Gizmodo

“Will [adaption X] break the video game curse?” is a debate as cyclical and pointless in entertainment criticism as “Are video games art?” is in games media, but Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin is intent on blending the two together to make his press tour as insufferable as possible.

A group of researchers is attempting to bounce radio signals off a 500-foot-wide asteroid during its close flyby of Earth on Tuesday.Read more...

PayPal, Venmo, and other cash app users who depend on digital payment platforms for business transactions can breathe a temporary sigh of relief. The Internal Revenue Service has delayed the implementation of a tax code change that would’ve mandated declaration of any exchanges over $600 by one full year, according…Read more...

Malka Older, the author of the Centanal Cycle, has a new book coming out. The Mimicking of Known Successes is both a cozy science-fiction mystery and an introspective slow-burn romance that comes together in startlingly tense moments of action. As Mossa and Pleiti work on a missing-person case together, the book…Read more...

A startup says it has begun releasing sulfur particles into Earth’s atmosphere, in a controversial attempt to combat climate change by deflecting sunlight. Make Sunsets, a company that sells carbon offset “cooling credits” for $10 each, is banking on solar geoengineering to cool down the planet and fill its coffers.…Read more...

Is it 2023 yet? We’re about to explode with anticipation for M3GAN—the killer doll (actually a kid-sized robot powered by an alarmingly self-aware AI) movie produced by noted nightmare inducers James Wan (The Conjuring) and Jason Blum (The Black Phone). This harrowing new clip makes us even more excited.

Preliminary data from a randomized clinical trial may point to a potential way to prevent long covid. The trial found that covid-19 patients who took metformin, a commonly prescribed diabetes drug, were noticeably less likely to be diagnosed with long covid up to 10 months later than people in the control group. More…Read more...

The most prolific electric vehicle brand in the world, headed by one of the world’s most prolific tweeters, has a new year’s resolution for 2023. According to a report based on leaked internal schedules, Tesla wants to cut back a bit on its vehicle production for January out of its main China production plant. It will…Read more...

When the BBC dropped our first big look at the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials over Christmas, there were plenty of surprises—more looks at David Tennant’s new-old Doctor, teases for just how Donna Noble re-enters the Time Lord’s orbit, Neil Patrick Harris’ mysterious showman. But perhaps the biggest of all? Just…Read more...

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A new class action lawsuit claims the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensor isn’t formatted to take darker skin tones into account, which is only exacerbating the noted biases of blood sensing tech that has routinely failed to accurately gauge blood oxygen levels for Black and brown people.Read more...

Hundreds of thousands of asteroids lurk in our solar system, and while space agencies track many of them, there’s always the chance that one will suddenly appear on a collision course with Earth. A new app on the website Neal.fun demonstrates what could happen if one smacked into any part of the planet.Read more...

Thanks in no small part to the epic array of streaming services now available, 2022 was a particularly robust year for genre TV—filled with shows that elevated the viewing experience with drama, humor, and emotional thrills we can’t stop thinking about. Here are io9's top sci-fi, horror, and fantasy series of the year.

When it’s not facing ongoing backlash from both federal and state lawmakers, TikTok is breeding some genuinely funny memes and trends. Enter: The Celebrity Death Hoax.

Across the U.S., at least 63 people have died amid unusually frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall. Officials confirmed the updated death count Tuesday morning, NBC News reported. At least 28 of the deaths occurred around Buffalo, New York, where it continues to snow.Read more...

The U.S. Space Force is getting a piece of a massive government funding bill, which it will use to boost the number of its satellites and to expand its newly acquired Space Development Agency (SDA).Read more...

A measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio has sickened over 80 children and hospitalized dozens. The majority of these cases have involved unvaccinated children who were nonetheless eligible for vaccination. It is not yet clear how long the outbreak will continue, with the most recent case having been detected just last…Read more...

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Disney’s retro-future animated film Strange World combines a pulpy, old-school science-fiction action aesthetic with a plotline that revolves around reconnecting with family and protecting the environment. As the directors Don Hall and Qui Nguyen developed this world they knew just how to make the lead character…Read more...

More than decade ago, near Kandahar, Afghanistan, the U.S. military employed one of its Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit (SEEK II) devices for the last time. The piece of tech, a chunky black rectangle used to scan fingerprints and irises, was turned off and stowed away.

When the first trailer for M.Night Shayamalan’s next horror flick, Knock at the Cabin, arrived, it looked mostly like a vacation-home-invasion movie where the invaders were played by people like Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint and were possibly cultists. That may still be the case, but this new trailer reveals there’s…Read more...

Apparently not everyone knows that Teslas aren’t actually full self-driving cars. A new California law going into effect in 2023 will prohibit Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) from marketing its driver assistance tech as completely autonomous if that’s not actually the case.

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

While two of the biggest U.S. financial regulators along with the Department of Justice have collectively decided to hammer the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX with claims of massive fraud, there was a time—less than a year ago—where that same founder was the talk of the town in Washington. Once-crypto…Read more...

The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie may have found its stars. There’s a lot of blood in Evil Dead Rise. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 writer Josh Miller teases Shadow’s villainous inspirations. Plus, a look at the Star Trek: Prodigy finale, and new pictures from Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary. Spoilers now!

2022 is on its last legs, and that means it’s time to embark on yet another journey through the bizarre.

As another year comes to and end, now is the time for reflection. While this year brought us Stranger Things 4, the World Cup, and the release of the first images from the Webb Space Telescope, a singular year is only a drop in the bucket of humanity. Some of the human race’s most daring, heartbreaking, and emotional…Read more...

