Gizmodo

Have you ever thought about where the term Wi-Fi comes from? Most people would logically assume it's a shortened version of some highly technical description for the tech that allowed computers to access the internet wirelessly. But those people would be wrong.

In The Walking Dead universe, three things never die: zombies, spinoffs, and lawsuits. Just as the show's sixth spinoff enjoys newfound success, so too has a lawsuit brought against its network, AMC, which at one point almost ended, but has since returned.Read more...

Welcome back to Gizmodo's March Madness bracket challenge to name the greatest app of all time! With more than 81 percent of the vote in yesterday's tournament, YouTube is headed to the Final Four and Venmo has been eliminated. Today, we have another difficult match. Duolingo has been the Cinderella story of this...Read more...

The Artemis 3 astronauts will be the first to walk on the surface of the Moon in more than 50 years, unlocking a new era of lunar exploration. NASA has chosen just the right tools for the astronauts to use, designed to test the feasibility of a long-term human presence on the Moon.Read more...

Star Trek's streaming revival finds itself at a bit of a crossroads. Discovery, the series that brought the show back to its current heights, is preparing to begin its final season next week-and Picard, arguably one of its biggest successes, came to an end last year. But things ending has never stopped Star Trek from...Read more...

A new image of our galaxy's central black hole reveals the magnetic field surrounding the object in polarized light. The image reveals how gas and superheated matter in the immediate vicinity of the black hole move around it. But aside from that, it's a great way to visualize the extreme physics happening at the...Read more...

Being a Spider-Man is not without its downsides-even beyond getting the superheroic snot beaten out of you by the occasional baddie. After a year's waiting for it to get a public release, Sony's new short film sees just how Miles Morales faces some of those more personal downsides as he settles into his role as a hero.Read more...

Digital kiosks from Soofa seem harmless, giving you bits of information alongside some ads. However, these kiosks popping up throughout the United States take your phone's information and location data whenever you walk near them, and sell them to local governments and advertisers, first reported by NBC Boston Monday.Read more...

The Bad Guys will return next year. The First Omen goes retro in its new TV spot. Get a look at Roku's take on The Spiderwick Chronicles. Plus, the X-Men go to hell in a look at today's episode of X-Men 97, and what's to come on Resident Alien. To me, my spoilers!

When former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer unveiled the promotional images for her new photo-sharing app, Shine, on Tuesday, I thought I was looking at one of the Facebook posts my elderly aunt has a habit of creating. But alas, the person posting was not my aunt, it was Mayer.Read more...

When the Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed in the early morning hours of Tuesday, there was almost immediately chatter on social media about potential conspiracy theories. In reality, the bridge collapsed because a container ship lost power and crashed into a column, causing it to tumble into the river below. But many...Read more...

The big TV releases for 2024 are finally coming down the pike, and if it wasn't already clear, this year's theme is split between AI and displaying the most film-accurate picture for your home display. Samsung's latest QLED and OLED TVs all emphasize their AI scaling tech, but no matter how much you try to make 4K...Read more...

Do you remember Facebook Watch? Me neither. Mark Zuckerberg's short-lived streaming service never really got off the ground, but court filings unsealed in Meta's antitrust lawsuit claim Watch" was kneecapped starting in 2018 to protect Zuckerberg's advertising relationship with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Have you seen YouTube ads recently for a slippage bot" that uses ChatGPT and promises to help you earn passive income with crypto? It's a scam. And it's ripping off a lot of people, all while using unsuspecting actors hired on Fiverr who don't understand what they've been hired to read. One of the actors tells...Read more...

Are you excited for Deadpool & Wolverine? Us too. The highly anticipated third Deadpool movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman is coming this summer and could potentially blow the roof off the Marvel Cinematic Universe with its hard R-rating and multiversal connections.

So-called activist investor Nelson Peltz, who's aiming to win two Disney board seats, has stirred up some controversy by calling out Disney's recent era of woke" strategy through diversifying its slate of films at Marvel Studios.

A police department in California that started obscuring its suspects' faces with Lego heads will cease the practice after the toy company reportedly reached out and told it to please stop.Read more...

The massive cargo ship responsible for the bridge collapse in Baltimore on Tuesday, had a previous, similar incident on its record, reports USA Today.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, this sentencewould seem free of any hidden meaning: Pedro Pascal has finished filming The Last of Us season two." Every day actors start filming projects and then they finish filming projects. When it happens it's rarely, if ever, significant. In this case, though, people began to...Read more...

There was once a time when Sam Altman, CEO of titanic tech company OpenAI, was the apple of Silicon Valley's eye. The days when the executive's reputation was unimpeachable may be waning, however. A new report from Insider suggests that some in the tech and finance communities are less than thrilled with Altman's...Read more...

For anyone who got stuck in a game and had to run to YouTube to figure out how to proceed, Sony will add a new feature to the PlayStation 5 to help with that. Players will be able to see video clips from others to find out exactly what to do when they can't get past a part.Read more...

Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy is, even now, still the definitive Star Wars text to many people beyond the films-one that we still see the reach and influence of to this very day, considering Disney and Lucasfilm are setting the stage to adapt its events once again. But it's also a frequently unhinged text,...Read more...

How does that joke about millennials go? We don't use ringtones anymore because our devices stay muted. Well, that's certainly true for me. I don't want to be bothered ever unless I'm the one reaching out and initiating the bothering.

The X-Men have landed on Disney+ with all the force of a particularly well-crafted optic blast. Disney has revealed that X-Men 97's premiere on the streamer last week has smashed records for the platform-and it's not just helping out the new show, either.

