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Science and Technology at gizmodo.com

Friday, Apr 26

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Chaturbate Owes Texas $675,000 for Not Verifying the Age of Users

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Chaturbate will pay $675,000 in fines for not adhering to a new law in Texas that requires all porn sites to verify the age of users, according to a new report from 404 Media which cites a court order released Friday.

22

Google Wants to Show You More YouTube Ads When You Pause Videos

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If you already hate ads on YouTube, then you’re going to have a bad time with Pause Ads. During its earnings calls on Thursday,Google crowed about the success of the tests it’s run on the ads, which could indicate the “feature” will roll…

Nintendo Switch 2: Everything You Need to Know

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This post was updated 4/26/24 at 4:35 p.m. ET to include new rumors about the size of the Switch 2's Joycons.

21

It's a Great Time to Be an Alien Fan

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Happy Alien Day to all those who celebrate. April 26, as many of you know, is the day pop culture has decided to celebrate one of the landmark franchises in science fiction: Alien. That’s because the planet in the sequel Aliens is LV…

Hubble Telescope Put Into Dreaded Safe Mode Due to Ongoing Glitch

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NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope isn’t doing so well. The observatory has been suffering from a pesky glitch affecting its gyroscope, causing it to suspend its science operations for a second time in less than six months.

Bring Your Favorite Creative Geniuses Home With You

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George Lucas. Hayao Miyazaki. Stan Lee. Shigeru Miyamoto. Names such as these have defined our lives. The art and products geniuses like these have created are as important to us as anything. And while we decorate our homes and…

20

Former Pixar Animator Gives One Big Reason AI Video Won't Work in Hollywood

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AI-generated video has received a lot of hype lately as a tool that’s supposedly going to revolutionize Hollywood. But Craig Good, a former animator at Pixar who worked on classics like Toy Story and Finding Nemo, isn’t convinced. Good…

18

Stop Using Your Face or Thumb to Unlock Your Phone

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Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California released a ruling that concluded state highway police were acting lawfully when they forcibly unlocked a suspect’s phone using their fingerprint. You probably didn’t hear about it.…

17

Scientists Discover Mysterious Ecosystem Beneath Earth's Driest Desert

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The Atacama Desert—an arid, unpopulated swath of northern Chile that is home to some of the most perceptive ground telescopes on Earth—is actually teeming with life beneath the ground, according to a team of researchers that recently…

13

Make Taking Pictures on iPhone Fun Again With These Retro Photo Apps

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No matter your composition, the lighting, and your attempts to manually set zoom or exposure, iPhone pictures all still have the same dull quality. They are not dull in the sense they’re not vibrant or detailed, but by default, with the…

Thursday, Apr 25

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Net Neutrality Is Back. Yes, You Should Care

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) killed net neutrality back in 2017 under former president Donald Trump, but on Thursday, it brought it back from the dead.

22

Everything Exciting About the Android 15 Beta So Far

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In the past, every new version of Android felt like a special occasion for the platform’s devoted users. It meant new software features, better algorithms, improved user interfaces, and maybe even something fun, like an easter egg.

21

Juno's Best Images of Jupiter and Its Moons (So Far)

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Jupiter and its moons are a diverse and dynamic subdivision of our solar system’s neighborhood, one that NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been visiting since 2016. Besides hosting the system’s largest planet, at over 300 times the mass of our…

20

Reddit Suffers Widespread Outage, Slowly Comes Back Online

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Update, 1:33 p.m.ET: Reddit says on its status page that a fix for the problem has been deployed and the site should be coming back up for everyone.

19

Chinese Astronauts Performed Emergency Space Station Repairs Following Debris Impact

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China’s space station crew carried out two spacewalks this past winter to repair the solar wings attached to the core module, which had been damaged by space debris.

17

Lego's Gorgeous New Space Sets Shoot You Into the Stars

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If you thought Lego’s space toys for May were limited to the world of Star Wars, think again—the toymaker’s latest reveals bring things back to our time and our galaxy, and they combine stunning engineering with incredible art.

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How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis's Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth

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In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon…

13

Hidden Google Maps Features You Should Know About

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I have always used Google Maps but never cared enough to look beyond the basic features. It wasn’t until today that I made an effort to explore the app and ended up going down a rabbit hole of all the cool things it’s capable of. You might…

Wednesday, Apr 24

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AI Can Tell Your Political Affiliation Just by Looking at Your Face, Researchers Find

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A study recently published in the peer-reviewed American Psychologist journal claims that a combination of facial recognition and artificial intelligence technology can accurately assess a person’s political orientation by simply looking…

22

How Dark Matter Aims to Ground High-Concept Sci-Fi With Real-World Emotions

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If you’ve read Blake Crouch’s 2016 novel Dark Matter—and a lot of people have, considering it’s a best-seller—you’re probably wondering how the upcoming Apple TV+ adaptation will handle the high-concept gimmick that propels the story: a…

21

X-Men '97 Knows Exactly Where Tolerance Will Get You

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The concept of tolerance has weighed heavily upon Disney+ series X-Men ‘97. And now as the world and what is left of mutantkind looks upon the ruins of Genosha, the series is ready to grit its teeth and show some fangs, giving us…

20

New Research Points to Violent Origin of Enigmatic Earth 'Quasi-Moon'

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For nearly a decade, a near-Earth asteroid named Kamo’oalewa has invoked speculation over how it came to orbit the Sun in total synchrony with Earth as though it shares some special relationship with our planet. A new study of the oddball…

iPad Pro OLED: Everything We Know So Far

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This guide was updated on April 24 at 2:10 to include new details on the iPad calculator app April 19 at 8:44 a.m. ET to include new rumors from DSCC analyst Ross Young.

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DARPA's New 12-Ton Robot Tank Has Glowing Green Eyes for Some Reason

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DARPA announced successful tests of its new autonomous vehicles on Wednesday, all part of the agency’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. And while the tests sound impressive, we found ourselves…

Injury Rates at SpaceX Soar Above Industry Norms

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SpaceX, the world leader in rocket launches, is increasingly coming under scrutiny for its workplace practices. A recent safety review performed by Reuters highlights an upsetting trend at the aerospace company. For the second year in a…

18

Elon Musk Needs Robots, and He Needs Them Now

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It’s a classic Elon Musk move. Tesla released some pretty grim first-quarter numbers on Tuesday, showing that net income dropped more than 50% from last year. During the earnings call, however, Musk floated his “new” vision for the…

16

First Look: Qualcomm Is Coming for Intel’s Lunch With the Snapdragon X Plus

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Tired of the so-called AI PCs already? Buckle up because we, or perhaps the artificial intelligence, haven’t even begun to peak. More power-efficient ARM-based CPUs don’t get nearly as much limelight as the x86 type. Still, chipmaker…

15

NASA Rover Reaches Promising Place to Search for Fossilised Life on Mars

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Unlike its predecessor Curiosity, NASA’s Perseverance rover is explicitly intended to “search for potential evidence of past life,” according to the official mission objectives.

NASA Launches Solar Sail to Test Sunlight-Propelled Space Travel

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A new experimental mission by NASA is now flying in orbit, aiming to use photons from the Sun to propel its way to higher altitudes.

14

The Best Alternatives to Spotify for Streaming Music

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Things have been rough for Spotify. There was anti-vaccine misinformation prominently featured on a Joe Rogan podcast on the app, which garnered quite a lot of criticism, and earlier this month, it also once again raised its prices. The…