Gizmodo

It's time once again to pay tribute to the utmost of ursines. That's right, it's yet another annual installment of Fat Bear Week. People will get the chance to vote for 12 of the plumpest brown bears living at the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska all through next week. The contestants include grizzled...Read more...

Never mind that Google took over the week with its Pixel device announcements. Samsung held a keynote for its developer's conference today, and it announced its new soundbar, the HW-Q900C, which can act as a centralized SmartThings smart home hub.

Your ring camera is not only going to be the source of an Amazon-fueled Big Brother dystopia-it may also capture evidence of extraterrestrial life. On the off chance that you record an alien being on your Ring camera, the tech company is willing to pay you for it.Read more...

President Joe Biden is suspending 26 environmental laws to build a border wall in south Texas, a move announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday. The laws include the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Environmental Policy Act-all waived in favor of...Read more...

In a galaxy of compelling species, the Ferengi are one of Star Trek's most peculiar, and most fascinating. Growing from not-quite-threatening villains in their TNG debut to a fascinating capitalist foil to the Federation's post-scarcity utopia in DS9 through characters like Quark, Rom, and Nog, their outside...Read more...

Fossilized human footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico are every bit as old as the 23,000 years-and-change they were dated at in 2021, according to new analysis published in Science.Read more...

Google announced today that the original Pixel Watch will be getting the Wear OS 4 later this year". We were already aware that the new Pixel Watch 2 is releasing with Wear OS 4 but it will be available for the 2022 model as well.

Blenders, lawnmowers, kitchen knives. These are common household items you expect to see featured in a horror film. You don't expect to see the serene things. You don't expect to see things known for their beauty. You don't expect to see a killer pool.Read more...

Pulsars are one of the strangest celestial bodies in space. These cosmic lighthouses emit periodic bursts of radiation from their magnetic poles, and now a team of researchers claim they have detected the largest burst ever recorded from a pulsar.Read more...

When Cyberpunk 2077 first launched after years of anticipation, a litany of bugs-and not even of the thematically cyberpunk kind-and other misgivings led to a disastrous landing. But in the years since, bolstered by goodwill updates and interest through collaborations like Netflix's excellent anime Edgerunners, Cyberpu...Read more...

The heyday of traditional cable may be over, but that doesn't mean the two biggest companies in the U.S. aren't trying to evolve with the times. Late last year, Comcast and Charter Communications announced they'd be teaming up on a streaming box to deter cord-cutters-and now, Xumo is here.

Breaking up is hard to do, especially when there's a commercial space station on the line. Northrop Grumman is abandoning its plans as a solo contractor to develop a replacement for NASA's International Space Station, and is instead partnering with Voyager Space to work on Starlab.Read more...

As the end of Ahsoka season one drew closer, we all had the same thought: There's no way this is all being wrapped up this season." And, now that we've seen the finale, that's certainly a fact. Series writer and creator Dave Filoni's ending did bring most of his characters to the end of a specific arc, but there is...Read more...

Star Wars has a long, long history with the collectible card game medium, but as the likes of Magic dabbles with high-profile crossovers and Disney itself gets in on the market with the wildly popular launch of Lorcana, its nearly time for the galaxy far, far away to return to the card-covered tabletop with its own...Read more...

On Thursday, UK regulators initiated a competition probe into Microsoft, Google, and Amazon's cloud computing practices. The investigation is based on a study by media watchdog Ofcom which forwarded its findings to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to examine U.S. big tech companies' competitive practices.Read more...

American Horror Stories heralds its return. Diane Kruger teases David Cronenberg's next movie, The Shrouds. Could They Live make a comeback? Plus, James Gunn offers a Superman: Legacy production update. To me, my spoilers!

Following the success of the Samsung Galaxy SmartTag and SmartTag+, the company announced a third successor in the line on Wednesday: Galaxy SmartTag2. Launching on October 10, the SmartTag2 promises upgrades in several areas which include the SmartThings Find companion app, battery life, design, and security.

Last year, it took reporters digging into Alameda Research's balance sheet to finally show that ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried's big crypto house of cards was built on a shaky bedrock of customer funds. But according to a new report, a few FTX employees were well aware that Bankman-Fried's hedge fund Alameda had...Read more...

New research appears to show that a ketamine-based nasal spray can outmatch a standard option for people with treatment-resistant depression. The large clinical trial found that people taking the spray in combination with other antidepressants were more likely to experience a sustained remission of their symptoms than...Read more...

Elon Musk's social media venture is getting curiouser and curiouser. Following some bizarre infrastructure changes (like rebranding the entire site's iconic name and imagery), Musk has now made the decision to strip links of their headlines when they're shared to the platform.Read more...

The first Surface Laptop Go I reviewed back in 2020 started at $550. The second version, from 2022, started at $600. Meanwhile, the new Surface Laptop Go 3 from Microsoft jumps to an $800 starting price. That's inflation for you, I guess.Read more...

This story is co-published with Grist, and is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how-and where-we live.

Quantum Leap returns to NBC this week to catch up with Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee), a time-traveler who has no control over where or when he's going to end up next, but who fortunately has the help of a Los Angeles-based team of badasses and geniuses helping him through each mission.Read more...

A stormy, wet year for California has brought its perilously depleted reservoirs back to life. The state's water year" ended this past Saturday, with officials noting that reservoirs throughout California are at 128% of their historical average, the Associated Press reports.Read more...

