Gizmodo

Microsoft laid 1,900 employees in its gaming division, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge on Thursday, with a majority of the layoffs hitting its newly acquired Activision Blizzard employees. Some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected, according to the memo. The layoffs come roughly three months...Read more...

Amazon abandoned its $1.4 billion acquisition of Roomba maker, iRobot, on Monday after regulators in the European Union threatened to block the deal. The deal's implosion means the robot vacuums, and the company's maps of 40 millionfloor plans across the globe, will not join the growing list of smart-home devices...Read more...

The influential career of Italian horror master Dario Argento gets a well-curated tribute in Dario Argento Panico. Simone Scafidi's new documentary features interviews with the director as well as famous collaborators and admirers, including fellow boundary-pushing filmmakers Guillermo del Toro, Gaspar Noe, and Nicolas...Read more...

The fan service was strong with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. And to please Reylo fans, the redeemed Ben Solo, formerly Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), got his reverse Uno Snow White moment when Rey (Daisy Ridley) kissed him before he died. Ultimately, the kiss didn't really please anyone-no matter if they were rooting...Read more...

Earlier in the month, a comedy special featuring an AI-generated George Carlin showed up on YouTube. The jokes weren't that great and there were questions about using a dead person's likeness without permission, and on Thursday, a lawsuit from the legendary comedian's family made it clear that this isn't a laughing...Read more...

Among movie fans, it's commonplace to hear someone call a slickly designed, artist-forward movie poster a Mondo poster." That's because the company Mondo was long at the forefront of the pop culture art wave. Last year, though, that wave crashed when Mondo's new owner, Funko, gutted much of the company's talent. Now,...Read more...

Despite taking an unfortunate tumble on the lunar surface, Japan's lunar lander has regained power more than a week after ending up face down on the Moon.Read more...

Footage taken off the coast of Santa Barbara has captured something new to science: a living newborn great white shark. The shark's discovery could help researchers finally learn where white sharks-one of the ocean's top predators-birth their young.Read more...

It didn't really start with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has what I describe as a Force Awakens-ass trailer. A minimal suggestion of what the movie's actual plot is, and a lot of familiar faces suiting back up and everyone else reminding us they know about the specific Ghostbusters...Read more...

The wife of a SpaceX employee who was severely injured in a 2022 rocket engine test has filed a negligence lawsuit against the aerospace company, as first reported by Reuters. This case highlights ongoing safety concerns at SpaceX, with an earlier investigation revealing a pattern of workplace injuries and...Read more...

Get a look at the return of Gru in Despicable Me 4's first trailer. The Penguin's mystery cast continues to grow. The Fall of Reach grows closer as Halo preps for season 2. Plus, Isla Fisher on the hopes for Wolf Like Me's return. To me, my spoilers!

A coin flip is the quintessence of fifty-fifty chance, but a large group of researchers recently overturned its equitable reputation. Recording a painstaking 350,000+ coin flips by hand, they found that almost 51% of tosses land with the same side facing upward as before the flip (i.e. if the coin shows heads at the...Read more...

Ad-free streaming services are officially a thing of the past. Amazon injected Prime Video's movies and TV shows with ads on Monday. The company is asking users to pay an additional $3 a month to keep Prime Video ad-free, on top of the $139 a year members already pay for Amazon Prime.Read more...

If you spend a significant amount of time on YouTube, you'll want to make the most of that time-whether it's the choice of videos you get recommended or the quality of those videos when they start playing. There are actually lots of different ways you can tweak YouTube, both in the apps and on the web, to improve your...Read more...

What wasn't obvious about the new slimmer version of the PlayStation 5 was that each individual panel can be removed individually. Unlike the original PS5, the black bar running through the center on the new version separates each panel into four pieces rather than two. This means you can make interesting designs...Read more...

Star Wars: Ahsoka didn't just pick up on threads from Star Wars Rebels, it also developed some new plotlines for its returning cast. Chief among them, Rebels character Sabine Wren ended up being Ahsoka's apprentice and discovered she had Force powers, making her a Jedi Mandalorian-and the first of her kind, in the...Read more...

