Gizmodo

Following Amazon’s deal to buy iRobot—the company that put Roomba on the map—for $1.7 billion, the European Union is gearing up to investigate the purchase. Not only will regulators look into the details of the acquisition, but they’re also likely to go over privacy concerns.Read more...

Most carbon credit schemes, where real-world pollution is traded for theoretical emissions reductions, are at least borderline bullshit. Through the language of carbon offsets, companies and governments can rely on shoddy calculations to make themselves look environmentally aware, while actively pumping more…Read more...

Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk said he would finally let the blue bird app fly free under a new CEO, though only after we reach the end of 2023 after he finally manages to “stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and the product road map is clearly laid out.”Read more...

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

It’s an especially great day to be a Nnedi Okorafor fan: the much-acclaimed author has three new adult fantasy novellas on the way. io9 is excited to reveal that DAW Books will release a prequel to Who Fears Death—itself the basis for an in-the-works HBO series being produced by George R.R. Martin.

Our worst suspicions over why Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s tweets flooded user feeds on Monday have apparently been confirmed. Twitter engineers purportedly created a special system to increase their boss’ view counts and the reason is just as petty as you can imagine.

Zine Month—or ZiMo—is in full swing, and even more games were released this week. We’ve got a whole slew of new indies for you to check out. Again, you can read through our first roundup here, which goes over some of the history of ZiMo, and you can peruse both Kickstarter’s Zine Quest and Crowdfundr’s Tabletop NonstopRead more...

Love is in the air today, and nothing quite says romance like... horror comics? Sure, maybe we got our holidays mixed up, or maybe we just want to provide some loving reading material for those whose tastes trend more macabre than they do mushy.

In a new oral history of the Raccacoonie scene in Everything Everywhere All at Once, producer Jonathan Wang shared his own deep connection to the standout moment—and how his film made it “Pixar” without, you know, getting sued by Pixar.Read more...

One simple update to Facebook may be the closest Meta has ever gotten to giving users a quick and relatively simple way of accessing the metrics it uses to hit them with targeted ads.Read more...

The last time Indiana Jones graced the big screen, an Iron Man film starring Robert Downey Jr. was still considered a risk, and fans had yet to experience Heath Ledger as the Joker. Even then, in a time that feels like a lifetime ago, legendary actor Harrison Ford was already considered a senior citizen.Read more...

Did you force your PC to install Windows 11 despite it not meeting the official requirements? (Why?) Microsoft might start nagging you for doing that—or at least reminding you that what you’ve done is against the intended use of its operating system. The January 2023 Windows 11 update is pestering folks who forced the…Read more...

It seems Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 isn’t impervious to cracks after all. PhoneArena reported this week on an email from a reader complaining that their Z Fold 3 had suffered nasty damage down the middle of the inside panel, right along where the 7.6-inch display creases. Of course, this happened after the device’s…Read more...

NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent its two years on Mars imaging the planet’s surface and collecting rock samples that will, should all go well, be brought to Earth in the early 2030s.Read more...

Hyundai and Kia are offering a free anti-theft update after a TikTok challenge went viral last summer. The challenge directed viewers on how to break into Hyundai and Kia vehicles using tools as simple as a USB cable.Read more...

It seems like every year, we get a new prediction that a folding iPhone is on the way. According to some new patents, part of the reason for that wait may be because Apple has been exploring new ways to make every single inch of the elusive device into an input surface, even when it’s folded up like a clamshell. As…Read more...

The Game Boy Advance is my favorite video game platform of all time, and while I loved it from day one, I didn’t love the original version of the handheld. It took almost two years for Nintendo to right the original GBA’s wrongs, but its successor, the clamshell GBA SP, was worth the wait (and the years spent…Read more...

Everyone has their Batman. The Batman they grew up with and made them fall in love with the character. Maybe it’s from a specific comic book artist: Jim Lee, Frank Miller, etc. Or maybe it’s from a specific series: Adam West, Christian Bale, heck, even Robert Pattinson. I know this is true because, well, it was a joke…Read more...

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced it has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm for a self-flying F-16 fighter jet less than three years after creating the control simulated F-16 jet.

Grogu will not follow the path of the Jedi. That much was clear after the character’s appearance on The Book of Boba Fett, where he chose to leave with the Mandalorian rather than train with Luke Skywalker and wield Yoda’s lightsaber.Read more...

Instagram is nixing the “Live Shopping” feature that’s allowed creators to directly tag products and promote links in their live broadcasts for the past couple of years. On Tuesday, the company announced the change in a Help Center post, and noted the feature’s official funeral is set for March 16, 2023.

“The last search on his phone before Carson ended his life was for hacks to find out the identities of his abusers,” said Kristin Bride, the parent of a child suicide victim and a social media reform advocate. Bride testified before a panel of senators about the cyberbullying that led to her son’s death and the other…Read more...

NASA’s new lunar program is in full swing, thanks to the successful launch and return of the Artemis 1 mission in late 2022. Physics researchers recently determined that the roar of the Space Launch System megarocket was louder than anticipated—but not so loud as the NASA launch that sparked an urban legend.

When Kevin Feige speaks, news about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to be made, and it just happened again. In a new interview, the president of Marvel Studios said that there are ideas of how to continue the story of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and that writers are getting to work now. He also thinks Marvel…Read more...

