Gizmodo

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...

The GOP infighting continues to rage on as the race for the 2024 presidential bid picks up steam. A super PAC supporting Florida hopeful Ron DeSantis has unleashed a campaign ad that features an AI-generated version of Trump's voice.

A wild rumor suggests Disney has tapped a director for a live-action Gargoyles movie. Strange New Worlds' Gia Sandhu talks about bringing more of Spock's backstory to the screen. Plus, what's coming on the last few episodes of Secret Invasion. To me, my spoilers!

Both Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram lead Adam Mosseri have been adamant they were not simply copying Twitter wholesale. And yet, that's exactly what they seem to be doing as the company's latest move has been to limit the number of posts users can see on the Instagram-based app, just as Elon Musk's Twitter did...Read more...

Things have gotten exceedingly weird in America lately so it's par for the course that our government is going to hold a hearing about unidentified flying objects next week.Read more...

Worried you're going to be woefully ill-prepared for an inevitable attack by invaders from outer space one day? Google and Taito-the company who released the original version of Space Invaders back in 1978-have a new version of the game that brings the invaders into the real world using augmented reality tricks...Read more...

Summer isn't over yet; theme parks are still drawing crowds, and San Diego Comic-Con 2023 is arriving later this week. Despite the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the annual event still has plenty of pop-culture activations scheduled for fans, many of which don't require a convention badge to attend.Read more...

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The ongoing WGA strike-in its third month of action as of writing-and last week's announcement that SAG-AFTRA, the wide-ranging actors union, would be joining it on strike, have created a labor reckoning in Hollywood not seen for over half a century. But that unprecedented moment has made for an equally unprecedented...Read more...

Tesla's Board of Directors have reached a $735 million settlement with investors following a lawsuit claiming they had drastically overpaid themselves. The money will be returned to Tesla, ending the legal claim filed in 2020 that accused the directors, including co-founder Elon Musk, of inappropriately siphoning off...Read more...

Veteran Reddit users have another thing coming after Reddit vowed to remove its famous Gold awarding system. The social media platform-which has been headed straight into the ground these past few weeks-has now nuked every direct message you've sent or received before 2023.

RRR is one of those movies you just want to bask in. To continually remember how watching it made you felt. And now you can do just that in the most adorable way possible.Read more...

Torrential downpours in South Korea late last week have flooded roads and underpasses and sparked landslides throughout the country. Homes have been damaged, trees have been knocked over, and flights have been canceled.

Tech hype comes in waves, and while the focus constantly changes (first crypto, then metaverse, and now AI), some things-like tech's critics-remain the same. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been the crypto community's public enemy no. 1 for a few years now, but now he's offering his somewhat caustic assessment on Silicon V...Read more...

NASA is likely to face some serious money issues in the upcoming year that could affect the space agency's science program, but not its Artemis Moon plans. At the same time, NASA's wildly expensive Mars Sample Return mission is now under some very serious Senatorial scrutiny, with its future potentially in doubt.Read more...

The top aircraft regulator in the US says it's experimenting with a pair of virtual reality helicopter training simulators to conduct safety research. While Mark Zuckerberg's dream of a semi-dystopian metaverse VR-enabled future may have hit a snag or two, the adoption of VR for less flashy, but almost surely more...Read more...

You might think the author of A Game of Thrones has enough to occupy his time, but when he's not making readers wait for his next book or toiling in the realms of TV, George R.R. Martin is known for elevating other sci-fi and fantasy writers. One way he does this: by presenting the long-running Wild Cards series, set...Read more...

Police in New York recently managed to identify and apprehend a drug trafficker seemingly by magic. The perp in question, David Zayas, was traveling through the small upstate town of Scarsdale when he was pulled over by Westchester County police. When cops searched Zayas' vehicle they found a large amount of crack...Read more...

Astronomers looking at ancient light seen by the Webb Space Telescope have found three pinpricks that they think could be dark stars," theoretical objects powered by dark matter.Read more...

You'd better think twice before leaving your dog poop on a sidewalk in this French town. Canine owners in Beziers will have to carry around a genetic passport in a bid to keep the streets of the town clean.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has issued an additional subpoena directing Meta to hand over documents surrounding content moderation on its newest app, Threads. The request was sent amid the ongoing investigation into policies on tech platforms including Google's parent company, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and ...Read more...

It's right there in the name. The first word in fact. So many times, movies, shows, or comics have focused on the mutant", ninja," or turtles" aspects of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But what about their ages? We know that they're teenagers, but are those awkward years ever the focus? Well, they most certainly...Read more...

Good Omens is back, thank heaven and hell, and with it Michael Sheen and David Tennant as the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley. Ahead of Prime Video's second season following the cosmic characters created by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett, io9 caught up with the fan-favorite stars.

