Gizmodo

Elon Musk announced he was changing Twitter's name to X In the last week of July, reflecting the billionaire's life-long obsession with the letter, which is a very normal thing for an adult man to have. To celebrate, CEO Linda Yaccarino, whom Musk appointed in May, changed her username from @lindayaccs to @lindayaX. ...Read more...

Everyone certainly hopes that the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are over long before December rolls around. However, if they aren't, actors who would like to attend and promote themselves at Los Angeles Comic Con will be able to do so.Read more...

Well, they actually did it. After months of tense bickering with Canadian lawmakers over a law forcing tech companies to pay publishers for news, Meta is following through on its threat to cut off access to news on Facebook and Instagram for the country's 40 million residents.Read more...

Great news: Lego saw all that sunny summer weather we've been having and decided that it's simply too much chance for heatstroke, so we should all stay inside well-ventilated rooms, hydrate, and build some new Lego sets. Lots of them. Lots and lots and lots of them.Read more...

Movie studios were served a big loss in their quest to take down pirates. This weekend, a federal court tossed a subpoena in a case against the internet service provider Grande that would require Reddit to reveal the identities of anonymous users that torrent movies.Read more...

A Chinese zoo is denying that its Malayan sun bears are humans dressed in costumes after visitors claimed the bears' behaviors strongly resembled that of a person. A video of the bear, named Angela, was posted on social media and went viral, showing the bear standing on her hind legs and facing onlookers before...Read more...

A weird, experimental debut novel, Oh God, the Sun Goes is set in a world where the sun has mysteriously, unexplainably disappeared. As an unnamed narrator heads west, the book takes a hairpin turn into a searing and eerie romance.Read more...

The summer of foldables may be over before we even see a release from Android's third-best brand, OnePlus. The company is reportedly delaying its folding smartphone debut due to dissatisfaction with its current display supplier. But the good news is that this might mean an upgrade for the folding display on the...Read more...

The high-powered handheld gaming market keeps on growing, and now Lenovo is reportedly getting in on the mix. The company had previously started on then dropped a handheld streaming device, but a new report says Lenovo has its eyes set on a full portable gaming machine akin to a Steam Deck.Read more...

Let's get streaming! Welcome to io9's latest edition of the Nerd's Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you'll like most. (And sometimes, just the ones that we like most.)

X, formerly known as Twitter, sued the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) on Monday, arguing that the nonprofit embarked on a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform" and illegally accessed the X's data. The lawsuit came days after Twitter unbanned Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye...Read more...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's space start-up Privateer aims to bring satellite access to the masses through a global online marketplace. Satellite-based data is primarily available to governments, but the company hopes to create a way for private citizens to share the cost of accessing a satellite, potentially...Read more...

Apple has reportedly removed more than 100 generative artificial intelligence apps from the Chinese version of its App Store believed to be in violation of the country's strict new regulations clamping down on subversive" speech produced by ChatGPT-style chatbots. Those restrictions, which officially take effect...Read more...

With the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem this week, BoxLunch is throwing it back to the classic animated series.Read more...

The family of Henrietta Lacks-whose cancer cells have played a vital role in modern medicine for decades-has reached a legal settlement with the biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific over the use of those cells.Read more...

We're sorry to say it but the Green Arrow might be a bit of an A-Hole. Speaking at GalaxyCon in Raleigh, NC this past weekend, Stephen Amell had some disappointing thoughts on the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which makes him the most vocal star so far to speak out against the work stoppage. However, after he got...Read more...

The European Space Agency's Euclid mission took over 11 years to get off the ground (and Earth), but now the nascent space observatory has produced its first test images of the cosmos.

Doctors in Florida are sounding caution about one of the world's oldest known ailments, leprosy. In a recent report, they detail a local case of the bacterial disease with no recent travel history or other clear risk factors. The case and others suggest that leprosy is spreading routinely in Central Florida and has...Read more...

For whatever quirky reason, August 2023 is particularly robust on two fronts: short-story collections, and retellings that shed new light on familiar characters from myths and history. That said, this month's list is simply huge (70 titles!) and also has plenty of epic fantasy and sci-fi-as well as some truly original...Read more...

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, currently 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, has phoned home, essentially telling mission controllers that the recent rumors of its impending death have been greatly exaggerated. The ongoing communications problem, however, remains unresolved.

Just a few short weeks after OceanGate's own CEO perished along with four others in an implosion of the Titan submersible, the company's co-founder wants to send another group of people into another uninhabitable environment.Read more...

As Return of the Jedi continues to mark its 40th anniversary, one of the best traditions to come out of this blockbuster trio of celebrations for the original Star Wars trilogy is From a Certain Point of View, short story collections going blow-by-blow through the movies from the perspectives of those in and around...Read more...

An asteroid-hunting algorithm set to be implemented in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 10-year survey spotted its first potentially hazardous asteroid, proving the algorithm's capabilities in advance of the observatory's opening.

If you were a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the late 1980s/early 1990s, one image is burned into your brain. It's the teaser poster for the first film. Four turtles, popping their heads out of the sewer and into big, bright New York City.Read more...

