Gizmodo

Anonymous video chat app Omegle, known for pairing strangers and weirdos together in a kind of raw, extended social experiment, finally threw in the towel after years of abuse. The site was forced to shut down due to a settlement from a recent lawsuit alleging the site gave free rein to sexual predators.Read more...

The Boys sets the stage for its 2024. Netflix teases the arrival of its live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series. Eddie Murphy gets on the bad side of an elf in his new Christmas movie for Amazon. Plus, Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson will headline an apocalyptic music movie. To me, my spoilers!

Nearly 120 days after authorizing an actors strike, SAG-AFTRA may have finally locked down a deal.Read more...

Even as audiences gobble up salacious rumors about purported crises at Marvel, and perhaps an end to the dominance that superhero media has had on blockbuster moviemaking in the wake of a string critical and financial misfires, people love reading about people talking about comic book movies like they're here to stay....Read more...

Have you ever seen AirPods that look exactly like Apple's, but the box would say something like Abble AirPods?' Sometimes, manufacturers of counterfeit products don't even change the company's name on the box in an attempt to trick the consumers into thinking that they are genuine products.

A new payload has been added to Firefly's upcoming mission to the far side of the Moon, one that will explore the lunar subsurface to find out if it can support future infrastructure.Read more...

Nextdoor, a popular neighborhood app, is prioritizing its commitment to shareholders" over its commitment to employees by eliminating a quarter of its staff to meet shareholder expectations, the company said in a 2023 Q3 reportTuesday. The layoffs are reportedly part of an effort to reduce Nextdoor's personnel...Read more...

No matter what you think about the House of Mouse, the Force, or Marvel's many assorted heroes and villains, there's no denying Disney+ has might behind it. According to today's quarterly report, which you can read here, the streamer now has more than 150 million subscribers worldwide, a number that includes India's...Read more...

The votes are in, and Texans overwhelmingly voted yes" for Proposition 7, which will funnel billions of dollars to fund fossil fuel power plants instead of turning to renewables to back up the state's fragile electrical grid. The proposition will allow the creation of a $10 billion energy fund, none of which can go...Read more...

Many people are carrying potentially harmful genes, research out this week has found. Scientists analyzed the genes of people living in Iceland and found that one in 25 people appear to have genetic variations linked to a shorter lifespan. The most dangerous variants were those tied to cancer.Read more...

Google's AI ecosystem continues to grow as the company expands its partnership with Anthropic, which will now run on Google Cloud's fastest AI-accelerating chips. This comes on the same day Google rolled out generative AI search capabilities worldwide, powered by PaLM2, putting AI in front of billions of people who...Read more...

Barbie wielded a lot of box-office power this year, raking in over a billion dollars at the global box office and making history as Warner Bros.' highest-grossing film of all time. But one monster hit wasn't enough to bring Warner Bros. Discovery into the realm of profitability, according to today's company earnings...Read more...

Who among us hasn't dreamed about Nicolas Cage? What might it be like to hang out with the Oscar winner, to watch him work or see how he chooses his incredible array of movies? From The Rock, National Treasure, and Renfield, to Adaptation, Wild at Heart, and Mandy, Cage is one of those actors whose career has been so...Read more...

We've barely upgraded our Apple devices to the new versions of their operating systems, and already, there's a delay on next year's software updates. But it's for a good reason, according to sources familiar with the pause.

There's officially a new and fierce competitor for Novo Nordisk's Wegovy (semaglutide) when it comes to weight loss. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug tirzepatide, developed by Eli Lilly, as a treatment for obesity. The weekly injectable drug will be sold under the brand name Zepbound.

Yesterday, Nintendo and Sony Pictures teamed up to deliver the shocking news that they were working on a live action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda. Even more so, they'd found their director already in Maze Runner and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' Wes Ball. But it turns out Ball has had a long, long time to...Read more...

Social media might be addictive, but it turns out quitting is complicated. A study out Wednesday from the UK's Durham University asked 51 moderate to heavy social media users to stay off the apps for one week. Participants had a decrease in negative emotions and feelings including boredom, but they reported a drop in...Read more...

OpenAI's ChatGPT and API experienced a major outage Wednesday morning affecting millions of users, two days after CEO Sam Altman's DevDay, where the company tried to entice developers to build on OpenAI products. This is the longest major outage for the company's API, the main product used by developers, in nine...Read more...

Rick and Morty's currently in its seventh season, but it was much earlier in the Adult Swim show's run that people started realizing how involved its fan base really was-remember 2017's Szechuan sauce kerfluffle?Read more...

Google sent a letter to European regulators asking them to free up Apple's iMessage for all platforms, according to a report from the Financial Times Wednesday. The EU Commission said Apple is gatekeeping iMessage in September, and Google's letter unnecessarily chimes in to say we agree."Read more...

If you were in charge of selecting the Lego minifigures for a massive celebration of a decade of Marvel Cinematic Universe films and beyond, you'd have plenty of priorities on your list. Heroes, villains, Earth's mightiest movie stars. Lego decided it had so many options, it could throw in Marvel Studios head honcho...Read more...

The Marvel Cinematic Universe gets the team-up we've been waiting for since Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel with The Marvels.Read more...

On Tuesday, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new automotive right-to-repair ballot initiative forcing car manufacturers to provide independent mechanics and technicians with the same diagnostics they give to authorized repair shops. The landslide vote comes months after the Biden Administration backpe...Read more...

In an effort to cut cost for the sake of the development of its next generation spaceplane, Virgin Galactic will lay off a number of its employees and save on expenses in hopes of bringing in future profits from its commercial flights.Read more...

