Gizmodo

Disney's trading card gameLorcana experienced a fan frenzy at last week's Gen Con-something that publishers Ravensburger were really not expecting. Drawing overnight lines and selling out of product every day, Lorcana was the game that everyone at the annual gaming conventionwas talking about. Some folks were in...Read more...

The highly anticipated debut of the Ariane 6 rocket will not happen this year as the European Space Agency (ESA) grapples with getting its heavy-lift launch vehicle off the ground.Read more...

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A Canadian woman's attempt to treat her infertility went drastically wrong, her doctors say. In a new case report this week, they detail how she developed lead poisoning from taking supplements filled with the toxic metal. The woman's symptoms were successfully treated. This discovery prompted authorities to seize...Read more...

Apple's Emergency SOS satellite connectivity feature debuted last November and has already played a central role in several dramatic, lifesaving rescues. It's helped pluck lost hikers out of L.A. County's canyons and locate stranded snowmobilers in remote parts of Alaska. And now, it's helping save folks struggling to...Read more...

Welcome to Dracula's boat buffet, a whole film based on the part of Bram Stoker's novel when the legendary vampiresails to London; you already know it doesn't go well for the crew. Andre Ovredal's take is ambitious but The Last Voyage of the Demeter manages to pull off a slow burn turned all out creature feature...Read more...

Researchers have trained the unrelenting gaze of the Webb Space Telescope on Earendel, the most distant star ever detected, revealing the star's color and a potential companion star.Read more...

As the writers' and actors' strikes continue in Hollywood-and the effects keep rippling across the entertainment industry, like today's announcement that the Emmy Awards have been bumped to January-there's a glimmer of hope, in the form of continuing negotiations between the Writers' Guild of America and the studios...Read more...

A crew of three private citizens reached suborbital heights on board Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spacecraft, marking the company's second commercial flight and its first carrying space tourists.Read more...

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Experimental" is a word that has defined much of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' second season. From tackling head-on iconic Star Trek episodes with its own takes, to bold plays with format like its Lower Decks crossover or last week's musical episode, this season has been unafraid to take swings, even when they don't...Read more...

The temperatures have been too damn high in Texas this summer, prompting households and businesses to crank up their air conditioning and break energy usage records again and again. The state has broken its own record for highest-ever electricity usage nine times in summer 2023.Read more...

That massive ball of hot gas at the center of our solar system is responsible for keeping our planet nice and balmy, but its also the source of some huge astronomical disruptions. Earlier this week, two enormous solar flares erupted from the Sun, knocking out radio signals across the U.S.Read more...

Climate change will make stomach bugs an even bigger problem, a new report has found. The study concludes that expected changes in temperature, precipitation, and humidity will make foodborne infections and toxins all the more common-at least in Germany. That said, other research has indicated that these increased...Read more...

Though Mike Flanagan's made his share of feature films, he's achieved the most notice for his eerie, emotional, carefully plotted horror series. The latest from the creator of The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club is the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired The Fall of the House of...Read more...

Anyone yearning to model their home living room after the business casual aesthetic of a now-flailing mid-2000s tech startup may finally get their chance. X, the company formerly called Twitter, is clearing house and auctioning off hundreds of: furniture, espresso machines, and plenty of bird-related paraphernalia...Read more...

On August 8, a member of the Brazilian Portuguese translation team for Baldur's Gate 3 noted on X (formerly Twitter) that the individuals who were largely responsible for the video game localization were not given proper credit. Larian Studioscredited Altagram Group, and its leadership was named, but not the workers...Read more...

After NASA's Moon-faring, water-hunting probe faced an untimely demise before it was ever able to reach its final destination, mission scientists have officially declared that clogged propellant lines led to the mission's failure.Read more...

Announced earlier this year, the impending closure of Galactic Starcruiser-Disney's exorbitantly-priced Star Wars immersive experience/cabin bunk hotel-is going to see the company take a hit to the tune of $250 million in accelerated depreciation," according to interim CFO Kevin Lansberry.

Just a week after a team of researchers announced the discovery of one of the heaviest animals to grace the face of Earth, a separate team of researchers has announced the discovery of one of the smallest extinct whales.Read more...

FOX Entertainment announced via press release that the 75th Emmy Awards, which honor excellence in television that aired in 2022, will be aired live on January 15, 2024. Originally slated for September 2023, the delay is due to the concurrent labor actions currently being undertaken by the Writers Guild of America and...Read more...

At the end of a nearly seven hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), a Russian cosmonaut got to strap onto a giant, 37-foot-long robotic arm attached to the orbiting lab for its first test drive in space.Read more...

Dan Trachtenberg says he's had conversations about a sequel to Prey. Sydney Sweeney teases how Madame Web differs from most superhero movies. Plus, is Mephisto finally showing up in Agatha: Coven of Chaos? To me, my spoilers!

Thousands of Hawaii residents and visitors are scrambling to escape an ongoing fire that has destroyed hundreds of businesses and homes, cut off power, and has killed at least three dozen people.Read more...