Suzanne Collins' first Hunger Games novel released in 2008, and went onto become a massive franchise. In the wake of last year's successful prequel film, Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Scholastic is building upon that momentum by bringing the first book to life again with an illustrated edition.

Even though the Covenant are the other side of Halo's ongoing conflict, the first season of Paramount+'s TV series largely represented them through a human proxy named Makee. With the upcoming second season, the coalition of alien races is set to become a more prominent threat, and that means they'll be getting more...Read more...

This year's Sundance film festival featured the documentary Super/Man, which chronicles the late Christopher Reeve, who played the DC character from 1978-1987. With how beloved the actor's take on Superman was for a certain generation, it's no surprise that studios are trying to snatch it up, and it may have found a...Read more...

Remember Jennifer's Body? 2009 audiences weren't really thrilled to see Megan Fox play a high schooler eating teenage boys, but more recent audiences have been able to groove on its wavelength more. It's now got something of a cult classic status, and for writer Diablo Cody, the turnaround's been so strong that she's...Read more...

Stephen King's The Shining was heavily inspired by his time at Colorado's Stanley Hotel. In the past, it's taken advantage of the 1977 novel's success-the 1997 TV miniseries used it as a filming location, and King's hotel room 217 is now advertised with his name. But if that's not enough, Blumhouse is now giving the...Read more...

Next week's Saturn Awards are going to honor Keanu Reeves at its event, with a special honor named after his John Wick co-star, Lance Reddick.

Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender saw Aang and the rest of Team Avatar travel the world so he could master all four elements from different bending masters. For all they went through, there was always a looming threat overhead in the form of Sozin's Comet, a celestial phenomenon which served as a massive power...Read more...

The latest iOS 17.3 update will make it harder for thieves to log into your phone, but only if you turn on this feature. The Samsung Galaxy Ultra S24 is out next week, and we've got our review of the flagship phone right here. Click through for our top product news and reviews from this week.Read more...

After months of fighting with two stubborn fasteners, NASA scientists finally cracked open the canister containing precious pieces of an ancient asteroid. Click through for our top science stories from this week.Read more...

This year, at least some countries will have to say goodbye to the Netflix Basic subscription tier, the last cheap(ish) way to watch Netflix without ads. While the streaming giant had already severed the $12 Basic subscription tier for new or returning subscribers, anybody who chose to keep paying their monthly tithe...Read more...

This week on io9 The Bad Batch got us thinking about Dark Disciple, the Battle of Boz Pity, and so much Nightsister magic with the reveal that Asajj Ventress is the latest Star Wars character to cheat death. Read on for more on that, plus even more of our most-read stories of the week! -James WhitbrookRead more...

The Taylor Swift AI porn debacle seems to be snowballing into a full-blown national emergency and now the White House is involved. Yes, our nation's executive branch weighed in on Taylor's fake nudes on Friday, with the top WH spokesperson claiming that the government is concerned about the whole thing but isn't quite...Read more...

Earlier in io9's 2024 Sundance Film Festival coverage, we reviewed In a Violent Nature, one of the most unconventional slasher movies ever made. That theme continues with Handling the Undead-a most unusual zombie movie, and one that offers proof (yet again) that the genre still has the ability to innovate.Read more...

Elon Musk's brain implant company Neuralink has been in more trouble with the federal government than previously known. A Reuters report published Friday says that the U.S. Department of Transportation recently fined Neuralink for violating rules governing the movement of hazardous materials. The DOT has since settled...Read more...

We already knew the world of Alien was returning both on TV and at the movies. But now, it's returning to the world of comics too, in a very unexpected way. Marvel just announced that Aliens, James Cameron's 1986 sequel, is getting a five-issue What If...?" spin-off focusing on Carter Burke, the evil company man...Read more...

Astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) are about to make a new cyborg friend in the form of two short mechanical arms that will do their bidding in the cold, dark vacuum of low Earth orbit.Read more...

Grand Admiral Thrawn's return at the climax of Ahsoka heralds the beginning of a Star Wars story long in the making-whatever Dave Filoni has planned in adapting one of the most famous stories in the old Expanded Universe, Heir to the Empire, across TV shows and even a movie. But another element from that saga could...Read more...

