify[ing]”…
On Monday, two new independent studies commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee were made public, providing the most in-depth look at online Russian interference in the 2016 election to date. The studies found that social media networks haven’t been totally forthcoming with lawmakers, and the propaganda efforts were decidedly designed to elect Donald Trump as…
Flying during the holidays is typically frustrating at best, and even worse if you’re traveling to or from anywhere that snows. So to help alleviate a tiny bit of stress, Google is adding its flight delay predictions feature to the Google Assistant. That means starting this holiday season, you should be able to ask the…
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook promised users a tool that would give them back some power over how extensively they can be tracked online. That was seven months ago. In May, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his personal page ahead of F8 that the company would roll out a feature called Clear…
The University of California, Berkeley, lost a beloved member of their campus last week, when a delivery robot was engulfed in flames outside the student union. There are about 100 Kiwibots in the university area. The courier rovers started delivering food to students about two years ago. The service seems to have been operating relatively…
Bears. Donkeys. Fat, friendly dogs. These animals—animals, generally—have been around for an extremely long time, long enough to feel like a fixed part of the landscape. It’s easy to forget that these creatures weren’t always there, and didn’t always look like they do now. On human—as opposed to geologic—time, forms seem more or less fixed;…
An annual survey that tracks drug use by American teenagers found that smoking, binge drinking, and abuse of prescription drugs is way down. But teen vaping is up—and not just a little bit. Vaping is way up. The study, conducted by the University of Michigan, asked roughly 45,000 American teens about their use of substances…
Gizmodo was all about examining the past and future this week. Thinking about what our world will look like far, far in the future can be tricky, especially when we consider what humans will be leaving behind. Earther looked at the future of fossils to explore what might remain long after humans have vanished. On…
Amazon, a company valued at $1 trillion earlier this year, is reportedly sick of selling you cheap shit that isn’t making it more money. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce behemoth is moving away from selling products apparently known internally as known as “CRaP,” or Amazon-speak for “Can’t Realize a Profit.”…
At a meeting in Canada in July 2018, espionage chiefs from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.—all signatories to a treaty on signals intelligence, and often referred to as the “Five Eyes”—agreed to do their best to contain the global growth of Chinese telecom Huawei, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday,…
Colin Kroll, co-founder and CEO of the popular mobile game HQ Trivia, was found dead in his New York apartment early Sunday. He was 34. A spokesperson for the New York City Police Department told Gizmodo by phone on Sunday that it responded to a 911 call at around 12:18 a.m. ET, at which time…
Cydia, a store for applications that run on jailbroken iPhones and other Apple devices, is shutting down the ability to buy and sell apps on its platform, TechCrunch reported on Saturday. In a Reddit post, Cydia founder Jay “Saurik” Freeman said he had initially planned to shut the entire store after years of frustration running…
