Gizmodo

Dungeons & Dragons might be bigger than ever, but the release of Baldur's Gate 3 has catapulted the fantasy world and mechanics of the world's biggest TTRPG into the hands of a whole eager new audience of players looking to gather a party and venture forth. If BG3 is your first proper encounter with D&D, it throws a...Read more...

It's been over 100 days now that Writers Guild of America members have been striking for a fair contract in Hollywood-and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is finally, seemingly, willing to negotiate. According to Deadline, the two groups are scheduled to talk again today, following up on last...Read more...

Free Speech Absolutist" Elon Musk appears to have hit a new low by standing in the way of website traffic flowing from X, formerly known as Twitter, to websites he doesn't like.The social media app targeted news sites including The New York Times and Reuters as well as competing social media platforms such as ...Read more...

Nebraska Republican Congressman Don Bacon says his emails were hacked as part of a suspected Chinese espionage campaign exploiting a vulnerability" in Microsoft software. The China-skeptical representative believes his hawkish views towards the Chinese Communist Party and public support for Taiwan made him a prime...Read more...

On paper, Elemental is a classic opposites-attract tale, in the most literal sense: the two main characters are the personification of fire and water. But when it came to animating the pair, the creative team behind Disney and Pixar's box-office hit faced unique challenges-one of which being, how do you craft a...Read more...

The road to unionization in the VFX and animation industries has been long and difficult. There's a predatory bidding system, studios that take advantage of contracts, and a massive base of freelancers who need to work. Disney and Marvel in particular have benefitted from a lack of unionization in VFX-something that...Read more...

Sorry gamers, Xbox says you need to behave. Starting today, Xbox will be cracking down on its Community Standards by rolling out an eight-strike policy that should help curb abusive behavior while educating players about their own rap sheet.Read more...

Options for foldable phones are expanding in the U.S. for the first time this summer, but this type of phone has been available overseas for several years now. Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone brand, has been carrying the torch for some time. The Android phone maker revealed the Xiaomi Mix Fold 3 Tuesday, and it's got a...Read more...

Toxie's back-though Troma fans all know he never really went anywhere. Fantastic Fest, the annual celebration of genre film in Austin, Texas, has announced Macon Blair's The Toxic Avenger will open this year's event, with visual proof in the form of our (murky) first look at Peter Dinklage as the mutant hero.Read more...

YouTube announced it's taking on the miracle cures, bogus disease prevention tips, and other health myths that litter the video-sharing site with a new assault on medical misinformation. The effort starts with a mass take-down of videos about harmful or ineffective" cancer cures, according to a Tuesday press release...Read more...

You can add regressive academic censorship to the list of unintended use cases for ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence models. In Iowa, a school district reportedly deployed AI software to identify and remove 19 books in order to comply with legislation prohibiting titles with descriptions or visual depictions of a...Read more...

Wilds of Eldraine, the newest set from Magic: The Gathering, invokes a storybook feel alongside fantasy villainy. In a press meeting, Wizards of the Coast senior communications manager Elizabeth Stewart said the set takes universal fairytale tropes and subverts expectations." Roy Graham, the game designer and story...Read more...

Americans are withdrawing from watching broadcast and cable TV. Nielsen reports the number of viewers dropped below 50% for the total TV usage in July 2023. This marks the first time linear TV viewership represented less than half of total TV usage.Read more...

A galaxy first seen in a massive Webb Space Telescope deep field image a year ago is one of the earliest ever spotted, according to a team of astronomers that reviewed imagery of the structure.Read more...

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who co-wrote and produced the animated smash hitSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, spoke to Games Radar about thesmall changesfans have noticed in the digital release. The differences aren't due to tweaks in the story or adjustments to their creative vision-it's because the film was...Read more...

Google's Search AI is getting much more definition-heavy. The latest update to the Search Generative Experience will feature AI summaries of long articles. Search will also categorize the articles for users' quick-viewing pleasure, though the company will have to contend with some publishers' precious paywalled pages.Read more...

