Gizmodo

It has been a hell of a time in the world of games. As people reckon with the reveal that Wizards of the Coast sent Pinkertons after a Magic: The Gathering leaker, more and more actual plays and streams are releasing massively produced and slick games. We’re excitedly waiting for The Ravening War—Dimension20's next…Read more...

Fifteen years ago, on May 2, 2008, Iron Man released in theaters. The Jon Favreau-directed film set off an unprecedented run of sequels, sagas, and franchises that literally saved Marvel from the brink of bankruptcy. The film was critically praised. It was nominated for two Oscars. In 2022 it was even selected for…Read more...

NASA’s ShadowCam has been flying around the Moon for nearly six months, strapped to a Korean lunar orbiter. The hypersensitive camera has been capturing beautifully detailed images of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions, offering a rare glimpse of potential landing sites for upcoming crewed Artemis missions to the…Read more...

Apple and Google are hoping with their powers combined they can truly hinder just how effective stalking with Bluetooth trackers has become. The two tech giants have agreed on a set of standards for AirTag-like products that would enable automatic alerts on both iOS and Android devices, though the proposed device…Read more...

Author Melvin Burgess is best-known for writing YA fiction, including the Carnegie Medal-winning Smack, called Junk in his native UK. His first novel for adults takes on the ultimate unreliable narrator: Norse god Loki. While the noted trickster has a high profile these days thanks to Marvel, this is a completely…Read more...

LinkedIn is exploring a rare, seemingly useful application of generative AI. The platform is testing out a feature for its paying subscribers that auto-generates personalized messages to hiring managers based on a user’s specific profile, according to a Tuesday blog post on the site by company exec, Ora Levit.

A video recently shared by NASA showcases just how big supermassive black holes can get. Supermassive black holes have masses greater than 100,000 Suns, and NASA’s new visualization shows the extent to which our local star pales in comparison.Read more...

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Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, Bush family scion, and flop presidential candidate, once considered helping to sell NSO Group spyware to U.S. federal law enforcement agencies.Read more...

Taylor Swift got publicly dragged last year when it was revealed that she’s one of the most prolific celebrity public jet users, and with good reason: just four hours of flying on a private jet produces more emissions than the average person living in the EU emits each year. But the Richie Riches polluting the planet…Read more...

Six years have passed since the Guardians of the Galaxy, under the watchful eye of director James Gunn, graced the silver screen in 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Since then, we’ve seen a lot of the Guardians, but most of it was in Avengers movies—plus a Thor movie, and Gunn’s Holiday Special for Disney+.Read more...

People like to tell lies about climate change on YouTube. That’s bad enough, but worse is the fact that Google makes money by running ads for major brands against those videos, sometimes sharing profits with creators. In 2021, Google took a stand and promised to stop doing that. But two years later, according to a…Read more...

A popular brand of flour appears to be the culprit behind a nationwide outbreak of Salmonella bacteria. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning the public to stay away from certain lots of Gold Medal Unbleached and Bleached All Purpose Flour, while General Mills has issued a voluntary recall of the…Read more...

The next edition of Warhammer 40,000—the 10th in Games Workshop’s venerable tabletop miniatures game—is set to hit shelves this summer, bringing with it a sea of rule changes that will make the intimidatingly dense game feel quicker and cleaner to play. From what little we could tell braving the tables of Warhammer Fest…Read more...

The SETI Institute said this week that the Very Large Array, a National Science Foundation telescope in New Mexico, will join the hunt for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.Read more...

The Israeli military is increasingly deploying experimental new facial recognition software to monitor Palestinians and “supercharge segregation” in the West Bank, according to a new Amnesty International report released Tuesday. Amnesty found that Israeli authorities are using a little-known advanced surveillance…Read more...

Before James Gunn directed the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, he already had the plot for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in his head. Now, to be fair, he didn’t know there would be a third film at the time; back then, he didn’t even know if the first film would work. But before he ever shot a second of the 2014…Read more...

From humble beginnings came Apple Incorporated, at least according to a check from none other than Steve Jobs that is up for auction. The check was written for $175 in 1976—the same year the company was founded—and is now auctioning off for over $16,000.Read more...

There may be a rise in concerning brain infections afflicting U.S. children. Hospitals and public health officials in some areas have documented higher than expected numbers of pediatric brain abscesses in recent years, often caused by Streptococcus bacteria. The complication remains rare, however, and in some places …Read more...

It’ll be a while before Google reprises its flagship Pixel series. Until then, we have Pixel 7a leaks to tide us over. The latest hints from overseas include a look at the phone itself and hint as to what kind of specs might be inside it. Google’s next mid-range Pixel could have more memory than its predecessor and a…Read more...

Dune: Part Two won’t be in theaters until November 3—but you can get a brief glimpse of it right now, plus a lot more tomorrow. Warner Bros. just released the first poster for the highly anticipated sequel, as well as a brief clip teasing the full trailer, which will arrive tomorrow.Read more...

Elon Musk has agreed to settle in a three-year-old defamation lawsuit brought against him by an outspoken critic of Tesla. The billionaire will pay out $10,000 to Randeep Hothi, concluding the drawn out court proceedings, according to multiple reports and a tweet from the plaintiff posted Monday.

Don’t miss the delight on the faces of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy when they unbox themselves in miniature toy form.Read more...

A man from the town of Dildo, Canada captured images of a remarkable penis-shaped iceberg off the country’s east coast. The natural wonder set off a viral frenzy, but sadly seems to have since lost its rounded tip.