Amazon is expanding its repertoire of services to include a virtual health clinic which is now available to customers in all 50 states starting on Tuesday. Customers will have access to clinicians 24 hours a day through both Amazon.com and the Amazon mobile app.

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Meta, owner of Facebook and instagram, plans to launch a series of AI chatbots with different personalities on its social networks as soon as September, according to a report in the Financial Times. It's the latest attempt to curb declining engagement, especially on Facebook, and could be a shortcut to harvesting even...Read more...

After a social media storm swirled in Japan after the U.S. social media accounts for the Barbie movie acknowledged the Barbenheimer" mashup memes, Warner Bros. has released an official statement apologizing for participating in the viral trend.

Ride-sharing giant Uber finally has some good news. Uber has reportedly made operating profit for the first time in the company's history, fueled by a post-pandemic demand for rides and a seemingly successful push toward food delivery.Read more...

A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2's antenna orientation, preventing the iconic spacecraft from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth, NASA announced earlier today. Mission controllers transmitted the commands to Voyager 2 on July 21.

Pearson, one of the top five textbook makers in the world, is leaping into the world of AI with the same speed and subtlety as a cinderblock-sized primer tumbling to the floor. The company said it plans to offer a new kind of study buddy AI chatbot they promise will be free from the noise and corruption of web-based...Read more...

Chris McQuarrie is already moving on to his next collaboration with Tom Cruise. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' musical episode reveals its song titles. Plus, Seth Rogen talks about his connection to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and new set pictures from the Fallout TV show. Spoilers get!

Fitbit has announced it's redesigning the mobile app from the ground up. The app will focus squarely on a new personalized and customizable" Fitbit experience, which will debut later this year. If you're itching with anticipation and absolutely can't wait to see what's next (I can't), you can sign up to be a part of...Read more...

This story is part of our new Hip-Hop: '73 Till Infinity series, a celebration of the genre's 50th anniversary.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that an unknown federal agency had breached official White House policy and used secretive methods to conduct a business deal with the NSO Group, a blacklisted spyware vendor known for selling powerful surveillance tools. The agency in question not only brazenly...Read more...

One of the most recognizable, versatile, and hilarious performers of our generation passed away this weekand the loss is being felt all over the world. Paul Reubens, best known for his iconic character Pee-wee Herman, lost a battle with cancer this week at the age of 70 and his friends in Hollywood have been paying...Read more...

Vampires aren't supposed to be sparkly, and we're here for bat creature Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter.Read more...

SpaceX recently performed two tests of its new water deluge system, which is meant to protect the surrounding infrastructure during launches of the company's Starship megarocket. The company is doing so, it would appear, without applying for the environmental permits that would have allowed SpaceX to legally discharge...Read more...

The latest in a slew of speculative AI research papers is making some pretty outlandish claims about how deep learning models have some subtle, unrealized cognitive abilities akin to, or even surpassing humans. Though researchers found a modern pre-training transformer model does well at multiple-choice tests that...Read more...

If you haven't been to the official Star Wars website in a while, today's a perfect day to do so. Besides being a place to find excellent Star Wars-themed interviews and videos, it also has a near-encyclopedic database on most of the canon storytelling. So movies, TV shows, animated series, and more almost all have...Read more...

Elon Musk finally dismantled the obnoxious, flashing X" sign on top of Twitter's headquarters on Monday following complaints from city authorities and residents. San Francisco's Department of Building Inspections (DBI) received 24 complaints about the unpermitted structure, including concerns about its structural...Read more...

Police in New Orleans have been using facial recognition for the better part of a year, but the tech hasn't had much of an impact on the city's violent crime crisis. NOLA's recently published quarterly public safety review, compiled by city consultant Datalytics, shows that during a nine-month period-between October...Read more...

The James Webb Space Telescope captured the eerie punctuation mark, found buried within an image of Herbig-Haro 46/47-a tightly bound pair of actively forming stars located 1,470 light years from Earth.

Halloween started this past weekend at Midsummer Scream, the season's official kick-off convention in Long Beach, CA.

TCGPlayer employees have filed an unfair labor complaint against parent company eBay, The Verge reports. The company, which sells and authenticates trading cards was acquired by eBay in 2022. The complaint accuses eBay of ignoring the union's existence after workers organized in March.Read more...

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Witch From Mercury broke ground for the Gundam franchise with-and sales records spurred in part by-its depiction of the burgeoning romantic relationship between its main characters Suletta Mercury and Miorine Rembran. But while the series itself came about as close to text as it could on their bond, Bandai itself is...Read more...

A man in the UK has become a medical first, though not in a great way. In a recent paper, scientists say he's the first known person to have caught a newly discovered bacteria from a stray cat's bite. Though the feline encounter resulted in a gnarly infection of his hands, the man was eventually treated successfully...Read more...

We may never definitively know the content of Subway's tuna" after all. A class action lawsuit filed over the alleged mystery meat has now been dismissed two and a half years after it was filed.Read more...

August will kick off with a full supermoon, which is set to rise less than 226,000 miles (363,300 kilometers) from Earth tomorrow night.Read more...