Gizmodo

It’s so dry in Spain, communities in the Catalan region asking for divine intervention.Read more...

The summer of 2023 has not even started at your local theater, but CinemaCon audiences got a glimpse at what’s in store for next summer. One movie in particular seems very mysterious: it’s called IF. It’s written and directed by John Krasinski and stars Ryan Reynolds, and is currently set for release May 24, 2024.Read more...

Season three of The Mandalorian has finished telling its tale, and boy it’s been a bumpy ride. After the dizzying highs of Andor and the mixed bags of The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, I clicked on the Disney+ app each week with a strange mix of excitement and dread.

China’s Zhurong rover has found evidence of liquid water on present-day Mars, according to a team that reviewed data from the rover’s cameras.Read more...

April’s often a tough month to swallow, starting with that awful holiday, April Fools, and then countless teases of warmer Summer temperatures before thermometers plunge and remind us it’s still Spring. April’s only saving grace is all the fun gadgets that debuted this past month, including many you may have missed.Read more...

Guillermo del Toro’s Netflix horror anthology Cabinet of Curiosities debuted last year with eight sinister, spooky tales that ran the gamut from gothic to fantastic and explored the components that make up contemporary horror. Lakeshore Records is now offering the soundtrack, which includes the work of 10 composers,…Read more...

The use of AI like ChatGPT is the way of the future according to a recent survey that found 91% of companies that are hiring want to bring on employees with ChatGPT experience. Resume Builder surveyed 1,187 business leaders and found that not only are candidates with a knowledge and understanding of ChatGPT considered…Read more...

Colorado Senator and failed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bennet introduced a new bill Friday to create an “AI Task Force” of government experts who could identify risks and reduce potential civil liberties and privacy drawbacks from the disruptive tech. The proposed legislation marks one of the first AI…Read more...

What’s your favorite Marvel movie? For me, it’s 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn’s first foray into blockbuster superhero filmmaking. A film no one expected to work, with characters no one really knew or cared about, which ended up being so beautiful, exciting, and vibrant, it made those characters into…Read more...

U.S. adults continue to swap smoke for clouds. Rates of cigarette use among over 18 Americans dropped to a new low last year, as just about one in nine adults now identify as smokers, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s compared to more than one in eight in 2018…Read more...

Once known for bringing flowers after April’s showers, May is now better known for May the Fourth, a.k.a. Star Wars day, when fans are encouraged to empty their pockets for even more merchandise—including eight new Star Wars sets debuting with the rest of all the new Lego sets that are finally available to purchase in…Read more...

Russia has agreed to keep its cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) until 2028 despite earlier threats to withdraw from the orbiting lab.Read more...

IDW, generally considered the fifth-largest comic book publisher, has laid off 39% of its workforce this week. Editorial has also been gutted, and “half” remain. This move was done in an effort to “preserve capital, and put the Company in the strongest position possible to unlock value from its assets, including its…Read more...

AI may not replace your doctor anytime soon, but it will probably be answering their emails. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine Friday examined questions from patients and found that ChatGPT provided better answers than human doctors four out of five times. A panel of medical professionals evaluated the…Read more...

When it was announced at Star Wars Celebration earlier this month, Dave Filoni’s “New Republic vs. Imperial Remnant” movie was teased as a culmination of plot threads woven throughout the “universe” of The Mandalorian and its connected TV series. But it seems like the director and producing partner Jonathan Favreau…Read more...

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission patted itself on the back for winning one of the largest civil cases against a crypto crook, even if most—or any—of those affected will see any of their money returned. On Thursday, a Texas judge issued a default judgment in a multi-billion fraud case against a man accused of…Read more...

Sony and Peacock reveal a first look at their Twisted Metal show. Get a look at the new title card for Saw X. A sequel to Black Phone could be on the way. Plus, Riverdale gets back to basics, and The Flash previews the return of Reverse-Flash. Spoilers now!

As the music industry struggles with AI’s role in the creative and copyright process, it looks like the retail industry might be ready to welcome artificial intelligence with open arms. Walmart is apparently using AI to bargain with suppliers for the best prices on some of its necessities—and the suppliers seem to …Read more...

Having seemingly exhausted 40 years worth of games starring a certain heroic plumber, Lego is now looking to draw inspiration from other adjacent Nintendo franchises for new sets to add to the Lego Super Mario collection, starting with Donkey Kong and all of his Kong kin.Read more...

Twitter became less useful on Thursday after New York City’s transit operator said it would stop tweeting about service outages because “the reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.” It’s the latest in a growing number of government agencies ditching Elon Musk’s social network.Read more...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.Read more...

I don’t know why we’re seeing a flood of Android tablets this season. It could be because the operating system can finally handle the scale of all sorts of screen sizes. Or it’s the long-awaited arrival of the Pixel Tablet that’s made every other manufacturer feel like it needs to follow in its still-unreleased…Read more...

Do you miss the pre-streaming days of clicking through a TV guide? What about stumbling upon three-quarters of an action flick or the last 15 minutes of My Cousin Vinny in a delightful channel-browsing haze? Well Google TV has a remedy for your nostalgia. The smart TV operating system is moving forward into the…Read more...

There’s always time for more TV, and new data published by Bloomberg earlier this week revealed that we watched a lot of it. A new report helps characterize the blackbox that is streaming shows to audiences—which is especially important in a world where Netflix has a reputation for cancelling your favorite show (I’m…Read more...

