Gizmodo

The lonely Windows" button on most modern keyboards is an old joke turned into a bore. The key is a lonely, barren island sitting between alt" and ctrl" that's long proved more of a nuisance for a wayward finger that strays a little too far southwest than it is a usable function. While some might find the key good...Read more...

How can you tell if a dinosaur is female or male? It's one of the most basic aspects of biology and yet, for the most part, it continues to be a mystery in paleontology. We don't yet know the sex of most extinct species, even if those in museum displays have gender-specific names like Sue the T.rex or Cliff the...Read more...

The last major ad-free streaming service is going away. Starting Jan. 29th, Amazon users will start seeing advertisements appear on movies and TV shows for Prime Video, according to an email sent to subscribers on Tuesday. To keep Prime Video ad-free, you'll need to pay an additional $3 a month, on top of the $139 a...Read more...

Following a successful liftoff, Firefly's Alpha rocket seems to have misplaced its payload due to a second stage anomaly.Read more...

On Christmas Day, a big GTA 5 leak revealed that Rockstar Games had some single-player DLC planned for the open-world crime sim. Though none of them were released, what was uncovered by online sleuths is interesting all the same.

Getting to know the Straw Hat Crew in Netflix's One Piece is one of the greatest joys in watching the new live-action show based on Eiichiro Oda' global franchise. Tell No Tales," the third episode, digs into Zoro's origins in a creative way, and io9 was excited to talk to editor Eric Litman about how the story came...Read more...

Well, that's one way to see your investment pay off. In 2014, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Mt. Gox, suffered a notorious hack that stole 850,000 Bitcoins from the platform. Victims are finally starting to get their money back on Tuesday, nearly 10 years later. However, some are reporting Mt. Gox...Read more...

Plasma could be wrangled to collide photons and yield matter, according to physicists who ran simulations to explore the practical applications of a world-famous equation.

I want to love Siri. I really do. Every day, I walk around with a little robot that lives in my pocket and responds to simple commands. It is a full-blown miracle, the kind of thing our ancestors could only dream of. The problem is Siri's an idiot. My digital assistant and others like it from Google and Amazon are...Read more...

Even though every year has managed to feel more eventful than the last, 2023 especially was a roller coaster that went extremely off the rails. It feels like something eventful happened at least twice per week (if not considerably more), particularly in the entertainment space.

That only 10 years have passed since the first film in the DC Extended Universe seems absurd. Somehow, through all the ups and downs, it feels like we've lived with Henry Cavill as Superman, Ben Affleck as Batman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as the Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman for...Read more...

The Brazilian wing of Burger King announced a surveillance technology marketing stunt this week called the Hangover Whopper," celebrating the booze-filled days between Christmas and New Year's with facial recognition. All you have to do is hold your bleary-eyed visage up to a camera, and the company says its...Read more...

As we near the end of the year, there's at least a visual update on Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie aDeux. Surprisingly we haven't gotten a trailer for the Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix musical with the release of Warner Bros.' Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom or The Color Purple. Then again, the studio's been hiding that...Read more...

Ahead of NASA's long-awaited return to crewed Moon landings, the space agency is testing an elevator that will carry astronauts from their spacecraft to the lunar surface. If all goes as planned, this elevator will be ready for the Artemis 3 and 4 missions, ambitiously set for 2025 and 2028.Read more...

No matter how you felt about the first part of Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon, odds are you're curious about what happens next. Kora (Sofia Boutella) has assembled a team of heroic warriors and brought them back to Veldt. The evil Admiral Atticus (Ed Skrein) has a renewed purpose. And it all seems to be building to a...Read more...

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When you've been around for 60 long years like Doctor Who has, growth and evolution is the name of the game. Not just in new places each week, new heroes and friends and villains along the way, but the show has adapted and built its own riff on genre after genre of storytelling thanks to its remit. But as Doctor Who...Read more...

