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January 1, 2024 won't just be the start of a new year. It'll also see Mickey and Minnie Mouse enter the public domain.

Paramount's Scream franchise has been thrown into further disarray with the departure of Scream 7 director Christopher Landon.

Before there was a PlayStation 4 remake that blew the doors off its own canon, Final Fantasy VII lived on through various spinoffs that expanded the world of the classic RPG. One of those was Advent Children, the 2005 CG film which followed on from the events of the original game. If you've never seen it, or it's been ...Read more...

Back in 2019, Jonathan Hickman gave Marvel's mutants a soft reboot in the form of House of X/Powers of X. Now living on the sentient island of Krakoa and taking active steps to no longer be a punching bag for humans, the stories that have spun out of this have kept the X-Men books going for almost five full years now....Read more...

Almost every DC Comics movie released in the last five or six years has done so with baggage attached that can't help but talked about. In many cases, said baggage helps inform why the film is what it is, but in other cases, it gets in the way of what makes an individual film rise or fall despite a game effort from...Read more...

Ever since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Disney has struggled with getting more Star Wars movies off the ground. In the years since, Lucasfilm has had a nasty habit of announcing things for the series and then not making them, if they ever actually existed at all. And it all dates back to December 10, 2020, where...Read more...

The Oscars are a few months away, and it won't be long before we're hearing about the nominees for the 2024 ceremony. Earlier in the week, a shortlist for 10 categories were revealed, and while they contained some of 2023's expected hits, other inclusions were interesting surprises.

A rough 2023 for Marvel got even messier last week as the conclusion of Jonathan Majors' legal proceedings saw the actor charged with reckless assault. But while there was plenty of legal drama this week, there were even more stories from the io9-verse you may have missed, so check them out here! -James WhitbrookRead more...

Here's what's going on at major tourist destinations in Orlando, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, and abroad. Disney Parks just opened Zootopia at the Shanghai Disney resort and we have a look at its wild animatronics and cute in-universe food. Las Vegas is lifting spirits with immersive showings of The...Read more...

This year has been jam-packed with new Star Wars, with three new seasons of TV in Bad Batch, The Mandalorian, and Ahsoka, and oodles of books and comics that saw us revisit legends or the High Republic. Even as we await its return to the big screen, Star Wars remains ever-present-but one new story in particular...Read more...

A moment can make a movie. You're sitting there, you're watching something, it's fine, and then boom: a scene or shot happens, and instantly something you thought was just okay becomes amazing.Read more...

That For All Mankind isn't one of the biggest shows in the world might make sense, if not for other shows like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, or Severance. All of them are originals released through Apple TV+, one of those streamers maybe you subscribe to while a show is on and then cancel, or mess around with for a...Read more...

It's become popular amongst the denizens of Silicon Valley to claim that AI could end the world as we know it. However, this week provided more than a few examples of why that isn't true. AI isn't going to pose a threat to humanity anytime soon. The AI products that exist don't even perform their limited function...Read more...

The week's top three stories on the science beat all made me a little uncomfortable, to be honest. The news that scientists found a credible link between having a cat during your childhood and later being diagnosed with schizophrenia was troubling. Then there was the 2,400-year-old leather than turned out to be made...Read more...

NASA just put its new propulsion system to the test, powering a 3D-printed rotating detonation rocket engine for a sustained burn that lasted three times as long as the first test.Read more...

Last year, I mused over whether foldable smartphones would ever be affordable. I wanted to see them take off after falling in love with the Galaxy Z Fold 4. This year, I got my answer. It's a resounding No," especially with the foldable market as it is right now. Even with the recently launched Motorola Razr, a flip...Read more...

The recent Google Play Store ruling could be bad news for Android phone users. Meanwhile, you only have a couple more days to buy a new Apple Watch before the ban kicks in. Catch up on the biggest product news of the week in our roundup.- Jorge JimenezRead more...

Generative artificial intelligence is everywhere you look these days, including on the web: advanced predictive text bots such as ChatGPT can now spew out endless reams of text on every topic imaginable and make all this written content natural enough that it could plausibly have been written by a human being.

The latest Apple Watch's big main draw was the double tap gesture control, but now the wearables maker is performing a more lethal kind of double tap on its latest Series 9 watches and premium Ultra 2 device. The company has already taken the device down from its online store, and in just two days, you'll be cut off...Read more...

When Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury ended earlier this year, it did so by taking a step forward in the franchise's history that few other series had the chance to make explicit in their own prior examinations of queer love. But after parent company Bandai pushed back on what was, in the show, a textual...Read more...

Midjourney released an upgraded version of its AI image-generating service, Midjourney V6, on Thursday. The update is a significant improvement that has truly wowed users with its shockingly realistic photos and attention to detail. It may not be here for long, so here's how to get V6 working now.

Few actors in the entire world are more qualified to talk about franchises than Djimon Hounsou. The man who most people first met when he did Steven Spielberg's Amistad has since made an incredible career for himself jumping between fantastical film worlds. He's worked with Marvel. He's worked with DC. He's been in...Read more...

Last month, astronomers focused the Webb Space Telescope on the galaxy MRG-M0138 and found something surprising: a supernova in the ancient universe, magnified for your viewing pleasure by the gravitational lensed galaxy.Read more...

It's been a year of ups and downs, so in 2023 we're particularly grateful for one source of reliable joy: sci-fi, horror, and fantasy entertainment. Here are the fictional characters-be they live-action, animation, made of plastic, or from galaxies far, far away-that helped guide us through.