By leveraging the same technology and techniques used to manufacture OLED panels, including lasers, a new machine that recently debuted in China can be used to fix broken OLED panels exhibiting malfunctioning vertical lines without a device's screen having to be turned off.Read more...

U.S. military personnel have been reportedly sending sensitive government and military information to the person managing Mali's internet domain for years, all because officials keep forgetting to type the I" at the end of their outbound address.Read more...

Most of us still call them UFOs - unidentified flying objects. NASA recently adopted the term unidentified anomalous phenomena," or UAP. Either way, every few years popular claims resurface that these things are not of our world, or that the U.S. government has some stored away.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has turned 20 years old, but its visual legacy remains as iconic as ever. Despite being relegated to Legends" status when Disney first purchased Lucasfilm, key elements of the game continue to influence the galaxy far, far away. Name drops and story bits have frequently popped upRead more...

Sony's gaming arm has long been fascinated by shapes. The fact that everybody else labeled their buttons with A" or B" meant nothing to the legacy tech brand, as the first PlayStation controller included X" or O" buttons instead. Now, the gaming company finally has a release date and price for one of the most...Read more...

Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, the one who comes to San Diego Comic-Con most years with gobs of exciting news about future projects, won't be at the convention this year. Which is disappointing. But, for fans hoping for maybe another leader of Marvel Studios, artist 100% Soft is happy to oblige. He's...Read more...

On Sunday, a canister-like object washed ashore in Green Head, Western Australia, triggering a mystery for both state and federal officials. Its origin has not yet been confirmed, but early speculation suggests it came from a rocket.

In an unsurprising move, Deadline reports that Interview With the Vampire has shut down production entirely after SAG-AFTRA announced a strike against AMPTP-backed productions. The series, created by Rolin Jones, was a sensation last fall as the gothic horror/romance reworked Anne Rice's seminal debut novel. Jacob...Read more...

Another round of wildfire smoke has been pushed down from Canada and over the United States, sparking air quality alerts and exposing communities to polluted air, again.

The UN is advising against neurotechnology using unregulated AI chip implantations, saying it poses a grave risk to people's mental privacy. Unregulated neurotechnology could pose harmful long-term risks, the UN says, such as shaping the way a young person thinks or accessing private thoughts and emotions.Read more...

The crew modules for NASA's Artemis 2, 3 and 4 missions are currently stationed next to one another at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the three spacecraft undergoing different stages of production for their upcoming launch dates.Read more...

As the ongoing WGA strike is joined by the launch in earnest of SAG-AFTRA's own strike action, it's not surprising that Hollywood studios are trying to act as if everything's carrying on as normal for now. But there's a dark humor in one of the first major trailer drops of this moment of unprecedented labor action in...Read more...

Many of us can remember the excitement of tearing off the plastic shrink wrap and opening our first iPhones, but imagine the excitement you'd be feeling 16 years later if you'd kept it sealed in its original box because an unopened iPhone just sold at auction for a staggering $190,372.80.

Thousands of top Russian officials and state employees have reportedly been banned from using iPhones and other Apple products over concerns they could serve as surreptitious spying tools for Western intelligence agencies. It looks like top government officials in Russia are about to start receiving way more green...Read more...

Set pictures from Disney's live-action Snow White give us a glimpse of the titular heroine. Spider-Man: Freshman Year reveals part of its production team. Plus, what's coming on Foundation and What We Do In the Shadows. Spoilers, away!

For a brand-new app, Threads launched in a highly functional form. Many of the things we're complaining about took a long time to come to Twitter, and perhaps it's unfair to judge something just a few weeks old with a mature (if deteriorating) app that first launched in 2006.Read more...

Like the orcas before them, the bottlenose dolphins have had enough. This past weekend, local reports from Japan noted several incidents of dolphins attacking and injuring swimmers, even in shallow waters.

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Welcome back to the Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest toy and collectibles news! This week the Good Smile Company rekindles our Metroid Dread nightmares, Super7 reminds us of childhood friends and time spent in Busytown, and Lego finally pays tribute to the man responsible for Disney's 100 years of...Read more...

Paramount's Mission: Impossible movies are often considered a pleasant surprise whenever one of them rolls around. They come just reliably enough that you like hearing when one's on the horizon, but not so often that you kind of get sick of them. And it doesn't help that pretty much all of them are fairly good in some...Read more...

Dune's spinoff series Dune: The Sisterhood has been in development since the original Denis Villeneuve movie was in production. After several actors and one of its directors of its pilot departed the project earlier this year as part of a creative overhaul, the series is said to be starting up production again fairly...Read more...