Gizmodo

It’s been a little over a month since SpaceX launched 21 mini versions of its next-generation Starlink satellites, but it appears that one of those little guys just couldn’t cling to orbit any longer.Read more...

Critical successes—they’re not just for players anymore! The Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie has an incredible 91 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an impressive number for a film adaptation of what was once considered the nerdiest of hobbies. But D&D fans and mass audiences alike love Honor Among…Read more...

One early crypto investor’s hopes to see a major telecom provider pay up for a 2017 crypto heist have been all but dashed. According to unsealed court documents filed last Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California shared that AT&T wasn’t liable to any damages due to the 2017 SIM swap…Read more...

Update: 4/4/2023, 3:47 P.M. ET: The 34 charges against Donald Trump are all counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, according to the unsealed indictment. The charges concern alleged hush money payments sent to two different women. Each count is a class E felony, per multiple news reports. Each of…Read more...

When Marvel Comics canceled The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl in 2019, it might not have seemed like a surprise. After all, for a publisher that puts out 60-plus comics each month, canceling one book doesn’t seem like anything to write home about—especially when that book was centered on one of the most oddball, unusual,…Read more...

Well, the day has come. As much of the country waited on pins and needles over the past few weeks for the indictment of twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, Tuesday, April 4, 2o23 became the day that Trump officially was arraigned in Manhattan.

The Apple weather app is working again after it appeared to struggle to meet consumer expectations on Monday night into Tuesday. As more and more people rely on technology, we’ve become dependent on it for nearly everything, including the (usually) quick and easy step of referring to a weather app on our phone instead…Read more...

A brave group of astronauts has been assigned a mission of a lifetime, carefully selected by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency according to their unique set of skills like leadership and ingenuity—but perhaps not punctuality.Read more...

The ‘90s were the time of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a burgeoning internet, and seemingly countless gadgets and gizmos hocked by sellers on television. These cheeky infomercials are staples of the post-Cold War era, and you may have memories of yourself basking in the glow of a late-night infomercial emanating from…Read more...

There’s still quite a bit of lingering nostalgia for Windows 95, and even though its notoriously easy to fake your way back into the days of blocky menus and balding men screaming at you that it’s “only $99,” one Windows experimenter managed to use ChatGPT to generate easy product keys for the venerable operating…Read more...

Tanner Cook, a 21-year-old YouTuber, was shot at Dulles Town Center in Virginia on Sunday while attempting to film a prank video, per Cook and family member accounts.

After allegedly lying her way into a $175 million deal with JPMorgan to purchase her student loan startup Frank, former CEO Charlie Javice has officially been charged with fraud by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly used a little-known administrative subpoena more than 100,000 times over six years to request information from schools, abortion clinics, and newspapers, all without first procuring warrants from judges.Read more...

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates spoke out against recent calls to pause Artificial Intelligence developments out of fear of the risk to society. Gates is now advocating for finding ways to use and embrace AI and says it isn’t likely to go away.Read more...

A group of scientists is making a provocative argument about the nature of elephants. They posit that these gentle giants have achieved self-domestication, meaning they’ve self-selected for traits commonly found in humans and our domesticated animals, particularly reduced aggression. Not every outside expert agrees…Read more...

In the middle of an abandoned onsen, a door opens into another world. This idea propels Suzume, the latest anime film from writer and director Makoto Shinkai, known globally for works like the hugely successful Your Name and Weathering With You.Read more...

In the Atlantic Ocean, between the coasts of West Africa and the Caribbean, there’s a disjointed series of mats and clumps of brown, tangled algae known as sargassum seaweed. It’s supposed to be there. Or, at least, some of it is. In the Sargasso Sea—the only sea without a land border, bounded instead by four…Read more...

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There are innumerable reasons to be scared of AI, but once it starts dipping into dark, illegal perversion, those fears get much, much worse. That’s the concept at the center of The Artifice Girl, a new sci-fi thriller coming from XYZ Films and io9 has your exclusive look at the new trailer and poster.Read more...

California is breaking records once again. State officials on Monday announced that the levels of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains have reached historic depths, after a season in which more than a dozen major storms dumped intense amounts of precipitation on the state.Read more...

After an absolutely incredible teaser trailer for Barbie that aped the “dawn of man” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the hotly anticipated full trailer has been released. Greta Gerwig came onto the production in 2019 and we’ve been paying attention to the hot pink Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling vehicle ever since.

Following months—if not years—of anticipation, Starship’s inaugural orbital test flight could soon be more than just a distant mirage for Elon Musk’s private space venture.Read more...

Is April Fools for pranks or not anymore? Yesterday, Asus revealed that the Steam Deck competitor it joked about over the weekend is apparently real, and now Nothing’s following suit by actually producing the craft beer it teased for the internet’s worst holiday.

Everything old is new again, especially for Illumination. Whether it’s working in sequels to its franchises like Despicable Me or Sing!, or this week’s release of the Nintendo nostalgia trip that is The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the animation studio du jour has a lot on its plate, most of it continuations of familiar…Read more...

A team of researchers performed magic tricks for several species of monkey, and they found that the animals’ gullibility may depend on the structure of their hands.Read more...

Klaus Teuber, the game designer who developed Settlers of Catan, has passed away at age 70. A statement on his death was released on Twitter by Catan Studios. According to the German Catan site, Teuber passed away on April 1 after a “short, severe illness.” Teuber was most well known for Settlers of Catan, but he also…Read more...