Members of the House Judiciary Committee kicked off what could be months of fiery debates over one of the US’s most controversial warrantless surveillance programs this week. In the hearing Thursday titled, “FIX FISA,” lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle voiced concerns over the scale of US citizen data…Read more...

It’s the bittersweet, powerful end of an era as Guardians of the Galaxy franchise director James Gunn—who’s now the co-head of DC Studios—bows out of Marvel. But he’s leaving on an excellently high note, as the first social media reactions to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (which opens May 5) suggest.Read more...

Two astronauts are gearing up for a nearly seven-hour-long spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, with one of them set to make history as the first Arab astronaut to take on the extravehicular activity.Read more...

SpaceX is getting ready to launch its super heavy-lift rocket for the second time this year, carrying a hefty broadband satellite to a distant orbit above Earth’s equator, as well as a pair of smaller satellites, before being disposed entirely.

After castigating OG Twitter for its cooperation with government content requests, it turns out that Elon Musk’s version of the platform hasn’t been doing much better since he took over half a year ago. Not only has Musk Twitter™️ been responding to a variety of government requests—but it’s been doing so at a much…Read more...

Read more...

Set “64 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute, and decades before Coriolanus Snow became the tyrannical President of Panem,” The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes explores the origin story of that future tyrant. After a couple of cryptic teasers, a full trailer has finally arrived.Read more...

The restoration of the Enterprise-D, long thought lost since it was broken up and crash-landed decades prior in Star Trek: Generations, was one of the biggest surprises of Picard’s final season. But now we know that parts of the ship made their way back home to be restored, this touching new short imagines just how.

With a trailer that’s been out in the world for almost a year now, expectations couldn’t be any higher for Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Except they can go higher, now that Paramount’s screened 20 minutes of breathtaking footage at CinemaCon 2023.Read more...

Clubhouse is downsizing, big time. The company, which launched its audio-based social platform in the early pandemic days of April 2020, is now laying off more than half of all of its workers.Read more...

Virgin Galactic appears to be one step closer to resuming its space tourism services. The company announced today a successful suborbital test of the VSS Unity spaceplane and hopes to begin rocket-powered spaceflight tests in the coming months.Read more...

Human remains unveiled in Lake Mead’s low water levels last year have finally been identified as a Las Vegas man who went missing years ago, local authorities said this week.Read more...

Read more...

Artificial intelligence and the music industry are having a moment, and it’s unclear at this point whether it’s a great one. As AI generators like ChatGPT and DALL-E get better and better, so too do AI voice generators—and that’s no better exemplified than the rise of completely fabricated songs from major artists.

The healing powers of poop can now officially come in a more palatable pill. This week, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Vowst, an oral capsule packed with beneficial bacteria derived from human fecal matter. The drug is intended to treat recurrent infections of Clostridioides difficile by balancing…Read more...

We’ve all been there: You’re in a conversation with friends, and you desperately try to find a TikTok that you had scrolled past that could serve as a funny contribution to the current topic of conversation. You hastily search and scroll through the app and finally find it, but it’s too late—your companions have moved…Read more...

The Mexican government’s press conference from the Palacio Nacional on Wednesday looked like it was part of a late-night comedy skit. Standing behind a podium with the government seal, an official proudly announced that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had been named the top streamer in Mexico in the first…Read more...

Last year, I wrote about how West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin was acting like a bad boyfriend to the Democratic party. The man was stringing his colleagues along for months and holding climate legislation in limbo. I ate my words just a couple of weeks later when Manchin worked with Democratic leadership to revive…Read more...

It’s been less than two weeks since the European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUICE mission began its journey to Jupiter, but the spacecraft has wasted no time getting itself ready to explore the gas giant system.Read more...

“You wouldn’t want to be here on May Day,” a character cautions Edward Woodward’s rigidly Christian, notably prudish Sergeant Howie in folk-horror classic The Wicker Man. After he travels to the isolated Summerisle to investigate reports of a missing child, he’s shocked—shocked!—to discover a community steeped in …Read more...

It’s been about 20 years since the life-simulator game, Second Life, came out. Nintendo Miis first emerged on the scene more than a decade and a half ago. We live in an era where near-photo-realistic video game graphics are possible. For better or worse, you can deepfake images and videos of notable people with a few…Read more...

At Paramount’s CinemaCon 2023 panel today, producer Seth Rogen introduced a new clip from director Jeff Rowe’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, appropriately clad in a turtle-green suit. The animated reboot brings a new sense of style to the classic TMNT quartet—voiced for the first time in the franchise…Read more...

The Justice Department filed a motion on Thursday to hold Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira without bail, arguing he is a flight risk and presents “an ongoing risk both to the national security of the United States and to the community.” Teixeira, 21, allegedly released sensitive and confidential government information on…Read more...

The Transformers franchise is returning to its animated roots with Transformers: One, and now we know who’ll be lending their voice to the film.

A team of mathematicians and engineers is unraveling the wriggly mystery of blackworms; specifically, the researchers are trying to understand how the worms are able to disentangle even quicker than they (intentionally) intertwine.Read more...

In expansive new research out this week, scientists around the world have started to unravel the genetic secrets behind one of nature’s greatest success stories: mammals. They’ve catalogued and compared the genomes of more than 200 mammal species, including elephants, bats, and humans. Among other things, their…Read more...