Gizmodo

Stephen Amell, former star of the CW DC series Arrow, stepped into sticky stuff recently when he made comments at a fan convention saying that while he supports his union, SAG-AFTRA, he is not in support of its strike action. He soon took to social media to clarify his comments-and then last week was spotted on the...Read more...

The New York Times is making it clear that the AI industry won't be given free rein to pilfer the newspaper's content to train algorithms. In a recent change to its Terms of Service policy, the Times has explicitly forbidden the use of its vast media archives for the purposes of training any software program,...Read more...

Finally, Netflix is offering something truly new for its subscriber base beyond ordering them to stop sharing passwords. The company has finally followed up on rumors and announced it's testing out the ability for users to stream some of its mobile game catalog right from the main Netflix app.Read more...

At Gen Con earlier this month, a pallet of Magic: The Gathering cards worth $300,000 was stolen from the convention center; the product belonged to Pastimes, a gaming shop and MTG vendor. In an update from Indianapolis news station WTHR 13, police have identified two people of interest in the case: Thomas J. Dunbar...Read more...

The devastating wildfires that have destroyed homes have now officially killed almost 100 people. The official reported death toll last Wednesday was 6 people. By Friday the count had risen to 55 dead. As of today, official reports say that 96 people have died.Read more...

No other burger chain has permeated pop culture like McDonald's in film and television, and the fast-food chain is here to prove it.Read more...

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into law a first-of-its-kind bill entitling young social media influencers to a percentage of earnings for monetized videos they appear in. The law, which could accelerate interest for similar legislation in other states, marks one of the first known examples of...Read more...

Last week, io9 shared a glimpse of the floating cities occupied by Earth's invaders in new sci-fi film Landscape With Invisible Hand. (Read our Sundance review here.) Today's final trailer reveals exactly what those extraterrestrial occupiers look like-and surprising" doesn't even begin to cover it. No wonder...Read more...

An AI chatbot wrote a collection of poetry, and when its human co-authors needed someone to narrate the audio-book, Werner Herzog was the only reasonable option. It's the only saving grace of our dull, slow-moving apocalypse: sometimes, as we stare into the abyss, Herzog stares back.Read more...

Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studio's epic new Dungeons & Dragons game, has consumed a not-insignificant amount of my free time since it launched earlier this month. An amount that even I, who had been waiting half a decade to play it, thought was a little extreme. So shout out to the absolutely unhinged folks who...Read more...

The finger-on-the-pulse and Polk Award-winning crypto news media company CoinDesk is in dire straits. The website has reportedly laid off 45% of its staff as parent company Digital Currency Group explores a sale.Read more...

After a complicatedly muted run at the box office, Lucasfilm and Disney have announced that the fifth and seemingly final Indiana Jones movie, Dial of Destiny, will begin its home release launch at the end of the month.

Astronomers recently spotted one of the most massive brown dwarfs known, an object between 75 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter with a beyond-scalding dayside temperature of 8,000 K (13,940 Fahrenheit.)Read more...

Amazon is rolling out a new generative AI tool that will summarize customer reviews for each product, the company announced Monday. Instead of sifting through hundreds, possibly thousands of personalized reviews, the AI-powered tool will sum up the most frequently mentioned product features and customer opinions that...Read more...

Go behind the scenes of Invasion season 2. Outlander teases its return for next year. House of the Dragon is casting an intriguing character for season 2. Plus, Thirteen Ghosts could be heading to television. Spoilers, away!

NASA's Perseverance rover has been diligently collecting rocky samples from Mars to stow them away on the planet's dusty surface while engineers work to develop a rocket that can launch off of another world as a crucial step in the process of retrieving the samples.Read more...

Apple is set to release its next Apple Watch Series 9 set of smartwatches, but the company is reportedly offering little to no reason for any current users to upgrade from the Series 8. Current reports suggest the best thing to do if you're excited about the next evolution in wearables is to wait a year for the big...Read more...

What's a plane without an engine? After aerospace company Pratt & Whitney issued a recall on some of its engine models, airline companies in the U.S. and Europe are scrounging for parts, and doing anything they can to prevent canceled flights.Read more...

The solution for protecting the planet from some of the sun's rays could be a space umbrella." A study published thescientific journal PNAS in June outlines a University of Hawai'i researcher's plan for hitching an umbrella or shield onto an asteroid to block some of the sun's rays.Read more...

Noooooooooooooooooo...!!! [screams into the abyss]Read more...

For a long time, the X-Men were an oddity in the pages of Marvel Comics. They were extremely popular for years on end and able to stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Spider-Man and the Avengers through multiple series, but during the late 2010s, the characters were gradually diminished in favor of the Inhumans (which...Read more...

Earlier in the week, game developer Bungie revealed that Keith David would be portraying the role of Destiny 2's Commander Zavala beginning with 2024's The Final Shape expansion. The actor is taking over the role from Lance Reddick, who passed away earlier in the year, but his relationship with Bungie goes all the way...Read more...

The upcoming Star Wars: Ahsoka has spent much of its marketing thus far showing that our titular former Jedi (played by Rosario Dawson) is teaming up with members of old Star Wars Rebels characters. But there's one important character from Ahsoka's past that hasn't been discussed so far: her old master Anakin SkywalkerRead more...

Timothy Olyphant is one of those actors you love to see pop up in things, either as a leading man or a reliable character actor. Over the years, he's made a name for himself thanks to leading hit shows like Justified and Deadwood and popping up in guest roles like Cobb Vanth for The Mandalorian and Joel in Santa...Read more...

Through the years there have been plenty of apps promising a one-stop shop for all your messages, and the latest of these is Beeper: It collects all of your conversations from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack, Google Chat, Twitter (or X), and, yes, even iMessage.Read more...

