Gizmodo

Private crewed space flights were so hot in 2021 and 2022, but the current year has been very quiet in this regard. That’s now about to change, as Axiom Space and Virgin Galactic prepare for their respective space-based missions, both scheduled for late May.

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Microsoft is treating Windows 11 more and more like a billboard bus, finding ways to stick advertisements for its services along every surface and armpit of its operating system. In addition to ads in the Start menu, the latest test build for Windows 11 includes notices for a Microsoft 365 trial and more in the…Read more...

Steam tells me I have been playing Respawn’s new Star Wars game, Fallen Order sequel Jedi Survivor, for nearly 20 hours now. I have barely gotten into it in that time—and not because Survivor is a vastly bigger game than its predecessor, though it is indeed that. It’s because I cannot stop dressing up, and taking…Read more...

Twitter is on the receiving end of both criticism and controversy for not properly moderating images of the Allen, Texas massacre that have surfaced online. Gruesome images showing the victim’s bodies covered in blood have been posted on Twitter, without a disclaimer warning viewers of disturbing content.Read more...

Giant party speakers are the easiest way to bring the tunes to wherever your guests are hanging out, but once everyone has gone home, you’re probably not going to drag it around to listen to NPR every morning. They’re usually only rolled out for specific occasions, but Sony’s latest party speaker is useful for more…Read more...

Everyone’s favorite clones of famous historical figures have just about thawed out after 20 years on ice and they are... incredibly horny. That’s one of the major takeaways from the latest trailer for Clone High, a modern reboot of the Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Bill Lawrence-created series that originally ran from…Read more...

Even if you’re not an anxious flyer, booking a plane trip can sometimes feel like rolling the dice. Will you make the tight-turnaround connecting flight? Will your carry on fit in the overhead bin? Will you end up stuck, waiting in the terminal or worse—on the tarmac? And honestly, the odds aren’t great. So far in…Read more...

Researchers have identified a gene that is associated with taller noses in humans and found it likely comes from Neanderthals, an extinct hominin group intimately related to our own species.Read more...

We’ve heard about the benefits of reflective electronic paper displays time and again, so why aren’t there E Ink monitors for those who spend all their time on a computer reading, writing, or crunching numbers? The answer is that there are E Ink computer displays, but they come with a lot of trade-offs. Philips’ new …Read more...

It’s springtime in the tech world, so birds are singing, flowers are blooming, and the Apple campus is getting ready for its annual developer conference. WWDC 2023 is happening June 5 at Apple’s spaceship HQ in Cupertino. Following this month’s Google I/O, WWDC is where we’ll learn about what’s coming up for the…Read more...

Battery Life—about a space traveler and a scavenger who join forces to survive the post-apocalypse—has an intriguing premise, but its backstory might be even cooler: authors Brennan Gilpatrick and Gregory Lang have been friends since the sixth grade, and decided to draw on their shared love of genre to write their…Read more...

The ongoing WGA strike is continuing to have wide-reaching ramifications even just a week after it began—but as more and more creatives publicly come out in support of writing staff striking for living wages and job protections in an industry seeking to automate their work, the more some are having to tackle the tough…Read more...

An intense heat wave impacting much of East and Southeast Asia continues to set records and spread sweltering misery. Vietnam documented its two hottest temperatures in the country’s recorded weather history on Saturday and Sunday. Elsewhere in the region, there was little relief.

The long, drawn-out saga of China’s latest spaceplane mission has come to an end, with the reusable vehicle completing a second secretive mission that lasted much longer than its first flight.Read more...

The only thing more expensive than trying to hunt down a Lego set that’s been retired and no longer in production, is trying to secure a Lego set that was created as an exclusive employee gift, which are often part of much smaller production runs. Unless you work for Lucasfilm, finding one May the Fourth Lego set that…Read more...

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is now pushing users to have no regrets for the amount of time they spend on the app, in his newest push to make the app desirable and lure in advertisers. As Twitter’s advertising revenue dries up, Musk is continuously looking for ways to make the platform profitable, this time telling…Read more...

Planet of the Apes could be heading to Disney+. More Star Wars: Visions could be on the way. Plus, a new look at The Walking Dead’s Maggie and Negan spinoff, what’s coming on The Flash’s final season, and another look at the next Yellowjackets. Spoilers now!

Elon Musk’s Twitter is circling the drain, though at least its Circle feature finally seems to be working properly. That’s important, because recently the feature was failing at keeping its supposedly private tweets private. In emails sent to users, the company finally admitted its system for allowing users to share…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular roundup of the coolest toy news around. This week: Wonder Woman’s iconic jet becomes a little more visible, Hot Toys heads back to the Clone Wars for a surprising Palpatine pull, and Lego drops a ton of new reveals. Check it out!

Officials in Alabama “engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect” when handling a rural Black community’s issues with their sewage, a Biden administration investigation into a long-standing environmental injustice found.Read more...

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I used to do research in pretty esoteric math. When people politely asked about my work, I would deliver my prepared layman’s elevator pitch and then wait for the inevitable dreaded question: “How does that apply to the real world?” I would then try to appease them with the few stretch-use cases of my research, or…Read more...

Even though it probably didn’t feel like it before release, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is finally in theaters. The final installment in James Gunn’s sci-fi comedy series (and his last Marvel movie for the foreseeable future) has had a longer than expected wait, but that hardly seems to matter. With solid…Read more...

It’s been six years and a longer than expected wait, but the MCU’s group of sci-fi misfits return with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Famously, the movie was backburnered after the firing of franchise writer/director James Gunn in 2018, followed by his rehiring the following year. During that window where he was no…Read more...

