Gizmodo

A massive federal offshore drilling lease sale in Alaska has, once again, proven wildly unpopular among fossil fuel companies.

Even with ambient sound-boosting features, most wireless earbuds aren’t designed to fill the role of a hearing aid for those dealing with the early stages of hearing loss, but Sennheiser’s new Conversation Clear Plus can help those who specifically struggle with hearing voices and conversations in noisy environments,…Read more...

NFL player Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, collapsed mid-game on Monday night—during the first quarter of a match against the Cincinnati Bengals. Hamlin remains hospitalized in critical condition, following an apparent heart attack, according to a statement posted across the Buffalo Bills’ official team…Read more...

The ChatGPT backlash has officially begun. On Wednesday, New York City public schools barred teachers and students from using the chatbot, apparently fearing that the powerful AI would lead to a tsunami of cheating.Read more...

Part of the fun of buying a new car is that distinctive new car smell you only get from a vehicle fresh off the dealer’s lot, but it’s also probably a smell you really shouldn’t be inhaling. (Womp, womp!) Instead of driving around for weeks with all the windows open to get rid of it, Panasonic’s “nanoe X” is a…Read more...

James Marsden, who played Teddy Flood in seasons one, two, and four of HBO’s prematurely cancelled Westworld, shares fans’ disappointment with the way the show ended. The decision likely came down to the fact that Westworld was a large, expensive show and the fourth season was not as well-received or widely viewed as…Read more...

Signify, makers of Philips Hue smart bulbs, announced on Wednesday that it’s bringing its Philips Hue light syncing technology to Samsung TVs. Philips Hue Sync TV is a paid app that lets you sync your Hue lights with whatever you’re watching or playing. All you need is the requisite hardware.

The global auto-making company Stellantis is breaking into the aviation industry after striking a deal with Archer Aviation, Inc. to build an electric flying taxi.Read more...

How often have you checked the status of a shipment through a carrier’s website only to find its expected ETA and current location wildly inaccurate? With these smart shipping labels that can be stuck to boxes and even letter mail, the precise location of a package is always known thanks to an always-on 5G connection…Read more...

Everyone’s favorite television daddy Pedro Pascal talked about finding a balance between playing two similar roles—at least on the surface. In a new interview about The Last of Us, he discussed the differences between Joel and Mando as well as how much he’ll be out of the suit in the Disney+ series.Read more...

Taking direct inspiration from the realm of neato PC case mods, Cooler Master announced Wednesday during CES that it was finally close to selling its own strange, strange cases—one designed to look like a shoe and the other resembling a shark.Read more...

Your iPhone protects your privacy—from everyone except Apple, apparently.

If you, like me, look at your board game shelf and wonder if it will eventually topple over and send meeple and cards skittering across the floor, then you have also wondered about electronic alternatives.Read more...

As lawmakers make their way into the House chamber this week nearly two years after the January 6 attacks on the nation’s Capitol they will do so with one less piece of equipment present. With the anniversary just three days away, Axios notes, the newly controlled Republican House of Representatives has opted to…Read more...

DoorDash is rolling out its newest feature this week to allow consumers to return or mail packages from the comfort of their homes. The app is known for its quick and efficient food delivery service, but it is now expanding its operations to include package pickup and dropoff at a nearby post office, UPS, or FedEx…Read more...

The penultimate episode of Willow is here and we think it’s the best one yet. If you’ve watched any genre TV in the past decade, that makes sense; the second-to-last episode is usually the best. It’s when everything the audience has been invested in or waiting to see comes to a head, ending right on the edge of that…Read more...

A team of scientists are looking to turn cancer into its own worst enemy. Their experimental vaccine candidate uses tumor cells modified to deliver a toxic payload to the rest of the cancer, while also making it easier for the immune system to target and remember the cancer in the future. In new research, the vaccine…Read more...

CES isn’t just a chance for companies to debut all the gadgets and devices they’ll be insisting consumers buy throughout the coming year, it’s also a chance to debut concept designs providing a sneak peek at technologies arriving in the decades to come. For Roland, that’s apparently a digital piano that surrounds…Read more...

Linda Codega is a tabletop roleplayer, writer, and critic. They have been covering TTRPGs for nearly five years and playing TTRPGs for nearly two decades. They curate the biweekly Gaming Shelf for io9, and you can keep up with their reporting here. Send tips, recommendations, and new games to lcodega@io9.com.Read more...

Huge portions of the East Coast narrowly avoided a grid catastrophe over Christmas like the one that hit Texas less than two years ago. Even so, hundreds of thousands of customers in North and South Carolina experienced hours-long holiday blackouts with little heads up during freezing temperatures—blackouts that,…Read more...

Apple TV+ had no easy task in adapting Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi epic Foundation, so while critical reactions to season one were mixed, the fact that it became a hit for the streamer is impressive. Season two arrives this summer, but today there’s a first look at what’s to come—including some Lee Pace eye candy, for those…Read more...

As allure for NFTs has seemingly crashed in recent months, NFT marketplace Magic Eden is navigating a different issue—porn. After users alerted the marketplace that it had been flashing thumbnails of porn instead of NFTs, Magic Eden found that something had gone wrong.

Get excited, space enthusiasts. A long-period comet discovered in March 2022 has recently brightened in the night sky, just in time for its closest approach to Earth in a few weeks. Once it passes us by, it won’t return again for tens of thousands of years.

Any time George R.R. Martin gets to write a history of fantasy people being absolutely terrible to each other, you know the man’s going to get up to some messed-up murdering at some point, and Fire & Blood, his retelling of House Targaryen’s long, messy history, was no exception. Which means, of course, House of the…Read more...

State officials say California currently has one the best snowpack levels covering its mountain ranges in four decades, the Associated Press reported.Read more...

