Gizmodo

Short flights won’t take off across France anymore, so long as there’s an efficient train line that can connect commuters from point A to point B. In an aggressive effort to lower the country’s emissions, France has banned flight routes for locations where connecting train service would only take 2.5 hours or less.Read more...

If you care enough about His Dark Materials to watch the season three premiere today, you know the score: It’s been just under two years since the second season finale of the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s acclaimed fantasy trilogy aired. So it’s genuinely impressive how seamlessly season three begins, not only…Read more...

The world’s largest radio telescope is officially under construction in Australia, where work is underway on one component of what will be an intercontinental instrument. When operational in the late 2020s, the telescope will offer a sharper, wider view of the universe in radio wavelengths.Read more...

Around 2,500 of endangered seals in the Caspian Sea have washed ashore along the coast of Dagestan, Russia, CNN reports, citing the state-run news agency RIA Novosti.Read more...

In August, Higround released a collection of Sonic the Hedgehog-themed compact keyboards, including one design featuring graphics from a classic Sonic level spread across all the keys. The company’s latest keyboard collection takes a similar approach, but trades Sonic for the classic anime, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

British company OneWeb and its largest internet satellite competitor SpaceX have gone from enemies to friends. Well, sort of. OneWeb, in the wake of a canceled deal with Russia, was forced to source new launch providers—leading them to SpaceX and a rather unlikely agreement.Read more...

Every video game console has its signature games and franchises. For Sega, obviously, Sonic the Hedgehog is the big one. But a few spots down that list is ToeJam and Earl, and the rapping alien duo are now going to join Sonic on the big screen. Or, at least, a streaming service.Read more...

Guns N’ Roses filed a lawsuit on Friday against an online artillery shop for infringement of the Guns N’ Roses trademark and claims the shop’s name, Texas Guns and Roses, associates the band with the store.Read more...

Meet Jeff, an Amazon employee with zero work-life balance. All he does is toil his days away for the mega-corp, making sure customers are united with their mounds of totally necessary impulse buys. He needs a vacation! But since he’s a drone, that sounds impossible... until the world finds a way. By ending.Read more...

Cybercriminals with ties to the Chinese government have stolen tens of millions of dollars in U.S. covid relief benefits, NBC reports.Read more...

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Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee is considering a set of new road-related rules to fund a proposed transportation infrastructure bill. On the docket: raising the fee electric vehicle owners pay to register their cars. Currently, EV drivers pay $100 in the state every year; under newly announced budged scheme,…Read more...

Meta may ask you to send the company a video of your face before letting you hit up fellow people looking for love on Facebook Dating, if only to verify you are indeed old enough to date online.Read more...

Despite the various fluctuations in management, objectives, and the general passage of time, Warner Bros. did reaffirm over the weekend that its Blue Beetle movie would actually be coming out. With a debut poster focusing on the titular superhero’s alien Scarab, all that’s left now is to wait for the trailer (or two,…Read more...

G.R. Macallister’s latest, Arca, returns to the fantasy world of the author’s Five Queendoms. It’s a sequel to Scorpica, which came out earlier this year, and io9 has an exclusive first look today.

If you’ve been putting off a dreaded trip to the DMV to get yourself a REAL ID, you’ve got some time. The Department of Homeland Security announced that full enforcement of the initiative, which is meant to standardize forms of identification used to do things like board flights, will not go into effect until the…Read more...

For all the great things the Pixel 7 does, it was still missing out on some of the features it trumpeted most at launch—until today. Google is rolling out the latest Pixel drop, which includes some of the Pixel 7's much-ballyhooed features, like Clear Calling, speaker labels for the Recorder app, and free VPN through…Read more...

Next year will bring many highly anticipated films to your eyeballs, but few have us as excited as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The follow-up to maybe the greatest superhero movie of all time arrives with super high expectations, and while we’ve already seen a brief tease from the film, now we know when the…Read more...

There have been a few handheld gaming machines that really push the limits of how small a console can get, but the creator of the original, credit card-sized Arduboy is back with an even smaller version that still looks very much playable. The device is meant to encourage gamers to dabble in hardware hacking to expand…Read more...

Servant, the psychological thriller executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan—a guy who knows a thing or two about mindfucks and thrills—returns for its fourth and final season on Apple TV+ in January. And from the looks of this new trailer, there’s a wild ride ahead to the series’ conclusion. Check it out!Read more...

New Zealand plans to start mandating that Google and Meta pay local media companies for reposting news content on their platforms. The country’s Broadcasting and Media Minister, Hon Willie Jackson, announced the planned legislation in a Sunday press release.

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Another year gone by, another chance to reflect on our society’s lexicon. While Merriam-Webster officially crowned “gaslight” as their word of the year, Oxford University Press, the publishers behind the Oxford English Dictionary, is paying homage to some edgier internet slang: goblin mode.Read more...

Good morning, dungeoneers and dragon riders. Paramount has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette for the most absurd film that I’m foolishly excited for in 2023, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The swords and sorcery heist stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia LillisRead more...

NASA’s Orion spacecraft has executed its final close flyby of the Moon, in what is expected to be the last major course correction of the Artemis 1 mission.Read more...

Major Apple supplier Foxconn says its Zhengzhou iPhone plant should resume “full production” by January following months marked by covid-19 outbreaks and mass protests in response to strict pandemic restrictions.Read more...

