Covid-19 is a zoonotic virus, meaning it spread to humans from an animals. Scientists aren’t sure which animal spread it to us, though they think snakes or bats might have spread it to us via pangolins. But it’s not just exotic, wild animals that spread diseases. Newe research shows the next global public health crisis could come to us through industrial animal agriculture.
In late December 2019, a 42-year-old man with pneumonia-like symptoms was admitted to a Paris hospital. Shockingly, a test of the patient’s stored sample swab came back positive for covid-19, suggesting the novel coronavirus was in France more than a month earlier than previously thought.
Adam Neumann, the controversial co-founder and former chief executive of spectacular startup failure WeWork, is suing Softbank over that failed multibillion-dollar bailout deal and claims that the company breached the terms of their agreement in doing so.
If you have a domain through GoDaddy, you might want to take a minute to reset your password and PIN and enable two-factor authentication if you haven’t already. The domain registrar and web hosting company has been hacked, says Threat Post. According to the California Attorney General, GoDaddy submitted the breach report on May 3—just two days ago—but the breach itself happened October 2019.
Maybe one of the greatest ironies of Google’s Nest security cameras—and the Nest line of products in general—is just how dang insecure they are. In the past, we’ve seen these devices hijacked to spout North Korean propaganda, spy on sleeping toddlers, and harass families in their homes—leading the company to start beefing up Nest’s internal security substantially over the past year.
Great Scott! Ravensburger is getting “heavy” with its latest game, Back to the Future: Dice Through Time, which puts players in the driver’s seat of the DeLorean to stop Biff Tannen from screwing up the timeline. In Gizmodo's exclusive first play-through, we found the game to be a fun and surprisingly insightful homage to the entire Back to the Future series—but be warned, it’s not easy getting back to the future.
A preliminary scientific paper on covid-19—detailed by the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday—is sure to unnerve people. It argues that the world is now dealing with a mutated, more contagious form of the coronavirus that causes covid-19 than the version that originated in China. But scientists we spoke with are sceptical of the paper’s conclusions.
In March, the spread of covid-19 forced Apple to convert WWDC 2020 into an online-only event. But back then, Apple never set a date for its annual developers conference. Well now we know: WWDC 20 starts on June 23.
Other than motion sickness, the uncomfortable bulkiness of VR headsets has always stopped me from dropping hundreds of dollars on one. If only they were more like Geordi LaForge’s visor. That’s some fashionable VR design I could get behind. But it seems like Facebook’s Oculus division is trying to change that, according to Bloomberg.
Astronomers and physicists continue to pursue the answers to the universe’s deepest questions, but on many matters, including dark matter and dark energy, they are stymied. What if an autonomously operating telescope, free from human biases and complications, could find the solutions we’ve been missing?
Dangling out of the side of various types of air vehicles and running forever is apparently no longer enough to rustle Tom Cruise’s jimmies. So naturally, he’s going...to space?
The U.S. just saw its biggest purchase of energy storage ever. California utility Southern California Edison signed seven contracts last week to launch several energy storage projects totaling 770 megawatts to come online in 2021. It’s a huge step, one that dwarfs all the storage purchased last year across the entire country.
While we sleep, our brains are busy organising fresh memories into long-term storage—or at least, that’s the theory. Intriguing new research is bolstering this assertion, with evidence that our brains replay the day’s experiences during sleep, in what is an integral part of the memory-storage process.
In 2018, Dyson released its V10 cordless vacuum and said goodbye to corded vacs forever. But while cleaning without wires is undoubtedly more convenient, batteries still limit how long a vacuum can run between charges. It’s an unfortunate downside, and one the new Dyson V11 Outsize specifically addresses by finally introducing batteries that can be easily swapped.
It’s absolutely primitive by today’s standards, but when Pong arrived in 1972, it was a technological marvel. So how did Tomy create a handheld knock-off of the game in 1977 when the electronics needed to miniaturise it didn’t exist yet? It created this mechanical alternative that might be one of the most bizarre portable gaming machines I’ve ever seen.
Governments are starting to lift restrictions and some are considering “immunity passports”, where all restrictions are lifted for those previously infected.
Over the weekend, I had a near-miss while driving that was harrowing and close enough that it’s been lingering in my head since it happened. I was very nearly in a head-on collision with a huge SUV in my Nissan Pao, a situation that could have ended very, very badly for me. I’m ok, danger was averted, but the incident has made me think about how we talk about car safety, and an important element of driving safety that I think remains under-appreciated.
With Mother's Day right around the corner, there's still time to book in a last minute gift. It's 2020 and all the best gifts are basically gadgets now so here's our roundup to help you out.
A species of mammal that lived in what is now Madagascar when dinosaurs roamed the island has finally been described today in Nature.
While most of us are sheltering at home in crude blanket forts floored with empty corn chip bags, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in his palatial, immaculate home, in the lotus position, hovering three feet above a reflecting pool, levitating with The Power of Ideas and emitting beams of coherent light and a never-ending stream of ideas. Of course, some of those ideas kinda suck, like the one he brain-tweeted this past weekend about the potential to play video games with your car, while driving, kind of like Pokemon Go, but, you know, in your car.