It’s the most romantic time of the year once more, and as always, io9 has got your back if you need to tell someone you love them through the medium of genre film and TV, and questionable puns. Let your heart skip a beat and stroll through our handcrafted nerd Valentines, from Star Wars to Marvel and beyond, from G/O…Read more...

Role, an integrated tabletop play experience—the company shies away from using the term “virtual tabletop,” hoping to convey a more holistic offering—is now going to be fully available on mobile app. The press release states that this will provide “seamless game room support across smartphones, tablets, desktop, and…Read more...

Google unveiled a beta version of its “Privacy Sandbox” for Android Tuesday, part of a years-long effort to transform the business of the internet and make it harder for companies to feast on the buffet that is your personal data. Paradoxically, Google says the goal is to track everything you do online in a way that’s…Read more...

An evil ruler with a legion of faceless soldiers at their disposal. A band of heroes, traveling across vast new worlds filled with evocative and wild creatures. Transports that look like giant stingrays. Enormous battles across towering technological wonders. A cantina. Yup, that all sounds like Star Wars, but it’s…Read more...

McDonald’s AI-powered drive-thru ordering system is apparently missing the mark, at least according to social media. Videos posted to TikTok are illustrating just how woefully ill-prepared automation is at taking fast food orders, and how woefully ill-prepared humans are to deal with it.

For the second time in two months, a docked Russian spacecraft at the International Space Station has sprung a coolant leak. Investigators don’t yet know the cause of the latest leak, prompting Russia’s space agency to delay the launch of a ‘lifeboat’ that’s meant to secure the safety of two cosmonauts on board.

Meta’s Oversight Board announced it is introducing new measures to expedite case reviews to ensure urgent cases receive a quicker response time. Each case will be considered on a case-by-case basis and will separate into summary decisions and urgent cases.Read more...

We’re just a few months out from The Super Mario Bros. Movie hitting theaters on April 7, which means it’s time for the hype train to officially leave the station and get up to speed. Following an amusing teaser released over the weekend reviving the Mario Rap from the live-action Super Mario Bros. Super Show, we’re…Read more...

A decade ago, BuzzFeed was mostly known for popularizing the listicle format and for its bevy of weird quizzes. Hell, there’s even listicles of weird quizzes there to keep users scrolling forever. But with the AI craze flooding the internet, BuzzFeed is trying to carve a new niche for itself in the often-surreal and…Read more...

Skeptical members of the Senate Banking Committee will hear from both crypto believers in a Valentine’s Day hearing to try and make sense of the recent “crypto crash” and advocate for new, more strenuous regulatory safeguards to protect consumers. The hearing comes at a pivotal moment for cryptocurrencies. Scandals,…Read more...

Mischa Collins’ Harvey Dent arrives in new Gotham Knights footage. Bo-Katan takes control in a look at The Mandalorian season 3. Emma Roberts and Laurence Fishburne team up for a tense new sci-fi thriller. Plus, a new look at Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider. Spoilers get!

Elon Musk’s Twitter has announced another delay in plans to end free access to its application program interface (API). The postponement came from, where else, but a tweet from the platform’s official developer account posted on Monday afternoon.

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

Federal prosecutors are squinting pretty hard, trying to keep an eye on what the failed FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been doing while he’s been ordered by the court to live under his parents’ roof. The young crypto founder has reportedly been accessing the internet using a VPN, and the U.S. Attorneys Office is…Read more...

Today, Tesla Autopilot workers in the company’s Gigafactory in Buffalo, New York have officially kicked off the union push with a letter to management, formally announcing their bid to unionize.

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After throwing a hissy fit last week because his tweets weren’t getting enough views, Twitter CEO Elon Musk seems to have finally gotten what he wanted: Musk-filled feeds.Read more...

It doesn’t take much to get ChatGPT to make a factual mistake. My son is doing a report on U.S. presidents, so I figured I’d help him out by looking up a few biographies. I tried asking for a list of books about Abraham Lincoln and it did a pretty good job:

T-Mobile said on Tuesday that it was operating at “near normal levels” after it suffered an outage that affected swaths of users across the U.S. on Monday night.Read more...

Anyone anxiously holding their breath for a competent robot doctor may need to wait a bit longer. A group of AnsibleHealth AI researchers recently put OpenAI’s ChatGPT to the test against a major medical licensing exam and the results are in. The AI chatbot technically passed, but by the skin of its teeth. When it…Read more...

Sure, the drama between the Chiefs and Eagles on the field was great, but the drama across multiverses and galaxies was probably even better. Super Bowl LVII had a ton of great movie trailers and commercials scattered throughout, from The Flash and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, to Indiana Jones and the Dial of…Read more...

Bella Ramsey—who identifies as non-binary and uses all pronouns—is entirely unsympathetic to the plight of the homophobe who wants their media to remain as straight as an arrow. The third episode of The Last of Us, which many critics praised for its storytelling and the post-apocalyptic queer romance at the center of…Read more...

Before the the new DC Studios’ Chapter One: Gods and Monsters begins its slate of films under new co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran, there’s going to be a complete reset in the The Flash.Read more...

For those who love the slimmed down, 24-inch experience of an iMac sitting pretty on top of your desk—no tower necessary—you may need to keep on keeping on with the current build. A credible analyst told readers Sunday to sit tight if they want any more info on a new version of the iMac line.Read more...

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