Gizmodo

It’s the holiday season and now, maybe more than ever, kids around the world are begging their parents for the next shiny gadgets and gizmos. While there’s no shortage of enticing new tech toys to choose from, recent revelations unearthed from The Facebook Papers and academic research show the potentially troubling…Read more...

Late last month, Elon Musk decided to start a feud with Apple. What feels like a million years later, Tesla has introduced a $300 wireless charging mat that promises some of the features that were supposed to be included in Apple’s AirPower.Read more...

Researchers examined the wall paintings from a palace at Amarna, an Ancient Egyptian capital, and managed to identify some of the animals in the artworks.Read more...

2022 was a strange year in animation—the medium has never felt both as strong and as vulnerable as it as this year, with dozens of incredible films and TV shows releasing alongside news of cutbacks and dismissals of their creators by a wider industry that just can’t seem to understand animation’s worth. In a year…Read more...

Warhammer 40,000 might be one of the biggest and best known wargames around, having made the leap from the tabletop to video games, books, comics, and now, with the help of megafan Henry Cavill, an Amazon streaming franchise of TV shows and movies. But it and its grand, densely written world are still difficult to…Read more...

A major hack affecting password manager giant LastPass appears much worse than first thought. In an update announcement two days before Christmas, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba admitted the attackers were able to successfully copy a backup of customer vault data. With that data in hand, the attackers can potentially…Read more...

The Muppet Christmas Carol is among the most beloved holiday movies ever; It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas is among the weirdest. But many Jim Henson fans also hold 1977's Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, based on the 1971 book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, near and dear. Its heartwarming riff on O. Henry’s “The…Read more...

We know at least one other DC hero who won’t be showing up in The Flash. You’ll have to wait a week longer to see Adam Driver’s sci-fi dinosaur movie 65. Plus, Diego Luna talks why Andor could only be two seasons, and what’s coming on Doom Patrol. ‘Tis the season for spoilers!

It’s not often you see a company give a group of strangers on the internet $50,000 and tell them to do something cool. On Reddit this week, we got a dose of the internet as good and pure force, just in time for the holidays.Read more...

So you waited until the 11th hour and it’s now too late to order holiday presents online. Thankfully, there are several stores where you can still scavenge in-person for the perfect last-minute geeky gift for the fan in your life. Pro-tip to speed up your quest even more: order pick-up exists!Read more...

Snow Globe introduces us to a perfectly pink-clad woman flitting around a festively decorated room. But it soon becomes clear in this short film from Christopher Ryan Laughter—whose work io9 has shared before—that things are much more sinister than they appear. For one thing, the poem that narrator is reciting is…Read more...

Still high on all that Across the Spider-Verse hype, between the gorgeous trailer and increasingly wider posters revealing even more Spider-cameos? Well, good news for the bad news of having to wait six more months: we’ve got a tiny distraction to help.

The notorious Russian politician Dmitry Rogozin, former director general of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, said he was injured during an attack in Donetsk on Wednesday after someone leaked his whereabouts.Read more...

As tumbleweeds blow through the empty halls and vacant office spaces of Twitter headquarters, somehow, somewhere, Elon Musk found even more people to fire.

ByteDance, the parent company behind TikTok, admitted this week a handful of its employees, some based in China, inappropriately accessed TikTok data of U.S. users and two journalists when conducting an investigation attempting to snuff out the source of a damning leak.Read more...

The Woman King and The Underground Railroad actor Thuso Mbedu is joining Stranger Comics to pen a new tale in the publisher’s Tales of Asunda afro-fantasy series, and io9 has your first look.Read more...

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In an effort to avoid drawing more water from the drought-stricken Colorado River, Arizona officials are looking as far as Mexico for reliable water supply.Read more...

Some colleges are now restricting TikTok access on campus following a government crackdown in several states. Lawmakers have accused TikTok of reporting user data to China, and in recent weeks have moved to ban the app on state-issued devices. South Dakota was the first state to pass the ban with 13 other states soon …Read more...

With Netflix’s Dragon Age: Absolution, BioWare’s fantasy-RPG franchise makes a gradual return after having been previously in a bit of franchise limbo since 2015. The series hasn’t completely gone away thanks to comics and some books, but Absolution marks a real sense of change for the series ahead of the release of…Read more...

Failed crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried heard the news no young man wants to hear Thursday: “sorry son, you’re moving back in with your parents.” For all the young people who lived with their folks into their 20s, let’s just hope for his sake that the old man didn’t get rid of his old childhood bed.Read more...

Remember March 2020, when we were all stuck inside watching a kooky gay big cat owner do battle with another kooky tiger-print-wearing big cat sanctuary owner? One of those catty characters just scored a big win in Washington.

The original Arduboy made headlines as a credit card-sized handheld you could keep tucked away in your wallet for gaming emergencies, but it was also a great way to get started coding through the Arduino platform. The Arduboy Mini offers the same experience—8-bit gaming and portability—in an even smaller device. It’s…Read more...

Severe cases of strep A appear to be climbing in parts of the world outside of the UK, where the surge was first reported. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as several children’s hospitals in the U.S. have documented an increase, while doctors in Montreal, Canada recently reported a possible rise…Read more...