Tron: Ares director Joachim Ronning has confirmed that the expected production start on the Disney sequel will no longer go ahead this week due to the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, blaming an extremely frustrating" lack of negotiations on the production's need to lay off 150 crewmembers indefinitely.

After playfully antagonizing the Internet with a revolving door of female vocalists, comedian Kyle Gordon is taking his viral summer parody song Planet of the Bass" to the next level with a bona fide music video and extended version.Read more...

In a move to consolidate their global footprint," Lucasfilm is shutting down its Singapore visual effects and animation studio. This division of Industrial Light and Magic was established in 2004 as the lead studio for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Variety reports that a Disney spokesperson also said that this decision...Read more...

Apple users are finally receiving their $65 payout following a 2018 class action lawsuit claiming Apple intentionally slowed down iPhones in an effort to push consumers to upgrade to a newer phone. The company agreed to pay up to $500 million to resolve the lawsuit in March 2020, but two iPhone owners filed an appeal...Read more...

Get a look at Kiernan Shipka's twisty new horror slasher, Totally Killer. Meet Susan Sarandon's Blue Beetle villain in new footage. Plus, what's coming in the final episodes of Riverdale, and more behind-the-scenes looks at the road to Ahsoka. Spoilers, away!

The Russian spacecraft headed for the Moon beamed back views of its journey, showing Earth and the Moon as tiny, bright specks amidst the surrounding darkness of the cosmos.Read more...

Hell hath no fury like Donald Trump scorned. Yesterday, Truth Social founder Donald Trump was indicted a fourth time, this time in Georgia for election interference. And if there's one lesson to take away from this latest legal fracas, it's never tweet.Read more...

Ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is again being accused of campaign finance violations. This time, prosecutors say the once-crypto kingpin used other FTX execs to hide just how much of the Washington machinery he was trying to turn pro-crypto.Read more...

Sometimes, a new device makes you reconsider what role technology plays in your life. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 did that for me.

The 1993 adaptation of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. video game franchise is a nostalgia sucker punch, and to celebrate its 4K restoration, there's a planned run to showcase the film in theaters.

The Georgia courthouse where grand jurors are currently mulling charges against former President Donald Trump weirdly posted what looked a whole helluva lot like evidence of an indictment to its website on Monday. However, the document was swiftly taken down and the court later told news outlets that no charges had...Read more...

Peter Jackson became an A-list powerhouse thanks to The Lord of the Rings' blockbuster and Oscar-winning reign, but he's also the guy whose first feature was low-budget splatter movie Bad Taste, and whose Hollywood debut was supernatural tale The Frighteners. All this is to say, the guy's a bona fide horror nerd, and...Read more...

Set to make its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Boy and the Heron marks what's said to be Hayao Miyazaki's last animated film for Studio Ghibli.

A fake press release claiming that investment firm Ripplewood is putting $1 billion intoOpenAI appeared on the website of the London Stock Exchange on Monday. The false press release claimed the 28-year-old New York-based company would benefit from investing in OpenAI, saying it would be a giant valuable asset" in...Read more...

Warrior. Outcast. Rebel. Jedi," the first trailer for Ahsoka blares at us, trying to distill the life of one of Star Wars' modern success stories-across mediums and eras as the titular heroine now finds herself on the precipice of her own live-action series-into just four words. But such a task is never going to be...Read more...

2023 has been a doozy of a year for anyone keeping their ear to the ground on technology-related legislation. In just seven months, numerous US states have passed age verification laws and parental content requirements for kids to access social media which would have been impossible to imagine only a few years prior....Read more...

Alcohol addiction could become a thing of the past with a new gene therapy that appears to significantly reducealcohol cravings in monkeys, according to a new study published on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine. The gene therapy was tested on macaque monkeys over 12 months, revealing promising results.Read more...