Will the promise of fewer ads entice more viewers to stream sports on Peacock? NBCUniversal hopes so, having announced Saturday, December 23's match-up between the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Chargers will feature a commercial-free fourth quarter.

Anthropic is reportedly in talks to raise $750 million from Menlo Ventures, which values the startup at $15 billion, according to The Information. Like OpenAI, Anthropic also has a complicated board structure with misaligned values, and this recent influx of cash begs the question: is Anthropic bound to be the next AI...Read more...

With just 11 days left in the year, it's clear that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will not reach his stated goal of achieving 100 Falcon 9 launches in 2023. Nonetheless, the company's achievements during the calendar year are damn impressive, with 2024 poised to be even more remarkable.

Not getting enough sleep is bad for both your physical health and your emotional well-being, as new research shows. The study, a review of existing data from clinical trials, found that even short bouts of sleep deprivation can reduce people's positive emotions and make them more anxious.Read more...

Lego's Technic line of mechanical construction sets mostly sticks to vehicles-lots of cars, trucks, bikes, even the occasional plane. But while it has dipped into the world of science and space exploration before, its latest addition is one of its best ideas outside of its typical wheelhouse. Within the wheelhouse...Read more...

Tinder isn't the best at reading the room or taking a hint. Even though its announcement of the outrageous $500-a-month tier, Tinder Select, led to considerable backlash back in September, the company has recently been expanding the membership offering by inviting additional users to apply for it.

Time's just about up for holiday shopping, and the pressure is on for anyone doing last-minute runs to the mall or searching online for the quickest delivery. If you're looking for that perfect Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, One Piece, Wonka, or Disney100 gift-don't worry, io9's got you covered with this handy list of...Read more...

This story was originally published by Gristand co-published with Fresnoland. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

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Following the launch of its next-generation satellite, Hughes Network Systems is now starting to offer faster internet speeds to compete with its main industry rival SpaceX.Read more...

It's time to look back at spaceflight in 2023, a real two steps forward, one step back" kind of year, filled with highs, lows, and everything in between.

The Einstein Probe, an X-ray telescope managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will be ready to launch next month. The probe will look for transient events in X-ray light and try to answer some fundamental questions about black holes and gravitational waves.Read more...

Doctor Who's Millie Gibson introduces her new companion, Ruby Sunday. Snowpiercer's unaired final season will appear... somewhere. Time is up for Shining Vale. Plus, Frank Darabont could direct some of Stranger Things' final season, and a new look at What If? season two. Spoilers, away!

Just when we thought gaming monitors were already going a little too hard on high refresh rates, LG shared Thursday details on a few of next year's pro gamer monitors that put too much stress on the pro." The company's upcoming display is yet another 4K OLED that can hit 4K resolution at 240 Hz. Sounds solid; I guess...Read more...

The initial pitch for the $380 Logitech Astro A50 X Lightspeed headset sounds like an infomercial. It's as if a revived, gamer-ified Billy Mays made a 30-second TV pitch sounding off: Are you tired of shoving all those dongles in your consoles? Do you hate that it's so hard to use the same headset across all your...Read more...

At one moment in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, characters are running through a mutated jungle, chased by lion-sized cockroaches while avoiding violent, human-eating plants. In another moment, multiple characters are standing around, their hair flowing wildly, delivering wooden dialogue that's almost as painful for...Read more...

Over 90,000 users on X experienced an outage on Thursday morning, marking the platform's most severe outage since Elon Musk's takeover in October of 2022, according to Bloomberg. Data from Google Trends shows that many users rushed to Mark Zuckerberg's Threads during the outage.Read more...

The largest lake in Earth's history is now in the Guinness Book of World Records. The Paratethys-or Lake Paratethys, if you will-and contained 10 times more water than all of Earth's modern lakes. In other words, it's long overdo for its place in the Guinness Book.

A life without burps might sound like a blessing, but a new study shows it's anything but. Researchers interviewed patients with the rare condition retrograde cricopharyngeus dysfunction (R-CPD), which makes them unable to burp or belch, about how it affected their daily life. Not only did patients report unpleasant...Read more...

An influential machine learning dataset-the likes of which has been used to train numerous popular image-generation applications-includes thousands of suspected images of child sexual abuse, a new academic report reveals.Read more...

You're not imagining things: air travel has gotten a lot worse. No checked bags, less and less legroom, charging for wifi when it costs the airline the same amount whether or not you use it - it's all part of a strategy that experts call calculated misery," where companies make your experience more unpleasant on...Read more...

Dinosaurs' reign on Earth ended explosively (and then dustily, as we'll mention in this story) when an asteroid slammed into Earth some 66 million years ago. But the dinosaurs-and the diverse ancient creatures they shared the planet with-have kept many secrets locked away in their fossilized remains, secrets which...Read more...

Last year theToronto International Film Festival played host to The People's Joker, a queer, comedic re-imagining of Batman's legendary foil in a Gotham City where crime was outlawed. Warner Bros, naturally, immediately did not care for this, and the film looked like it was destined for a life of limited showings at...Read more...

A new NASA experiment will take to the skies on a balloon, scanning the space between the stars of our galaxy and listening for cosmic ingredients to understand how the Milky Way evolved over time.

All eyes are on Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Pictures after the CEOs of each company met Tuesday in New York City to explore a possible merger. According to Axios, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav met with Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish and Shari Redstone, who owns Paramount's parent company, about...Read more...