As we cozy up beside a roaring fire for some quality family time, or opt to just stay home to avoid the crowds and arctic temperatures spreading across the country, we’ve rounded up some of the more classic oldie but goodie Christmas films that can keep you company.Read more...

Even bad movies can have good moments—a standout scene, a big reveal, something impactful that sticks with you. In 2022, movies (some bad, but mostly good) were filled with unforgettable moments. We’re talking animals jumping out of trucks, pirate ships flying through the air, John Krasinski’s Mr. Fantastic being…Read more...

On Friday, Google announced its machine learning tool called Magritte was going open source. According to information sent to Gizmodo, the tool detects objects inside images or video and automatically applies blur when they appear on screen. Google mentioned the object does not matter, and blur can be applied to, for…Read more...

In an interview with NME, Charlie Cox discussed what he thinks the new Daredevil is going to look like now that Disney is producing the show. “My opinion is this character works best when he’s geared towards a slightly more mature audience. My instinct is that on Disney+ it will be dark but it probably won’t be as…Read more...

Earlier this week, Arianespace’s Vega-C rocket suffered a fatal anomaly that resulted in the loss of two satellites. The rocket, which debuted a few months ago, was meant to fill a major gap for the European space industry, but is now grounded pending an investigation.Read more...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation took a break from hunting serial killers this week to post a public service announcement: if you’re not using an ad blocker, what are you doing?Read more...

The Webb Space Telescope’s instruments have been in safe mode intermittently since December 7, but scientific operations resumed earlier this week, NASA said in a press release on Wednesday.Read more...

Much has been written about Tony Gilroy’s excellent Star Wars series Andor, available on Disney+. It’s being rightly praised for its complex characters and its multilayered plot. However, what jumped out at me, as a veteran of the intelligence business, was its knowing depiction of the role and execution of espionage.…Read more...

The crewed Artemis 5 mission to the Moon won’t happen until 2028 at the earliest, but the mission and those that follow will benefit from upgraded RS-25 engines, which NASA will use to power future iterations of its gigantic Space Launch System rocket.

Scam job listings and fraudulent recruitment efforts abound in email inboxes and on sites like Indeed, LinkedIn, and Zip Recruiter, according to a new report from the Washington Post. Under the guise of fake employment offers and opportunities, internet grifters are angling to take advantage of jobseekers, and collect…Read more...

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Google is reportedly ramping up work behind the scenes to close the technological gap with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model, an advanced chatbot capable of churning out conversational answers which some critics warn could pose the most significant threat to Google’s treasured search dominance in years.Read more...

As Elon Musk continues to gut Twitter due to his own hubris, it’s odd to hear of a new—potentially helpful—feature coming to the platform. The social media platform announced this week the integration of tickers for stock and crypto prices in search results and tweets.

When two fans of Ana de Armas rented Yesterday after seeing de Armas in the trailer, only to realize at the end of the movie that her part had been cut, they were so unhappy that they went to court over it. And won. In a rather bizarre Free Speech case, a federal judge has ruled in favor of movie-goers over the…Read more...

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Although it’s been more than a year and a half since Apple put its little tracking doohickey called AirTags on the market, the product has been repeatedly abused by stalkers as a way of keeping tabs on targets. This week, Apple silently released details on earlier firmware updates to its AirTags that lets users tell…Read more...

Warner Bros. has been a very busy studio this year when it comes to situations that feel like they are On Fire All the Time. But few have been tumultuous as the last few weeks and months in the studio’s DC Comics wing of moviemaking, where the arrival of a new leadership team has upended the movie slate as we know it.…Read more...

New footage from HBO Max’s 2023 slate teases The Last of Us and more. The next Alien film gets an intriguing code name. Megan Fox has joined S.K. Dale’s new sci-fi thriller. Plus, more teases for Henry Cavill’s final season on The Witcher. Spoilers now!

This past year was one of dire climate warnings, from bombshell IPCC reports to a summer of floods and fires to disturbing droughts across the world. And yet, entrenched interests were still working against climate action as hard as ever in 2022.Read more...

Just ahead of the Christmas weekend, much of the lower 48 is covered in a chaotic patchwork of severe weather warnings, watches, and advisories from the National Weather Service. From Thursday through Saturday, bitter cold and winter storms are forecast to ravage the U.S. across an area spanning at least parts of 45…Read more...

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South Korea’s top spy agency revealed on Thursday that state-sponsored North Korean hackers had stolen $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency and other digital assets from targets around the world over the last five years.Read more...

Climate change is throwing a wrench into an unexpected place: the workings of data centers. As the frequency of heat waves grows worldwide, these critical pieces of technology infrastructure are melting down more and more often, threatening a foundational element of the internet.

Elon Musk is destroying Twitter and Twitter is destroying Elon Musk’s life and fortune. Now that the man himself has publicly agreed to switch horses midstream, who will be the next CEO of Twitter?Read more...

Have you noticed that websites are offering you a friendly new way to sign-in with Google? Try Investing.com. When you hit the site, Google displays a popup recommending that you sign in the top right. If you’re on a phone, the prompt takes up almost half your screen. And if you’re using Chrome, you can sign in with…Read more...

Researchers in Japan say they’ve discovered “super” resistant mosquitoes in Asia. In a study published this week, they detail finding populations of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes—a common disease vector—in Vietnam and Cambodia carrying several mutations believed to confer strong protection against the most widely used…Read more...