Gizmodo

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...

Get ready to greet more ghosts in a sequel to the scariest movie of the summer: Talk to Meis getting a part two and yes, it's called Talk 2 Me.

If you've ever stumbled upon Shudder OriginalFried Barry-the tale of a sleazy drug addict who gets possessed by an alien andheads out for a debauched rampage around Cape Town-you might not be surprised to hear its director, Ryan Kruger, is planning a remake of Street Trash. And if you're a fan of that grimy...Read more...

Sword and sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian has become a cult classic for many reasons, including Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakthrough performance as Robert E. Howard's musclebound warrior and the movie's Ron Cobb-designed, Frank Frazetta-inspired sets. (It also has some killer quotable lines.)Read more...

Zoom updated its Terms of Service on Monday after a controversy over the company's policies about training AI on user data. Although the policy literally says that Zoom reserves the right to train AI on your calls without your explicit permission, the Terms of Service now include an additional line which says,...Read more...

Prosecraft.io, a site that used novels to help power a data-driven project to display word count, passive voice, and other much more subjective, writing-style markers such as vividness, shut down today after authors protested the project. Prosecraft used the full text of over 25,000 books-which is entirely copyrighted...Read more...

Two people are dead and more than a million were in the dark after a series of severe weather bringing heavy rain, thunder, and strong winds swept over much of the East Coast yesterday evening.Read more...

The Changeling, adapted from the Victor LaValle novel, already looks like it's going to be incredible. Before Apollo (LaKeith Stanfield) married Emmy (Clark Backo), she made a deal with a woman in the rainforests of Brazil. After Emmy gives birth to their first child, something horrible happens, and she disappears....Read more...

The upcoming movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter has plenty going for it. The premise-following Dracula's voyage to England-is enticing. The cast, including Corey Hawkins, Liam Cunningham, and David Dastmalchian, is fantastic. Director Andre Ovredal (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Trollhunter) knows how to do ...Read more...

Wegovy, the popular obesity treatment, also seems to offer heart health benefits. On Tuesday, Novo Nordisk reported the results of a comprehensive clinical trial evaluating the drug's efficacy in preventing heart attacks and strokes in overweight or obese individuals. According to the company, Wegovy cut the risk of...Read more...

I know that the Demeter travelogue portion of Dracula takes literally less than ten pages in the whole book, but those epistolary passages (well known to anyone who follows Dracula Daily, as we have just sailed through the traumatizing passages) are incredibly horrific and haunting. Not to mention that they used all...Read more...

Apple is reportedly testing out just how much juice it can squeeze from its highly anticipated M3 processor, with the next M3 Max set to hold a surprising amount of graphical capability to power the company's next main laptop offering.Read more...

The race for song of the summer is seeing a dark horse candidate overtake what we thought were frontrunners. The latecomer is a Eurodance banger called Planet of the Bass" from memer and pop genius DJ Crazy Times with vocals from elusive chanteuse Biljana Electronica.Read more...

Following several delays and over $1 billion in losses, Boeing claims its troubled Starliner program will be ready to launch crews to the International Space Station (ISS) by early 2024 as it works to resolve two safety hazards on its capsule.Read more...

The mermaid (and merman) of the moment might be popping up on screens right now in Barbie, but Disney would like to remind you that The Little Mermaid also came out this year. If you didn't make it to the theater to see Halle Bailey's star-making turn as the live-action Ariel and you've been holding out for Disney+,...Read more...

From iconic directors and legendary actors, to big corporations and famous name brands, it seems everyone in Hollywood has something incredible to say about William Friedkin. The legendary, Oscar-winning filmmaker behind The Exorcist, The French Connection, Sorcerer, and so many others passed away at 87 this week in...Read more...

A new study published by a number of British researchers reveals a hypothetical cyberattack in which a hacker could leverage recorded audio of a person typing to steal their personal data. The attack uses a home-made deep-learning-based algorithm that can acoustically analyze keystroke noises and automatically decode...Read more...

Almost a full year after allegations of overwork and poor conditions, the visual effects staff at Marvel Studios is forming its own union.

A notorious 500-pound black bear responsible for a spate of home invasions over the last year was finally successfully captured in Lake Tahoe on Friday. The female bear, known as Hank the Tank," broke into 21 different homes with three cubs in tow. She will be transferred to a sanctuary in Colorado if her veterinary...Read more...

Across various slices of entertainment, crunch and overwork have become big problems. Though it's been commonly talked about in video games in recent years, those discussions have bloomed over into animation, as we saw with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse earlier this summer.

