Gizmodo

There was no shortage of weird and exciting stuff at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week, from Motorola’s rolling smartphone display to OnePlus’s pulsating liquid cooling technology.

Paramount has confirmed that Star Trek: Discovery—the first series in the franchise since Star Trek: Enterprise ended in 2005, and the herald of Star Trek’s revitalization as a streaming show universe—will come to an end after its fifth and final season.

A Spirit Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency stop along its route Wednesday after a battery device caught fire inside an overhead luggage bin. Local reports said the plane quickly filled with smoke as flight attendants worked to put out the flames. A retired firefighter on the plane told local reporters…Read more...

In a disappointing turn of events, Rocket Lab is reconsidering its daredevil method of trying to catch and recover its Electron boosters mid-air using a helicopter.Read more...

Stephanie Hsu spoke to Jimmy Fallon about her role as Jobu Tupaki in the breakout A24 film Everything Everywhere All At Once, directed by the Daniels (Swiss Army Man). She reveals that she had to get over some nerves when it came down to embodying Jobu—someone who’s so over the top and wild, a foil to the grounded and…Read more...

A group of cities in the Western U.S. have voted to move ahead with a new nuclear project that could help revolutionize how clean power is generated in this country—despite sharply rising costs for the project.

Last summer, Astra’s Rocket 3.3 came crashing down after failing to reach orbit and deliver a pair of shoe-box sized satellites. Following a six-month investigation, the California-based startup identified the culprit: fuel injector blockage that resulted in combustion chamber burn-through.Read more...

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For years, Dave Filoni was the Star Wars animation guy. He worked side by side with George Lucas on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. That was followed by the first new Star Wars project released by Disney, Star Wars Rebels. He’s also produced both Star Wars Resistance and Star Wars: The Bad Batch. But with the birth of…Read more...

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant company, is facing a new roadblock on its extremely ambitious avowed quest to cure blindness and paralysis. The Food and Drug Administration has shot down Neuralink’s application to proceed to human trials with its device, according to a Thursday report from Reuters, attributed to…Read more...

“Hey, Grogu, put that down,” I said to my screen, myself the only person in the room. On Thursday, Google provided a little Easter egg for all those anticipating the drop of The Mandalorian’s third season.Read more...

Fire up the pulse rifles and get your acid spit ready. The new Alien movie from director Fede Alvarez just added its second lead, meaning we’re getting that much closer to seeing Xenomorphs on the big screen again. Previously, Cailee Spaeny joined the project, and now Isabela Merced, seen in the recent Hulu hit …Read more...

The Federal Trade Commission is poised to ban the mental health app BetterHelp from sharing medical information with Facebook, Snapchat, and other online advertisers. A proposed order issued Thursday includes a $7.8 million fine and limits the ways BetterHelp can share mental health data going forward. It’s part of a…Read more...

Google Maps continues to get new features and updates more often than you’d think, and if you haven’t been paying attention, you might have missed a number of changes that can make getting around a lot easier.

The world emitted more carbon dioxide last year compared to any other year on record, according to data released Thursday from the International Energy Agency. And while the growth of emissions was slower last year than it had been in past years—thanks to an explosion of renewable energy around the world during the …Read more...

Lily Sullivan is about to see her horror profile rise exponentially—she stars in Evil Dead Rise, which releases in April—but today, io9 has the exclusive teaser premiere of another genre film she’ll soon appear in: Monolith, an Australian sci-fi thriller screening in the SXSW Film Festival’s “Midnighters” program.

Star Trek: Picard season three has so far been, even with the promise of greater stakes to come, something of a relaxing, almost idealistic venture. It’s been about our heroes being the heroes we want them to be, getting things done consequences be damned, about the discovery of legacy, and so on. This week however…Read more...

A reporter says she was fired by her paper after calling the mayor of Dallas “bruh” on Twitter, a comment the news outlet claimed violated its social media policy.Read more...

Millennium Media’s upcoming adaptation of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy has found its Big Red. Jack Kesy (The Strain) will star in The Crooked Man.Read more...

Last week, Texas introduced a bill that would make it illegal for internet service providers to let users access information about how to get abortion pills. The bill, called the Women and Child Safety Act, would also criminalize creating, editing, or hosting a website that helps people seek abortions.Read more...

Astronomers looking up at the night skies have started to feel the effects of the growing number of satellites swarming Earth orbit, and they want to do something about it before it’s too late. An international group of astronomy organizations have banded together to petition the United Nations, asking it to form a…Read more...

After reports revealed that Meta was planning on opening Horizon Worlds to teens, two democratic senators are now encouraging the company to reconsider. Meta’s virtual reality video game platform is currently 18+, but internal documents previously indicated that Meta was planning on enticing kids to join in on the…Read more...

President Joe Biden is expected to issue the first veto of his term to defend the right for retirement plan managers to direct client investments based on environmental and social considerations. The anticipated action follows the advancement of a Republican-backed resolution through the House and Senate this week…Read more...

Apple waded into the debate over generative artificial intelligence this week when it blocked a ChatGPT-powered email app over concerns the app would not properly filter content for young audiences. The blocked app update, which the developer claims is unfair, points to the power Apple could wield to set AI moderation…Read more...

