Gizmodo

Janitors are the latest group of workers left in limbo by the ongoing drama happening over at Twitter. The company reportedly terminated the contract that employed the striking janitors, according to the California Labor Federation (CLF). Elizabeth Strater, the communications director at CLF told Gizmodo in an email…Read more...

One of the coolest things about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films is that if you travel to New Zealand, you can actually visit many of its real-life locations. But what if you could go a step further? What if you could live there?Read more...

In 2018, a man was arrested for stealing a pair of socks from a T.J. Maxx store in New York City, even though he was signed in at a hospital for the birth of his child when the crime was committed. The police never checked the man’s alibi, and the case rested on a single piece of evidence. Apparently, a police officer…Read more...

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Dwayne Johnson worked hard to generate hype around his DC Universe debut, Black Adam, but it seems like nobody was truly ready for the hierarchy of power to change. Although Black Adam brought in just under $400 million at the box office, which is no small feat and certainly not a bad run, the film needs around $600…Read more...

Google is facing backlash from Hong Kong officials and legislators for a pro-democracy song that has shown up at the top of a search for the China’s national anthem. The song, Glory to Hong Kong, is among the top results, prompting the pro-Beijing legislative council and Hong Kong’s chief secretary to criticize…Read more...

Anime movie director Makoto Shinkai’s legacy has already been assured, thanks to the fabulous Your Name. Now he has a chance to add to it courtesy of his new film Suzume, which finally has a U.S. release date.

A.G. Riddle had a hit this year with Lost in Time, about an inventor sent to the distant past using his own time-travel machine after he’s accused of a terrible crime. The author’s next sci-fi thriller, Quantum Radio, also concerns a fantastic invention, albeit one that actually exists in our world—and io9 has a sneak…Read more...

The Los Angeles City Council opted to end oil and gas drilling within the city’s limits in a historic Friday vote. The decision was unanimous, with 12-0 in favor of a draft ordinance phasing out existing fossil fuel wells and banning new ones. LA will end all of its current oil and gas drilling within the next 20 y…Read more...

It can get cold on the Moon—so cold in fact that these temperatures are likely to impede the abilities of some current NASA engineering. As a result, the space agency is testing out a new mechanical arm that is designed to withstand the frosty temperatures on the Moon ahead of the ongoing Artemis missions.

That annoying friend who’s constantly telling you how superior Waze is over your crappy navigation app during road trips may soon have to put their money where their mouth is. For the first time, the Google-owned social navigation app is getting its own dedicated in-car app, though it will only work with two new…Read more...

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s medical implant company, is facing a federal probe over possible animal welfare violations, according to a report from Reuters. The investigation, reportedly opened by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Inspector General, focuses on Neuralink’s practices when it comes to animal…Read more...

In September, the Ethereum cryptocurrency network managed to pull off what it had been promising to do for years: switch to a model of mining that is far less emissions-intensive than the standard, a move known as the Merge. Did the switch do anything for the currency’s emissions? Could it be a good solution to the …Read more...

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has a trade offer for you: Amazon will monitor your phone data to verify ads and in exchange, you get $2 a month. Try not to spend it all in one place.

What if you suddenly woke up in a universe where you’d been dead for years—and on the surface, it looked like a better one than the world you’d just been in a moment ago? That’s already a horrifying enough existential crisis, but Retroverse decides that’s not enough and throws in some alien nightmares for good measure.

The Flash teases an all-out battle for its ninth and final season, while in the DC movie-verse the movie version of the speedster runs in a little earlier than planned. David Duchovny ponders X-Files’ future without Gillian Anderson. Plus, what’s coming on His Dark Materials. Spoilers, away!

Imagine walking into work on a Monday after spending the weekend trying to decompress from the constant pressures to do more with less and meet the insurmountable expectations of your new boss. You’ve been harried not just by your own workload but by the constant news cycle reminding you that every day the job you’ve…Read more...

As much as SpaceX has become a force of nature in the deployment of commercial space infrastructure, the company’s work assisting nations’ attempts to militarize space has sat simmering on the back burner. Now, with a new military-minded division under the company’s newly christened “Starshield” banner, that could…Read more...

Have you gone to your notifications tab on Twitter, only to see nothing there? You’re not alone. Users have increasingly reported broken notifications in recent days. And while Twitter didn’t respond to questions about why, it’s hard not to see a possible correlation with the mass layoffs of software engineers…Read more...

There are big things on the way for the Ghostbusters franchise: an animated film as well as a live-action sequel for Ghostbusters: Afterlife. And there’s news on the latter. Deadline reports that Afterlife director Jason Reitman, son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, will be handing over directing duties…Read more...

If you’ve been watching the casting announcements around Disney+’s Marvel series Daredevil: Born Again and wondering... what about Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) and Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson), who were part of the show’s original Netflix incarnation, you’re not alone. Star Charlie Cox, while attending German Comic…Read more...

From dumping out water bottles to picking easy to slip off shoes, most air travelers have grown accustomed to the regulatory and bureaucratic dance that is navigating major airports. Increasingly, however, travelers may soon encounter a new accessory en route to their destination: a facial recognition scan.Read more...

The director of Parasite is back and now he’s got a Batman. Warner Bros. just officially announced that Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho is in production on the sci-fi adaptation Mickey 17, which stars Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. It’s on track for a release date of…Read more...

The Supreme Court seems poised to rule in favor of a Colorado web designer who appealed for the right to decline her services to same-sex couples. Lorie Smith is the owner of a web design company called 303 Creative, and says she will serve LGBTQ+ customers for general design requests, but says she should not be…Read more...

