Gizmodo

Chucky may be currently terrorizing the airwaves, but another distressing toy is making her presence known: the high-tech robot creation poised to trigger all your uncanny valley fears in M3GAN. The movie’s coming in January from producers James Wan (The Conjuring) and Blumhouse (Halloween), but you can get your…Read more...

BeReal, the increasingly popular social media app that every other platform wants to be, is seeing some major traction in 2022. New data indicates that the app—which is particularly popular with the Gen Z crowd—has racked up 53 million downloads so far this year. While the app is doing well in terms of downloads, it…Read more...

The Twitter v. Musk lawsuit may be on hold for now, but information about the stayed case continues to emerge. In the latest revelation, the billionaire’s legal team accused the social media company of making its former executive (and current whistleblower) Peiter “Mudge” Zatko destroy documentation of his time at…Read more...

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An alarming share of drivers using partially automated driver assistance features overestimate their vehicles’ supposed self-driving capabilities. Around one in four Tesla Autopilot drivers and an even higher 53% of Cadillac Super Cruise users surveyed in a new report said they feel “comfortable” treating their…Read more...

With the holidays fast approaching, ‘tis the season for companies to reveal all the shiny new gadgets they want showing up on wish lists. Today is Meta’s turn, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg expected to reveal all the details on Project Cambria (rumored to be called the Meta Quest Pro)—its next generation virtual reality…Read more...

Chainsaws have an interesting place in pop culture. Whether it’s movies or film, they’re one of the handiest tools to have on hand during a zombie apocalypse (or believed to be, anyway). Video games like Gears of War and Dead Rising have further turned the power tool into punchlines where the joke is absurd display of…Read more...

A year after releasing the BlowerBaby, a battery-powered duster that dealt with dirt and crumbs using a 44 MPH blast of air, Nitecore is already revealing a follow-up, the BB2, that increases the power and the windspeed but also introduces adjustable power settings to help stretch battery life.Read more...

Astronomer Marc Buie has been tracing the shadows of a swarm of rocky bodies as they pass in front of stars, leaving behind a distinct imprint of their shape. These space rocks are known as the Trojan asteroids, two groups of asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter as they orbit the Sun.Read more...

Rug-pull, verb: “to pull the rug out from under someone,” dramatically upsetting the status quo.Read more...

A new Jumanji could be on the way. Get another close look at the new Black Panther with more Wakanda Forever merch. Jamie Lee Curtis wants a Freaky Friday sequel. Plus, another look at Mayfair Witches, and what’s coming on Quantum Leap. Spoilers, away!

In case you missed the Ryzen 7000 Series news that’s been bombarding the techie scene, AMD’s Zen 4 processors have officially been released into the wild. Adopting new technologies and pushing beyond 5.0 GHz on boost speeds across multiple cores, these CPUs are part of AMD’s plans to release the fastest gaming…Read more...

Google has big plans for ChromeOS beyond catering to students and those looking for an ultra-affordable computer. The company is priming ChromeOS to help fill the gaping hole that Stadia left behind, and it’s partnering with what used to be its cloud gaming competition to do it.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is finally here, arriving after one of the most contentious graphics card generations in recent memory. While the performance for Ampere-based cards like the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 was definitely there, the cards themselves noticeably were not. Like many other things, the pandemic led to a…Read more...

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a link to an event that was part of New York’s Climate Week. The panel’s title was “Choosing a climatarian diet: the case for including beef”; the description promised a discussion of the “role beef production plays in a climate-smart food system.” I’ve never clicked a “register”…Read more...

Apple’s finally positioning the Apple Watch as a tool for adventurous types with the Ultra model, so companies that’ve traditionally dominated this category are now facing stiffer competition. This includes Garmin, which plans to fend off Apple with a major upgrade to its MARQ smartwatch, including a much improved…Read more...

On your first visit to the website for Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading online news source, you’re faced with a choice: buy a €4.99 monthly subscription or give up your data.

A four-legged robot in China that looks similar to Boston Dynamics’ Spot has gone viral again on platforms like Twitter and Reddit, but this time there are a couple of new twists. The machine can be transported via drone, according to the new video. And, perhaps most importantly, the robot has a gun attachment on top.Read more...

Amazon will be throwing a lot of Prime Early Access deals at consumers over the next 48 hours, but it turns out not every “deal” offers as big a discount as it claims. Sure, the sticker might say 50% off, but price history is a volatile thing: If a product is advertised as 50% off the manufacturer’s suggested retail…Read more...

Halloween is a few short weeks away, and it’s time to make your final costume selections. Trust me, at this point most aisles have been cleared of decor and that’s because spooky event season is about to kick into high gear. It’s better to be prepared and run out to your local Halloween store or get speedy shipping…Read more...

This week’s episode of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire starts with Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) observing a piece of art that does not really exist. The painting depicts Jesus reaching upwards to the heavens as small devils try to pull him down. As Molloy looks it over, Rashid (Assad Zaman) mentions that it was…Read more...

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As this season of House of the Dragon sets up the wars to come, a feeling of peace is briefly granted to the ailing King Viserys (Paddy Considine) in “The Lord of the Tides.” For the first time in years, his entire family descends on King’s Landing to grapple over control of Driftmark—resulting in some, uh, spicy…Read more...

A rash of cyberattacks targeted over a dozen major U.S. air travel websites on Monday, including those of several large airports. Security experts believe that the incident, which downed multiple sites but failed to meddle in any operational capacity with air travel, is the work of a pro-Russian hacker group…Read more...

