Gizmodo

R.L. Stine, a man whose name seems born to be featured on 160 books of children’s horror fiction, told an utterly packed room at New York Comic Con that he never intended to write the Goosebumps series. Stine is an incredibly sarcastic and sardonic man, speaking like your uncle from New York who’s lived too long, seen…Read more...

A decade from now, a young woman taps into her talent—she is scary-good at VR games, to the point that wealthy clients hire her to play in their stead—to scrape up cash for her family. The Peripheral, which stars Chloë Grace Moretz as the gaming whiz, asks: what if that futuristic VR world was actually real?Read more...

In the last decade, archaeologists have discovered evidence that foxes may have been kept as pets thousands of years ago—or, at the very least, tolerated to hang around human settlements.

Comic book writers and artists tend to alternate between working at Marvel and DC Comics fairly often, assuming they don’t break off to do their own stuff. Soon to be joining DC is former Joe Quesada, writer and artist who previously served as the editor-in-chief for Marvel the during the early 2000s.

Before an injustice becomes a reality, when the consequences are all very abstract, it can be easy to doubt and defer grasping how inevitable they are. Some people will write off what is plainly obvious to everyone around them as the misgivings of pearl-clutching doomsayers, the fallout of overactive imaginations.…Read more...

More than 65,000 salmon have died before they could spawn in just one Canadian stream. The die-off of two species, mostly pink and some chum salmon, hints at a potentially devastating season for the fish, local people, and the wider ecosystem throughout the region.Read more...

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Found-footage horror—which once felt like a gimmick on its way to obscurity—just keeps finding new ways to reinvent itself. One big reason is the V/H/S series, which revived itself with last year’s sickeningly entertaining V/H/S/94. A new entry (set five years later) hits Shudder just in time for Halloween.Read more...

It’s always special when a show that you think is gone forever comes back in some form or another. Firefly getting Serenity. Beavis and Butthead getting a new show and movie. The return of Lucifer. The list goes on and the latest addition to it just got a howling new trailer.Read more...

The first chapter of the latest Lord of the Rings saga is about to close and wow does it look like it’s going to be massive. At New York Comic Con, the team behind Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power unveiled a special trailer for the show’s first season finale, which debuts October 14 and things…Read more...

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power might be the epic fantasy TV series consuming all of Amazon’s attention (and money), but Prime Video doesn’t want you to forget about its TV adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series—and the best way to do that is with the first look at season two.

Facebook parent company Meta has filed a lawsuit against several Chinese developers accusing them of creating knock-off WhatsApp Android apps that were used to hijack over a million user accounts. The company also revealed it had identified some 400 apps dedicated to stealing Facebook login credentials and reported…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, where io9 recaps the latest, greatest, and often silliest in geek merch. This week Power Rangers and Transformers compete for the weirdest Halloween getups, Lego heads to Wakanda Forever, and Stranger Things figures out how to sell you... a flashlight? Check it out!

September heat waves across Canada and the U.S. were so bad that the high temperatures melted ice all the way in Greenland. Strong winds from North America carried the hot air to the northeast, raising average temperatures there more than 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to past Septembers, according…Read more...

Rings of Power has spent its entire season reminding us that it, at its core in manners similar to Lord of the Rings as a whole, is a story of enduring hope in the face of seemingly unyielding darkness. This week is much the same, but it also takes a lot of time to allow its heroes to wallow in the fact that seemingly…Read more...

We’ve got some good news to start the weekend: A recovery team has regained control of NASA’s CAPSTONE probe, which is in the midst of a four-month journey to an elliptical halo orbit around the Moon.Read more...

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took images of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa during a recent flyby. One of the photos—released this week by NASA—offers an intimate view of Europa’s surface features.Read more...

Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago, has opened up applications for one of the largest guaranteed basic income pilots in the U.S. to date.Read more...

The toll of covid-19 in the U.S. this winter will depend heavily on how many Americans are able and willing to get an upgraded booster shot, suggests a new expert analysis. Even a moderately successful booster campaign would save tens of thousands of lives as well as billions of dollars in medical costs, researchers…Read more...

A fire that may have been intentionally set has caused “irreparable” damage to some of the iconic ancient moai statues on Easter Island, local authorities said this week.

Say cheese! New York Comic Con 2022 is here and you know what that means? Cosplay. Lots of it. Characters from every universe, every comic, every TV show, every movie—the New York fans show up when Comic Con comes to town and here, we’ve put together a stunning collection of amazing cosplay.

Instead of doing any one thing to bring themselves back into the sci-fi cultural limelight, the heads behind the storied counterculture comic magazine Heavy Metal are taking a shotgun approach to regaining their legacy, including movies, a revamped launch schedule and—because why the hell not—NFTs.Read more...

For the first time since June 2019, we’ll get to see a SpaceX Falcon Heavy take to the skies. The U.S. Space Force has chartered a ride with the heavy-lift launch vehicle, but the details of this defense mission are a bit vague.

Culled from an expansive library of Christopher Pike novels, The Midnight Club is a new sort of Netflix venture for Mike Flanagan, best-known for his adult-focused, limited-run horror series like The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. By contrast, The Midnight Club has been written as open-ended and is aimed at…Read more...

President Biden signed an executive order placing new restrictions on how U.S. intelligence agencies harness data as it flows between the U.S. and the E.U., the White House announced Friday. The order creates a new framework to comply with European privacy rules.Read more...

