Gizmodo

There is nothing more satisfying than when bosses realizewho does the work needed to make them money. While the WGA successfully picketed and shut down productions on both coasts, the SAG-AFTRA actionshut down productions shooting internationally, like Interview With the Vampire and Gladiator 2. And now, according...Read more...

Jimmy Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer, is threatening to investigate insurance companies that leave the state. Patronis blames wokeness" for the moves, not rampant lawsuits or climate change.Read more...

ChatGPT is changing, though so far it's been incredibly hard to say how or why. Users have widely complained that the GPT-4 language model powering the paid version of OpenAI's chatbot has been degrading over time, spitting out false answers and declining to follow through on prompts it once happily abided. New...Read more...

The AI gold rush is showing no signs of slowing down. As ChatGPT continues to enamor the world with its strings of relatively coherent text, Apple is looking for its piece of the pie by developing its own artificial intelligence engine.

When the Star Wars Expanded Universe began to take nascent steps towards building a world beyond the original movie trilogy, it dug into the same questions Disney and Lucasfilm explored decades later in creating the sequel trilogy. What does Star Wars look like in this new time? What parts of its world have evolved?...Read more...

Threads is getting some new feature updates, inching it a little closer to the Twitter clone that was promised. The updated features will include a followers list, the option to subscribe to unfollowed users, and a revised follows" tab, Threads developer Cameron Roth, said in a Threads post. Unfortunately, the most...Read more...

Long-running, much-loved Adult Swim series The Venture Bros. may sadly be over, but there's some consolation, and some sense of closure, for its many fans: five years after its seventh season ended, a direct-to-video film-The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (yes, the title makes sense once you...Read more...

Astronomers have discovered an ancient stellar remnant that keeps its light elements separate, in a strange first.

We are in the penultimate episode of Marvel's Disney+ series Secret Invasion, and, surprisingly, we don't have a lot of questions or plot points to wrap up. After the first four episodes of the Samuel L. Jackson-led spy-thriller series, most mysteries have been solved or explained in... Gravik detail. (Get it?...Read more...

Good Omens fans know what it means to pine for a couple to be together. Season two adds more shipping to the mix with Nina (Nina Sosanya) and Maggie (Maggie Service), shopkeeper neighbors of bookselling angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen). If their names and faces are familiar, that's because you've seen them together...Read more...

In February 2022, two Barbie dolls responded to an unusual call: Come on Barbie, let's go party.....to space." Dressed in white spacesuits, the pair spent a few months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) among real-life astronauts. Now that they're back on Earth, the two astronaut Barbies are on display at...Read more...

In the wake of legal turmoil that has stalled-but not prevented-a merger between Microsoft and Activision, the Biden administration has opted to revisit the guidelines that the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission will use to assess mergers and acquisitions under the lens of federal antitrust laws.

Google is restricting some employees' Internet access in a pilot program created to combat cyberattacks. An internal memo informed employees that 2,500 were selected to use the internet-free desktop PCs, but the memo was revised to include the caveat that they have the option to opt out of the program while others can...Read more...

Researchers poring over genomes of people who lived during the Copper Age have found older cultural contacts between ancient groups than previously known.

One of Agatha Christie's most famous characters, Hercule Poirot, returns to the big screen in A Haunting in Venice, the third film to come out of the partnership of director/actor Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green. The previous two films; Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022),...Read more...

On July 6, a woman in the French town of Schirmeck was chatting with a friend on her terrace when she was struck by a small object. On further inspection, the black-and-gray concretion appeared to be a meteorite.Read more...

It is entirely possible that we are witnessing the death of one of the internet's favorite social media platforms in real-time. After charging for access to its API and attempting to squash subsequent protests via interviews with the hare-brained CEO, Reddit has now made its iOS app icon into a tacky, 8-bit...Read more...

Get a new look at the upcoming Pet Sematary prequel. The cast of Barbie gush over Greta Gerwig in a new featurette. Plus, what's coming on Riverdale and Secret Invasion this week, and a turtle-tot-tastic new clip from TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. Spoilers, away!