While fans eagerly await more Babylon 5 in live-action, the sci-fi series, which marks its 30th anniversary this year, makes its return-in animated form-with Babylon 5: The Road Home, releasing this week on digital and on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray. io9 has an exclusive clip to share today!Read more...

The Montana judge who heard the United States' first constitutional climate trial has officially ruled in favor of the young plaintiffs who argued that the state's officials had violated their rights in favor of fossil fuel interests.Read more...

Stephen Amell, former star of the CW DC series Arrow, stepped into sticky stuff recently when he made comments at a fan convention saying that while he supports his union, SAG-AFTRA, he is not in support of its strike action. He soon took to social media to clarify his comments-and then last week was spotted on the...Read more...

The New York Times is making it clear that the AI industry won't be given free rein to pilfer the newspaper's content to train algorithms. In a recent change to its Terms of Service policy, the Times has explicitly forbidden the use of its vast media archives for the purposes of training any software program,...Read more...

Finally, Netflix is offering something truly new for its subscriber base beyond ordering them to stop sharing passwords. The company has finally followed up on rumors and announced it's testing out the ability for users to stream some of its mobile game catalog right from the main Netflix app.Read more...

At Gen Con earlier this month, a pallet of Magic: The Gathering cards worth $300,000 was stolen from the convention center; the product belonged to Pastimes, a gaming shop and MTG vendor. In an update from Indianapolis news station WTHR 13, police have identified two people of interest in the case: Thomas J. Dunbar...Read more...

The devastating wildfires that have destroyed homes have now officially killed almost 100 people. The official reported death toll last Wednesday was 6 people. By Friday the count had risen to 55 dead. As of today, official reports say that 96 people have died.Read more...

No other burger chain has permeated pop culture like McDonald's in film and television, and the fast-food chain is here to prove it.Read more...

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into law a first-of-its-kind bill entitling young social media influencers to a percentage of earnings for monetized videos they appear in. The law, which could accelerate interest for similar legislation in other states, marks one of the first known examples of...Read more...

Last week, io9 shared a glimpse of the floating cities occupied by Earth's invaders in new sci-fi film Landscape With Invisible Hand. (Read our Sundance review here.) Today's final trailer reveals exactly what those extraterrestrial occupiers look like-and surprising" doesn't even begin to cover it. No wonder...Read more...

An AI chatbot wrote a collection of poetry, and when its human co-authors needed someone to narrate the audio-book, Werner Herzog was the only reasonable option. It's the only saving grace of our dull, slow-moving apocalypse: sometimes, as we stare into the abyss, Herzog stares back.Read more...

Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studio's epic new Dungeons & Dragons game, has consumed a not-insignificant amount of my free time since it launched earlier this month. An amount that even I, who had been waiting half a decade to play it, thought was a little extreme. So shout out to the absolutely unhinged folks who...Read more...

The finger-on-the-pulse and Polk Award-winning crypto news media company CoinDesk is in dire straits. The website has reportedly laid off 45% of its staff as parent company Digital Currency Group explores a sale.Read more...

After a complicatedly muted run at the box office, Lucasfilm and Disney have announced that the fifth and seemingly final Indiana Jones movie, Dial of Destiny, will begin its home release launch at the end of the month.

Astronomers recently spotted one of the most massive brown dwarfs known, an object between 75 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter with a beyond-scalding dayside temperature of 8,000 K (13,940 Fahrenheit.)Read more...

Amazon is rolling out a new generative AI tool that will summarize customer reviews for each product, the company announced Monday. Instead of sifting through hundreds, possibly thousands of personalized reviews, the AI-powered tool will sum up the most frequently mentioned product features and customer opinions that...Read more...

Go behind the scenes of Invasion season 2. Outlander teases its return for next year. House of the Dragon is casting an intriguing character for season 2. Plus, Thirteen Ghosts could be heading to television. Spoilers, away!