Gizmodo

Paleontologists recently revisited a trove of fossils found in a South African quarry and found two previously unknown species of sabertooth cats in their mix.Read more...

Want to skip those annoying, long, repetitive ad breaks on YouTube? Well, Google-parent Alphabet is going to need you to pay more. The YouTube Premium subscription service now costs $13.99, up $2 from before. Thinking about paying annually? Well, now you're going to need to pony up $139.99, $20 more than it was...Read more...

Danny Devito gets accosted by a spectral armchair in a new Haunted Mansion clip. The Dear David" viral twitter movie gets its first trailer. Plus, what's coming on Riverdale, and more. To me, my spoilers!

Growing fruits and veggies isn't a terribly difficult endeavor-humanity has been doing it successfully for thousands of years-but it does require a certain amount of know-how, a lot of dedication, and the right environment to turn seeds into edible plants. If you struggle with all of those things, the hydroponic Rise...Read more...

One of the best things about a brand new Star Wars show is brand new Star Wars tech. Blasters, ships, armors and, of course, lightsabers. And when you're talking about a show like Ahsoka, one that has a lot of Force users in it both good and bad, there are bound to be a lot of new lightsabers. And now you can check...Read more...

io9 is at San Diego Comic-Con 2023 and we made a pre-convention center detour to the Sonic the Hedgehog Speed Cafe, a fast food activation inspired by SEGA's Sonic the Hedgehog video game universe.

Fears over the increasing and encroaching role of large language models and other generative AI tools in media have become the heart of Hollywood's current labor struggle, as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have both centered safeguards for human workers in the face of an industry eager to jump on the latest tech bandwagon. But...Read more...

Juul is requesting FDA approval for an updated version of its e-cigarette a year after it was forced to briefly remove its fruity-flavored devices from the market. The new e-cigarette reportedly has age-verification capabilities and a unique Pod ID chip that will prevent consumers from using counterfeit pods with the...Read more...

Melania Trump released her latest collection of nonfungible tokens (NFTs), this time commemorating humanity's giant leap on the Moon with a famous photo of NASA Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walking on the lunar surface. There's just one thing though: NASA does not approve the use of its imagery for the digital tokens.Read more...

Did you know that Aquaman (2018) is the highest grossing DC Universe movie? At least according to The Hollywood Reporter, it is the highest grossing" DC movie of all time at 1.148 billion dollars. Which, absolutely bonkers considering what a weird over-developed riot of CGI that film was. And of course the sequel, ...Read more...

The most preeminent member of one of the U.S.'s most preeminent universities plans to step down in a month's time. The news out of Stanford comes after student journalists uncovered allegations that their dear leader's old lab had manipulated data in dozens of major scientific papers published in many preeminent...Read more...

A new incarnation of the Doctor-even if they have a very familiar face-means, inevitably, a new sonic screwdriver for them to wave about the place with reckless Time Lord abandon. David Tennant's 14th Doctor is no exception, but his updated tool of choice is suitably new and familiar at the same time.

Update: July 19, 3:44 p.m. ET: The jackpot is now up to $1 billion, after no winning ticket was sold for the Monday draw. Powerball says this marks the third time that its jackpot has reached this eye-watering milestone, and it ranks as the seventh largest jackpot in history, the largest being a $2.04 billion jackpot...Read more...

There is nothing more satisfying than when bosses realizewho does the work needed to make them money. While the WGA successfully picketed and shut down productions on both coasts, the SAG-AFTRA actionshut down productions shooting internationally, like Interview With the Vampire and Gladiator 2. And now, according...Read more...

Jimmy Patronis, Florida's chief financial officer, is threatening to investigate insurance companies that leave the state. Patronis blames wokeness" for the moves, not rampant lawsuits or climate change.Read more...

ChatGPT is changing, though so far it's been incredibly hard to say how or why. Users have widely complained that the GPT-4 language model powering the paid version of OpenAI's chatbot has been degrading over time, spitting out false answers and declining to follow through on prompts it once happily abided. New...Read more...