The provenance of a large metallic object that washed ashore near Jurien Bay in Western Australia this past weekend remains unknown, despite rampant speculation about it hailing from an Indian PSLV launch vehicle.

As we said back in 2017, when the Beats Studio3 Wireless headphones debuted, Beats' products have been getting better and better since Apple bought the company and started contributing to their design and hardware. The new Beats Studio Pro, the first new addition to the Beats Studio line in six years, bring excellent...Read more...

Whelp, I guess we all knew this was coming. With no formal announcement, Netflix removed its $9.99 Basic" subscription tier for anybody trying to sign up for a new account or resubscribe in the U.S. and UK. Now your two options are to pay $5.50 more per month for the Standard" plan, or otherwise suffer through...Read more...

Begun, the Comic-Con news, has. Though the convention won't start until later this evening, Lego is already breaking news by revealing three brand new Star Wars sets that'll be revealed at the event. Two are from Star Wars Ahsoka, the upcoming show coming to Disney+ on August 23, and the third is a big, brick-built...Read more...

Though its San Diego Comic-Con panel was understandably cancelled in light of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in Hollywood, Prime Video's Wheel of Time still has a treat for fans: a first trailer for season two. It reveals a dramatic glimpse of the battles ahead.

In 2021, Robosen and Hasbro left 80s toys fans with their jaws on the floor after revealing a $700 robotic Optimus Prime that could autonomously transform from the Autobot leader to a Freightliner truck. Two years later, Optimus is finally getting some backup with a new robotic Grimlock that transforms nearly exactly...Read more...

The U.S. government placed two Israeli spyware companies on a blacklist this week, all but totally cutting them off from business opportunities with American firms. The move is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to clean up the ethically bankrupt spyware industry before it spins totally out of control.Read more...

To be the musk created by the strength of Henry Cavill swinging his sword, one can only imagine while watching The Witcher star train with stunt coordinator and second unit director Wolfgang Stegemann.Read more...

It looks like all that Barbie hype hasn't helped bring momentum to another toy-adjacent Mattel property. Variety is reporting that the live-action Masters of the Universe movie that has been in development for some time, most recently at Netflix-Kyle Allen was cast as He-Man over a year ago-is apparently no longer.Read more...

The performers of SAG-AFTRA and the writers of WGA were already feeling disgusted with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers; that's why both unions are now on strike, fighting for fair work contracts. In Hollywood, the picket lines themselves have now become part of the battle.Read more...

Before Jaws, most beachgoers didn't worry about getting chomped by sharks. After Jaws, it's all anyone could think about-and Hollywood, as well as the international film industry, took notice, capitalizing with so many rip-offs a new genre was born. It gets its own spotlight in a new documentary: Sharksploitation.Read more...

Just like Pokemon Go gamified walking, we want to gamify sleep." That's the unofficial explanation for Pokemon Sleep, the newest mobile game to be released in the Pokemon franchise. It's expected to debut sometime this summer, and io9 got a chance to try it at a press event a few weeks ago.

More than three dozen members of Congress have signed a letter pressuring the Biden administration to step up and close an oversight in federal privacy law that allows law enforcement to obtain access to abortion records and other sensitive health data without a warrant. Lawmakers writing the letter say additional...Read more...

OpenAI is on a quest to conquer the world-and it's doing pretty well on that front. It's ascended to the heights of industry. It's managed to suck up to politicians in countries scattered across the globe. And nowit's begun a charm offensive aimed at an entirely new sphere of influence: the news media.Read more...

Taco Bell succeeded in its petition to remove the Taco Tuesday" trademark held by Taco John's, claiming it held an unfair monopoly over the phrase. Taco John's CEO Jim Creel backed down from the fight on Tuesday, saying it isn't worth the legal fees to retain the regional chain's trademark.Read more...