Amid revived drama with Twitter that’s causing whiplash across the internet, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is doing one of the things he’s best at: distracting the public with a shiny new statement.Read more...

People who have been using Toyota’s smartphone app may have had their personal information leaked, the company reported on Friday.Read more...

Recent excavations of submerged Maya salt kitchens off the coast of Belize indicate that their ancient workers lived on the sites and possibly worked in kin-based teams.

After 2019's incredible first season on Prime Video, Good Omens fans—demons and angels alike—have been longing for any season two news. After months of “wait and see” from both the streaming service and creator Neil Gaiman, we finally have a clip with a bit more information, coming at you straight from the New York …Read more...

Google may be the originator of the Android operating system, but it’s competing with other companies staking a claim on the platform. Samsung and OnePlus bundle in software features to help differentiate from the crowd, so Google leverages its search engine and Assistant smarts to entice you away from Android…Read more...

A nasty but short-lasting stomach bug may have lingering consequences for an unlucky few. Researchers have found evidence in mice and human cells that norovirus infection can trigger Crohn’s disease in people already genetically predisposed to it. The findings may also help scientists one day find better treatments…Read more...

Star Wars has long had a rocky history with textual queerness—while LGBTQ characters have slowly but surely begun to thrive in the pages of books, games, and comics, on screens big and small the results have been decidedly mixed. It’s fitting then that Andor, a shock to Star Wars’ system as of late, is emboldened in…Read more...

Renewables have been keeping pace with growing global energy demand, a new analysis finds, in an encouraging sign during a global energy crisis. But there’s trouble ahead for clean power, as climate change keeps wreaking havoc and supercharging droughts and heatwaves.

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Everything on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has led to this. Every character we’ve met, every storyline we’ve teased, every iota of self-growth, it all came together in the eighth and penultimate episode of the show, “Ribbit and Rip It.” A seemingly disconnected story about a hero named Leapfrog became the basis for Jen…Read more...

Nord Stream Pipelines 1 and 2 were likely sabotaged, according to the results of a preliminary Swedish investigation, which found evidence of the use of explosive devices.Read more...

Google has officially revealed its new Pixel lineup for the year. The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are two new Android smartphones with updated cameras and a ton of Google smarts. Google also finally announced official details for the long-awaited, overly-leaked Pixel Watch. All three devices will be on sale Oct. 13, with…Read more...

Today’s Star Trek: Lower Decks asks its surprising lead character if it’s worth trying to do something out of your comfort zone, even if you fail. At least unlike its surprising lead character, Lower Decks is much better having tried, even if not everything quite worked out.

When Hurricane Ian made landfall over Florida as a category 4 storm last week, it left behind a trail of destruction that killed dozens of people amid flash floods, severely damaged homes, and inundated cars and streets. The devastation has also triggered new environmental concerns: serious leaks of chemicals, sewage,…Read more...

Five years ago, the two of us—both already YA authors—had an idea that would become All of Us Villains, our co-written debut about a magical death tournament filled with celebrations and inversions of all our favorite YA tropes. After the release of All of Our Demise, the second and final book in the duology, it’s…Read more...

There weren’t too many surprises at today’s Made by Google event in Brooklyn, NY. We knew the Pixel 7/7 Pro would make its official debut, with accompanying details about its specifications and camera hardware. And we knew that the Pixel Watch would finally arrive into the zeitgeist. We didn’t realize Google would…Read more...

Boston Dynamics, the DARPA-backed robotics company known for uncomfortable videos where nearly 200-pound humanoid robots perform backflips, uncomfortable dances, and various forms of horrifyingly aggressive parkour, says it isn’t interested in weaponizing its robots.Read more...

Desperate to recoup his internet fame, a disgraced livestreamer declares he’ll spend the night alone in a notoriously haunted house. But his stunt takes a turn when he realizes the ghost stories about the place are... real? Found-footage chiller Deadstream hits Shudder today (read our review here!) and io9 has an…Read more...

Authorities in Australia arrested a 19-year-old who allegedly tried to blackmail customers of telecommunications company Optus following a data breach last month that impacted thousands of people.Read more...

The Anon rover was built for Mars, but its interplanetary mission got derailed. The car-sized robot is now undergoing tests at a quarry near London in hopes that it could one day go to the Moon instead.Read more...

Tesla CEO and potential Twitter owner Elon Musk made the internet erupt like a volcano on Tuesday when he decided he would buy the social media platform he has spent months dissing at the original $44 billion price. However, before Musk, the richest man in the world, decided to honor the deal he agreed to months ago,…Read more...

Netflix’s latest trailer for its take on Little Nemo in Slumberland is giving us exactly what we want—which is mostly an excuse to see Jason Momoa ham it up as a dream Satyr. But for those of you less interested in that, it’s also doing a pretty good job at showing us the wider premise of the movie.

Another fan-made Lego Ideas submission has been given the nod to become an official Lego set, but while the company’s designers will often make small changes before these sets go into production, the new Table Football got a major facelift and a massive reduction in size.Read more...

With the introduction of the Astro A30 wireless gaming headset, Astro and Logitech G are now working closer than ever since the latter brand took over the former in 2017. The Astro A30 may have signature Astro styling, but it’s powered by Logitech G’s Lightspeed wireless technology. Handy as that tech may be for a…Read more...