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The rumors are true. If you need to replace or switch to a USB-C charging case for your Apple AirPods Pro, you will no longer have to spend $250 on a new pair. Apple is finally selling its new USB-C AirPods Pro USB-C charging cases separately for $99 (first spotted by The Verge).

Disney's Encanto has become one of the studios most beloved animated features on the strength of its fabulous songs (written by Lin-Manuel Miranda), amazing animation (directed by Byron Howard and Jared Bush), and a heartfelt story about a girl who doesn't feel special among her extraordinary family.Read more...

The legions of Elon Musk stans who have long dreamed of following in the unhinged billionaire's footsteps will soon have an opportunity to learn directly from the master. Or, rather, they'll have an opportunity to attend a university set up by Musk. And learn science. Or something. Maybe.

Three hackers in Poland were hired to fix the software of a broken train, and they were successful, but now the train company, Newag, is threatening to sue them, according to Polish outlet Rynek Kolejowy. The hackers allege that the trains were deliberately outfitted with software that would ensure they couldn't...Read more...

Talking on the Town podcast, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos-who, host Matt Belloni pointed out, has been reluctant to divulge ratings and audience numbers in the past-explained the timing of yesterday's What We Watched" engagement report, including why it's taken Netflix so long to offer this level of data transparency.

NASA's iconic space probe is having trouble communicating with its home planet due to a computer glitch, forcing engineers to resort to decades-old manuals to come up with a way tofix the 46-year-old mission.Read more...

Here's a scary lesson about why you shouldn't hold in your sneezes. In a case report this month, doctors in the UK describe a man in his 30s who tore open his windpipe by holding his nose and mouth closed while sneezing-apparently the first documented instance of such an injury. Though the man did have to spend some...Read more...

Have you ever wanted to wear the screen you play your Xbox games on? If you were desperately looking for yet another device to use your Game Pass Ultimate subscription, Meta and Microsoft told users Wednesday that they can start running through their cloud gaming library on Meta Quest headsets, including the Quest 2, Q...Read more...

After all this time, Hollywood still believes in The Lost Boys. After years of failed sequels and multiple attempts at TV reboots, the film is now going off the screen and onto the stage. It's being turned into a musical.

If Elon Musk's car company doesn't want its Nordic offices to get really smelly, really fast, it's going to have to put its tail between its legs and admit that it's officially been bested by the organized labor of Europe.Read more...

Twitter is officially dead. Since Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition of it late last year, people have been saying it's dead or dying or will die. Musk ended the argument when he renamed the app X." And now, so many people seem to pine for the days when Twitter was good. But let me tell you, it was never good. It...Read more...

In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves in several of his movies: Whoa."

Apple's strategy, if there was one at all, for protecting your phone's data from theft has been pretty bad all along. If the thief can take a glance at your password before stealing your iPhone, you have handed him your entire digital life. With the iOS 17.3 beta that rolled out yesterday, the company finally added...Read more...

Netflix announced that it was branching into games back in November 2021, but so far the streamer remains far better known for its movies and TV series. The company hopes to change that in 2024, with four new games on the way it announced today, and dozens more in the works-as well as a push toward making Netflix...Read more...

So far, Monarch has done a fascinating job of exploring the legacy of Godzilla across its dual timelines, but actually getting glimpses of the big guy (and current box office darling) since we flashed back to G-Day have been hard to come by. But as io9 can exclusively reveal, we're getting a little taste this week.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' private space venture, is ready to fly its New Shepard rocket again after over a year of being grounded. The company this week announced the rocket's first cargo mission since its booster went up in flames in a liftoff malfunction back in September 2022.Read more...

Worldcoin, Sam Altman's cryptocurrency venture, is now integrating its verification services into popular apps such as Reddit, Discord, Shopify, Mercado Libre, Telegram, and Minecraft. The move is part of Altman's World ID 2.0, which describes itself as a human passport for the internet."Read more...

As 2023 draws to a close, the io9 staff has had to admit something about ourselves: we watch a lot of TV. From a starting list that was admittedly alarmingly long, we managed to winnow down our 20 favorites-including animation, sci-fi, horror, and fantasy, and titles both brand-new, some seasons in, and (in one case,...Read more...

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Christopher Eccleston has had a long road of private and publicly processing his time on Doctor Who-for many years, the actor simply refused to talk about why, having helped turn the series into a sensation when it returned in 2005, he left and never looked back. But, while still largely reserved, Eccleston is now...Read more...

Are you enjoying that new Deck smell a little too much? Valve's support staff are now telling users that they shouldn't be huffing the exhaust from the Steam Deck's grills for their health and safety, though there's no recorded issue with folks taking a hit off their electronics' cooling vents.Read more...

Apple says it now requires a judge's consent before it will hand over your push notification data to law enforcement or government officials, according to an update of Apple's Legal Process Guidelines on Tuesday. Senator Ron Wyden wrote a letter to the Department of Justice last week accusing foreign governments of...Read more...

Kung Fu Panda expands its cast for its fourth movie. Terrifier 3 locks in a major return. Plus, another new look at Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Spoilers, away!

Meta's long-promised AI-enabled vision features for the company's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses are finally incoming, allowing the onboard AI to see, hear, and interpret its environment through the glasses' 12 MP camera and microphone. The company proclaimed late Tuesday that these new AI-vision features are now available in...Read more...

Many dream of hitting it big on the internet, but few actualize it.Read more...