Some Republicans are seemingly no longer denying that climate change isn't real, and they have a plan to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Not, it's not supporting a transition towards renewable energy. They want to plant more trees.Read more...

It's a weird year for San Diego Comic-Con, as this week the show opens with a raft of absent studios and amid the shockwaves of an unprecedented labor movement in Hollywood. But the more things have changed for SDCC 2023, one thing's stayed the same: there's plenty of cool toys and collectibles con-goers (and in some...Read more...

On October 1, 2021, a pair of small spacecraft got their first good look at the closest planet to the Sun, revealing the strange process through which Mercury produces its own auroras.Read more...

Residents in Greenpoint, Brooklyn reportedly took it upon themselves to catch the culprit who had been throwing ripped-out pages of 1970s porn magazines, junk mail, children's stories, Bibles, and old Reader's Digest pages from his car every Sunday for four years. NYPD Sergeant John Trzcinski was identified and...Read more...

Fans always debate how far Marvel Studios has things planned in advance. Does president Kevin Feige really know who is going to appear in specific movies that don't even exist yet? In the case of a follow up to Captain Marvel, star Brie Larson says that's exactly the case. Feige knew specifically what the sequel was...Read more...

As the AI bubble continues to inflate-for better or worse-two titans of the tech industry, Microsoft and Meta, have unveiled the second generation of LLaMA, and they're giving competitor OpenAI a run for its money by making it open source.

Apologies in advance, but today is one of those days you're going to feel old. That's because today is the 15th anniversary of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. A film that changed not only what fans thought a superhero movie could be, but Hollywood too, thanks to its $158 million opening and $534 million domestic...Read more...

A tech industry leader and military AI experts testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday said the US Department of Defense urgently needs to streamline its lagging data collection practices if it wants to maintain its lead in the global AI arms. Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who was among three...Read more...

You feel like for something to be Star Wars," there are only two prerequisites. One, set it in the stars. Two, there should be wars. But the upcoming Disney+ show The Acolyte is only embracing one of those staples. It's very much set in a galaxy far, far, away but, for the first time, it'll be set in a time of star...Read more...

Just how much copyright protection should an artist or photographer expect after they post their work on social media? It's a murky legal question by itself that's now made even murkier as an appeals court digs directly into the nature of HTML to say that-no-that embedded photo isn't a copy of the original photo, but...Read more...

On April 20, SpaceX wantonly launched its Starship megarocket without the benefit of a flame diverter or water deluge system, resulting in significant damage to the launch pad and hurtling dust and debris into the surrounding areas. Looking to prevent a recurrence, the company is building a powerful deluge system,...Read more...

It's been a pretty good anniversary year for Babylon 5 already even if we were only getting the brand new animated movie this summer. But there's icing on the cake: for the first time ever, the legendary sci-fi series will be making its way to Blu-ray in its entirety.

When Good Omens returns next week, fans of Prime Video's Neil Gaiman-Terry Pratchett adaptation will notice some interesting things about the supporting cast. There are familiar faces playing new characters-and an unfamiliar face playing a familiar character: Shelley Conn (Bridgerton, Gen V) as Beelzebub.Read more...

As the SAG-AFTRA strike continues, the union has released its list of demands alongside the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers' responses. A note that AMPTP denies that this is totally accurate, and says that the following document fails to include the proposals offered verbally" and concessions made...Read more...

Rocket Lab's Electron rocket launched seven satellites to orbit for its latest mission before its booster gently glided its way back down for a parachute-assisted ocean splashdown to test its reusability.Read more...

The Biden Administration is working alongside tech companies to put in place a cybersecurity certification and labeling program on participating smart devices. Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Best Buy are among those who will be implementing labels on their devices to indicate they are less vulnerable to cyberattacks.Read more...

That unmistakable sinister chuckle will fill your brain every time you catch a glimpse of the Hasbro Star Wars: The Vintage Collection Jabba the Hutt set-a worthy tradeoff for having such a well-appointed collectible paying tribute to the corpulent gangster Han Solo was really, really trying to avoid.Read more...