Disney is watching Netflix like a hawk, trying to consider whether or not restricting people from sharing their accounts with friends and family would be a good way to push back against streaming losses. In the meantime, the House of Mouse is going with the tried-and-true method of drastically making its streaming...Read more...

New academic research analyzing Facebook's adoption across 72 different countries is trying to challenge the common claim that social media is to blame for negative mental health outcomes. Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) said they found no evidence" that increased Facebook penetration worldwide...Read more...

Europe has been on fire this summer, but the number of firefighters available to address blazes around the continent has been on the decline.Read more...

Universal Music Group and Google are in discussions to license artists' voices and melodies for AI-generated content. The two companies are considering developing a tool that people can use to create AI-generated music, otherwise known as deepfake, with popular artists' voices, the Financial Times reported.Read more...

After 100 days of the writers' strike, and nearly a month of the actors' strike, Disney has realized it needs writers and actors to celebrate the company's 100 years, which were made possible by those very artists.

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It's an incredibly busy day at Gen Con-the annual tabletop gaming convention held in Indianapolis-and the Pirate Borgtable is full of books, dice, and, off to the side, a galleon figurine. The galleon is suitably manned by skeletons, half-dead pirates, and I think I spotted a shark or two shadowing the water.

Update August 9 at 5:20p.m. EST:

Magic: The Gathering cards worth an estimated $300,000 were stolen from Pastimes, an Indiana gaming company, last week during Gen Con in Indianapolis-one of the largest gaming conventions in the world. Zack Reiter, a manager at Pastimes, confirmed via email to io9 that it was his store that was affected by the theft. ...Read more...

The House of Ideas' latest is something that indeed could diplomatically be described as an idea:" Marvel has confirmed after a brief period of teasing that Spider-Man hasn't gotten enough attention for all the wrong reasons lately.

Getting enough steps in to stay healthy might be easier than expected, a new review of the evidence suggests. The study found that walking just under 4,000 steps a day is associated with a reduced risk of early death, while even less than 2,500 steps a day could cut your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease....Read more...

Halloween is starting now, and if that thought makes you groan like a zombie, you've clearly forgotten how early things begin to sell out at your local Spirit Halloween. Yeah, pretty much as soon as doors open and hordes of horror fiends descend into the aisles.

The International Space Station (ISS) has been home to more than 250 astronauts who have lived and worked on board the orbiting lab for months at a time. Unlike homes on Earth, however, the space station has been discovered to have higher levels of chemical contamination lingering in dust.Read more...

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Apple has once again had a wrench thrown in its plans for smartphone hardware, though it won't affect the hotly anticipated autumnal release of the iPhone 15. Saudi Arabia had passed a law requiring all future smartphones sold in the country to have USB-C ports beginning in 2025.Read more...

Solar Opposites season four arrives August 14 on Hulu, bringing a new cast member (Dan Stevens, replacing Justin Roiland) and a new set of adventures for its alien characters, who always manage to entangle themselves in plots that are somehow both mundane and potentially apocalyptic. io9 has an exclusive clip to share...Read more...

Tech news website CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results, Gizmodo has learned.Read more...

After six years of development, Baldur's Gate 3-Larian Studio's highly anticipated successor to the legendary Dungeons & Dragons CRPG series-finally hit PC last week. Players have been gathering a party and venturing forth to chaos, heroics, and a motley crew of characters. But for one of those heroes" in particular,...Read more...

Astronomers transfixed the public in April 2019 when they released the first-ever image of a black hole, produced by radio wave data from a collaboration of telescopes around the world known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope.Read more...

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Epic Games' appeal against Apple on Wednesday, which would have required the iPhone maker change its App Store's payment options. Epic Games, the owner of the popular video game Fortnite," filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in 2020 accusing the company of holding a monopoly over...Read more...

Do I actually use my iPhone to call people? Yes, yes I do, as it so happens. The thing about calls is that their function hasn't changed in any major way since the first iPhone started the whole smartphone craze, despite the addition of extra features like Facetime. Now Apple's latest iOS 17 beta has changed the...Read more...

The special counsel investigating Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election tried, failed, and ultimately succeeded in accessing the former president's Twitter account, documents published Wednesday show. According to the courts, Twitter was late in producing all the information investigators wanted on...Read more...

Get hooked back into the Spider-Verse with the opening sequence from the hit Sony Pictures Animation superhero film.Read more...

The White House has announced a contest incentivizing the development of new artificial intelligence systems designed to hunt for software vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. The AI Cyber Challenge" will be a two-year government-sponsored competition designed to spur the creation of new automated security...Read more...

Here's some potentially happy news: Depression and anxiety might not raise the chances of cancer after all, new research this week has found. The study, a review of existing research, found no significant link between either condition and an increased risk of cancer in general, or many of the most common types of...Read more...

The Witcher's long, curious road through Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy novels has led to a lot of frustration for some fans-even before the series' messy downward spiral by the back half of season three. But according to a new documentary about the season from Netflix, the team behind the show wanted to patch up one...Read more...