Earlier this year, io9 revealed the cover for LySandra Vuong's Covenant, Oni Press' graphic novel publication of the wildly popular Webtoon digital comic. Today, we're thrilled to share the first chapter from the book, as well as some commentary from Vuong, aka Explodikid, ahead of the April 2024 release.

Apple released 14 and 16-inch variants of the MacBook Pros touting its newly-released M3 chips. It doesn't bring a lot of new upgrades and doesn't make much sense if you're on an M2-series chip already. However, if you're one of those Intel or M1 MacBook Pro holdouts, now might be the time for a change.

WhatsApp has recently been added to Apple's App Store for Mac. I know it seems weird that it wasn't there this whole time. You've not gone crazy, I swear.

Millie Bobby Brown will sleuth again in Enola Holmes 3. Hear Alan Tudyk sing about farts in a new clip from Disney's Wish. Plus, more looks at the return of The Santa Clause. Spoilers get!

Samsung aims to take a stab directly at the heart of Google's big AI ambitions with its upcoming phones. The next range of Samsung mobile devices coming next year will be bursting at the seams with generative AI, including a new assistant chatbot.Read more...

Rockstar Games decided Wednesday to acknowledge that yes, there is a trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI and that it will premiere next month.Read more...

The first impressions for The Marvels have hit the internet, and while for some the Marvel Studios flick that soars by the might of its trio of heroes, for others that chemistry is brought down by some wider issuesRead more...

Everyone has their go-to annual holiday movies and specials to watch, but what if you're itching to watch something new? Here's a list of 10 brand-new releases coming for 2023's festive season, leaning heavily into the comedy and Santa-style magic, with some animation along for the ride too.Read more...

The first look at the Dinkinesh asteroid revealed a surprise: The small space rock had its own moon. Now as the Lucy spacecraft downlinked more images of its first target, it showed not one but two tiny asteroids orbiting around Dinkinesh.Read more...

This afternoon Nintendo of Japan officially confirmed that it is working with Sony Pictures to bring one of its most seminal franchises, The Legend of Zelda, to the big screen in a live action movie adaptation.Read more...

Netflix is doing its best to lure its customers into exploring its gaming options, and now another streamer-one that's perhaps better angled for this purpose-is trying the same: anime hotspot Crunchyroll. Starting today, members of the Mega Fan ($9.99/month) and Ultimate Fan ($14.99/month) tiers can access free games...Read more...

Twenty years ago today, the sight of a diminutive cartoon Yoda-shrouded in a hooded cloak, his green lightsaber ignited and held high-riding atop a goatlike mount transformed Star Wars as we knew it. A year before at the climax of Attack of the Clones, he'd told us that begun, the Clone Wars had: now they truly had,...Read more...

It surely says something about the state of the world today that one of the web's most anodyne and wholesome memes chose to come out of retirement this week to wade into the discussion surrounding one of the most contentious political conflicts in modern history.Read more...

Viruses are somehow even weirder than we thought. In a recent study published last month, scientists say they've discovered two new viruses that hijack the machinery of other bacteria-infecting viruses in order to replicate themselves. One of these vampiric viruses even acts the part, appearing to bite" and latch...Read more...

A one way trip to the Red Planet would take up to nine months. During that time, astronauts on board the Mars-bound spacecraft could lose their sense of direction and ability to know up from down, making it difficult to orient themselves on the Martian surface. In order to keep astronauts on course, a wearable device...Read more...

A UK-based startup is hoping to turn their specialized tampons into a popular test for sexually transmitted infections. The company Daye has launched a new at-home screening service for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and other common STIs. The test is currently only available in the UK but will reportedly expand to the U.S....Read more...

Over a decade has passed since Christopher Paolini last published a book in The Inheritance Cycle, and he returns to Alagaesia, this time following a fan-favorite character from the original series, Murtagh. Picking up a year after 2011's Inheritance, Murtagh, alongside his dragon, Thorn, is searching for meaning in a...Read more...

Everyone's talking about how creepy generative AI is, so Google Photos won't let you edit pictures of your driver's license, ID cards, or anything personally identifiable. If you try to use the Magic Editor with a compatible Pixel device, Photos pops up a window to let you know it can't complete the action since it...Read more...

Early last week, Israel's Arrow 2 missile system successfully intercepted and destroyed a suborbital ballistic missile suspected of launching from Yemen. It's a notable technological achievement, but one with potentially serious legal and geopolitical implications.Read more...

Texas will vote on whether to give the oil and gas industry billions to make its barely-working power grid more reliable while ignoring the benefits of renewable energy. This comes two years after a winter storm shut off power for millions of Texans, and a heat wave this past summer that pushed the power grid to its...Read more...

A rare bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has teamed up to propose major privacy reforms that could fundamentally reign in the US government's most powerful domestic surveillance tools.

Four episodes in, season seven of Rick and Morty has already introduced new voices (who sound just like old voices), as well as packed in fan-favorite side characters and guest stars. But amid the partying, grotesque mutations, and horrifying spaghetti reveals, the biggest theme so far has been the importance of...Read more...

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) proposed to hold big tech accountable to the same regulations that banks are, in a filing Tuesday. If Apple and PayPal offer financial services similar to banks like savings accounts, credit cards, and payments, the CFPB wants to regulate them like it does the banks.

The AMPTP has doubled down on AI-a contentious issue within the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike-with its latest final offer" for the actors' union.Read more...

Google how many days until Christmas" on a computer, and you'll find a little animated present that transports you to the company's Santa Tracker hub, a winter wonderland full of activities and educational content for children. Among the offerings is a guessing game called Quick Draw, which makes an explicit and...Read more...

Waze users will start hearing directly from the app which are the most accident-prone roads on their route. Perhaps now the Google-owned app will help settle the age-old argument about which state has the worst roads and the worst drivers (hint: it's a tie between all states in the northeast U.S.).Read more...