Gizmodo

If you're behind on what's happening with the robot uprising, have no fear. Here's a quick look at some of the weirdest and wildest artificial intelligence news from the past week. Also, don't forget to check out our weekly AI write-up, which will go into more detail on this same topic.

Spy x Family was one of the biggest anime of 2022, and audiences became delighted with the weekly exploits of Loid Forger, Yor Briar, Anya, and their dog, Bond. Fortunately, season two isn't that far out-it premieres next week exclusively on Crunchyroll starting Saturday, October 7.

Once it became clear the Hollywood strikes would be going on longer than anyone initially believe, Democratic senators in California wrote up a bill to compensate workers on strike. With backing from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the hope was that it would be passed and provide money to anyone out of work in the...Read more...

Watching the Saw movies isn't for everyone-across the now 10-movie franchise, audiences have seen people mutilate themselves in order to stay alive or die trying in some pretty grisly fashion. For those who loves these movies or to see people get messed up, that's part of the appeal. But when you're the one involved...Read more...

BioWare's 2003 game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of the most well-known video games to bear the franchise's name, and players were delighted to hear it would be coming to the current gaming generation. But much like Star Wars Eclipse, whose existence had to be reconfirmed by developer Quantic Dream...Read more...

At a time when folks are tying a movie's runtime as part of their interest in seeing it in the theater, blockbuster tentpoles can sometimes run fairly long. At two hours or more, superhero flicks can run long in the the tooth. So if such a thing matters to you, you'll be pleased to hear that the upcoming The Marvels ac...Read more...

In 2019, animator and illustrator Vivienne Medrano (aka VivziePop) released the pilot for her upcoming animated series Hazbin Hotel. Animation fans took the show fairly well and at time of writing, it's racked up 90 million views on YouTube. The following year, A24 opted to pick up the pilot for a full-blown show, and...Read more...

There are few places in this world where dead things are offered such a promoted place among the living. If I had to arrange my mind to any, my first thought lands on the Catacombes de Paris, the old quarries turned morbid gallery for the shelves of anonymous bones. In that enormous memento mori, the skulls of...Read more...

Get ready for some SuperSize collectibles from Super7, which are available as of today.

The summer season has ended, but spaceflight continues to be hot, with new views of our Moon and Jupiter's moon Io, the much-anticipated return of an astronaut and an asteroid sample, and important new rocket engine tests, to name just a few of the many moments that captured our attention in September.Read more...

Watching the Meta Quest 3 being announced by Meta made me realize something - the hardware available for virtual, augmented and mixed reality is finally catching up with the big idea pitches everyone had about this concept called the metaverse" a couple of years ago.

Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette, has developed a free virtual event series for aspiring science-fiction and fantasy writers. Attendees can attend any of the 14 sessions-which are spread out over six weeks in October and early November-for free. The topics range from nitty gritty advice on worldbuilding to a panel...Read more...

Universal Pictures has a long horror legacy that encompasses the original Universal Monsters films, Chucky, events like Halloween Horror Nights, and new Blumhouse terrors like M3GAN and the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy's.Read more...

Nowhere is safe from microplastics. Tiny plastic pieces are in waterways, in our bodies, and now researchers have found microplastics in clouds on top of Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama.Read more...

From its new headquarters in the U.S., Tokyo-based startup ispace will develop its Apex 1.0 lunar lander to transport NASA payloads to the Moon in 2026.Read more...

Nocturne, the new successor series to Netflix's excellent animated Castlevania adaptations, plays with its legacy in some truly smart ways-both as a successor show metatextually, and narratively as its heroes navigate being part of a generational supernatural conflict. But one of its greatest moments is a fascinating...Read more...

The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope launched from Earth on July 1 and has since been getting set up to begin its investigation of the dark universe. But the instrument commissioning hasn't been rainbows and butterflies, as the telescope's engineers and scientists have worked to untangle several issues...Read more...

BeReal's active users appear to be exiting the platform in droves, with the number of active users dropping by 18% since it peaked in November of last year. The app gained a substantial number of active users in 2022 but now has a shrinking userbase that's far smaller than its social media counterparts, according to a...Read more...

A new era of Doctor Who means a new version of the 60-year-old series' legendary theme song, and before fans hear it across the trio of anniversary specials set to broadcast in November, they'll get to experience it in style... if they turn their radio on, that is.

A week before it was set to launch to a distant metal rich asteroid, NASA's Psyche spacecraft is forced to remain grounded until the space agency resolves an issue with its thrusters.Read more...

Once among the star companies championing a deal to create a private successor to the International Space Station, talks between Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Sierra Space regarding the Orbital Reef project now appear to be souring.Read more...

The kids are not all right and are being subject to a firehouse of pinging in the thick of the Information Age. A new report reveals that children are getting upwards of 4,500 notifications a day and have some predictable favorite (and least favorite) apps.Read more...

The feast and famine of Lego releases continues as, after last month's Star Wars blowout, October is looking like a quieter month in terms of sheer volume of sets to tempt your wallet. But that doesn't mean there aren't heavy hitters among those to come!

On Wednesday, the organized workers of board game bar/cafe Hex & Co. delivered a letter to one of the owners, Dr. Jon Freeman, asserting their right to collectively bargain, and asking him-and co-owner Greg May-to voluntarily recognize the union. They have given Freeman and May until the end of the month to respond.Read more...