Although I’m now just a few screen taps away from watching nearly every Disney animated movie ever released, this new Lego set, featuring a brick-built recreation of a VHS copy of The Little Mermaid, is making me nostalgic for a time when my shelves were stacked with plastic tapes of my favorite Disney films.Read more...

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) last night authorized a strike. It has been negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for better compensation and equity structures and, in mid-April, held a strike authorization vote that saw record numbers of unit members (97.85%) voting yes.…Read more...

I have no mouth and I must scream—the AI workforce appears to be full steam ahead. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that the company is planning to pause or slow hiring in the coming years for roles in which AI could replace humans.

Get a new look at Hammer’s re-imagining of Dr. Jekyll with Eddie Izzard. Mia Goth and Halsey feature in the first look at MaXXXine. Jodie Comer may have left Amazon’s Blade Runner 2099 series. Plus, what’s coming on Superman & Lois and Riverdale. Spoilers, away!

Global weather patterns may be changing this year.Read more...

In the blink of an eye, Wall Street Bets’ once-favored trading app burned a hole in one of meme stock traders’ favorite gambles, AMC Entertainment. On Monday, the stock trading platform briefly and erroneously told users that the company had suddenly gone belly up.

Solar geoengineering is a controversial proposed strategy to block sunlight from reaching Earth in order to slow down climate change. One of the leading geoengineering ideas involves adding reflective particles to the stratosphere. But before humanity makes any more big changes to our atmosphere, it would probably be…Read more...

The Federal Aviation Administration is facing a new lawsuit following SpaceX’s April 20 Starship launch. Conservation groups claim that the FAA rushed its approval of SpaceX’s expanded launch operations in Boca Chica, Texas, without adequate environmental review and without requiring sufficient mitigation efforts from…Read more...

Building official Lego sets has always been a linear experience: you start on page one of the instruction book, and work your way through each step, one by one, until you end up with the model pictured on the box. But with Lego’s new DREAMZzz line, builders finally have a say in how the model they’re building turns…Read more...

Pornhub disabled access to its website for people in Utah on Monday to protest the state’s new age verification law, which requires websites with adult content to confirm users are 18 years of age or older.Read more...

Microsoft issued a Windows update that broke a Chrome feature, making it harder to change your default browser and annoying Chrome users with popups, Gizmodo has learned.Read more...

The Writers Guild of America, the union that bargains on behalf of Hollywood’s screenwriters, has called a strike after negotiations with major studios failed to produce a favorable contract this week. The strike, which is the first involving WGA to occur in 15 years, seeks to bring firms to the table on a host of…Read more...

Taika Waititi has spent time in both the Star Wars and Marvel galaxies, and he’s adding another sci-fi project to his to-do list: a big-screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.Read more...

Leading global human rights organization Amnesty International is defending its choice to use an AI image generator to depict protests and police brutality in Colombia. Amnesty told Gizmodo it used an AI generator to depict human rights abuses so as to preserve the anonymity of vulnerable protestors. Experts fear,…Read more...

For as long as Gundam has existed as a franchise, the specter of its first major antagonistic standout, Char Aznable, has lingered over it. And that’s not unintentioned on Gundam’s part—for almost as long the series has grown, it has put morally dubious people in face masks and coined the “Char Clone” trope as a…Read more...

Is your employer monitoring your mouse clicks, keystrokes, or webcam? What about your location or pace of work? If so, the White House wants to hear from you—from the confines of your digitally enabled professional panopticon.

Let’s get streaming! Welcome to io9's latest edition of the Nerd’s Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you’ll like most. (And sometimes, just the ones that we like most.)

The private space industry has set up shop at Florida’s Cape Canaveral and the state is looking out for its billionaire space entrepreneurs. The Florida House passed a bill that would protect commercial space ventures against legal liability in the event of a crew member’s injury or death.Read more...

Balloon hysteria in America might strike again. After some hullabaloo involving mysterious spy payloads drifting into American airspace earlier this year, the U.S. military says it’s tracking yet another balloon.

Folks who want more streaming content without paying through the nose have quite a few more options this spring. Amazon announced Monday that it’s planning to drop a few more crumbs of content from its mainline Prime Video streaming platform to its Freevee ad-based video service.Read more...

This past weekend in Manchester, England, Games Workshop invited legions of its tabletop wargaming fans to the first in-person Warhammer Fest since 2019. And it brought with it a ton of news from across its portfolio of sci-fi and fantasy miniature games, including a new look at the future of Warhammer 40,000. Here’s…Read more...

Do or do not, there is no try, and nowhere is that better exemplified than at the Museum of Failure. The Museum of Failure is a traveling showcase of over 150 of the worst failures in tech, medicine, food, and sex we’ve seen over the last few decades. Notable failures include 3D TV’s, Cyberpunk 2077, and many ventures…Read more...

It’s been quite a few months for ChatGPT: The AI chatbot has gone from relative obscurity to powering web searches and passing medical exams and plenty more besides, and it’s only going to get more powerful from this point on. All of which might leave you wondering if you can use it on your phone in place of those…Read more...

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Star Wars is a franchise that’s taken inspiration from plenty of things over the decades to become what it is today. Sometimes it requires work to figure out what it’s drawing on for a particular character, location, or plot point. Other times, it hits you dead in the face and despite that, might still work for you.

After a wild winter of more than a dozen huge storms and record-breaking snowfall in the Sierra Nevadas, California’s big flood season is just getting started.Read more...