Apple is already big on biometric data for letting users unlock their phones, but a new patent shows the Cupertino company is looking ahead to the day when it can scan a user’s face, neck, chest, arms, legs—AKA your full silhouette—to let you access a device, or else allow your phone to tell you if you should be…Read more...

Florida health officials say a man recently died from a brain-eating amoeba called Naegleria fowleri—an infection likely caught from rinsing his sinuses with tap water. These infections are incredibly rare but almost always lethal, and they have been previously linked to nasal rinsing, such as through the use of neti…Read more...

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Ars Technica spaceflight reporter Eric Berger writes that prominent launch provider ULA is up for sale and that investment firm Morgan Stanley and consulting firm Bain & Company are overseeing the transaction. As to ULA’s potential suitor, we can only speculate.

A robotic elephant was donated to an Indian temple to replace having a wild creature living in captivity. PETA India donated the elephant named Irinjadappilly Raman, to the Sree Krishna Temple in Kerala to “help conduct ceremonies at the temple in a safe and cruelty-free manner,” the animal rights organization said in…Read more...

Researchers from the University of Arizona have developed a possible new way of scouting for real estate on other planets: tiny robots that drop digital breadcrumbs while exploring Martian caves. It’s a method ripped straight from folklore.Read more...

We’d seen a little Haunted Mansion footage at the D23 Expo last year, but it didn’t prepare us for the movie’s first actual trailer. Fan-favorite ghosts featured in the Disneyland attraction mingle with a massive cast of stars; it may win over diehard Disney fans and mass audiences alike.Read more...

As the fight over licensing rights in the tabletop industry begins to die down, Paizo has turned its attention to another issue of contention: AI-generated art. Talking broadly about both generated text and images, Paizo has stated on its blog that it will not employ the use of such tools because of the “ethical and…Read more...

Struggling to keep your wireless earbuds clean? You can buy cleaning kits for AirPods that come with purpose-built tools for getting rid of earwax, or you can deal with the problem at the source with a device that looks like an over-sized pair of headphones, but is actually a washing machine for your ears.Read more...

Convention season is gaining momentum, and for WonderCon 2023 Funko and Loungefly have the goods for the spring fandom fling.Read more...

Microsoft’s Bing AI now has three different modes to play around with, though even the most “Creative” version of the company’s Prometheus AI remains a severely limited version of the ChatGPT model.Read more...

One of the best features of Apple’s wireless earbuds—their sleek and compact charging case that’s one of the smallest on the market—unfortunately also makes the AirPods and AirPods Pro easy to lose. And while Apple provides several electronic ways to find a lost pair of buds, an easier solution might just be to make…Read more...

Netflix teases its new Chupacabra movie. Scream 6 dives into making the deadliest Ghostface yet. Amazon wants to take a crack at Day of the Triffids. Plus, what’s to come in the season finale of The Winchesters. Spoilers now!

Following a last-minute scrub early Monday morning, SpaceX successfully launched four astronauts on a one-day trek to the International Space Station.Read more...

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

If you walk into a brick and mortar therapist’s office, a receptionist will tell you if there’s no availability. It’s probably a safe assumption they won’t charge you for the therapy sessions they aren’t giving you, either. Allegedly, neither of those things are true on Talkspace, a popular mental health app that…Read more...

Scientists in China say they’ve begun to develop what could be the first of a new and improved generation of sunscreens. In mice, their experimental polymer appeared to provide greater protection against ultraviolet radiation than commercial products. It also wasn’t absorbed through the skin and seemed to be non-toxic…Read more...

Every so often, dictionaries spruce up their database of lexicography in order to get with the times. Dictionary.com is no different, and announced this week the new additions to the website’s catalog of words.

A rare species, once common but thought to be extinct in the eastern U.S. for decades, has been rediscovered loitering at a Walmart.Read more...

Joe Biden gave federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from government devices earlier this week. Until now, most politicians intent on punishing TikTok have focused solely on banning the app itself, but, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters, federal agencies must also “prohibit internet traffic from reaching the…Read more...

Havana syndrome, the bizarre malaise that has impacted over a thousand U.S. foreign service members all over the world, is still a total mystery. Indeed, even as the government has attempted to explain away some of the weirdness, it’s pretty obvious we still have no fucking idea what this thing is.Read more...

We already knew Matthew McConaughey had been cast to voice the title character on Agent Elvis, and thanks to this new trailer for the Netflix series—the first adult animated project from Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse studio Sony Pictures Animation—we’ve got an even better idea of what to expect from this mash-up…Read more...

Elon Musk presented Tesla’s much-hyped “Master Plan 3" on Wednesday, in the company’s first “investor day” livestream. But, instead of revealing a new Tesla model, specifying the date of the repeatedly delayed cybertruck launch, introducing a more affordable electric car (as previously promised), or announcing some…Read more...

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Directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley knew they had a huge task in front of them when they started working on the Dungeons & Dragons script that had been floating around Hollywood for a few years (the Honor Among Thieves subtitle wouldn’t come until later in the process). In a new interview with Variety,…Read more...

A year ago saw the opening of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, an attraction at Walt Disney World aiming to bring interactive experiences to a new level with its three-day vacation in “space.” A blend of LARPing, immersive theater, and Disney Cruise, Galactic Starcruiser takes Star Wars fans and their families on…Read more...