Gizmodo

Europe has been on fire this summer, but the number of firefighters available to address blazes around the continent has been on the decline.Read more...

Universal Music Group and Google are in discussions to license artists' voices and melodies for AI-generated content. The two companies are considering developing a tool that people can use to create AI-generated music, otherwise known as deepfake, with popular artists' voices, the Financial Times reported.Read more...

After 100 days of the writers' strike, and nearly a month of the actors' strike, Disney has realized it needs writers and actors to celebrate the company's 100 years, which were made possible by those very artists.

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It's an incredibly busy day at Gen Con-the annual tabletop gaming convention held in Indianapolis-and the Pirate Borgtable is full of books, dice, and, off to the side, a galleon figurine. The galleon is suitably manned by skeletons, half-dead pirates, and I think I spotted a shark or two shadowing the water.

Update August 9 at 5:20p.m. EST:

Magic: The Gathering cards worth an estimated $300,000 were stolen from Pastimes, an Indiana gaming company, last week during Gen Con in Indianapolis-one of the largest gaming conventions in the world. Zack Reiter, a manager at Pastimes, confirmed via email to io9 that it was his store that was affected by the theft. ...Read more...

The House of Ideas' latest is something that indeed could diplomatically be described as an idea:" Marvel has confirmed after a brief period of teasing that Spider-Man hasn't gotten enough attention for all the wrong reasons lately.

Getting enough steps in to stay healthy might be easier than expected, a new review of the evidence suggests. The study found that walking just under 4,000 steps a day is associated with a reduced risk of early death, while even less than 2,500 steps a day could cut your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease....Read more...

Halloween is starting now, and if that thought makes you groan like a zombie, you've clearly forgotten how early things begin to sell out at your local Spirit Halloween. Yeah, pretty much as soon as doors open and hordes of horror fiends descend into the aisles.

The International Space Station (ISS) has been home to more than 250 astronauts who have lived and worked on board the orbiting lab for months at a time. Unlike homes on Earth, however, the space station has been discovered to have higher levels of chemical contamination lingering in dust.Read more...

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Apple has once again had a wrench thrown in its plans for smartphone hardware, though it won't affect the hotly anticipated autumnal release of the iPhone 15. Saudi Arabia had passed a law requiring all future smartphones sold in the country to have USB-C ports beginning in 2025.Read more...

Solar Opposites season four arrives August 14 on Hulu, bringing a new cast member (Dan Stevens, replacing Justin Roiland) and a new set of adventures for its alien characters, who always manage to entangle themselves in plots that are somehow both mundane and potentially apocalyptic. io9 has an exclusive clip to share...Read more...

Tech news website CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results, Gizmodo has learned.Read more...

After six years of development, Baldur's Gate 3-Larian Studio's highly anticipated successor to the legendary Dungeons & Dragons CRPG series-finally hit PC last week. Players have been gathering a party and venturing forth to chaos, heroics, and a motley crew of characters. But for one of those heroes" in particular,...Read more...

Astronomers transfixed the public in April 2019 when they released the first-ever image of a black hole, produced by radio wave data from a collaboration of telescopes around the world known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope.Read more...

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Epic Games' appeal against Apple on Wednesday, which would have required the iPhone maker change its App Store's payment options. Epic Games, the owner of the popular video game Fortnite," filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in 2020 accusing the company of holding a monopoly over...Read more...

Do I actually use my iPhone to call people? Yes, yes I do, as it so happens. The thing about calls is that their function hasn't changed in any major way since the first iPhone started the whole smartphone craze, despite the addition of extra features like Facetime. Now Apple's latest iOS 17 beta has changed the...Read more...

The special counsel investigating Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election tried, failed, and ultimately succeeded in accessing the former president's Twitter account, documents published Wednesday show. According to the courts, Twitter was late in producing all the information investigators wanted on...Read more...

Get hooked back into the Spider-Verse with the opening sequence from the hit Sony Pictures Animation superhero film.Read more...

The White House has announced a contest incentivizing the development of new artificial intelligence systems designed to hunt for software vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. The AI Cyber Challenge" will be a two-year government-sponsored competition designed to spur the creation of new automated security...Read more...

Here's some potentially happy news: Depression and anxiety might not raise the chances of cancer after all, new research this week has found. The study, a review of existing research, found no significant link between either condition and an increased risk of cancer in general, or many of the most common types of...Read more...

The Witcher's long, curious road through Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy novels has led to a lot of frustration for some fans-even before the series' messy downward spiral by the back half of season three. But according to a new documentary about the season from Netflix, the team behind the show wanted to patch up one...Read more...

Your work chats are going to look very different very soon. On Wednesday, Slack said it would update its interface for the first time in three years, adding new ways to quickly gauge who's screaming for your attention across multiple channels and chats and mark conversations for followup.

Gen Con 2023 is in full swing, but the day before the festivities started, a heist occurred on the show floor.

