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As Halloween draws near, it’s time to start thinking about macabre ways to prank your friends. The ol’ “fake knife with a notch” is a classic way to make it look like you’ve almost sliced off a finger, but in Japan, one such novelty prop kit was reportedly packaged with real, razor-sharp hobby knives instead…
The first day of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court start today at 9:30am ET/6:30am PT. And as one of the most important political showdowns in years, you might wonder how you can watch the proceedings on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and more. Well, Gizmodo has got you covered. The political makeup…
Twitter, the social media site for people who like getting angry at things, has long been a haven for misogynistic harassers, white supremacists, and garden-variety trolls. The site has claimed to be working on this, but its supposed commitment to change has been repeatedly undermined by their decision to do things like add a blue…
A Google engineer discovered a vulnerability in the third-party system controlling access to doors across its campus in Sunnyvale, California, and took the opportunity to prove that he could bypass any RFID keycard-operated lock in the facility, Forbes reported on Monday. According to Forbes, employee David Tomaschik discovered that Software House devices connected to Google’s…
Venmo is an app that should be simple and transactional. Instead, it’s thorny and oftentimes awkward to navigate. It’s truly wild that a self-professed “digital wallet” stirs up so much drama. “A guy I was cheating on my boyfriend with once Venmoed me the morning after we got drinks, when I’d told my boyfriend I…
11,000 years’ worth of artifacts went up in smoke as the 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro—one of the largest collections in the Americas—burned down in a massive firestorm on Sunday night. According to the Rio Times, reports indicate that every piece from the museum’s collection of over 20 million items that…
As the recent revelation over Google’s background tracking of your location shows, it’s not as easy as it should be to work out when apps, giant tech companies and pocket devices are tracking your location and when they’re not. Here’s what you need to know about how location tracking works on a phone—and how to…
Dogs wear their hearts on their sleeves; cats—or at least some cats, some of the time—can spend years at your side without making it totally clear that they know, or care, who you are. An expression vaguely resembling contentment flits across their face and you think, triumphantly: see! My cat doesn’t despise me. Which it…
Here at Gizmodo, we’ve just wrapped up Feud Week: A series on personality and business clashes in the tech world, scientific disputes, and whether or not to shoot Bigfoot. (I say let the big guy do his thing, unless it turns out it’s kidnapping people with mind-waves to make more Bigfoots.) Some have said that…
Google’s huge Pixel 3 XL smartphone is expected to be officially released in October, but it has already been unofficially released in the form of leaks to the Russian and Ukrainian tech media (possibly after someone stole a shipment in transit). Its smaller cousin, the standard Pixel 3, has also had some major leaks, with…
A semi-trailer truck carrying a shipment of Axe Body Spray caught fire near Interstate 35 in Belton, Texas on Friday morning, resulting in cans of the deodorant exploding and spraying across the street. Per KCEN, the Axe explosion did not result in hordes of women in bikinis converging on the area as advertised, but it…
Images of the next line of GoPro cameras, the Hero 7, appear to have been leaked in the form of a product display via Reddit, the Verge reported on Saturday. The images show the Hero 7, which is expected to be released later in September, seems to come in a choice of three colors (white/silver/black)…
Google Chrome was released to the world 10 years ago today. I’ve been using the browser since it launched on OS X in 2009, and let me tell you what, I feel trapped now. This power-hogging, data-gobbling piece of software is where I spend most of my days, although not necessarily because I want it…
Mistakes happen—one misplaced key press and suddenly your 10,000 word essay has been reduced to a blinking cursor. Don’t panic though: Whether you need to undo a single action or roll back a whole week’s worth of misguided edits to the work presentation you’re preparing, here’s how to save the day in any popular application.…
So, Chrome is ten years old. Officially in the double-digits. Soon it’ll be getting wispy chin-hairs and its voice will be cracking. That said, Google’s browser has accomplished a lot in the ten years that it’s been around. It went from a latecomer in the Browser Wars, with just a 1-percent market share early on…
Researchers looking into bizarre reports of U.S. diplomatic staff in Cuba and later China hearing troubling noises before developing symptoms very similar to brain trauma have pinned the most likely cause—and it’s not some form of mysterious sonic device, as previously speculated. Instead, according to a report in the New York Times on Saturday, they…
Google has confirmed that it is not planning on launching a smartwatch this year, telling Tom’s Guide that the company simply isn’t there yet and will focus on upgrades to Wear OS for the time being. According to Tom’s Guide, multiple Google employees confirmed that there won’t be a Pixel Watch (or “Google Coach,” depending…
There comes a time in every gadget’s life when it needs to accept the reality of growing old—software lag has gone beyond a joke, it’s no longer getting updates, and nothing works with it any more. And maybe the screen is broken too. But while you put in an order for a new toy, here’s…
Twitter is a site that none of us should have joined, a swirling nexus of hot-take insights posing as original analysis, endless performative posturing, and one good account. Anyhow, I do not have good judgment and have poured a disturbing amount of time and effort into letting everyone else on the network fully aware of…
After months of back and forth, amending bills, combining them, and pulling them apart, California’s legislature has finally passed a law that will, at least for some 40 million Americans, restore the net neutrality protections repealed by the Trump administration this year. After clearing the state Assembly on Thursday, S.B. 822 was passed by the…
