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We’ve been debunking fake photos at Gizmodo since 2013, but in the year 2017, the fakes seem to be spreading online faster than ever. Here are just a few of the images we’ve seen swirling around the internet lately. And none of them are what they appear to be at first glance. 1) Is this…
Somewhere along the way your mobile phone went from being a way for your friends and family to reach you, to becoming a portal through which marketers and spammers can bombard you with calls you’re not interested in. It’s sort of like the landline, only much, much more irritating. Here’s what you can do to…
According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, a traditionally reliable source for iPhone news, Apple’s tenth anniversary iPhone is shaping up to be the company’s most ambitious phone yet. The phone will be a nearly bezel-free slab of glass and stainless steel (or possibly aluminum), the home button will be dead, and a gorgeous OLED display…
Physical therapy often involves the use of a device providing transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation—TENS, for short—that uses electrodes attached to the skin to stimulate the muscles beneath. But virtual reality researchers have found an alternate use for the shocking technology: to let someone in a virtual world feel walls that don’t exist. The human body…
It’s a nightmare scenario straight out of a primetime drama: a child-seeking couple visits a fertility clinic to try their luck with in-vitro fertilization, only to wind up accidentally impregnated by the wrong sperm. In a fascinating legal case out of Singapore, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that this situation doesn’t just constitute medical malpractice. The…
James Cracknell is a British athlete and two-time gold medal Olympian. But now he has his sights set on politics. His pet issue? Tackling obesity. But wait until you hear what he believes are model countries for battling the obesity epidemic. Spit take warning: You may want to slowly put any hot beverages like your…
The United States stands on the brink of war with North Korea. As Vice President Pence said yesterday, the “era of strategic patience is over.” But it’s becoming increasingly clear that President Trump might not know the name of North Korea’s leader. Seriously. President Trump isn’t fond of details, at least outside of his golf…
It’s always a good time to check in on former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. It seems that since he retired he’s been bored. So, he decided to pour millions of dollars into figuring out how the U.S. government spends his millions (billions?) of dollars in taxes. And he’s releasing all of that data on tax…
The entire industry of puzzle gaming is held up on the joy of problem-solving and the endorphin rush that is felt when a player suddenly figures it out. Science knows very little about that brief moment when we all just get it and in a new study, researchers have attempted to gain some insight by…
Netflix issued its first quarter user gains report to investors today and the fact that it fell short of user growth estimates caused a brief drop in the streaming giant’s stock price. It blamed the lackluster growth on one thing: no House of Cards-style blockbusters. But in reality, Netflix is probably waking up to the…
The perfect fake viral news story has two crucial elements: something outrageous that makes you real mad and something you could basically believe. Not like, “Donald Trump Decrees ‘All Dogs Are Boys,’” but like, “Donald Trump Nominates Steven Seagal as Secretary of Defense.” That perfect storm of plausibility and heinousness seems to have been achieved…
Coachella is always full of surprises (like when Radiohead quit earlier this week after audio problems), but this year’s biggest surprise seems to have happened far away from the main stage. On Friday, a New York man was arrested after allegedly stealing more than 100 cell phones from concert attendees in one of the more…
On Monday, while reading an Easter story to dozens of children she’s about to doom to a substandard education, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was featured on the official White House Snapchat under an interesting title: “Secretary of Educatuon.” The way I see it, there are three likely explanations for this error: 1. The official…
Telescopes dot the cloudless top of the dry volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Earth’s tallest mountain from its underwater base to its peak. Its night skies, free of artificial light, are a resource disappearing across the planet in the face of light pollution. This new video comes as part of the SKYGLOW project, which seeks…
New species are discovered frequently, but this creature is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Called the giant shipworm, it lives inside a long shell where it consumes noxious chemicals at the bottom of muddy lagoons. An international team of scientists are now the first to study this elusive animal in the flesh, but after taking…
Airbnb can be an awesome service for frugal travelers, and it feels especially great to use when the only other option is staying at an overpriced boutique hotel in the same city. But the incumbent hotel lobby is hoping to highlight some of the weaknesses of the “short-term rental” service, including how it negatively impacts…
In the midst of the ongoing manhunt for Steve Stephens, who allegedly shot and killed a 74-year-old man on Sunday and then uploaded a video of the slaying to Facebook, members of the alt-right are spreading an altered image of the murder suspect under the guise of fighting “PC Culture.” In the hours after the…
The depths of the ocean are festooned with the most nightmarish creatures imaginable. You might think you’re safe, because these critters live thousands of feet down in a cold dark abyss, but the vampire squid, which looks like a nightmare umbrella, and the frilled shark—a literal living fossil—will live on in the recesses of your…
People will do weird things for free stuff. People will also do weird things on public streaming platforms. And sometimes they’ll do both, such as voluntarily kissing a car for hours on end, in hopes of winning it, on Facebook Live. That’s the premise of a contest currently being held in Austin, TX that will end…
Have you seen those ads for Prevagen, the memory-enhancing supplement? It’s got “a protein originally found in jellyfish,” so you know it has to be good. The company that makes the drug, Quincy Biosciences, is currently being sued in federal court by the FTC and the New York Attorney General for “clear-cut fraud.” So we…
