Gizmodo

“Franchise.” It’s a word you hear more often than not these days when talking about movies. “It’s part of a franchise” or “We want it to start a franchise.” Franchises are prized in Hollywood because it means much of the hard work is already done; making a new Marvel movie or Star Wars movie is a no-brainer because…Read more...

Admittedly, this is my first time with a Sonos speaker—ever. The brand was always too far out of my price range for me to consider over the years, and I’m not what you would call an “audiophile.” I am a person who listens to the same five songs over and over again in pursuit of a “vibe.” To be fair, the Sonos Era …Read more...

When Henk Rogers attempted to get the rights to publish Tetris on handheld consoles in 1988, he likely had no idea the mess he would be thrust into. What followed was a year of flying in between Moscow, Tokyo, and various cities in the United States as he attempted to negotiate for video game rights while the Cold War…Read more...

Despite approval setbacks, Elon Musk continues to charge forward on his grand plans for human brain implants. Neuralink, the billionaire’s biotech venture, has asked one of the largest and best regarded U.S. neurosurgery centers to be a partner in potential, future clinical trials involving people, according to a…Read more...

A tornado swept over Western Mississippi on Friday night, felling trees, flinging roofs off of houses, and killing at least 25 people. At least one person died in nearby Alabama.Read more...

A Japanese mission to the Moon seeks to be the first private venture to successfully land on the lunar surface. But before it attempts to touchdown on its dusty surface, the Hakuto-R lunar lander is treating us to some sweet new views of our natural satellite.Read more...

With even smartwatches offering more processing power than the classic video game consoles of yesteryear, there’s now no shortage of ways to scratch a retro gaming itch. And while it seems like most retro gaming innovation is currently focused on retro handhelds, Powkiddy, which makes its own fair share of portables,…Read more...

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This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here. This article was produced in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations, where Adam Federman is a reporting fellow. Subscribe to their newsletters here.

Researchers studying lunar soil samples from China’s Chang’e-5 mission believe they may have found a water reservoir on Earth’s arid satellite.Read more...

A judge ruled against Internet Archive, a free online digital library, on Friday in a lawsuit filed by four top publishers who claimed the company was in violation of copyright laws. The publishers, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House filed the lawsuit against Internet…Read more...

In spite of a rocky first third, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a delightful, if slightly unsurprising, swords and sorcery film that balances the goofball antics of playing tabletop role-playing games and focused storytelling without sacrificing approachability. It follows a rag-tag group of adventurers…Read more...

In 2020, former President Donald Trump kicked off a worldwide frenzy about TikTok over the app’s potential security concerns. TikTok is now banned on government devices in the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, and elsewhere, and American lawmakers have their eyes on a national ban for consumers. The French, apparently, are…Read more...

Silicon Valley Bank, once triumphantly dubbed the “financial partner of the innovation economy,” before its recent historic collapse, is being acquired by First Citizens, a legacy banking institution founded in 1898. The new deal will see First Citizens take on the entirety of SVB’s loans and deposits just two weeks…Read more...

There really is so much good SFF happening right now, it’s kind of wild. Renfield is looking to be a campy, Raimi-esque comedy gorefest, The Power reflects modern inequities through a sci-fi reversal, and... oh, well, I guess Joker 2 is still happening. But the animated Gamera miniseries? That looks incredible. Time…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly roundup of the latest merch mania. This week, Kang conquers Hot Toys’ Marvel movie lineup, Mega Construx gives you a He-Man sword of your own, and it’s a Spider-Verse special as Mezco and Hasbro swing in with new toys. Check it out!

Elon Musk’s Twitter hasn’t been going great, and now we’re learning the CEO’s plans to make the website’s code open source may have come to fruition a little too early. Court documents have revealed that portion’s of the platform’s source code leaked on the software development forum GitHub, exposing some of the…Read more...

Twitter owner Elon Musk may have let the cat out of the bag about Twitter’s current total worth. According to a Sunday report from The Wall Street Journal, Musk told employees some have received stock rewards based on a $20 billion valuation. Just a reminder, Musk bought the platform last year for $44 billion. At the…Read more...