Meta has lots of data through Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, but that's not enough for them. Court filings unsealed last week allege Meta created an internal effort to spy on Snapchat in a secret initiative called Project Ghostbusters." Meta did so through Onavo, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service the...Read more...

Donald Trump's social media enterprise officially became a publicly traded company on Tuesday, with its stock price jumping 16% to $58 a share. We'd like to take this moment to welcome Trump Media, trading under DJT, to the world of meme stocks.Read more...

Too much light at night may be bad for our brains, research out this week suggests. In a population of city residents in China, researchers found a link between increased exposure to artificial outdoor light at night and a greater risk of stroke. Unsurprisingly, they also found that more exposure to air pollution was...Read more...

It's not quite a full-on Nunsploitation revival, but between Immaculate and The First Omen, horror nuns are having a bit of a moment. Continue the religious experience with these 10 earlier films featuring nuns (supernaturally pregnant, demonic, and otherwise) and invariably creepy convents.Read more...

Backyard astrophotography is experiencing a surge in popularity thanks to telescopes becoming more user-friendly and, as a result, actually fun to use. However, cost and portability remain a barrier, making the Dwarf II Smart Telescope a smart, viable option despite some annoying shortcomings.

Apple's annual event, the Worldwide Developers Conference, has an official start date of June 10, the company revealed Tuesday. The show will have the traditional looks at upcoming software updates for Apple's line of devices, but this year could see something even bigger from the iPhone maker.Read more...

Screenshotting on an iPad could be a little confusing since there's a different way to do it, depending on whether your model has a home button. Each method is incredibly easy, though. Here's how to take a screenshot on an iPad regardless of what model it is.

As it was written, the Lisan al Gaib has gone from ruling Arrakis, to the galaxy, to Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. That's where a young, powerful ruler by the true name of Timothee Chalamet has inked a new deal with the studio that'll allow him to star in and produce feature films.Read more...

It's springtime in the United States, and the country's social media landscape is budding with change. Lawmakers in the Senate are considering a bill that could ban TikTok, or force a divestment from its Chinese parent company ByteDance. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's Truth Social is becoming a public company this week....Read more...

Netflix's 3 Body Problem has been out since last week, and the streamer is starting to share spoiler-filled behind-the-scenes videos. Today's drop goes into great detail about episode five, Judgment Day," a title that refers to both the giant ship at its center... and the memorable fate suffered by all aboard.

Ancient South Americans were apparently inspired by fossilized dinosaur tracks in what is now eastern Brazil, where they cut figures into the rock, imprinted tens of millions of years earlier by the movements of giants.

Bird flu has reached the cows. Health and agriculture officials announced this week that cattle in two states have tested positive for a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), likely caught from wild birds. Though the virus seems to have sickened the cattle, it is not thought to pose a high risk to humans...Read more...

Welcome back to Gizmodo's March Madness bracket challenge to name the greatest app of all time! Following yesterday's contest, WhatsApp has been eliminated and Google Maps heads to the Final Four. Now, we have to decide between the world's biggest video app and the premiere method of making easy payments.Read more...

We have three Apple Pencils now, and all three pair with your iPad differently. This would have been confusing enough on its own. However, to add to the confusion, in some cases, the same Pencil pairs differently with different generations of the iPad. If none of this makes sense, that's okay. This guide will help...Read more...

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The European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid telescope is back in action after an experimental procedure restored its ability to see the light in the cold, dark depths of space.Read more...

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed in the early morning hours of Tuesday, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority. The cause of the collapse was a container ship striking a column, which sent the bridge into the water of the Patapsco River below. The entire thing was captured on video...Read more...

We're on enough of a regular cadence with Legendary's Godzilla franchise-now expanded in the recent entries to give top-billing to an extra co-star in King Kong-that we should probably expect at this point when people say the new one is full of good dumb action and not much else. But, stop us if you've not heard this...Read more...

So, to start, yes, if you have a Netflix account, you indeed have access to a number of free and surprisingly high-quality mobile games. All of them are free. They don't have any microtransactions, gameplay timers, or ads. At least for now, none of these titles require any extra upfront payment; instead, you only need...Read more...

Jerry Bruckheimer talks about taking Pirates of the Caribbean in a new direction for its next movie. First Omen director Arkasha Stevenson teases the violent scene that nearly bumped the film's rating up. Plus, James Gunn debunks more DC rumors. Spoilers, away!

A High Court in London is seeking assurances from the U.S. government that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won't receive the death penalty if his extradition is approved.Read more...

Technology has become so ingrained into our lives that we often don't stop to think about the electronics-small, delicate, and powerful-that have to work in perfect harmony to make our favorite gadget work. In my case, I would have never imagined that Apple's Lightning charger, a bane of my existence, would have as...Read more...

The Artemis 2 astronauts are gearing up for a key test of the Orion capsule, to see if the Moon crew can manage manual maneuvers prior to a lunar flyby.Read more...

With Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss among the big names behind the new 3 Body Problem adaptation, fans of the HBO series probably weren't surprised to see Game of Thrones alumni John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, and Jonathan Pryce among the core cast of the Netflix show-nor the cameos that pop up...Read more...

A man from suburban Kansas City was falsely accused in social media posts of being a mass shooter at the Super Bowl parade for the Kansas City Chiefs last month. And now that man has filed a defamation lawsuit against Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, who helped spread the inaccurate claim, according to K...Read more...

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