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According to the folks who made this video of a melting VHS tape, it took 160 hours in an acetone vapor bath to liquify the relic of the Blockbuster age. 20,000 photos later, we have a visual record of the process. And while it starts out a little slow, the footage eventually hit all of…
The Yahoo breach was already considered to be the largest known hack of user data when it was counted at 1 billion affected accounts. Now, that record-breaking breach has tripled in size. All Yahoo accounts were affected by a catastrophic breach in 2013, the company confirmed today. Yahoo had previously placed the total at over…
When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands as a Category 4 storm this past month, it immediately brought devastation from winds, flooding, and storm surge to many Americans. The entire island lost electricity. While there’s been some recovery to the power grid and shorter gas lines, the next concern is more…
A new and unexpected source of radioactive material left over from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found up to 60 miles away along coastlines near the beleaguered plant. The discovery shows that damaged nuclear reactors are capable of spreading radiation far from the meltdown site, and in some surprising ways. New research published…
Following a report on Monday that claimed US spies working under diplomatic cover were the primary target of mysterious “sonic device” attacks on US embassy personnel in Havana, American authorities have expelled 15 members of Cuba’s diplomatic staff from its embassy in Washington. https://gizmodo.com/following-mysterious-sonic-weapon-attacks-us-pulls-mos-1818999829 In what’s shaping up to be one of the strangest diplomatic…
For a brief shining moment Walmart allowed anyone with a quick clicker finger to pre-order Google’s next smart speaker, the Google Home Mini. Unfortunately, that speaker isn’t expected to actually be announced until tomorrow. Oops. The speaker was available online for a glorious few minutes starting at 12pm EST/9am PST, which suggests someone maybe hit…
For weeks, reports have steadily confirmed that Sprint and T-Mobile are in negotiations to merge their businesses into a telecom behemoth as soon as the end of October. Previous merger attempts have been thwarted by regulators but analysts are predicting this time around that things could be different. Here’s everything you need to know about…
For nearly three days, deaf people and residents with vocal disabilities in Utah were unable to place 911 video calls in the event of an emergency. That’s because a Utah telecommunications firm didn’t renew a domain name. According to the Federal Communications Commission, Sorenson Communications neglected to renew the domain connected to its video relay…
Take it from a wise 20-something: you will, at some point, require medical attention for something entirely avoidable and at least somewhat embarrassing. Just how embarrassing it is may vary, but it’s OK. It happens to the best of us. Case in point: Per the New Zealand Herald, an eight-year-old patient recently showed up to…
Former Megaupload chief Kim Dotcom’s long, wild ride through the courts crashed into another setback Monday, with the Supreme Court declining to hear an appeal in the 2012 seizure of his assets in New Zealand. US prosecutors had charged Dotcom with crimes including racketeering and money laundering related to Megaupload, the file-hosting service they said…
Waymo’s trade secret lawsuit against Uber has so many twists and turns, it’s hard to keep up with it all. But there’s one key document that both sides of the case have been fighting over for a long time—the due diligence report Uber commissioned when it was considering the acquisition of Anthony Levandowski’s self-driving truck…
Facebook turned over 3,000 ads to Congress on Monday that the company says were purchased by a now-defunct troll farm with known Kremlin ties. In a blog post, Facebook said the ads reached as many as 10 million Americans and there could be more Russian-funded political ads it hasn’t discovered yet. Although the ads reached…
Snap, Inc., the social media giant behind Snapchat and Bitmoji, launched a countdown clock for a mystery announcement on Monday afternoon at https://art.snapchat.com. Unfortunately for Snap, which has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, seen tanking stock and turned to bragging about its cool augmented-reality hot dog amid poor growth numbers, the security measures surrounding…
Astronomers have detected traces of an organic compound known as methyl chloride around a group of young stars. The discovery comes as a complete surprise to scientists, but instead of signifying the presence of alien life, it’s forcing them to re-evaluate the source of this molecule and its role as a basic building block for…
Since Waymo sued Uber in February, alleging a massive theft of trade secrets related to its self-driving car technology, Gizmodo and our sister site Jalopnik have aggressively covered the case. Waymo’s claims are damning—the Google-incubated company says one of its leading engineers downloaded tens of thousands of confidential documents before quitting his job and then…
Spotify inched a little closer to owning the whole music streaming market today. Microsoft announced that its own subscription streaming service, Groove, will be mothballed and that it’s arranged a partnership to move you Groove-lovers into a safe zone with all your tunes. https://gizmodo.com/streaming-music-services-from-most-screwed-to-least-sc-1793612699 According to a release from Microsoft, an update will be available…
In 52-to-41 vote on Monday, the US Senate reconfirmed Ajit Pai to another term on the Federal Communications Commission, all but ensuring that his efforts to deregulate the telecom industry and destroy net neutrality will carry on. The vote to reconfirm Pai, whom President Donald Trump elevated to the role of chairman this January, fell…
The massive Equifax hack just keeps getting worse. The company announced today that it lost personal information belonging to 2.5 million more people than it initially reported, bringing the total number of American consumers impacted by the breach to 145.5 million. Mandiant, the cybersecurity forensics firm hired by Equifax to investigate the hack, completed its…
Have a look at the gun above. It’s an M1911 pistol, the standard issue sidearm for the United States Armed Forces for nearly a century. The semi-automatic weapon can hold up to 11 rounds and fire as fast as one can pull the trigger. And that specific gun above, it was made with a machine…
You probably spent a lot of time thinking about what you named your cat. Maybe you came up with Mr. Felidae Cat-stro, or Meow-gusto Pinocat. Or Meowbarak. Cat-dafi. Meow-losevic. But don’t let your teeny dictator’s charismatic meows fool you. You need to be the one in control of their diet because it’s possible your vet…