The AI gold rush is showing no signs of slowing down. As ChatGPT continues to enamor the world with its strings of relatively coherent text, Apple is looking for its piece of the pie by developing its own artificial intelligence engine.

When the Star Wars Expanded Universe began to take nascent steps towards building a world beyond the original movie trilogy, it dug into the same questions Disney and Lucasfilm explored decades later in creating the sequel trilogy. What does Star Wars look like in this new time? What parts of its world have evolved?...Read more...

Threads is getting some new feature updates, inching it a little closer to the Twitter clone that was promised. The updated features will include a followers list, the option to subscribe to unfollowed users, and a revised follows" tab, Threads developer Cameron Roth, said in a Threads post. Unfortunately, the most...Read more...

Long-running, much-loved Adult Swim series The Venture Bros. may sadly be over, but there's some consolation, and some sense of closure, for its many fans: five years after its seventh season ended, a direct-to-video film-The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (yes, the title makes sense once you...Read more...

Astronomers have discovered an ancient stellar remnant that keeps its light elements separate, in a strange first.

We are in the penultimate episode of Marvel's Disney+ series Secret Invasion, and, surprisingly, we don't have a lot of questions or plot points to wrap up. After the first four episodes of the Samuel L. Jackson-led spy-thriller series, most mysteries have been solved or explained in... Gravik detail. (Get it?...Read more...

Good Omens fans know what it means to pine for a couple to be together. Season two adds more shipping to the mix with Nina (Nina Sosanya) and Maggie (Maggie Service), shopkeeper neighbors of bookselling angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen). If their names and faces are familiar, that's because you've seen them together...Read more...

In February 2022, two Barbie dolls responded to an unusual call: Come on Barbie, let's go party.....to space." Dressed in white spacesuits, the pair spent a few months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) among real-life astronauts. Now that they're back on Earth, the two astronaut Barbies are on display at...Read more...

In the wake of legal turmoil that has stalled-but not prevented-a merger between Microsoft and Activision, the Biden administration has opted to revisit the guidelines that the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission will use to assess mergers and acquisitions under the lens of federal antitrust laws.

Google is restricting some employees' Internet access in a pilot program created to combat cyberattacks. An internal memo informed employees that 2,500 were selected to use the internet-free desktop PCs, but the memo was revised to include the caveat that they have the option to opt out of the program while others can...Read more...

Researchers poring over genomes of people who lived during the Copper Age have found older cultural contacts between ancient groups than previously known.

One of Agatha Christie's most famous characters, Hercule Poirot, returns to the big screen in A Haunting in Venice, the third film to come out of the partnership of director/actor Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green. The previous two films; Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022),...Read more...

On July 6, a woman in the French town of Schirmeck was chatting with a friend on her terrace when she was struck by a small object. On further inspection, the black-and-gray concretion appeared to be a meteorite.Read more...

It is entirely possible that we are witnessing the death of one of the internet's favorite social media platforms in real-time. After charging for access to its API and attempting to squash subsequent protests via interviews with the hare-brained CEO, Reddit has now made its iOS app icon into a tacky, 8-bit...Read more...

Get a new look at the upcoming Pet Sematary prequel. The cast of Barbie gush over Greta Gerwig in a new featurette. Plus, what's coming on Riverdale and Secret Invasion this week, and a turtle-tot-tastic new clip from TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. Spoilers, away!

The provenance of a large metallic object that washed ashore near Jurien Bay in Western Australia this past weekend remains unknown, despite rampant speculation about it hailing from an Indian PSLV launch vehicle.

As we said back in 2017, when the Beats Studio3 Wireless headphones debuted, Beats' products have been getting better and better since Apple bought the company and started contributing to their design and hardware. The new Beats Studio Pro, the first new addition to the Beats Studio line in six years, bring excellent...Read more...

Whelp, I guess we all knew this was coming. With no formal announcement, Netflix removed its $9.99 Basic" subscription tier for anybody trying to sign up for a new account or resubscribe in the U.S. and UK. Now your two options are to pay $5.50 more per month for the Standard" plan, or otherwise suffer through...Read more...