If you're behind on what's happening with the robot uprising, have no fear. Here's a quick look at some of the weirdest and wildest artificial intelligence news from the past week. Also, don't forget to check out our weekly AI write-up, which will go into more detail on this same topic.Read more...

Throughout the decades, there've plenty of video games based on or featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While each of them have their own fans, one thing they all share in common is that they exist pretty comfortably in a space for young kids and maybe a nostalgic fan. After all, when the whole property is ...Read more...

Back in April, Disney+ started to gradually add a number of Spider-Man films to its catalog, from the old Sam Raimi trilogy to the considerably less older Spider-Man: Homecoming and Venom. Also added in that mix (eventually) was 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man, though it wasn't clear at the time when its sequel would...Read more...

Across most of the world where it's released, Warner Bros.' Barbie has been a big hit, and it's already shaping up as one of the biggest cultural events of the year, film or otherwise. And its impact is so big that it got people to break their mid-pandemic rule and actually see a movie in theaters as it was playing...Read more...

Since early May, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been striking for better pay and protections against AI (among other conditions). Over the months, support for the union has persisted across various avenues, and grown as SAG-AFTRA has also joined in on the strike efforts. Though last weekend saw botched...Read more...

Folding phones haven't replaced the standard smartphone, but the summer of foldables heated up when Samsung announced the Z Fold 5. The fifth-generation folding device is the more expensive of Samsung's two folding phones and the more feature-filled. It's essentially a package of everything Samsung wants you to...Read more...

Even in this day and age, you can't always guarantee a strong cellular connection to a mobile network everywhere you go, especially if you're on vacation. That can cause a problem when you're trying to make your way from A to B using your map app of choice. The solution is to download and cache sections of the map...Read more...

For the past 17 years, a lone spacecraft has been following Earth's tracks in its orbit around the Sun and capturing unprecedented views of our host star. Now, STEREO-A has finally caught up with its home planet, lapping us in our cosmic trail and meeting the Earth for a brief rendezvous.Read more...

Hello! We are officially launching a THING. It's going to be a weekly roundup about what's happening in artificial intelligence and how it affects you.Read more...

We've got a storm coming, maybe. The rest of the 2023 hurricane season will be busier than previously thought, according tonew projections from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Read more...

Virtual Private Networks, better known as VPNs, are services that route your traffic through a sort of encrypted tunnel, hiding your online activities from your internet service provider and anyone else who manages your network. That makes VPNs a tool you should definitely not consider using when you land at your...Read more...

Back in 1993, Jurassic Park mined agonizing tension from the simple image of water rippling in a glass. Those heavy T-rex footsteps are going to make an even more menacing impact when Steven Spielberg's sci-fi tale-which has been enthusiastically marking its 30th anniversary all year-hits theaters in RealD 3D.Read more...

Social reactions for Blue Beetle buzz with excitement, marking an auspicious future for DC Studios' clean cinematic start for its upcoming James Gunn and Peter Safran-led superhero slate.

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Modern smartphones have become incredibly water resistant, so much so that even foldables are boasting they can survive a 30-minute bath without crapping out. The one issue is that wet touchscreens are still a pain to control, and holding a phone out in the rain guarantees you're not scrolling until you dry it off....Read more...

Are you not entertained?! Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk's will they/won't they continues, and it appears that the long awaited fight between the two tech billionaires could take place in Italy.Read more...

Mickey and friends are summoned to the rabbit-filled land of Monoth in Disney Illusion Island, a new game for Nintendo Switch. They answer the call to protect it from impending doom because they're the heroes from all the journeys we've seen them on-no matter that Donald points out all those adventures were just ...Read more...

Once the lord of a multibillion-dollar crypto empire under the FTX brand name, Sam Bankman-Fried will now have to prepare himself for his upcoming trial from a cell. A New York federal judge revoked Bankman-Fried's bail and sent the crypto wiz to jail Friday to await trial later this year.

Futurama may have debuted over 30 years after Dune was published, but its homage to the classic sci-fi tale feels like another way the current revival season is tipping its cap to the pop culture of 2023. While we wait for Timothee Chalamet to mount a sandworm on the big screen, the Hulu series is sending team Planet...Read more...

Another day, another terrifying sea creature for our fragile human minds to process. A team of marine scientists say they've confirmed the existence of a bevy of new species living around Antarctica. One of these apparent discoveries is an invertebrate that somewhat resembles a strawberry, albeit with 20 arms.

After massive backlash over its wishy-washy communication regarding training artificial intelligence with customer data, Zoom wants to set the record straight. Today, Zoom issued an update to its previous announcement on its plans for AI to formally claim that the company will not use audio, video, chat, or similar...Read more...

As a parliament of nerds (affectionate) walked up and down the lanes of Gen Con, the annual tabletop gaming convention in Indianapolis, there seemed to be a never-ending supply of new games to try-and independent outfits were giving con-goers a massive variety to choose from.Read more...

In the rare times I've had, well, the time to actually play Dungeons & Dragons, I've never played a Warlock. I usually go for some form of Ranger, or a more traditional caster class. But in my many years adjacent to the biggest TTRPG around, I've heard the rumors about Eldritch Blast being the D&D equivalent of...Read more...

Beta Pictoris b is a young exoplanet about 12 times as massive as Jupiter, with an orbit nearly twice as long. Now, a timelapse video of the planet's nearly 23-year orbit lets you see most of that journey in just ten seconds.Read more...

We still don't know exactly how Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) made it from zombie-infested America to zombie-infested France, but as this new teaser for his Walking Dead spin-off informs us, a bunch of bad decisions" had a lot to do with it.