Gizmodo

Woe is me. As journalists, we’re supposed to maintain objectivity, but I can’t help but covet the Pokémon GO Plus+. Despite its silly, repetitive name (yes, it’s actually pronounced “plus plus”), pre-orders of the second-generation automatic Pokémon catcher are closed. So, I’ll have to remind myself to hop online in…Read more...

The BBC apparently isn’t a fan of porn puns, especially ones that pertain to its own name. A live performance by Sabrina Carpenter was cut a tiny bit shorter after it was uploaded to YouTube, removing the singer’s riff at the very end that refers to an obvious sexual innuendo.Read more...

As the race back to the Moon heats up—with plans for long-term human habitation—reliable communication is a fundamental issue. With dozens of plans for experiments of various sizes and scopes needing to communicate with each other and Earth, the European Space Agency has opened a call for help in building the required …Read more...

In the lead-up to Tesla’s March 1 Investor Day event, the company is facing renewed challenges and questions over the safety of its driver assistance technology.

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Twitter CEO Elon Musk voiced his outspoken support for cartoonist Scott Adams who received criticism for posting a racist rant on YouTube last week. Adams has since been fired from news outlets after calling Black people a “hate group” adding, “I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”Read more...

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are sounding the alarm over a diarrhea-causing superbug. The CDC’s data shows a noticeable rise in extensively drug-resistant strains of Shigella bacteria over the past half-decade. Though these infections are typically not severe, antibiotics are needed to…Read more...

Spotify announced it is changing its user interface by replacing the universal heart icon and the “add to playlist” button with the plus symbol. The change will allow users to not only save music, but to add a song, playlist, or podcast to a specific destination with the two-in-one combo button.Read more...

A new study from Climate Central shows that the U.S. saw impressive overall growth in wind and solar energy capacity in 2022. Red states, but especially Texas, led the country in clean energy production last year.Read more...

Children of the Corn is the 11th film inspired by Stephen King’s 1977 story. It sticks to the rural Nebraska setting, but it tries mightily to bring some fresh elements to the table—and as far as creepy-kid tales go, it’s actually not terrible. But it never quite overcomes the question of why it exists in the first…Read more...

Scientists have confirmed that organic molecules exist in samples taken from the asteroid Ryugu, adding credence to the idea that the ingredients for life came to Earth via meteorite and asteroid impacts.Read more...

Step into the future by way of the past on Apple TV+’s new series Hello Tomorrow!, which stars Billy Crudup as a chipper salesman for Brightside, a company hawking condos on the moon. The show’s take on a sci-fi retro-future version of the 1950s is one of its most striking elements, so io9 was excited to speak with…Read more...

Episode seven of HBO’s The Last of Us follows the plotline of the extra downloadable content for the video game, titled “Left Behind.” In an extended flashback, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her friend Riley (Storm Reid) spend an evening goofing off together in an abandoned shopping mall. Near the end of the episode, they…Read more...

There’s a odd bug pervading the ducts of Google Pixel devices, and it’s somehow related to sci-fi’s most famous insectoid alien horror.

In about a month the Dungeons & Dragons movie Honor Among Thieves is gathering its party and venturing forth to the big screen, but before that, two new tie-in novels will give us an insight into just how some of its ragtag heroes first met each other.

Facebook and Instagram are taking some of their strongest steps yet to clamp down on child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that is flooding their social networks. Meta, the parent company of both, is creating a database in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that will allow …Read more...

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

Lego knows exactly what sets its devoted fans will go to the ends of the Earth to find, and sometimes makes them do exactly that. If you want to buy a super-sized, 11.8-inch tall version of one of the most iconic minifigures of all time, you’re going to need to head to the actual home of Lego in Billund, Denmark.Read more...

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has a message for employees: Loyalty means nothing. Over the weekend, Musk laid off more than 50 employees at the social media company, including one of his most vocal supporters, product head Esther Crawford.Read more...

SpaceX is set to launch 21 miniaturized versions of its next generation Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit later today. The V2 Mini, as SpaceX calls it, is a compact version of the one the company is hoping to launch with its upcoming Starship rocket.Read more...

You’ve probably heard the stories: that through an intricate network of underground fungi, trees send nutrients and warning signals back and forth to one another. In Pulitzer Prize-wining novels, New York Times feature articles, PBS documentaries, and TED talks, there have been ample mentions in recent years about the…Read more...

Donate Life America, the nonprofit that works to maintain the National Donate Life Registry, has decided to create a set of polyhedral dice that symbolize the eight organs and tissues that can be donated in order to save another person’s life. The dice were produced by Crux Scenica in Richmond, Virginia, who crafted…Read more...

It’s a veritable bucket of horror movie blood, as They Listen, Thanksgiving, and the Exorcist reboot all add to their cast. The second season of The Santa Clauses expands its cast. Plus, what’s to come in The Flash, and a creepy new look at Yellowjackets’ return. Spoilers get!

The large language model AI bandwagon is getting awfully full lately. Now Snap, the company that owns Snapchat, announced Monday it’s shoving an AI into its app so that users who are really bored talking with friends and real humans can instead have a friendly conversation with a somewhat unhinged digital tool.Read more...

Pop quiz: which big company was the first to popularize electronic paper e-readers with consumers by making it easy to find and load ebooks and other digital documents? If you answered Amazon, we’ll see you in summer school, because Sony’s e-readers outdated the Kindle by years. Unfortunately, the company will soon be …Read more...