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

The CW’s major superhero players will reunite in the final season of the The Flash. Fitting, as Arrow’s Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) was there when it all started for Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) in their shared DC universe.Read more...

Scientists in China believe they may have found a better way to fix an injured penis. In research published this week, a synthetic material developed by the team was able to restore normal erectile function when implanted in pigs. The material may offer important advantages over existing methods, and it may even have…Read more...

Major financial regulators consisting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) warned banking organizations against cryptocurrency scams and fraudulent activity in a joint…Read more...

The EU issued a €390 million (about $414 million) fine against Meta Wednesday, a decision that suggests Europe may be in its final days of widespread targeted advertising. One thing is certain: EU citizens are going to see even more pop-ups asking for consent to track them online than they already do.

Admit it: your inner child has always wanted to talk to Mickey Mouse. Later this year, you’ll be able to do so through an Amazon Alexa-powered speaker in your home. Disney and Amazon are bringing the “Hey Disney!” voice assistant to more users. Right now, it’s only available in hotel rooms at Disney resorts. But soon,…Read more...

M3GAN is going to surprise a lot of people. From the trailers and slightly tongue-in-cheek internet hype, many are probably expecting a bonkers murder-fest starring a dead-eyed, artificially intelligent killer doll in the mold of Child’s Play. And, okay fine. It is that, to an extent. But the majority of the movie is…Read more...

With any big movie, there are three key dates: the first trailer, the theatrical release, and then the streaming debut. For Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the first two are long past. Now, we finally have the third one.Read more...

SpaceX’s sixth dedicated rideshare mission lifted off from a Florida launch pad on Tuesday, delivering a whopping 114 payloads to low Earth orbit. It’s a promising start to 2023, as the company strives for 100 orbital launches in a single calendar year.

Mack DeGeurin covers breaking news for Gizmodo with an emphasis on politics and tech policy. For this year ahead, Mack spoke to seven experts spanning the political and policy milieu and pressed them to predict some of the top trends likely to occur in 2023. You can follow Mack’s coverage here and email story ideas…Read more...

Thanks to a tease yesterday by Bruce “Ash Williams” Campbell himself (who gently reminded us that he’s not actually in the movie, though he is one of its producers), we’ve been eagerly anticipating the first trailer for Evil Dead Rise, the fifth film in the series created by Sam Raimi and his collaborators in 1981.

A college student has created an app to help us humans decipher whether text was written by a human or generated by OpenAI’s crazy new chatbot, ChatGPT.

Even as I dread the day I’ll finally eclipse the age of 30, I am already well on my way to being a crotchety, craggy faced old cretin. I have dealt with random bouts of back pain from sleeping on many brick-like mattresses. I have tried some massage therapy to deal with these issues, but in all these years of…Read more...

Jody Serrano covers online communities for Gizmodo. Since Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter earlier this year, it seems she has been cursed (blessed?) to write about Twitter or Musk daily. She has covered medical misinformation on social media extensively on topics ranging from herbal abortions to antidepressants.Read more...

Although a spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast told Bloomberg that the company remains “committed to using digital games,” they have decided to cancel five previously-planned D&D games. None of these games have been announced, so while Baldur’s Gate 3 is still coming, there’s no real indication of what video game…Read more...

In a year marked by economic downturns and layoffs plaguing tech, two of the industry’s biggest heavyweights both lost more in terms of valuation than any other company before it. First came Amazon, and now, Apple. Combined, the two companies have shed roughly $2 trillion worth of valuation in around 12 months. If…Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration has made a temporary change permanent. The agency officially scrapped a long-standing requirement that people seeking abortion pills pick up their prescriptions from a medical provider in person. With the change, the FDA has finalized expanded access to medication abortion, allowing…Read more...

After almost four years, Twitter is reversing its ban on political advertising. The company announced Tuesday it was “relaxing” its policy for “caused-based” advertising, which relates to political and social issues, and would make a similar move with overtly political ads in the coming weeks.Read more...

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has reached a $100 million settlement with the New York State Department of Financial Services after the department’s investigation revealed that Coinbase failed to properly vet users before opening an account, leading to criminal activity on the exchange.

Microsoft is really hoping you’ll be interested in using Bing after the company soups up the search engine with popular artificial intelligence tech ChatGPT. The tech company is reportedly rolling out the AI-supplemented search engine in just a few months.

As happy as we are for robovacs to add floor mopping to their cleaning skillsets, we also know that a soggy mop head parked in a charging dock for hours on end is a recipe for bacteria, mold, and odors. To ensure the new Roborock S8 Pro Ultra isn’t just spreading dirty water across your floors, its charging dock not…Read more...

We are really starting off this new year with good horror:Takashi Shimizu, the director of The Grudge, returns with a trailer for his newest film, Immersion, which looks incredibly prescient and haunting. There’s also a trailer for Wolfkin, which looks like my new favorite werewolf film. Don’t forget that The Bad BatchRead more...

When cooking, you can be creative and impulsive, throwing almost anything into a dish that will (potentially) still turn out delicious. But baking is an exact science, and if you want those scones or muffins to turn out perfectly, you need to be more precise about your measurements: an approach that’s less of a pain…Read more...

A 41-year-old man from California, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of attempted murder and child endangerment after police concluded that he had intentionally driven a Tesla with his family inside over a 250-foot cliff. Although the car was left mangled, all four people in it—the driver, his wife, and their two…Read more...

Over the years, a few different companies have stepped up to the plate to take a swing at making digital board games a thing. Arcade1Up’s Infinity Game Table has been one of the more successful attempts, thanks to partnerships bringing classic games like Risk, Ticket to Ride, and Monopoly to the table, which is more…Read more...