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Australian scientists in the midst of investigating a herpes outbreak among green sea turtles at the Great Barrier Reef say the blight—which causes abnormal growths on the skin, mouth, eyes, and internal organs—is likely due to pollution. For the past three years, Karina Jones from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, has been investigating fibropapillomatosis…
Alex Gibney, the famed documentarian behind the the jaw-dropping film Going Clear that investigated the Church of Scientology, has a new movie that explores Stuxnet, a piece of Malware created by the United States and Israel to take down Iranian nuclear facilities. The director just sent Gizmodo his latest trailer. Stuxnet is considered to be…
Turns out brown bears are trash monsters whose habit of noshing on garbage leads them to develop a more sedentary lifestyle. Wow, same! According to a new study published in the Journal of Zoology, migratory brown bears in northeast Turkey who often visited a garbage dump to find food—researchers termed them, fantastically, “dump bears”—tended to…
Uber drivers witness a lot of awful things. You may have been a part of some of those cringeworthy moments, but just in case, Ask Reddit is currently hosting a thread asking Uber drivers to spill the deepest secrets they’ve heard while driving. The stories are pretty incredible. We should note that it’s impossible to…
Fourth of July celebrations along Florida’s Treasure Coast were decidedly muted yesterday, thanks to a putrid, toxic algae bloom that continues to fester days after Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency. Described as “rancid” and “guacamole-thick,” one of the worst algae blooms in recent memory has spread across coastlines and seaside inlets in…
It’s been a bad couple of days/months/lifetime for the Transport Security Administration, but there’s some good news. The much loathed government agency is going to try to make airport screening less terrible with fancy new automated security checkpoints. The TSA will be partnering with American Airlines to test a new security screening procedure that aims…
Astronauts on the International Space Station need to relax, just like the rest of us. So it’s no surprise that there are movies and TV shows on board for them to watch. I’ve obtained the complete list through a Freedom of Information request, which is published below. The movies are a great mix of old…
In an effort to learn more about the dreaded disease, the National Institutes of Health is funding a study in which a group of US athletes, coaches, and staff will be monitored for exposure to the Zika virus while attending the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Brazil. Earlier this year, the US Olympic Committee…
Visitors to Hong Kong’s beaches have taken to various social media channels to voice their outrage about the current state of the region’s beaches. Judging by the accompanying photos, they look more like trash oases than relaxing paradises. “I have never in my 20 years here seen consistently this much rubbish on our [South Lantau]…
By 2026, there’s going to be a lot less hunger worldwide—and that’s something to celebrate. The reason is not that we’re growing more food, however. Food is just getting cheaper. The USDA just crunched the numbers on food costs in the world’s low- and middle-income countries, which also have the majority of the world’s hungry…
There are a few things that make America great, and blowing shit up on the Fourth of July is one of them. So when PBS decided to digitally add stock footage of fireworks to its “live” coverage of the Capitol’s Independence Day celebration, some viewers were left unimpressed. Faking shit? Very Un-American. The controversy started…
Almost a year after a massive hack exposing the users of the infidelity website Ashley Madison, its parent company Avid Life Media is bringing on a new CEO and president to make some much needed changes. However, the company is also the subject of a new Federal Trade Commission investigation, according to Reuters. Rob Segal…
If this face seems familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it associated with any number of recent terror incidents. This man has apparently died at least three times since January, most recently in the terrorist attack at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul. So what gives? A France24 investigation provides the answer. This same guy has been…
Nexus phones are essential tools for any Android fan or developer because of their lack of bloatware and regular system updates. Now, thanks to tweaks to the latest version of the operating system, it’s not that difficult to get a Nexus-style experience on any handset. Here’s how you can do it. For the purposes of…
Apple plans to add a new feature to its Health app that will allow users to easily sign up with a national organ donor registry, according to a report from the Associated Press. The option will come in the form of a software update for iOS 10, which is set for release this fall. Though…
First they came for Facebook and Facebook became a graveyard of baby photos. Now the olds are coming for Snapchat and we’re about to see how long it’ll take before it, too, becomes majorly uncool. The Wall Street Journal reports that 14 percent of US smartphone users over the geriatric age of 35 are on…
In another move to censor and control the media, the Cyberspace Administration of China has moved to crack down on news reports that use information on social media. The Chinese government says this is an attempt to stop the spread of false news, but it’s obviously another move by the government to control public opinion.…
Locusts contain multitudes. Though traditionally associated with Biblical plagues that destroy crops, it turns out they could have a second career as remote-controlled cyborgs that sniff out explosives. This possibility is only slightly less terrifying. Most animals have a better sense of smell than human, and dogs (and sometimes rats) have long been used to…
Are you an aspiring alchemist? Do you try to turn lead into gold? What about poppers into silver? The poppers, or bang snaps as they are also called, contain trace amounts of silver fulminate, so Cody over at Cody’sLab on YouTube decided to try and extract it. To do so, he bought around 5,000 poppers…
Since the 1960s, the Drake Equation has been used to predict how many communicative extraterrestrial civilizations exist in the Milky Way galaxy. Along these same lines, a new formula seeks to estimate the frequency at which life emerges on a planet—a calculation that might allow us to figure out the likelihood of life arising elsewhere…