Short flights won’t take off across France anymore, so long as there’s an efficient train line that can connect commuters from point A to point B. In an aggressive effort to lower the country’s emissions, France has banned flight routes for locations where connecting train service would only take 2.5 hours or less.Read more...

If you care enough about His Dark Materials to watch the season three premiere today, you know the score: It’s been just under two years since the second season finale of the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s acclaimed fantasy trilogy aired. So it’s genuinely impressive how seamlessly season three begins, not only…Read more...

The world’s largest radio telescope is officially under construction in Australia, where work is underway on one component of what will be an intercontinental instrument. When operational in the late 2020s, the telescope will offer a sharper, wider view of the universe in radio wavelengths.Read more...

Around 2,500 of endangered seals in the Caspian Sea have washed ashore along the coast of Dagestan, Russia, CNN reports, citing the state-run news agency RIA Novosti.Read more...

In August, Higround released a collection of Sonic the Hedgehog-themed compact keyboards, including one design featuring graphics from a classic Sonic level spread across all the keys. The company’s latest keyboard collection takes a similar approach, but trades Sonic for the classic anime, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

British company OneWeb and its largest internet satellite competitor SpaceX have gone from enemies to friends. Well, sort of. OneWeb, in the wake of a canceled deal with Russia, was forced to source new launch providers—leading them to SpaceX and a rather unlikely agreement.Read more...

Every video game console has its signature games and franchises. For Sega, obviously, Sonic the Hedgehog is the big one. But a few spots down that list is ToeJam and Earl, and the rapping alien duo are now going to join Sonic on the big screen. Or, at least, a streaming service.Read more...

Guns N’ Roses filed a lawsuit on Friday against an online artillery shop for infringement of the Guns N’ Roses trademark and claims the shop’s name, Texas Guns and Roses, associates the band with the store.Read more...

Meet Jeff, an Amazon employee with zero work-life balance. All he does is toil his days away for the mega-corp, making sure customers are united with their mounds of totally necessary impulse buys. He needs a vacation! But since he’s a drone, that sounds impossible... until the world finds a way. By ending.Read more...

Cybercriminals with ties to the Chinese government have stolen tens of millions of dollars in U.S. covid relief benefits, NBC reports.Read more...

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Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee is considering a set of new road-related rules to fund a proposed transportation infrastructure bill. On the docket: raising the fee electric vehicle owners pay to register their cars. Currently, EV drivers pay $100 in the state every year; under newly announced budged scheme,…Read more...

Meta may ask you to send the company a video of your face before letting you hit up fellow people looking for love on Facebook Dating, if only to verify you are indeed old enough to date online.Read more...

Despite the various fluctuations in management, objectives, and the general passage of time, Warner Bros. did reaffirm over the weekend that its Blue Beetle movie would actually be coming out. With a debut poster focusing on the titular superhero’s alien Scarab, all that’s left now is to wait for the trailer (or two,…Read more...

G.R. Macallister’s latest, Arca, returns to the fantasy world of the author’s Five Queendoms. It’s a sequel to Scorpica, which came out earlier this year, and io9 has an exclusive first look today.

If you’ve been putting off a dreaded trip to the DMV to get yourself a REAL ID, you’ve got some time. The Department of Homeland Security announced that full enforcement of the initiative, which is meant to standardize forms of identification used to do things like board flights, will not go into effect until the…Read more...

For all the great things the Pixel 7 does, it was still missing out on some of the features it trumpeted most at launch—until today. Google is rolling out the latest Pixel drop, which includes some of the Pixel 7's much-ballyhooed features, like Clear Calling, speaker labels for the Recorder app, and free VPN through…Read more...

Next year will bring many highly anticipated films to your eyeballs, but few have us as excited as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The follow-up to maybe the greatest superhero movie of all time arrives with super high expectations, and while we’ve already seen a brief tease from the film, now we know when the…Read more...

There have been a few handheld gaming machines that really push the limits of how small a console can get, but the creator of the original, credit card-sized Arduboy is back with an even smaller version that still looks very much playable. The device is meant to encourage gamers to dabble in hardware hacking to expand…Read more...

Servant, the psychological thriller executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan—a guy who knows a thing or two about mindfucks and thrills—returns for its fourth and final season on Apple TV+ in January. And from the looks of this new trailer, there’s a wild ride ahead to the series’ conclusion. Check it out!Read more...

New Zealand plans to start mandating that Google and Meta pay local media companies for reposting news content on their platforms. The country’s Broadcasting and Media Minister, Hon Willie Jackson, announced the planned legislation in a Sunday press release.

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Another year gone by, another chance to reflect on our society’s lexicon. While Merriam-Webster officially crowned “gaslight” as their word of the year, Oxford University Press, the publishers behind the Oxford English Dictionary, is paying homage to some edgier internet slang: goblin mode.Read more...

Good morning, dungeoneers and dragon riders. Paramount has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette for the most absurd film that I’m foolishly excited for in 2023, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The swords and sorcery heist stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia LillisRead more...

NASA’s Orion spacecraft has executed its final close flyby of the Moon, in what is expected to be the last major course correction of the Artemis 1 mission.Read more...

Major Apple supplier Foxconn says its Zhengzhou iPhone plant should resume “full production” by January following months marked by covid-19 outbreaks and mass protests in response to strict pandemic restrictions.Read more...