Sharknado-the knowingly goofy horror comedy about a tornado that dumps hungry ocean predators all over Los Angeles-turns 10 this year. Though it started off as a made-for-TV affair, it eventually transcended that label to become a full-fledged pop-culture phenomenon, and it's marking its birthday with a special...Read more...

A day spa in Northern California might be the source of a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. Over the weekend, local health officials reported three cases of the bacterial illness, including two deaths, among recent customers of the Zen Day Spa in Richmond. The spa has now been closed down while officials...Read more...

The Star Wars Rebels heroes are back in a new fight led by Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) to stop the threat of Thrawn. The continuation of the Dave Filoni universe that started with Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes the jump from animation to live-action in Ahsoka, coming soon to Disney+.Read more...

More than 100 million Americans living on the East Coast are on the lookout for severe weather conditions that could form this week beginning Monday afternoon.Read more...

Noah Schnapp had a massive year in the wake of Stranger Things season four. The 18-year-old actor publicly came out on TikTok, mirroring Will Byers' journey on the Duffer brothers' supernatural horror show. Schnapp recently spoke to Variety about how his personal experiences will be affecting season five of the show.Read more...

The same weekend a film mentioning Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League crossed a billion dollars at the box office, a film that also relates to Snyder's story had reason to celebrate. David Ayer, the director of 2016's DC film Suicide Squad, said on X that he's spoken to one of the presidents of DC Films, James Gunn,...Read more...

PayPal is diving into the messy world of crypto with a new stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, aptly and uninventively named PayPal USD. The company's entrance into the industry comes at a time of deep regulatory uncertainty as federal agencies and lawmakers continue to grapple with the fallout of multiple major ...Read more...

One of the greatest American film directors of his generation, William Friedkin, died this week in Los Angeles at the age of 87. Best known for films like The Exorcist, The French Connection, Sorcerer, Cruising, and To Live and Die in L.A., Friedkin was as prolific as he was talented, redefining the horror genre one...Read more...

Two firefighters and a pilot died this weekend after helicopters that were responding to a fire in Southern California collided in midair. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened a probe into the crash, and investigators are on their way to the scene of the accident.Read more...

Last week, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers offered to meet with the strikingWriters Guild of America for the first time in nearly 100 days. But almost immediately after leaving the bargaining table, the WGA started receiving calls from trade magazines asking for comments on the negotiations....Read more...

Stephen King is one of the most adapted authors of all time, and-unlike Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming-he's still alive and prolifically publishing. New documentary King on Screen celebrates the phenomenon of King-inspired movies and TV series, mostly through interviews with directors who've helmed...Read more...

While the scientific community has been recently focused on the feasibility of an alleged room-temperature semiconductor, U.S. scientists revealed this week that they have successfully recreated a pivotal fusion experiment.Read more...

Google is just plain tired of all your grammar flubs in Search. The company announced Monday it had added a simple grammar check feature into the world's largest search engine, though you won't be using it to shore up any writing you want to show someone else.Read more...

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Elon Musk said his social network will livestream his cage match with Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Sunday. Musk challenged Zuckerberg to the fight in late June, and the Meta CEO called his bluff.Read more...

Sure, we're all busy playing Baldur's Gate, but if you have a minute to look up from the screen, we're here to tell you about what's coming up on...well, your other screen, probably. Check out the trailer for Marvel's I Am Groot and keep your eyes out for the Korean film Devils, hopefully coming to a big screen near...Read more...

After years of dominating the cell phone market, one thing has become clear to Apple: Things on the smartphone front might be slowing down. The tech corporation has acknowledged a dip in sales in the U.S. ahead of the release of the iPhone 15.Read more...

There's something about an elevator that touches on the very nature of the .GIF format. There's a repetition to its design, a cyclical nature of destination and return, a permanent transience. It loops, constantly, permanently. What changes is the people who are there to inhabit it-or witness it.Read more...

Since 2005's Elantris, Brandon Sanderson has gradually risen in prominence as one of the biggest (and busiest) fantasy authors working today. And like other authors of similar status, Sanderson's reach is gradually expanding outside of books over to other industries such as games. Though he's stepped into the video...Read more...

Paramount's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the first movie version of the comic book characters since the two live-action films nearly a decade ago. The Heroes in a Half Shell have had an off-and-on relationship with movies, but Mutant Mayhem is shaping up to be one of the better received incarnations....Read more...

One of the artists working on Dungeons & Dragons' newest book-Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants!, has stated that they used AI to help generate certain details or polish and editing" in a recent post on X, on the site formerly known as Twitter. Ilya Shkipin, who drew the art in question, has deleted his posts, but...Read more...

Two weeks after release, Greta Gerwig's Barbie is part of the billion-dollar club.

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