Pornhub notified performers last week that the platform is requiring proof of consent from anyone featured in its videos moving forward, according to emails seen by 404 Media. The policy update is Pornhub's latest effort to verify that its performers are not being abused or sexually trafficked.Read more...

Welcome to AI This Week, Gizmodo's weekly deep dive on what's been happening in artificial intelligence.Read more...

The National Security Agency (NSA) is purchasing Americans' internet records, according to government documents made public on Friday. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, wrote a letter claiming the NSA goes through backchannel avenues to purchase your browsing records and location data, which government...Read more...

A dangerous fungal infection has seeded its spores farther across the United States than previously assumed. Research out this week details evidence that cases of blastomycosis are regularly showing up in Vermont, outside of the established areas of the U.S. where it's thought to be endemic.Read more...

Apple has been relatively absent from last year's AI hype cycle, and Microsoft even briefly surpassed it as the most valuable company in the world. But don't count out the iPhone maker as some analysts expect the move into AI will happen with iOS 18 at this summer's Worldwide Developers Conference, according to the Fin...Read more...

A modern folk horror tale that draws upon Australia's troubled history to enhance its monstrous elements, The Moogai also includes an exploration of postpartum depression. Unfortunately, its one-dimensional plot ultimately detracts from the elements that make it an otherwise unique story.Read more...

Cruise, the self-driving car company whose robotaxi dragged a pedestrian, shared footage from the graphic incident with regulators using a bad internet connection, according to an independent review. Cruise didn't explicitly say that a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet, and hoped screen sharing a video would speak for...Read more...

Earth's orbit will be monitored by a watchful set of robotic eyes, the first commercial constellation of satellites with the ability to keep track of objects in space to avoid collisions between spacecraft.Read more...

The next version of the Nintendo Switch might be released later this year and feature an 8-inch LCD display, based on reporting from Bloomberg.Read more...

The world was already a pretty excellent place for Godzilla fans considering a) Godzilla Minus One exists and is in theaters, and b) its black and white version, Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, is also in now in theaters for a limited time. One thing could make it better though. Maybe, say, a new limited edition...Read more...

Some of our posts include links to retailers. If you buy something from clicking on one, G/O Media may earn a commission. Because editorial staff is independent of commerce, affiliate linking does not influence our editorial content.The smartphone audience is so wide that it's difficult to settle on just one of the best phones of 2024. Some of us want huge screens, fast processors, and tons of memory. Others want the very best camera. And then there are the folks who want the best budget phone and/or best small phone (they're often the same...Read more...

Everything about the moviegoing experience is merchandisable, and long has been. But the rising trend of increasingly complex and elaborate collectible popcorn buckets might have finally reached the apex with Dune: Part Two, which invites you to place your hand in a very different kind of Gom Jabbar test.Read more...

Earlier this week, AI-generated porn featuring Taylor Swift started circulating on X (formerly Twitter). Swifties were scandalized. Polite society was incensed. Swift herself hasn't publicly commented on the scandal but it's easy to imagine she's probably not thrilled about it.Read more...

A series of AI-generated images of Taylor Swift in suggestive and pornographic situations are causing an uproar on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Though some of the images have been taken down, others remain on the platform. Swift's army of fans have embarked on a campaign to bury the images by flooding...Read more...

Do not scratch your eyes: the Moon is slowly shrinking, causing quakes on its surface that complicate NASA's plans for landing Artemis 3, the first Artemis mission that will make a crewed landing on the Moon, and more ambitious missions geared towards maintaining a prolonged human lunar presence.Read more...

Being the space nerd that I am, I often imagine a museum filled with the most important objects ever sent to space. We couldn't possibly build a place like this, but we can speculate as to which human artifacts deserve a place in our imaginary spaceflight museum.Read more...

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has a lot going for it just in terms of the smorgasbord of AI software it's packing, but under the hood, it's also a very interesting specimen. It didn't take long before the first DIYers pried back the shell on Samsung's latest premium phone, and from the looks of things, the South Korean...Read more...