Gizmodo

German company Isar Aerospace has raised $165 million in order to ramp up the development of its Spectrum rocket, which is scheduled for its debut launch later this year. For Europeans needing access to space, the rocket’s arrival will come not a moment too soon.Read more...

The space adventures in Marvels’s Guardians of the Galaxy films are nearing their conclusion—and with that, we’ll finally be learning the mystery behind the creation of Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.Read more...

As Disney creates worlds, so too can it destroy them. The happiest company/place on Earth no longer includes a dedicated metaverse division. Disney has cut its entire “next-generation storytelling and consumer-experiences unit,” according to a Tuesday Wall Street Journal report.

A new invasive mosquito has moved into Florida, a team of scientists say. In research out this month, they present evidence that the species Culex lactator has established itself in at least three southern counties of the Sunshine State. The exact risk this species poses to humans is unclear, though its relatives are…Read more...

The last decade has seen Disney making live-action versions of basically every popular animated movie of its past: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, 101 Dalmatians, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Dumbo, Lion King, the list goes on and on. Next year there’s Snow White and later this year, The Little Mermaid too.…Read more...

Update 3/28/2023, 4:00 p.m. ET: Elon Musk has amended his original announcement. Now, he says the plan was always that the “For You” section would continue to include “accounts you follow directly,” in a tweet posted nearly a full day after the original. “Forgot to mention...” he began the hours-late tweet—embedded…Read more...

Good news, Star Trek fans—in the broadest sense, because this affects multiple among Paramount+’s current crop of shows. The streamer has just revealed premiere dates and renewal news for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Star: Trek Prodigy.Read more...

At this point, it’s basically a conspiracy theory, but it seems like The X-Files could be coming back again. In a new interview, show creator Chris Carter said that none other than Black Panther director Ryan Coogler is interested in bringing back the popular show.Read more...

China’s plan to reach the widely coveted lunar south pole—where NASA hopes to touch down in 2025 with Artemis 3—has been disrupted by a decades-old U.S. trade law. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, has seemingly prevented the 2026 Chang’e 7 mission from including UAE’s Rashid 2 rover.

The return of Pixar shorts is something we’ve been waiting for, and Carl’s Date is a fitting choice—not least of all because it’s a wonderful homage to the late, great Ed Asner, the voice of Up’s Carl Fredricksen.Read more...

On October 9, 2022, a gamma ray burst brighter than any before seen swept across Earth and space-based detectors. A team scrambled to take follow-up observations at radio wavelengths, and they confirmed that the burst was about 70 times brighter than anything recorded previously.Read more...

Fans of the Child’s Play movies will want to seek out new documentary Living With Chucky—an affectionate portrait of the cult-beloved horror franchise that features interviews with most of its major players, including creator Don Mancini. The movie itself is a bit uneven, but the love it has for its source material…Read more...

A few months after a Russian crew capsule sprung a leak while docked to the International Space Station, the MS-22 returned to Earth carrying cargo but with no crew on board.Read more...

Read more...

Electricity generated from renewable energy sources surpassed electricity created by coal for the first time ever in the U.S. in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced yesterday.Read more...

U.S. federal prosecutors have added yet another charge to the long list that fallen cryptocurrency founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is facing. The former CEO of crypto exchange FTX is being indicted over allegations that he bribed Chinese government officials to the tune of more than $40 million dollars as part of his…Read more...

If you’re into Minecraft, good news! Dungeons & Dragons has partnered with the blocky video game to create a special adventure that mimics some parts of the D&D mechanics and gameplay. The new DLC will be available in spring of this year, and has some unique features for Minecraft, including dice rolling for combat,…Read more...

Tesla is once again under investigation, this time for its vehicle’s seatbelts allegedly not being properly attached, meaning the belts could potentially come loose during a crash which could result in a mass recall. U.S. highway safety regulators are looking into the claims after two Tesla owners filed complaints…Read more...