It may be easy to forget, but Matt Groening’s Disenchantment still exists as one of Netflix’s big adult animated series. While not as big a hit as The Simpsons or Futurama, it seems to have found its own niche over the years and managed to survive Netflix’s multiple cancellation sprees to compete its 40-episode order.…Read more...

Production on the fifth and final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things has been paused.

There has been a tenfold increase in sexual abuse imagery created with webcams and other recording devices worldwide since 2019, according to the the Internet Watch Foundation.Read more...

On March 22, 2023, thousands of researchers and tech leaders – including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – published an open letter calling to slow down the artificial intelligence race. Specifically, the letter recommended that labs pause training for technologies stronger than OpenAI’s GPT-4, the most…Read more...

There comes a point in every movie franchise where new installments don’t feel quite as special as they usually do. Maybe it’s because the series has become annualized, or maybe it’s just that so many entries have diminished the magic—either way, this has happened before, and Star Wars was one of its most recent…Read more...

Right now, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is going on strike to secure better compensation and equity structures for TV and film writers across Hollywood. As parts of the efforts to draw attention to their cause, writers are picketing at various studio lots on both the east and west coasts. Even though it’s only…Read more...

There’ve been over a thousand episodes of the Pokémon anime since its premiere in 1997. In that time, several episodes (eight, according to Wikipedia) have been pulled for various reasons, like giving children seizures or a frequent use of firearms. Other times, an episode has been pulled for having events be similar…Read more...

Since his 1996 series Dexter’s Laboratory premiered on Cartoon Network, Genndy Tartakovsky has become a household name in animation. His new show, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, feels like a natural extension and endpoint of his previous work up to now.Read more...

The artist known as Grimes (real name Clare Boucher) has said that you’re totally free to use an AI-generated version of her voice to make new music, just as long as you give her a healthy 50 percent of the royalties that the track generates.Read more...

Earlier this week, the Writers Guild of America voted to go on strike after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) fell through. Because the WGA represents TV and film writers in Hollywood, most shows and films have halted production entirely in a move of solidarity with the…Read more...

Scientists in France might have just found the most effective way to catcall an unfamiliar cat. The team discovered that cats living at a cat cafe responded most quickly to a human stranger when the stranger used both vocal and visual cues to get their attention. The cats also appeared to be more stressed out when the…Read more...

After turning traditional men’s soccer on its head with his Kings League, ex-professional soccer player Gerard Piqué now has his eyes set on transforming women’s soccer using the same formula: streamers, drama, and video game-like rules.Read more...

At the tail end of 2022, screenshots of bizarre app features started going viral on Twitter. They rested just on the line between plausible and absurd. Google isn’t going to add punctuality scores to calendar invites, but it could if it wanted to. Or what if Instagram sent a warning if you accidentally like a three…Read more...

NASA is finally, once again, scheduled to get its constellation of small, storm-monitoring satellites into space after a 2022 launch failure tanked two of the six planned cubesats. Launch of the TROPICS mission is set for May 7, at 9:00 p.m. ET from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s North Island.

When Queen Elizabeth II died September 2022, her son Charles III became the new king of England. Immediately, headlines advised on how he could brand himself as the climate king. Publications lauded him as the potential “activist king” or recalled his works as the “climate prince.”Read more...

Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, would very much appreciate it if Media Matters for America would stop monitoring media. The Rupert Murdoch-owned network sent Media Matters a cease and desist letter on Friday, demanding that the non-profit watchdog take down leaked, behind-the-scenes footage of Tucker…Read more...

It’s May, meaning the summer movie season is about to kick into high gear, but sci-fi fans have their sights on something else. Something distant. The month of November. Because that’s when Denis Villeneuve will finally unleash the sequel fans have been eagerly anticipating—Dune: Part Two—on the world.Read more...

Alex Jones—the bloated, misanthropic mannequin that spews hate and conspiracies with robotic efficiency—found himself at the mercy of a prank call earlier this week by a man claiming to be ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The jig was up, according to Jones, when the fake Carlson started saying “lewd, sexual things.”Read more...

Star Wars: Visions is back, and Lucasfilm’s second volume of animated shorts made by outside studios expands the canon with fresh perspectives for tales that build out that galaxy far, far, away.

The Israeli government is taking action against crypto accounts it has deemed suspicious, closing down dozens on one of the largest platforms for the digital currency.Read more...

It was a Wednesday morning, I’m burned up in midweek blues, and there was a subtle drumming building to a four-on-the-floor on my temples. I spotted a small press release for a new AI chatbot, just one of so many that have scrolled across my screen since the advent of ChatGPT a little over half a year ago. The first…Read more...

A new edition of Warhammer 40K means new models—and for some of the 40-year-old wargaming franchise’s creatures and characters, that means updates they’ve not had in generations. For one big new beastie in particular, it’s a glow up almost 30 years in the making.

New Jersey residents were in for a surprise after finding hundreds of pounds worth of pasta in the woods of Old Bridge, a small suburban town. Community advocate Nina Jochnowitz, who unsuccessfully ran for city council several years ago, received a message about the cooked pasta and headed to the woods to see for…Read more...

The nerve of Warner Bros. Discovery will never cease to amaze me. Today’s personal grievance comes from none other than the company’s CEO and president David Zaslav, who shared a curious point of view regarding the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.

With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 completing a trilogy of films, obviously there were going to be lots of payoffs. Writer-director James Gunn delivers with sometimes satisfying, sometimes sad, but equally excellent endings for basically all of your favorite characters. But did you realize that you, the audience…Read more...