Jonathan Majors' trial starts this month just as Loki season two is set to debut on Disney+, but the actor's place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe remains unchanged for now.Read more...

Android users rejoice, you're finally being treated with the dignity you deserve. Google announced a couple of cool things at their Pixel event today. One of the smaller announcements that stood out was regarding the software policy for the Pixel 8. Google guarantees seven years of OS updates for its latest phone....Read more...

French police arrested five former Ubisoft employees this week for sexual assault and harassment allegations dating back to 2020. The French newspaper, Liberation, first reported that police detained two chief executives on Wednesday while another three were arrested the previous day following a year-long...Read more...

In Star Wars, nothing is ever really gone, especially if you're a contemporary streaming show on Disney+ and are in need of another callback to the wider saga. This week's Ahsoka finale gave us one such callback in its final moments, setting the stage for a fascinating arc-one rooted in Star Wars' most esoteric Force...Read more...

The animal kingdom is a dynamic place, filled with action, splendor, and drama. But freeze any one moment in time, and creatures' behavior can become hilarious. These images represent the final shortlist of the 2023 annual Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards competition. Previous finalists have included a lion...Read more...

Google hosted its Pixel 8 event today and announced several interesting developments. Their newly-released Pixel 8 phones were the star of the event, with the Pixel Buds Pro and Pixel Watch 2 bringing up the rear. There were also a few announcements on AI, Android 14, and the Bard Assistant.Read more...

Part of what makes going to a Disney park so magical is trying to figure out how any of it is possible. How do the structures of the rides blend so perfectly into the park? How do they launch fireworks like this every night? Who's making all of this food? Disney normally prefers to keep all of that a mystery but it doe...Read more...

Forget about switching into a different holiday mode when October is over-November is going to keep Halloween alive thanks to a theatrical re-release of 2022 horror breakout Terrifer 2. And there's more enticement than big-screen extreme gore: fans can expect their first eyeball-gouging tease of Terrifier 3.

Tree planting projects seem like a great climate solution-lots of trees can sequester lots of carbon that would otherwise be warming the atmosphere. But, surprise surprise, it turns out you can't just plop any old tree into the ground and expect to reap environmental benefits, new research finds.Read more...

The Bezos-Musk rivalry intensifies this week as Amazon gears up for the launch of two demo internet satellites. This marks the beginning of the Amazon billionaire's 3,236-satellite-strong megaconstellation that might one day compete with Musk's leading space-based service, SpaceX-with one day" being the operative...Read more...

Apple is telling users they can finally take their iPhone 15 models out of the freezer. The company released an iOS patch Wednesday with the stated purpose of fixing some bug that's making the phones run hotter than they should.Read more...

The act of already remaking a game as beloved and influential as Final Fantasy VII was always a daunting prospect, even before 2020's FFVII Remake made an audacious move to reframe itself as more akin to a metatextual exploration of the very idea of remaking FFVII. But when that prospect then has to weigh generations...Read more...

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There's always room for more artificial intelligence in your news feed-at least according to Artifact. The news app developed by former Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger is now rolling out AI-generated images for posts on the platform.Read more...

More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers went on strike on Wednesday, adding to the growing list of strikes sweeping the nation this year. Healthcare workers threatened to go on strike after contract talks between union leaders and Kaiser stalled on Tuesday.Read more...

It's finally here. Eli Roth's Thanksgiving goes from Grindhouse trailer to real movie.Read more...

Your genetics might just help sway your veggie-eating habits, new research out Wednesday suggests. The study found a possible association between adopting a strict vegetarian diet and up to 34 different genes. Some of these genes affect brain function and how our bodies process the fats we get from our food, offering...Read more...

It's mind-blowing to think Ahsoka is already over. Fans waited years to see how the character's story would continue and now, a mere eight episodes later, a major piece of that story has come to its end.Read more...

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta plans to charge European users $17 a month for an ad-free version of Instagram and Facebook. It solidifies a trend that would have seemed absurd just a few years ago: every major social media platform now either has a premium tier or is experimenting with rolling...Read more...

Google is touting its new Pixel 8 Pro phone as the first phone built for the generative AI era." As expected, Google's premium smartphone is getting a whole smattering of AI features running on-device thanks to the Tensor G3 chip. Well, at least, maybe it will be, eventually.Read more...

Chucky's back-and if you've caught any of the season three marketing, you've seen that he's seized upon potent, real-life national anxieties by infiltrating the White House. But what's his motivation? Without spoiling anything, all is not what you might think in the first half of Chucky's new season.Read more...

Meta's continued experiments with piloting us into a half-baked future appear to be backfiring. After announcing more customer-facing AI features on Meta platforms in September, the company's new sticker generation tool is letting some choice phrases and prompts go unchecked.Read more...

NASA is gearing up to start a crucial series of tests on the updated RS-25 engine, which will power the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon.

Astronauts traveling to the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program will go there in style as Axiom Space taps luxury brand Prada to assist in the design of its spacesuit.Read more...

Uber wants to eliminate trips to FedEx or the post office with its new Return a Package" feature. The ride-hailing company announced the addition to its growing list of services on Wednesday, saying it will mail up to five pre-paid packaged items to UPS or FedEx per trip.