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We’ve got nine long days to wait until the sequel to the BBC’s spectacular 2001 nature documentary, Blue Planet, airs on October 29 in the UK. Fortunately, the BBC has blessed us with a second trailer for Planet Earth II, which looks like it will make even the most extravagant Hollywood blockbusters pale in comparison.…
Oath isn’t just Verizon’s cultishly-named agglomeration of Yahoo, AOL, and 12 other legacy web brands of varying relevance—it’s also a fragrance. https://gizmodo.com/verizon-to-turn-aol-and-yahoo-into-some-kind-of-weird-c-1793970956 The scent, which was given the name “Empowered,” isn’t sold in a bottle for easy dousing. The only way to imbue one’s body with the fusty stench of web 1.0 is through a…
No one said that monsters needed to be big or even scary. But when James Dwight Dana first spotted one strange plankton species back in the 19th century, he knew he had something weird on his hands. “Little monster,” Monstrilla seemed like as good a name as any. After all, scientists can name species after…
Still having a hard time finding a Nintendo Switch in stores? Or maybe you’re tired of waiting for Nintendo’s promised online store full of retro games? Tim Lindquist took things into his own hands and built a Nintendo Switch clone from scratch that can emulate games from over 50 classic systems. https://gizmodo.com/how-to-build-your-own-mini-snes-1790156604 Lindquist spent his…
Have you seen this Twitter account from General John Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff? Some tweets from the account have started to go viral on conservative Twitter in recent days, as it gains followers at a rapid pace. But it’s totally fake. How do we know that it’s not really General John Kelly? Well,…
The US Federal Aviation Administration wants the world’s airlines to stop letting passengers put large electronic devices like laptops in checked bags on international flights. The proposal, which will no doubt upset some frequent travelers, will be considered by the United Nations in the coming weeks. The FAA is concerned about the lithium-ion batteries that…
Just over 10 years ago, television producer Steve Molaro ordered a pizza from the Domino’s website. Like anyone using the online system, he made his selections with a set of radio buttons labeled “whole,” “left,” “right,” and “none.” He selected “none” cheese. He selected “none” sauce. And he selected “left” beef. Thus was born what…
Lyft announced today that Alphabet’s investment arm CapitalG—formerly known as Google Capital—led a $1 billion investment round in the ride-sharing company. In a blog post, Lyft stated that the investment pumps its valuation up to $11 billion and that CapitalG Partner David Lawee is joining the Lyft board. Google’s parent company has reportedly been considering…
If physics were complete as-is, the Universe wouldn’t exist. All particles would have found their antiparticle pairs and annihilated into a burst of energy. Matter and antimatter look like exact mirror images of one another, after all. There’s no difference between a particle and its antiparticle partner aside from having the reverse value of some…
Senate lawmakers on Thursday unveiled their first major legislative effort to increase transparency in online political advertising, called the Honest Ads Act. Sponsored by Senators Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar, and John McCain, the bill attempts to align rules for online advertising with those broadcast on television and radio airwaves. “We understand that election security is…
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has issued its forecast for the 2017-18 winter season and, for the second year in a row, La Niña is poised to be a major factor in how the season shapes up. In general, the forecasters are predicting a cooler, wetter north, and a warmer, drier south. It’s difficult to know…
Kids’ smartwatches are usually intended to help parents feel at ease that their children are safe when they’re not around. But as it turns out, a number of these devices may do more harm than good. A 49-page report on smartwatches for children (with the unfortunate title of #WatchOut) details all the ways in which…
Tencent, the developer of China’s popular messaging app WeChat, has released a mobile game that encourages citizens to applaud President Xi Jinping—just days after WeChat blocked features that citizens use to protest. The game debuted on Wednesday, after Xi’s longwinded address at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which occurs once…
The microscopic processes involved in human fertilization are a difficult thing to convey visually, but a group of scientists, using Star Wars as their inspiration, have managed to do just that, creating a highly entertaining and informative video—while accidentally stumbling upon a new scientific discovery in the process. The three-minute video called “The Beginning” was…
Apple may be riding the highest stock prices of its lifetime, but China continues to be a vexing problem for the hardware giant. With a high-profile legal dispute with Qualcomm threatening a ban on the iPhone in China and its market share in the country falling, more bad news arrived late last month when the…
A man dressed as Pikachu tried to scale the White House fence on Tuesday and was quickly caught by Secret Service agents. Was he hoping to make a courageous political stand for Pokémon rights? Not quite. He told authorities that he just “wanted to become famous” on YouTube. Curtis Combs, a 36-year-old man from Kentucky,…
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate, reads the gates to the Inferno. “Abandon all hope, you who enter,” which is a pretty nice way of saying “welcome to Hell.” But there’s a real underworld, albeit one with fewer dogs and less being blown around by the wind or wading through shit. Scientists are working on a…
Tons of speakers already work with Alexa, and even more mobile devices feature Amazon’s digital assistant so you can talk to her on-the-go. But when it comes to solid portable speakers with Alexa built in, the pickings are actually kind of slim. Even Amazon’s own portable Echo Tap has a pretty big flaw: You need…
New York City’s $25.9 million database holding information on tens of millions of dollars in unclaimed forfeitures could experience a technical failure at any time with little hope of recovering the underlying information, Courthouse News reported this week. During a court session related to a 2014 request by nonprofit Bronx Defenders to study NYPD records…
In a blog post on Wednesday, Symantec security researchers wrote they had discovered at least eight Google Play Store apps that functioned as fronts for a “new and highly prevalent type of Android malware” called Android.Sockbot. The apps in question presented themselves as skins for player characters in popular app Minecraft: Pocket Edition and boasted…