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Game Boy Camera’s debut, and despite its very limited capabilities—even for 1998—there are still devoted Game Boy Camera photographers that love its pixelated aesthetic, and who will love this 3D-printable custom shell that makes it compatible with proper lenses.Read more...

The jokes really write themselves as far as the fledgling phone company Nothing is concerned. So far, the famed maker of the LED-backed Phone has kept up in the European, Middle Eastern, and Asian markets and has had nothing to show for the U.S. or Canada, at least as far as its phone business is concerned. Now, the…Read more...

Guy Ritchie wants to start shooting the live-action Hercules soon. Get a close look at Blue Beetle’s titular mysterious insect in a new poster. Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn’t believe in werewolves in a new Teen Wolf clip. Plus, Daredevil: Born Again and Loki casting. Spoilers now!

Three years and counting of a global pandemic has put the strain on a lot of people’s social lives: a problem that Cooler Master has decided to further exacerbate, rather than resolve, with a new multi-purpose computing pod called the Orb X that lets users further shut out distractions like co-workers, family, and…Read more...

Government officials in Moore County, North Carolina declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew from 9 p.m. Sunday night to 5 a.m. Monday morning after two shooting attacks on power substations knocked out power for thousands of people. And while some on Twitter speculated the attacks may have been tied to a…Read more...

Lionsgate and Keanu Reeves’ John Wick series is taking its first big leap for franchisekind with two spinoffs. One will be a TV show focused on the Continental that’s served as a base of operations for John and his surrogate dad Winston (as played by Ian McShane), while the other is a film centered on ballerina…Read more...

In about two weeks time, folks will finally see Avatar: The Way of Water in theaters. There’s been a lot of talk about if the multi-delayed, debatably long-awaited sequel to the 2009 juggernaut has anything to offer during its 3-hour runtime beyond gorgeous visuals and blue people with dreadlocks. And to that, James…Read more...

Amazon’s The Boys has become such a hit with audiences that it was only inevitable the series would get a spinoff or two to build out the franchise. While The Boys: Diabolical offered up some of the mothership series’ trademark violence and satire in an animated anthology format, Gen V is in live action and has as its…Read more...

Though we fairly recently had a live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, it still feels like it’s been awhile since there’s been a big live-action adaptation of a beloved anime to be watched. Plenty have been announced, to be fair, but several of them are quite a ways off, if they ever get made at all. Fortunately (?),…Read more...

Late Friday night, journalist Matt Taibbi released “The Twitter Files,” a batch of emails sent by Twitter executives discussing the company’s decision to stop an October 2020 New York Post story in its online tracks.

With its adaptation of The Last of Us, HBO is banking on the goodwill that Naughty Dog’s zombie-adventure franchise has banked through two games, an expansion, and a handful of comics. An adaptation of the series was always going to draw attention, but putting Pedro Pascal in the lead role as Joel and hiring …Read more...

Though the future of Netflix’s The Witcher is in an....interesting (if somewhat uncertain) place at the moment, its past couldn’t feel more sure of itself. Later in the month, the fantasy series is receiving another prequel in the form of Blood Origin, which aims to tell the story of the very first Witcher and show…Read more...

Next year, the Walt Disney Company will turn 100 years old. Ahead of that big milestone, Disney’s released a new animated short highlighting one of the oldest and long-forgotten creations: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

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The HBO horror-comedy series Los Espookys is calling it after two seasons. Like with Westworld from back in November, HBO has opted not to bring the series back for another season of episodes.

Those who plays video games may recall a game from earlier this year (or, if you have a Nintendo Switch, a month ago) by the name of Sifu. Developed by Sloclap of Absolver fame, the roguelike simultaneously garnered solid reviews for its combat and criticism for how it incorporated Chinese culture and languages. Now…Read more...

In this collection from the 2022 Nature inFocus Photography Awards, you’ll see animals in their natural habitats—like a tiger lounging on a bed of flowers—and ones in decidedly unnatural environments, like a caterpillar in its nest of plastic or a fox in a snow-covered city. The contest received tens of thousands of…Read more...

The Associated Press showcased its top photographs of 2022, reflecting on a year that’s experienced plenty of ups and downs across the globe.

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s goal for “general amnesty” towards banned accounts is in full swing. Since taking over, the multi-billionaire owner has given thousands of once-banned users access to their accounts once again. His extreme laissez faire-attitude has attracted some of Twitter’s worst characters back to the…Read more...

It’s officially time for the everything to be decked out in lights and for Sandy Claws and the Grinch to reign. Hey, they were really ahead of the curve with Santa cosplay. Jack Skellington has been in residence at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland since fall. And of course the real mean one has taken up residence at…Read more...

Before the trailer for Indiana Jones 5 was released, the world hardly knew anything about it. They knew who was in the cast and its release date, but until the trailer hit, 99.9% of the world didn’t even know the film’s title. In some deep, dark pockets online, though, certain fans think they know everything, and…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the coolest collectibles and most marvelous merchandise around. This week, we’ve got a whole host of Marvel Lego to assemble, Transformers goes retro again, and the armored star of Demon’s Souls braves the world of action figures. Check it out!

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Margot Robbie’s female-led Pirates of the Caribbean film, which was announced in 2020, might actually be back on the docket. Although Robbie said in an interview a few weeks ago that Disney “wasn’t interested” in the script, Jerry Bruckheimer, the executive producer of all five Pirates of the Caribbean films, has told …Read more...