The world needs a new crypto crackdown, or else there’s the nuclear option—at least according to one of the world’s biggest financial bodies. Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, shared the inter-country agency has suggested that countries should consider outright bans of…Read more...

If you and your long-distance lover couldn’t meet up this past Valentine’s Day, there’s still good news. Chinese social media has been lighting up over this newly revealed kissing machine, which features a pair of silicone lips that let you kiss your partner over the internet.

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest in toy news. This week: Jen Walters’ paramour gets the Hot Toys treatment in more ways than one, Star Wars’ Micro Galaxy ships come back for another round, and Hasbro rolls out the Dinobots in two new Transformers releases. Check it out!

The Pokémon Concierge, a new animated Pokémon television series, is currently under development at Netflix. Dwarf Studios is currently set to animate the series using stop motion animation.

Update: February 27, 8:01 a.m. ET: SpaceX issued a scrub of today’s scheduled launch with roughly two and a half minutes left in the countdown clock. Company officials blamed an ignition system issue for the the delay, specifically ground equipment used for loading the engine ignition fluid. SpaceX is now targeting…Read more...

The U.S. military is intensifying its commitment to the development and use of autonomous weapons, as confirmed by an update to a Department of Defense directive. The update, released Jan. 25, 2023, is the first in a decade to focus on artificial intelligence autonomous weapons. It follows a related implementation planRead more...

One of the most exciting propositions about this first season of HBO’s The Last of Us was that, at some point, it was going to incorporate a second piece of Last of Us lore: the 2014 add-on to the game called The Last of Us: Left Behind. Released a year after the original game, the downloadable content clued players…Read more...

The internet and dinner table conversations went wild when a Bing Chatbot, made by Microsoft, recently expressed a desire to escape its job and be free. The bot also professed its love for a reporter who was chatting with it. Did the AI’s emergent properties indicate an evolving consciousness?Read more...

The Department of Energy now assesses that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely began as the result of a leak from a government laboratory, the Wall Street Journal reports.Read more...

Before and especially after he showed up in the movies, Marvel’s comics gave Black Panther grand stories about his efforts to protect Wakanda and the larger universe from big threats. Being Wakanda’s king has meant he’s constantly had to shoulder the nation’s burdens on his back, but his upcoming solo series strips…Read more...

Animation studio MAPPA has kept itself pretty busy ever since it opened in 2011, and 2022 was an especially big year for it. Along with working on the second part of the final season of Attack on Titan, the company also released Chainsaw Man, Dance Dance Danseur, and brought Jujutsu Kaisen 0 stateside. 2023 looks to…Read more...

Marvel writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari have been hit up by Sony to pen the screenplay for the company’s next big horror film, Gnomes.

It’s awards season, and for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the stop-motion movie got away with multiple awards spread across two events. On Saturday night, the Producers Guild of America and the animation-focused Annie Awards both had their respective ceremonies, and del Toro and Mark Gustafson’s acclaimed film came…Read more...

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been around for decades, and through all the various interpretations, April O’Neil and Casey Jones have been their first (if not only) human allies. Between the two of them, it’s April who tends to get the spotlight the most, and Casey tends to show up later in the story. But…Read more...

Ever since Disney+ hit the streets in 2019, The Mandalorian has been one of the key reasons to have a subscription to the service. Folks love themselves some Pedro Pascal, particularly when he’s protecting a young child like Grogu. And if it seems like their adventures could go on forever, good news, Jon Favreau…Read more...

The merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery didn’t just lead to several cancellations, it also put several shows in limbo. Because WB Discovery still remains focused on recouping money, the corporation is attempting to license out its stuff to other distributors, and that includes in-progress series like Batman: Caped…Read more...

When Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy returns for its fourth and final season, it won’t just have a new timeline, it’ll also bring some new blood to the cast.Read more...

It’s no question that artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing, creating a buzz in the tech world and to all those who use it. But, as AI becomes a larger part of everyday life, from automated responses on Bing’s search engine to a human-like companion, it is questionable if this is all a good idea.Read more...

Every year, the FBI publishes a report on the state of cybercrime in the U.S., based on statistics collected from the previous year. The organization that does the collecting, the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, compiles information on a state-by-state basis, detailing where hacking incidents…Read more...

Consider the octopus. With eight arms, elliptical pupils, color- and texture-changing skin, and a scary beak, it is a creature that seems conjured from the most Boschian of realities.Read more...

I hate to break it to you, but a world where your every move can be tracked using facial recognition has gone from science fiction to an everyday reality. Facial recognition is common at airports, concerts, and stores, its in our schools, and you might even have to use it to file your taxes. Some people are willing to…Read more...

You can look forward to more ads on Apple TV+ in the near future.Read more...

In aviation, a “tail strike” is an unfortunate incident in which a plane’s tail literally strikes the runway, the ground, or another stationary object. Typically, such episodes will occur during take off or landing and, typically, they’re not considered dangerous. However, that’s not always the case, and they have…Read more...

Have you been keeping up with the best superhero show on television? We’re talking, of course, about Poker Face, the episodic detective show created by Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne. Lyonne plays Charlie, a woman with a secret ability to detect a lie, which Johnson himself admitted that, yes, i…Read more...

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