It's been a few weeks since Good Omens season two dropped on Prime Video, and let me tell you the Aziracrow girlies (non-gendered) have been eating good and also sobbing into their meals for the past two weeks. I'm not going to spoil it, as the entire season dropped at once and I would like more people to watch the...Read more...

The saga of Cardi B's microphone retaliation in Las Vegas has come to an end. After an audio technician began an auction last week for the mic the rapper threw at a fan, it's now sold for almost $100,000 on eBay, with the proceeds being split between two charities.Read more...

Google hungers for all that content produced by the wealth of digital publishers creating text, video, and images on a daily basis. To deal with the sticky copyright issues at the heart of AI training, Google is proposing that all those companies who don't want their content gobbled up will need to opt-out" to ensure...Read more...

Peter Dinklage welcomes you to The Academy in a new Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes teaser. Universal's live-actionHow to Train Your Dragon has been hit with indefinite delays. Plus, more behind the scenes on Last Voyage of the Demeter. Spoilers now!

This year's Perseid meteor shower is set to be a good one, and it'll reach its peak this coming weekend. Here's what you need to know about the Perseids and the best way for you to catch this dazzling display.

The days of sky-high carshare rates could be behind us-at least if Lyft is your app of choice. The Uber competitor announced during a quarterly earnings call yesterday that phasing out surge pricing is on its list of priorities moving forward.Read more...

Meta is adding more features to Instagram Threads. Users will now be able to see their own liked posts if they update the app. The feature was beta tested on Android last week but rolled out for all users over the weekend.Read more...

The back-to-school season has a different feel now than in the pre-pandemic days. Today, hybrid learning is a given for many students, and having a reliable computer is table stakes for even grade schoolers, not just high school and college students.Read more...

Though most American audiences know Matt Berry for playing frisky vampire Laszlo on What We Do in the Shadows, he's had a lengthy comedy career in his native England, highlighted by cult-beloved shows like Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, and Toast of London, to name just a few.

While you still can't share passwords without paying extra, it sounds like Netflix will soon attempt to sweeten your subscription deal by bringing its game offerings to your TV. The streaming giant has unexpectedly published the Netflix Game Controller to the iPhone App Store without any heads-up or an official launch...Read more...

Looks like a good old fashioned visit to the toy aisle might be in order if you want a chance at the second drop of Barbie movie dolls.Read more...

NASA is working to resolve a lingering issue with the Orion capsule's heat shield, which is designed to protect the astronauts on board the spacecraft during its return to Earth as part of the Artemis 2 mission.

Amazon has removed half a dozen AI-generated books published under a living author's name without her consent following a social media backlash. Though the misleading content was finally removed on Tuesday, the author, veteran publishing industry writer Jane Friedman, worries that a lack of clear, coherent policies at...Read more...

Preventive mammograms for breast cancer might be less worthwhile for older women, according to research released this week. The study's authors estimate that a substantial percentage of cancer cases caught through screening in women over 70 are overdiagnosed, that is, the detection of a tumor that isn't likely to...Read more...

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Disney is jumping on the artificial intelligence bandwagon. The conglomerate has formed a task force to determine how the technology can be strategically deployed across various parts of its vast entertainment and media empire.Read more...

So... Gen Con happened. To like, all of us. The annual gaming con held in Indianapolis brought record breaking" numbers of fans through the convention center. Also, a few awards. Yours truly lost the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming to a truly excellent and deserving game, Coyote & Crow. Additionally Free...Read more...

Alarming heat and humidity killed hundreds of cows in Iowa last month. These losses have further decreased the size of the overall U.S. cattle herd, which has shrunk to a more than 50-year low. The Department of Natural Resources in Iowa told Reuters that it had received a much higher than normal number of body...Read more...

The ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have made it so that Hollywood productions are largely ground to a halt, and other arms of the entertainment industry are similarly in stasis. Things have been a little murkier over in the Actual Play space, where actors play a roleplaying game on YouTube or another streaming...Read more...

Update: They're real! For those thinking about getting a Steam Deck but who recently missed out on sale prices, Valve now says customers will be able to buy used, refurbished Steam Decks at discounted prices.Read more...

Security researchers at IBM say they were able to successfully hypnotize" prominent large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT into leaking confidential financial information, generating malicious code, encouraging users to pay ransoms, and even advising drivers to plow through red lights. The researchers were able...Read more...

Russia is getting ready to launch its first mission to the Moon in nearly fifty years in an attempt to stay relevant amidst a renewed space race.Read more...

In a new interview with Empire, Ridley Scott revealed that he regrets being forced to turn down the director position for the Blade Runner sequel. Because of scheduling conflicts with Alien: Covenant, he was asked to choose between the two films (the Alien franchise is released by 20th Century, Blade Runner by Warner...Read more...

Data collected by the InSight Lander on Mars before its untimely demise this past December may have revealed some of the planet's curious behavior. Scientists studying Mars recently revealed that the planet's rotation may be increasing while its core is causing it to wobble.Read more...