Jonah Hauer-King wants The Little Mermaid’s live-action Prince Eric to have some depth. Ben Affleck goes up against mesmerizing bank robbers in a new trailer for Hypnotic. Plus, a new teaser for the final episode of The Owl House. Spoilers, away!

Houston, Virgin Orbit has a problem. The satellite launch company from British entrepreneur Richard Branson has announced that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware.

On April 3, NASA announced the crew for Artemis II, which will see astronauts spending up to three weeks on a flyby trip to the moon in 2024. This mission will be the first time in more than 50 years that humans will visit the moon—or leave low Earth orbit—since Apollo 17 in 1972. And a Canadian will be onboard this…Read more...

Who would’ve thought the lowly cooler would one day be elevated to an object of status? Rolling up to the beach with a Yeti in tow is now as much a status symbol as the car that got you there, but there’s another company vying for that same level of brand recognition with a slick cooler called the Tempo that promises…Read more...

“Free speech absolutist” Elon Musk’s Twitter algorithm is paying particular attention to the ongoing war in Ukraine. According to an analysis of the Twitter source code, the site makes specific mention of Twitter Spaces that reference the “Ukraine Crisis.” Though it remains unclear how Twitter policies speech about…Read more...

The first two trailers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have put their focus on Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). With how long it’s been since we’ve seen this take on the young Spider-Man, the trailers have gone out of their way to show how much he’s come into his own since then (and remind audiences how great …Read more...

It’s been six years since the Nintendo Switch launched, and the handheld market is clamoring for a successor. While great games are still being made for the platform, recent buggy releases like Pokémon: Scarlet and Pokémon Violet show that the power of the system, which uses SoC architecture originally designed for…Read more...

When Elon Musk turned Twitter verification into a paid service, he promised to remove blue checks from “legacy verified” Twitter accounts that had earned their status before the change. He said this great de-verification was happening “in the coming weeks.” Then he said it would be “soon.” Then it was “in the next few…Read more...

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Although streaming services try to keep their viewing numbers secret, Amazon Studios was all too happy to crow that the premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series had 25 million global viewers on the day it premiered. That’s quite a lot! But as it turns out, by the time the first season ended, a…Read more...

Spider-Man’s Bad Connection—the sequel to Marvel Universe novel Spider-Man’s Social Dilemma, part of Preeti Chhibber’s middle-grade series—is out in September. To celebrate the cover reveal for book two, io9 caught up with the author to discuss her inspirations for the novel, including what music she listened to while…Read more...

The Department of Justice said Monday that it had reached a settlement with gaming giant Activision Blizzard over a complaint accusing the company of financially penalizing successful Overwatch and Call of Duty esports teams. The DOJ alleged Activision’s “Competitive Balance Tax” would have “effectively operated as a…Read more...

This morning DC and Warner Bros. gave us our first look at Blue Beetle, the former HBO Max exclusive superhero movie from Angel Manuel Soto that’s now getting to swarm the box office itself as the next big movie of... well, DC’s weird transitory universe phase right now. But its peculiar place in DC’s slate doesn’t…Read more...

After an unexpectedly wet winter marked by consecutive storms in California, the state’s snowpack is now one of the highest that officials have ever documented.Read more...

Tinder is working on an ultra-expensive subscription offering that seems explicitly geared toward those wealthy enough (or at those feigning affluence) looking to swipe right on other semi-influential folks. The company is leaving the door open to abandon the idea altogether, meaning that those with deep pockets would…Read more...

In November of 2021, after years of ongoing scandals, the Biden administration formally blacklisted the NSO Group, a notorious spyware maker from Israel, shutting it off from American businesses and investment opportunities. But the New York Times now reports that not every part of the government was on the same page…Read more...

Chinese company Space Pioneer established a pair of milestones this past Sunday, becoming the first startup to successfully reach orbit on its first attempt, and the first Chinese company to reach orbit with liquid rocket propulsion.Read more...

The Game of Thrones prequel may be about to get a prequel. Variety has reported HBO is in active discussions to make another series based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, this time set even earlier in the timeline than the current prequel, House of the Dragon. If made, however, it’ll…Read more...

Google is taking a bold step in the world of online travel planning. The tech giant is piloting a price guarantee for airline bookings. Now, certain flights departing U.S. airports will come with a money-back promise. If a Google-guaranteed ticket price gets cheaper before the time of the flight, Google says it will…Read more...

A new study is the latest to suggest that modest alcohol consumption isn’t likely to provide any health benefits. The research, a review of existing studies, found no strong evidence that light to moderate drinking can reduce people’s risk of dying early. Past studies that did find a positive effect might have failed…Read more...

Spotify is officially shuttering its Clubhouse copycat called Spotify Live. The feature was a bit like a live radio station that listeners could access on the Spotify mobile app.

A team of physicists has recreated a classic experiment in particle physics with a dimensional twist, by performing it in time instead of just space. In the process, they showcased the utility of a unique material for future experiments.Read more...

Android’s answer to Apple’s AirDrop is almost ready for Windows PCs, and you can try it out now. In an official blog post, Google announced that Nearby Share in Beta is already available to download to your PC. It’s compatible with PCs running Windows 10 and up and phones on Android 6 and up. ARM-based machines, like…Read more...

The Indian Space Research Organization successfully conducted a test yesterday of its Reusable Launch Vehicle, an in-development spaceplane that took flight from an air force helicopter at an altitude of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) and landed autonomously on a runway.