Sam Altman needs developers to build useful tools with ChatGPT, but his company is pissing them off right now. Just before Christmas weekend, OpenAI emailed plugin developers, people building practical tools with ChatGPT, asking them to turn their work into GPTs.

David Oyelowo has an update on his sequel to The Rocketeer. The next Saw movie might have already found its place in the chronology. Zack Snyder wants to take on a young James Bond. Plus, behind the scenes on Doctor Who with Ncuti Gatwa. Spoilers, away!

Modern medicine has extended our lives and reduced suffering in all kinds of ways. Many of the impactful interventions we have available today have been around for a long time, like antibiotics, most painkillers, and various forms of cancer screening. But every once in a while, scientists come up with novel treatments...Read more...

The White House has left Apple without hope of federal intervention to keep the current-gen Apple Watch on store shelves. The Biden administration has officially declined to veto restrictions on the company's wearables due to an ongoing patent dispute, despite the Cupertino tech giant's pleas. So much for the season...Read more...

Few disciplines are as full of drama and surprises as archaeology, and this year was no exception. Archaeologists and anthropologists mined ancient genomes, excavated Roman weaponry from caves near the Dead Sea, and found a still-standing shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Huron. Click through for some of our favorite...Read more...

This past year was a tipping point for the games industry. There have been some amazing, trend-setting releases alongside devastating industry turmoil, including mass layoffs, studio closures, and ballooning development costs. There's a sense of foreboding entering into 2024, but there's at least one thing we can...Read more...

The Golden Globe Awards will be handed out January 7 on CBS (the Oscars, meanwhile, aren't until March 10), so if you're taking advantage of holiday downtime to catch up on your awards-season viewing, here's a handy guide to where you can stream the nominees. Not every title is available for home viewing, but most are...Read more...

If you're not breaking laws or causing harm, it's really up to you what you look at on the internet-we won't judge. But there might be occasions when you don't want someone in close proximity to see the contents of your open tabs, and that's where a browser panic button, capable of shutting down your browser with a...Read more...

The outside world is loud. Sometimes too loud. If you commute, you know this all too well. A good pair of active noise-canceling headphones is exactly what you need to enjoy a little peace and quiet, even on the noisiest train. Shure's Aonic 50 has good ANC; you could even argue it's too good.Read more...

There have been so many words written about the expanse of genre here at io9, and 2023 was a wildcard of a year for entertainment (including Marvel Studios, Star Wars, DC Studios, and Max), theme parks, and games. We covered a lot of ground, from union-strong solidarity during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes to...Read more...

It's Christmas, and that can only mean one thing we've been waiting simultaneously six years and also just three weeks for: Doctor Who is back for a festive treat, and it's bringing a new Doctor and companion, and a whole new era, along for the ride. Need somewhere to talk about everything that just happened? We've...Read more...

In early 2023, io9 gazed into a blood-splattered crystal ball and made a list of all the horror entertainment we were most looking forward to. Some of the titles we were excited about delivered; others did not-and perhaps most excitingly, several releases we knew nothing about in advance swooped in and scared the hell...Read more...

Unless something truly crazy happens, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be the final film in the DC Extended Universe that began 10 years ago with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. It was a universe dominated by Snyder's decisions, which resulted in some memorable highs and embarrassing lows. And while Lost Kingdom completel...Read more...

Earlier this year, Disney filed a lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis and the state's other elected officials. The corporation apparently isn't donehitting the state quite yet, as it's now suing Florida again while also facing a lawsuit from one of its recent actors.

It's Christmas weekend, and Hollywood still has gifts to give. This weekend saw the release of two big sci-fi epics, both of which are unified by their connection to filmmaker Zack Snyder, who previously spearheaded the DC Extended Universe.

Though the Insomniac Games hack and the information gleaned from it overwhelmed video game news for the entire week, it was the second leak" to hit this week. Shortly before, big plot spoilers for Rocksteady's upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League were posted online and quickly circulated. But for as far as...Read more...