Begun, the Comic-Con news, has. Though the convention won't start until later this evening, Lego is already breaking news by revealing three brand new Star Wars sets that'll be revealed at the event. Two are from Star Wars Ahsoka, the upcoming show coming to Disney+ on August 23, and the third is a big, brick-built...Read more...

Though its San Diego Comic-Con panel was understandably cancelled in light of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in Hollywood, Prime Video's Wheel of Time still has a treat for fans: a first trailer for season two. It reveals a dramatic glimpse of the battles ahead.

In 2021, Robosen and Hasbro left 80s toys fans with their jaws on the floor after revealing a $700 robotic Optimus Prime that could autonomously transform from the Autobot leader to a Freightliner truck. Two years later, Optimus is finally getting some backup with a new robotic Grimlock that transforms nearly exactly...Read more...

The U.S. government placed two Israeli spyware companies on a blacklist this week, all but totally cutting them off from business opportunities with American firms. The move is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to clean up the ethically bankrupt spyware industry before it spins totally out of control.Read more...

To be the musk created by the strength of Henry Cavill swinging his sword, one can only imagine while watching The Witcher star train with stunt coordinator and second unit director Wolfgang Stegemann.Read more...

It looks like all that Barbie hype hasn't helped bring momentum to another toy-adjacent Mattel property. Variety is reporting that the live-action Masters of the Universe movie that has been in development for some time, most recently at Netflix-Kyle Allen was cast as He-Man over a year ago-is apparently no longer.Read more...

The performers of SAG-AFTRA and the writers of WGA were already feeling disgusted with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers; that's why both unions are now on strike, fighting for fair work contracts. In Hollywood, the picket lines themselves have now become part of the battle.Read more...

Before Jaws, most beachgoers didn't worry about getting chomped by sharks. After Jaws, it's all anyone could think about-and Hollywood, as well as the international film industry, took notice, capitalizing with so many rip-offs a new genre was born. It gets its own spotlight in a new documentary: Sharksploitation.Read more...

Just like Pokemon Go gamified walking, we want to gamify sleep." That's the unofficial explanation for Pokemon Sleep, the newest mobile game to be released in the Pokemon franchise. It's expected to debut sometime this summer, and io9 got a chance to try it at a press event a few weeks ago.

More than three dozen members of Congress have signed a letter pressuring the Biden administration to step up and close an oversight in federal privacy law that allows law enforcement to obtain access to abortion records and other sensitive health data without a warrant. Lawmakers writing the letter say additional...Read more...

OpenAI is on a quest to conquer the world-and it's doing pretty well on that front. It's ascended to the heights of industry. It's managed to suck up to politicians in countries scattered across the globe. And nowit's begun a charm offensive aimed at an entirely new sphere of influence: the news media.Read more...

Taco Bell succeeded in its petition to remove the Taco Tuesday" trademark held by Taco John's, claiming it held an unfair monopoly over the phrase. Taco John's CEO Jim Creel backed down from the fight on Tuesday, saying it isn't worth the legal fees to retain the regional chain's trademark.Read more...

Some Republicans are seemingly no longer denying that climate change isn't real, and they have a plan to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Not, it's not supporting a transition towards renewable energy. They want to plant more trees.Read more...

It's a weird year for San Diego Comic-Con, as this week the show opens with a raft of absent studios and amid the shockwaves of an unprecedented labor movement in Hollywood. But the more things have changed for SDCC 2023, one thing's stayed the same: there's plenty of cool toys and collectibles con-goers (and in some...Read more...

On October 1, 2021, a pair of small spacecraft got their first good look at the closest planet to the Sun, revealing the strange process through which Mercury produces its own auroras.Read more...

Residents in Greenpoint, Brooklyn reportedly took it upon themselves to catch the culprit who had been throwing ripped-out pages of 1970s porn magazines, junk mail, children's stories, Bibles, and old Reader's Digest pages from his car every Sunday for four years. NYPD Sergeant John Trzcinski was identified and...Read more...