YouTube is headed further down the TikTok-ification rabbit hole, but this time it could be kind of a good thing. The Google-owned video platform is introducing “handles,” a not-so-new, new way for creators on the site to uniquely identify.

This was quite the read over the weekend: the Wall Street Journal reported that the car crash detection feature built into the new iPhone 14/14 Pro and Apple Watches is sensitive enough to be set off by a roller coaster.

One of the Southwest’s most familiar plants may be in deep trouble. The towering, multi-armed saguaro cactus, which is found only in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, California, and parts of Mexico, has faced increasing instability as climate change alters its natural habitat through droughts and wildfires. The cacti…Read more...

Rivian, the Amazon-backed electric vehicle upstart and long-rumored Tesla killer once valued at $100 billion just had to recall nearly every vehicle it’s ever made.Read more...

A large, 10-year randomized trial has found that simply recommending a common screening procedure for colorectal cancer may not be as beneficial for the general public as hoped for. The study found no difference in cancer death rates between healthy middle-aged people who were or weren’t offered a colonoscopy, though…Read more...

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer wanted to congratulate Fallout on Monday for 25 years of… yadda yadda, but what’s that? Up there on the top shelf, could it be? An Xbox streaming box?

The Western drought has come for pasta sauce and ketchup. Processing tomatoes, used in innumerable grocery store staples, are suffering from years of subpar rainfall and snowpack in California. The state, which has historically produced about one third of the processing tomato crop’s global supply, is slated to fall…Read more...

Tech layoffs appear to be striking everywhere, and Spotify is the latest victim. The streaming company has reportedly laid off 38 employees from its Gimlet and Parcast studios, which produce Spotify Original podcast content. With the layoffs come the cancellation of 11 of those Spotify Original podcasts, 3 from Gimlet…Read more...

Coalinga, California, is set to run out of water before the end of this year.Read more...

A 65-year-old woman in Japan paid the equivalent of $30,000 in a recent online scam that defied gravity. The con artist tricked the woman into believing he was a Russian astronaut who just couldn’t afford a ticket back to Earth, local media in Japan reported.Read more...

The upcoming film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is parody squared. It supposedly tells the true story of the parody songwriter “Weird Al” Yankovic, but pretty much all of it is complete bullpucky. It’s a farce of music biopics that stretch the truth in order to tell a more engaging story. From what filmmakers have…Read more...

PayPal, the company co-founded by right-wing darling Peter Thiel, was caught in a firestorm of conservative backlash over the weekend for daring to say it would not allow its services to be used to promote misinformation. Now, the company has walked everything back, and further claimed that policy was one big…Read more...

If you haven’t been tracking it, Game of Thrones is back—and it’s up to its same old tricks: namely, violence, incest, and great power politics. My opinion is that House of the Dragon is a mediocre follow-up to the original series, but it’s still an interesting meditation on power and rivalry in a brutal world.Read more...

Massachusetts-based audio giant, Bose, recently released the successor to its first gen QuietComfort Earbuds, which came out two years ago. The newly released buds, named the QuietComfort Earbuds II (QC Earbuds II), brought with them a plethora of upgrades. Enhanced Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), a trimmed down…Read more...

io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Primordial Soup and Salad” by Gene Doucette. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on Lightspeed’s website. Enjoy!

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

Didn’t make it to New York Comic Con this past weekend? Don’t worry about it. We did, and we’ve compiled every iota of news, trailers, and descriptions of all the other footage that debuted at the convention, including the bananas teaser for season three of Star Trek: Picard, a look at the epic finale to Lord of the…Read more...

The potential for a nuclear armageddon has seemingly increased in recent months, much to the confusion and worry of some of the American public. That potential appears to be crystallizing into a legitimate concern for the U.S. government, which recently announced the purchase of a drug used in radiological and nuclear…Read more...

The InSight mission on Mars is currently waiting out a continent-size dust storm that has caused the lander’s power levels to drop.Read more...

As Oscar Isaac took the stage at New York City Comic Con 2022 for his spotlight panel, the applause was, and I’m not being facetious here, deafening. A spotlight panel typically focuses on a single actor, and Isaac’s fans filled up the entire Empire Stage Room—the second-largest stage at NYCC. As the panel began, the…Read more...

A Twitch streamer says she broke her back in two places after jumping in a foam pit live at TwitchCon on Saturday. In a brutal video that’s painful to watch, streamer and adult performer Adriana Chechik happily jumps into the pit but then begins to writhe in pain almost immediately after she lands. Chechik told her…Read more...

“Prepare for Nuns. Demons. Murder. Some children. A Goat. And a dead priest,” warns the newest trailer for Wendell & Wild, the upcoming stop-motion film by The Nightmare Before Christmas creator Henry Selick and co-written by Get Out’s Jordan Peele. But can anyone ever truly prepare for goats and nuns?

The biggest monetary losers from crypto lender Celsius’ demise are on full public display.Read more...

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The second season of Syfy’s horror series Chucky kicked off with a bang this week. Showrunner/creator Don Mancini and the main cast teased what’s to come at New York Comic Con today: There will be oodles of trauma, new characters, and a cheeky homage to Jennifer Tilly’s 1996 crime thriller Bound in Episode 4.

If you’ve ever felt like being told to turn your camera on during the Zoom meeting was a fundamental overstep of workplace boundaries and rights, a Dutch court might be on your side. A remote employee of U.S.-based software company Chetu has been awarded about €75,000 by a Dutch judge for wrongful termination, after…Read more...