Alex Garland has written or directed several excellent, terrifying, disturbing films. Films like 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Ex Machina and Annihilation. Films that show familiar worlds in unfamiliar, and often times unfathomable, circumstances. His new film seems as if it's going to do that too, but it's somehow much...Read more...

Tesla is under fire by California's Department of Motor Vehicles over the company's ads claiming its cars are completely self-driving, which they're not. Elon Musk's electric car company argues that its claims of being self-driving are protected under free speech, according to court documents made public by The...Read more...

Scientists once thought that only humans and our closest relatives, chimps, were clever enough to use tools. But as our documenting of the natural world has gotten more detailed-and as we've become less haughty about our supposed superior intellect-we've found that many species are actually deft with sticks, stones,...Read more...

The House of Mouse celebrated its centennial in 2023 through monumental film and television releases and Disney Parks experiences, while dealing with real-world repercussions during historic writers and actors' strikes. And then, of course, there was the whole ongoing skirmish with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Although the X-Men have been returning to the world of Lego in fits and starts recently-a few characters in the Marvel minifigures line here, a giant Wolverine fist there-2014 was the last time Marvel's mutants actually got to star in a more traditional Lego set. That's now changing... but it's not an entirely joyous...Read more...

If you give me access to your location, I am the person who will check on you constantly and bring it up the next time I see you. So," I'll start casually, what were you doing in the city last week?" Then you'll ask me how I knew you were down there. I'll remind you that you gave me access one summer long ago and...Read more...

As if the movies themselves didn't make it more than obvious, fans have long come to understand that the Star Wars sequel trilogy changed drastically throughout development. Multiple writers and directors worked on The Force Awakens as well as The Rise of Skywalker, sometimes with radically different results, while The...Read more...

The era of streaming services being reticent to share viewership information appears to be ending, as Netflix, one of the biggest in the biz, is now touting the arrival of its twice-yearly What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report."Read more...

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In contemporary fandom, canon is king. This is not a jab against an admiration of an ordered continuity and worldbuilding, the necessary aspects of creating a story to be lost in. But what goes beyond it-a yearning for raw, wiki-able data and facts that can be collated and held in amber, where interpretation gives way...Read more...

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The Last Starfighter is Hollywood's white whale. The 1984 film about a young man who is recruited to defend a planet because of his video game skills was decades ahead of its time and, in recent years, has been the frequent subject of speculation and excitement. It seems everyone in Hollywood has attempted to bring...Read more...

The coroner's report has officially come in, and just as we all expected, E3 is dead as a doornail. What was once the world's biggest gaming event was taken off life support years ago, but on Tuesday the Entertainment Software Association declared it was calling it quits supporting the Electronic Entertainment Expo.Read more...

When will Marvel fans get to see more adventures with Shuri as the Black Panther? It's unclear. But Marvel did just announce when the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be returning to Wakanda, and it'll be doing it in a very unexpected way.Read more...

Robots may help determine your legal fate if you end up in a British court. The UK Judicial Office issued guidance Tuesday permitting judges to use ChatGPT and other AI tools to write legal rulings and perform several other tasks.Read more...

Apple just redesigned its Apple TV app and brought a couple of features that should have been there a long time back. With the overall aim of making the streaming service easier to navigate, it already looks much more organized and intuitive.Read more...

New research shows that tirzepatide, the latest FDA-approved obesity drug, really can help people lose substantial amounts of weight-but only if they continue taking it. The study found that people who stopped taking tirzepatide after 36 weeks regained much of their lost weight within a year, while those who continued...Read more...

Cast your memory back to season one of The Mandalorian, to the first moment you glimpsed Baby Yoda-even before Star Wars marketing nudged fans into calling the character the Child," and before we learned his name was Grogu." This clip from Disney Home Entertainment's TheMandalorian Season 1 and Season 2, out today,...Read more...

In the streaming world, the most important superpower is luring eyeballs to your platform-though adding actual superheroes to your line-up certainly can't hurt. Thanks to a new deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, Tubi is now offering (or will soon offer) a wide range of DC Universe movies and TV series.Read more...

It's certainly disappointing that Dune: Part Two isn't in theaters right now but sometimes waiting is the best part. Case in point, today we've been graced with a brand new trailer, and it'll make you somehow even more excited for the sequel than you already are. Which is really saying something.

Since launching its first test mission to vaporize bits of an asteroid in space, AstroForge has struggled to keep a hold of its spacecraft and is now at risk of losing the ability to send commands to the in-orbit demonstration.Read more...

Space is an inky black yonder... but for the countless light sources that pepper the billions of light-years that human instruments can see. Thanks to ground-based telescopes and observatories parked millions of miles from Earth, 2023 has been a terrific year for space imagery. Astronomers captured fascinating new...Read more...

Retro toys are a funny thing. When The Phantom Menace hit theaters, it did so alongside the firepower of a fully armed and operational action figure line that represented a huge generational leap from the Star Wars toys that changed the movie industry two decades prior. And yet now in the present, nearly 25 years...Read more...

On Tuesday, the Entertainment Software Association announced that E3, once the biggest video game showcase on the planet, is officially dead.

Update: Late Monday evening, Corrain confirmed that she'd been review bombing POC authors, attributing it to past struggles with mental health. As she explained on Twitter, she had a mental breakdown earlier this month, which resulted in her creating the Goodreads accounts to boost A Crown of Starlight's rating and...Read more...