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It might not feel like it, but it’s been almost three years since the original Amazon Echo hit the scene.
If you made a building out of bricks and cinderblocks, then hundreds of years later you’d expect it to still be, well, a building made of bricks and cinderblocks. But planets are not buildings if you haven’t noticed. Earth, for instance, just doesn’t seem to have the same composition as the meteors thought to have…
Researchers working at a sedimentary rock formation in northern Labrador, Canada, say they’ve uncovered evidence of primordial life in 3.95 billion-year-old rocks. The discovery, which is already drawing scrutiny and some skepticism, suggests that microbial life emerged relatively quickly after the formation of our planet. The idea that life could have emerged so long ago—and…
It’s been 16 years since the original Blue Planet debuted and crowned BBC Earth as the king of the nature documentary. In the meantime, David Attenborough and company have focused on a number of other documentaries, but now they’re circling back with a sequel to the beloved series that told the story of our world’s…
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that DirecTV was giving some customers a refund on their NFL Sunday Ticket packages if they said they were canceling due to players’ national anthem protests. DirecTV has yet to confirm the updated policy—we have reached out for comment—but a customer service agent made it seem to Gizmodo…
With a top speed of just five miles per hour, Radio Flyer’s ride-on Landspeeder toy doesn’t provide much of a thrill for adults. But when you hack it apart and then rebuild it with one of Razor’s high-speed Crazy Carts, suddenly you’ve got a great reason to buy some more Star Wars toys. https://gizmodo.com/i-sure-hope-this-adorable-kid-sized-landspeeder-can-hol-1797086236 This…
The election in Germany over the weekend saw the rise of the country’s nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the first time in decades that a far-right group has won seats in German parliament. It also marked Facebook’s first real election security test since the company has fully come to terms with the widespread political…
Watching YouTube videos on your Amazon Echo Show is no longer an option. On Tuesday evening, Gizmodo received a tip that Amazon’s personal assistant could no longer play videos from the Google service. And this morning, both companies are confirming that’s the case, but for different reasons. https://gizmodo.com/the-amazon-echo-show-is-the-best-dumb-smart-machine-in-1796380588 The Echo Show debuted back in June…
Donald Trump can’t stop deleting his own tweets, and we’re not just talking about typos any more. On Tuesday, the president scrubbed evidence of his support for Alabama senator Luther Strange on Twitter, after Strange lost a primary runoff. A Trump tweet congratulating Roy Moore, the anti-establishment candidate that beat Strange, also disappeared, though it…
Look up and you might see the bright constellation Cassiopeia trace a zig-zag across the sky as it seemingly always has. But almost 450 years ago, it was the source of surprise: A bright flash, Tycho’s supernova, or “SN 1572″ as scientists call it. This was one of the few supernovae humans have been able to…
Paul Horner published some of the most popular fake news stories of the 2016 presidential election. Horner even said that he believes his deliberately false stories helped get President Trump elected. But the fake news writer reportedly had a history of prescription drug abuse, and he was found dead in his bed on September 18th.…
The Solomon Islands—a nation comprised of nearly one thousand islands located northeast of Australia, between Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea—is an impressive corner of the globe. Dense, lush rainforest blankets the majority of the islands, and the country’s coral reef biodiversity is among the richest in the world. Many of the plants and animals in…
In a letter last week, Sens. Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar urged their colleagues to support a bill that would crack down on shadowy campaign ads running on social networks like Facebook. A draft of that bill may be circulated among lawmakers as early as Tuesday, Gizmodo has learned, but with at least one significant…
If you want total privacy, Signal is the generally understood to be the best messaging app around. But that doesn’t mean it offers total privacy. Its developers are still working on improvements. And the latest tweak uses a controversial new feature in Intel processors to prove to that Signal isn’t storing your contact info. https://gizmodo.com/us-senate-can-now-officially-use-signal-for-encrypted-c-1795300382…
Twitter thinks we aren’t expressing ourselves enough, which begs the question: Has it used its own service? The company announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it’s testing out an increased character limit—280 characters to be exact—in tweets so that “every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter.” Twitter says it’s…
When NASA’s New Horizons space probe zipped past Pluto in 2015, it revealed portions of the dwarf planet’s surface were strewn with what could only be described as gigantic blades of ice, many of which extended into the Plutonian sky for hundreds of feet. Finally, after nearly two years of research, a team of scientists…
On Monday, Trump signed a memorandum to ramp up education initiatives in STEM education and computer science, and on Tuesday, Ivanka joined a panel discussing the over $300 million that tech companies have just pledged to K-12 computer science programs in the US. “Computer science and coding are a priority for the administration as we…
With the backing of Japan’s government, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) has decided to revise its plan to remove highly radioactive spent fuel from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. It’s the fourth re-think made by the utility since the plant suffered a meltdown following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami—and yet another delay to a…
Dyson has made a name for itself by inventing all sorts of new approaches to vacuuming your house, and it seems that the company is now looking to innovate in a whole new “clean” industry. On Tuesday, founder James Dyson announced that his company is making a major play in the electric car business. https://gizmodo.com/dyson-s-first-robovac-sucks-up-all-your-dirt-and-cash-1784141541…
Atari, my dude, please get it together. The classic console maker has slowly trickled-out details about its upcoming retro gaming machine over the last few months and each time it sounds more and more like this project is misguided. Today brought the biggest dump of news from Atari yet, and it’s too expensive, hasn’t been…