Apple Music Classical, the company’s big venture into a dedicated platform for classical music, finally went live on the App Store Tuesday. It’s only available on iPhone currently, and though it bears many features that classical fans have been clamoring for, it takes a bit of extra work to listen to classical songs…Read more...

Wizards of the Coast announced a new Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair drop for fans of the new Dungeons & Dragons movie. The cast of Honor Among Thieves is going to appear on their own Magic cards, each one with a nod to characterization in the film. The Secret Lair pack will include the six main characters: Edgin,…Read more...

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy stirred the AI researcher hornets’ nest this week by repeating a number of ill-informed, and increasingly popular statements about advanced AI chatbots’ capacity to achieve human-like understanding and teach themselves complex topics. Top AI experts speaking with Gizmodo said Murphy’s…Read more...

For some, tiles are rarely thought of unless it’s time for home renovations, but for mathematicians, they present plenty of conundrums—and a clever team has just cracked a particularly tricky one. Researchers identified a shape that was previously only theoretical: a 13-sided configuration called “the hat” that can…Read more...

Elemental, the story of a young fire-person named Ember and her budding friendship with a water-person named Wade, has just gotten a full-length trailer from Pixar. The feature film stars Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie as Ember and Wade, and also features the voice talents of Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi…Read more...

New research shows how an attacker can use inaudible ultrasound to silently take control of phones, smart speakers, or any device with a digital assistant.Read more...

Private launch company Virgin Orbit is still seeking new funding to help resume its operations after deal negotiations reportedly failed over the weekend.Read more...

Prolific author Julianna Baggott (Pure, Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders) has published novels for both YA and adult readers, as well as poetry. But she’s got something new up next: her first volume of short stories, the provocatively titled I’d Really Prefer Not to Be Here With You. io9 has a ghostly tale to…Read more...

Clearview AI, the shady US facial recognition firm whose surveillance tech is used by at least 2,400 law enforcement agencies, says police have run nearly a million searches using its service. The company’s database of images scraped from social media sites now reportedly numbers around 30 billion, a staggering 50%…Read more...

As us plebeians are getting our legacy blue checkmarks yanked out of our hands and CEO Elon Musk tweets about “treating everyone equally,” I regret to inform you that there is a shadowy group of 35 VIPs that Twitter has been pushing onto your timeline.Read more...

The Biden administration passed an executive order Monday that seeks to implement strict new guidelines for what kind of commercial spyware can be used by U.S. government agencies.Read more...

Sure, it’s silly, but the fact that James Gunn’s twitter continues to make headlines (and he responds to those headlines!) will never not be funny to me, especially when so many of those headlines are literally the length of the tweet. Anyway, Guardians 3 is going to be about 2.5 hours long and James Gunn is working…Read more...

Former CEO of failed crypto exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried was already ordered to live every millennial’s nightmare and move back in with his parents. Now, prosecutors have laid out how SBF is being grounded, curtailing his ability to access the internet or even play any online video games.Read more...

As the past few years have painfully made clear, infectious diseases remain one of humanity’s greatest perils. It only took weeks for scientists to identify the cause of the covid-19 pandemic—a previously unknown species of coronavirus—but there have been plenty of outbreaks, past and present, whose true cause isn’t…Read more...

Today DJI is introducing two upgraded versions of its drone accessories with the DJI Goggles Integra, which eliminates the cable wrangling from the DJI Goggles 2, and the DJI RC Motion 2, which features a redesigned two-way trigger accelerator allowing for quick transitions to reverse flight.Read more...

The FBI’s cybersecurity division has been purchasing bulk internet data from a little-known tech firm based in Florida, Motherboard reports. Team Cymru, which calls itself a “global leader in cyber threat intelligence,” sells access to bulk web traffic and tells clients it can act as a gateway to a “super majority of…Read more...

After winning an Academy Award, you have to assume a person’s career options suddenly become way more vast. No doubt Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson—a hugely successful musician in addition to picking up an Oscar last year for Summer of Soul—already had quite a bit of freedom in picking his next project, but who could have…Read more...

Residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania are currently grappling with uncertainty and anxiety surrounding their tap water. On Friday night, more than 8,000 gallons of hazardous chemicals spilled into Otter Creek (also known as Mill Creek), which flows into the Delaware River, the largest source of drinking water for…Read more...

Well, it was a great run. Gone are the days of waking up two minutes before your first meeting and checking your inbox in your pajamas, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who posit that the pandemic-era work-from-home boom is finally fizzling out.

It’s been 15 years since The Incredible Hulk—the Louis Leterrier-directed, pre-Disney Marvel Studios film with Edward Norton playing the big green guy. A lot’s changed since then—but Liv Tyler’s character Betty Ross endures. She’ll make her Marvel return in Captain America: New World Order.Read more...

Zoom is introducing an Artificial Intelligence feature to its platform. The video conferencing platform is collaborating with OpenAI to create a feature that expands on its current Zoom IQ capabilities by “summarizing chat threads, organizing ideas, drafting content for chats, emails, and whiteboard sessions, creating…Read more...

In October 2020, engineers landed a spacecraft on an asteroid 200 million miles (320 million km) from Earth and collected a rocky sample from its surface. But that wasn’t even the hardest part. Now the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on its way back to Earth to drop off that sample, with NASA rehearsing the smoothest way to…Read more...

One company is calling on all crypto pirates to sail more than 200,000 miles to the lunar surface to recover a bitcoin booty left on the Moon. The advertised 62 bitcoin, with a stated worth of $1.5 million, will remain stranded on the lunar south pole after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket delivers it to space later this…Read more...

Two of the things that have fans most excited for the return of Fast and Furious are the additions of Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. Aquaman and Captain Marvel add some major star power (and, in Larson’s case, Oscar-caliber acting) to a franchise that’s already jam-packed with talent. However, since both actors are…Read more...

Beautiful and troubling photographs of how the world is changing and heating up are part of a competition to pressure one of the world’s leading camera companies to drop its controversial views on climate.

Mondo has had a huge impact on my life. As far back as I can remember, I always loved movie posters. Growing up, I’d buy posters at Suncoast or take them from my video store, and tack them to my wall. If they ripped, I’d just throw them out and get new ones. Years later, the posters of Mondo made me realize the papers…Read more...

A lot of considerations go into choosing where to live. Whether it’s job opportunities, outdoor recreation, culture and entertainment, or the political landscape, whether a city is affordable is also one of the biggest factors in deciding where to live. We’ve seen more and more people leave big cities and their high…Read more...

Kermit will always be top Muppet, but Disney+ series The Muppets Mayhem will shine a spotlight on the no-less-beloved members of the Electric Mayhem—the groovy house band on The Muppet Show. A new interview with the show’s co-creators gives us a good idea of what to expect from the series (although, alas, when it’ll…Read more...

SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9 is currently in a class by itself, but rival companies are hoping to end the rocket’s near-monopolistic hold on the spaceflight industry. One such company is Rocket Lab, with its chief financial officer now taking direct aim at the Elon Musk-owned firm.

Way back in 1999, Lego made an announcement that helped save the company: a collection of sets based on the original Star Wars trilogy. Since then, Lego has released over 860 Star Wars-themed sets over the past 24 years, but no lightsabers with glowing blades. For that, it seems, we have to rely on talented amateur…Read more...

Begun, the Jedi Adventures have. Lucasfilm just shared three short films set in the world of Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, which is set to debut on Disney+ and Disney Jr. May 4. The kid-friendly animated show takes place during the era of the High Republic and features Jedi younglings, led by Yoda himself,…Read more...

TRAPPIST-1b is a superhot rocky world just 40 light-years away. Astronomers recently trained the Webb Space Telescope this exoplanet, a world in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, and found that it’s devoid of an atmosphere.Read more...