January 1, 2024 won't just be the start of a new year. It'll also see Mickey and Minnie Mouse enter the public domain.

Paramount's Scream franchise has been thrown into further disarray with the departure of Scream 7 director Christopher Landon.

Before there was a PlayStation 4 remake that blew the doors off its own canon, Final Fantasy VII lived on through various spinoffs that expanded the world of the classic RPG. One of those was Advent Children, the 2005 CG film which followed on from the events of the original game. If you've never seen it, or it's been ...Read more...

Back in 2019, Jonathan Hickman gave Marvel's mutants a soft reboot in the form of House of X/Powers of X. Now living on the sentient island of Krakoa and taking active steps to no longer be a punching bag for humans, the stories that have spun out of this have kept the X-Men books going for almost five full years now....Read more...

Almost every DC Comics movie released in the last five or six years has done so with baggage attached that can't help but talked about. In many cases, said baggage helps inform why the film is what it is, but in other cases, it gets in the way of what makes an individual film rise or fall despite a game effort from...Read more...

Ever since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Disney has struggled with getting more Star Wars movies off the ground. In the years since, Lucasfilm has had a nasty habit of announcing things for the series and then not making them, if they ever actually existed at all. And it all dates back to December 10, 2020, where...Read more...

The Oscars are a few months away, and it won't be long before we're hearing about the nominees for the 2024 ceremony. Earlier in the week, a shortlist for 10 categories were revealed, and while they contained some of 2023's expected hits, other inclusions were interesting surprises.

A rough 2023 for Marvel got even messier last week as the conclusion of Jonathan Majors' legal proceedings saw the actor charged with reckless assault. But while there was plenty of legal drama this week, there were even more stories from the io9-verse you may have missed, so check them out here! -James WhitbrookRead more...

Here's what's going on at major tourist destinations in Orlando, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, and abroad. Disney Parks just opened Zootopia at the Shanghai Disney resort and we have a look at its wild animatronics and cute in-universe food. Las Vegas is lifting spirits with immersive showings of The...Read more...

This year has been jam-packed with new Star Wars, with three new seasons of TV in Bad Batch, The Mandalorian, and Ahsoka, and oodles of books and comics that saw us revisit legends or the High Republic. Even as we await its return to the big screen, Star Wars remains ever-present-but one new story in particular...Read more...

A moment can make a movie. You're sitting there, you're watching something, it's fine, and then boom: a scene or shot happens, and instantly something you thought was just okay becomes amazing.Read more...

That For All Mankind isn't one of the biggest shows in the world might make sense, if not for other shows like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, or Severance. All of them are originals released through Apple TV+, one of those streamers maybe you subscribe to while a show is on and then cancel, or mess around with for a...Read more...

It's become popular amongst the denizens of Silicon Valley to claim that AI could end the world as we know it. However, this week provided more than a few examples of why that isn't true. AI isn't going to pose a threat to humanity anytime soon. The AI products that exist don't even perform their limited function...Read more...

The week's top three stories on the science beat all made me a little uncomfortable, to be honest. The news that scientists found a credible link between having a cat during your childhood and later being diagnosed with schizophrenia was troubling. Then there was the 2,400-year-old leather than turned out to be made...Read more...

NASA just put its new propulsion system to the test, powering a 3D-printed rotating detonation rocket engine for a sustained burn that lasted three times as long as the first test.Read more...

Last year, I mused over whether foldable smartphones would ever be affordable. I wanted to see them take off after falling in love with the Galaxy Z Fold 4. This year, I got my answer. It's a resounding No," especially with the foldable market as it is right now. Even with the recently launched Motorola Razr, a flip...Read more...

The recent Google Play Store ruling could be bad news for Android phone users. Meanwhile, you only have a couple more days to buy a new Apple Watch before the ban kicks in. Catch up on the biggest product news of the week in our roundup.- Jorge JimenezRead more...