Southwest Airlines has cancelled over 2,400 flights for Tuesday, roughly 61% of its entire schedule, according to the latest figures from FlightAware. The bad news comes after Southwest cancelled over 2,900 flights on Monday, and this could be just the beginning for the airline’s woes, with several reports noting…Read more...

There is a certain irony that the final two episodes of His Dark Materials, the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s YA fantasy novels, aired one day after Christmas. On December 25, one of the world’s larger religions celebrated the arrival of its messianic figure, while tonight, a bunch of soldiers, angels, witches, an…Read more...

An account whose sole purpose is to track Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s private jet is back on the blue bird app nearly two weeks after Musk changed the rules to kick it off the platform. Whether it will manage to stay on the platform Musk rules with an iron fist is an open question.Read more...

A new craze is sweeping across tabletop RPG twitter, and game designers and players are all getting in on planning #Dungeon23–a commitment to create a megadungeon in 2023 by creating a new room every single day. The premise is simple, but a blank page can often be the death of creativity. Here’s how to get started,…Read more...

We love toys here at io9, and when we’re not writing about them, we’re probably playing with them. It’s been a killer year for cool nerdy collectibles, so here’s just a few of our favorite things we picked up in the proverbial toy aisle this past year.

Even though a chilling bomb cyclone hurtled across the United States, audiences still found a way to make it out to the movies during Christmas and Christmas Eve, says The Hollywood Reporter. While Avatar: The Way of Water continued to bring in the big bucks, other films like Puss in Boots, Black Panther: Wakanda…Read more...

There’s a lot of Star Trek, and a lot of it is very watchable—especially in the iconic sophomore series The Next Generation, which helped truly catapult the franchise into the pop culture stratosphere. Asking a Trek neophyte to dive into over five days of TV is a daunting task, however. So why not just give them an …Read more...

The Frasers are back, and hoo boy, they sure look like they’re in for a heap of... dreams about electric lightning? Even though I believe early 20th-century nurse Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and 18th-century Scottish Highlander Jamie (Sam Heughan) are currently living somewhere on the American frontier during the…Read more...

What would you do if you saw a self-driving car hit a person?Read more...

In my big age, 22 years after the release of Ron Howard’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas live-action film take on the Dr. Seuss classic, I finally caught a detail that unlocked the whole film for me. Sure, I knew the horniness between Jim Carrey’s Grinch and Christine Baranski as Martha May Whovier is one for the…Read more...

My condolences to the children of Iceland. While many Christmas celebrations around the world are full of tidings of comfort, joy, and rampant consumerism, for young Icelanders it’s a time of terror, where you’re lucky to escape with your life… or a potato. At least, that seems to be the case according to this…Read more...

Dana James (Mallori Johnson), the lead character in Octavia Butler’s Kindred—now an FX series streaming on Hulu—is a lost woman. After she impulsively sells her family’s Brooklyn brownstone, she moves to Los Angeles to pursue TV writing. But her pursuit is limited to taking notes of old reruns of Dynasty rather than…Read more...

Come 2023, the BBC’s sci-fi series Doctor Who will be a whopping 60 years old. The network has spent months playing coy about what awaits in the 60th anniversary special, but it decided some kind of present was in order, hence the special’s first trailer.

It’s the big day, folks: a very special birthday to one of the most important religious figures on the planet, the child of the Virgin Mary. We’re talking about the vampire Camilla, of course. Who else could it have been?

Since I was a boy, I’ve always dreamed of blasting xenomorphs on LV-426 with the Colonial Marine Corps. That’s not just because the characters from James Cameron’s Aliens—like Hicks, Vasquez, and Hudson—were cool, it’s because the weapon they had was even cooler. The M41-A Pulse Blaster has always been one of my…Read more...

These days there’s no shortage of Christmas-themed horror movies, especially ones that feature a killer dressed as Santa Claus. But in the slasher genre’s earliest days, that hadn’t yet become a trope—1972's Tales From the Crypt gave us a red-suited maniac, to name maybe the most notable early example, and 1980's To…Read more...

The Planet of the Apes franchise has been on ice since the reboot films wrapped up with 2017's War for the Planet of the Apes. Fox is preparing to start the films up again in 2024, meaning we’ll see what the series is like now that Disney has a hold of it. And with Disney comes Marvel, which means some new comics.

There’s so many live service and online games out there that hearing about one you’ve never really put much thought into can often be a pleasant surprise. Maybe what you hear about catches your attention for a few days, maybe it gets you to dip into said game to see what it’s all about. That’s more or less what I’m at…Read more...

Every year starting in mid or late November is right around the time that TV networks put out holiday specials or festive episodes. Much of them are new, and some of them are so old you could probably reenact them without much effort. But more often than not, they’re memorable in some form or fashion.

The cast and crew of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever spent months being fairly direct about their feelings on continuing the film without original leading man Chadwick Boseman, and more vaguely about what the sequel would’ve been like had he not unexpectedly passed in 2020. Even as the film has become a pretty solid…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, where this week while we wait to unwrap some toys from Santa this weekend, we’re looking at all the toys we want to get our hands on in 2023! This week, Gondor calls for aid, Hasbro adds another member to its plastic Fantastic Four, and dine in Trek style. Check it out!

As 2022 stumbles towards its conclusion, Christmas time is with us once again. I’m warming my feet by the fireplace, the family dog is drifting off to sleep beside me, and the sounds of a petty argument between my brother and sister waft in gently from the other room. It’s been a long year of writing articles about…Read more...

It’s beginning to look a lot like winter vacation at major theme parks and fan-tastical destinations, with lots of merriment to be had into the new year. The Grinch continues his reign on both coasts at Universal Studios Orlando and Hollywood. Fantasmic returns at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios with the Frozen…Read more...