Letterboxd owners sold a majority stake in their social film discussion and discovery platform to Tiny for a whopping $50 million, the company announced on Friday. Tiny, a Canadian technology investment and holding company, acquired a 60% stake in the platform, but the owners noted in a press release that they'll...Read more...

The DisneyLorcana trading card game arrived with a massive splash at Gen Con this year, with people staying in line overnight to get booster packs. The high demand continued after the convention, and now a Ravensburger spokesperson tells io9 that additional booster product" will be arriving at local gaming stores in...Read more...

If you love genre films, there truly is nothing like Fantastic Fest. While most festivals play a more balanced slate of films covering all genres, this Austin, Texas-based fest plays only the good shit. Other festivals sometimes refer to them as Midnight Movies," but it's always midnight at Fantastic Fest. Horror,...Read more...

The mutants are coming! The mutants are coming! A new report suggests that now, with the writers' strike over, Marvel Studios has put the wheels in motion to start taking meetings about an upcoming X-Men movie. This is the absolute earliest stage of the process-but it is the start of the process, and that's saying...Read more...

Break out the mops, throw on the tutus, and slide that eye down to your cheek. The first trailer for the remake of The Toxic Avenger is here and it perfectly portrays the film's irreverent tone and gory tendencies.Read more...

Behold a galactic onion: the shell galaxy NGC 3923, spotted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory's Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at a distance of about 70 million light-years from Earth.

The days may be getting shorter, but October's list of new sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books is as long as ever, with a seasonally appropriate emphasis on horror." There are witches, haunted houses, monsters, and more-plus celebrity cameos, like Star Trek icon Patrick Stewart, and a host of new anthologies, including...Read more...

The GOP's biggest gripes with big tech content moderation will have their day in the United States' highest court. On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments for Florida and Texas' big bills that have tried to stop big tech companies from moderating disinformation or other speech. The outcome has the...Read more...

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 hits a couple of my soft spots. It's a hybrid PC with an inventive, risk-taking design, and it includes an E Ink display. And not just any E Ink display, but one of the only color E Ink displays I've seen in the real world. The other side of the display is a 13-inch OLED panel, which...Read more...

Anyone disappointed that they didn't get to see last year's awesome Predator-prequel Prey in theaters will soon get the next best thing. The streaming title is getting its very own 4K/Blu-ray release next week and io9 has an exclusive clip from the special features.Read more...

French authorities reportedly raided Nvidia's local offices this week to investigate the company's suspected anti-competitive practices. The raid was based on a final opinion report by the Autorite de la concurrence which published a market study on cloud sector competition in June.Read more...

NASA's groundbreaking Parker Solar Probe continues to set new milestones, diving continuously deeper towards the Sun, and offering insights into the star's enigmatic atmosphere and how it affects space weather.

A new Fall of the House of Usher clip introduces us to its world. Chucky makes a threat in new footage from season 3. Samara Weaving's new sci-fi action movie finds a home.. Plus, teases for Luca Guadagnino's take on Lord of the Flies, and even more footage from Saw X and Exorcist: Believer. Spoilers now!

France may finally allow Apple to sell iPhone 12s in the country again after Apple has seemingly met the country's electromagnetic radiation standards.Read more...

As Google faces a massive antitrust lawsuit, revelations surrounding the case have presented us with a glimpse into an alternate reality. Microsoft reportedly discussed selling Bing to Apple just a few years ago, and if the deal went through, Google would have no longer been the default search engine on iPhone.Read more...

A team of researchers from around the world, led by Ohio State University, will be gathering data to create artificial intelligence-informed models to better understand the long-term impact of the climate crisis on biodiversity.

Filmmaker David Gordon Green's Disneylandbiopic centering on Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney is currently being held up... for now.Read more...

We may not ever see the end of Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman series on film, but his next movie looks like it fits right in. This February, the man who directed Kingsman, Kick-Ass, Layer Cake, and X-Men: First Class returns with his latest spy film, Argylle, and the trailer has to be seen to be believed.Read more...

Balancing the need to bring a new but familiar sound to Star Wars while also playing in the footsteps of John Williams' legendary music for the saga is a challenge for every composer who joins the franchise. Few have faced it as often as the Kiner family-composer and father Kevin, alongside his children Deana and...Read more...

Blue Beetle delivered a solid DC superhero adventure with Jaime Reyes' origin story, and you can now watch the beginning of the film on YouTube.Read more...

The Department of Agriculture (DOA) has confirmed that a local sighting of the invasive spotted lanternfly was reported on Sept. 16, marking yet another state it's migrated to since the colorful insect was first sighted in the U.S. nearly a decade ago. The Department of Agriculture did not disclose the lanternfly's...Read more...

Iran claims it has successfully placed a third imaging satellite in orbit, a move that will likely garner more criticism from the Western world over fears that the Islamic republic is bolstering its ballistic missile technology.Read more...

It's only been about a year since Uber Eats began deploying food delivery robots throughout select parts of Los Angeles and, already, concerns have been raised that the squat little automatons could become a police surveillance tool.Read more...

Big tech companies want to put big, driverless trucks on the road, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom is ready to help them reach that goal. Now the Democratic mainstay is taking a beating from unions who say he's allowed unsafe 10,000+-pound vehicles onto the road without drivers.

The last time Lower Decks truly surprised me was in season two's remarkable tri-perspective episode wej Duj," a compelling experimental story that examined the plights of lower deckers across all sorts of Star Trek vessels, not just Starfleet. It's fitting then perhaps that in surprising me this week, it does so by...Read more...