The spirit of what April Fools’ Day should be is the energy of the Looney Tunes, and with that in mind ACME Fools will debut wacky new content to celebrate the silly antics of animation’s agents of chaos and their Warner Bros. 100 crossover events.Read more...

To most, Lewis Carroll is best known as the whimsical author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but did you know that he was also an avid puzzler and published mathematician? Among his many contributions was a book of mathematical puzzles that he called “Pillow Problems.” They are so named because Carroll devised…Read more...

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Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. Fear the Walking Dead is still on the air and a trailer for its eighth and final season is here. In it, the show makes direct reference to a major character in the original series, providing a link that fans have been curious about since day one.Read more...

When one of the key figures behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe was fired seemingly out of the blue, you had a sense it was going to get much more complex. And now, it has.Read more...

John Wick: Chapter 4 just had a killer weekend at the box office, grossing $73.5 million, the biggest opening weekend yet for the franchise and the second biggest opening of Keanu Reeves’ career, behind The Matrix Reloaded.Read more...

Jonathan Majors, the actor who portrays the villainous Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was arrested and charged in New York City this weekend after an alleged domestic dispute. TMZ first reported the news.Read more...

With just a teaser out in the world so far, the movie version of Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes—the prequel to the Hunger Games series, set six decades before the revolution sparked by Katniss Everdeen—has dropped some sparkle to remind you it’s on the way. Behold, this 24k new poster!

David Cronenberg’s name has become shorthand for skin-crawling body horror, and many of his films do lean into the extremely visceral. But while Dead Ringers tells a story rooted in the medical profession, its shocks are (mostly) more psychologically distressing than stomach-turning—with no potency lost 35 years after…Read more...

The much-anticipated “modern refresh” of MTV’s cult animated series Clone High is inching toward its HBO Max release—and the series, created in part by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller, has some hilarious new history-twisting images to prove it. Plus: more casting news!Read more...

Star Trek: Picard fans knew that the show’s third and final season would be a Next Generation reunion, featuring characters from the series that introduced Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard. But while Brent Spiner had appeared in previous Picard seasons, many wondered if season three would find a way to bring him back…Read more...

After a mishap involving her office’s slick new printer, aging pencil-pusher Marlène gets called out by her smarmy young boss. Perhaps, he suggests, if she can’t evolve with the technology, she should take herself out of the workforce entirely. As sci-fi short Seniors 3000 reveals, there is another, far wilder way!Read more...

Earlier this week, Relativity Space’s 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket failed to reach orbit on its first flight. That’s now the sixth failed launch in the past four months across the global space industry, in what’s an upsetting yet not altogether surprising trend.Read more...

Shrink down to the size of toys at Toy Story Land in Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios, where you can play and dine alongside Andy’s treasures. Disney Parks invited io9 to preview the food and theming at the newest dining destination that has something for everyone, even plant-based BBQ!Read more...

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The days where streaming was synonymous with playing video games in a bedroom are over. In recent years, streamers have been moving their cameras away from their desktops and towards impressive, hilarious, and sometimes downright strange live events. On Sunday March 26, streamer-run live events will reach a new peak…Read more...

If you got your blue Twitter verification checkmark the old-fashioned way—you know, by not paying for it—then I have bad news for you. The Tesla CEO turned Twitter CEO reiterated today that legacy blue checkmarks on the platform will be yoinked from users’ authenticated hands on April 1...or will they?

What if I told you that actor Madison Iseman is the reincarnation of the goddess Athena? Would you have any idea I was referring to Knights of the Zodiac, the upcoming live-action adaptation of a hit manga/anime series from the 1980s originally called Saint Seiya? I would be surprised, because adaptations were…Read more...

A group of security researchers have, once again, proven that Tesla vehicles’ high-tech software and systems are easily exploited. At Zero Day Initiative’s Pwn2Own 2023 hacking competition this week, cybersecurity firm Synacktiv successfully cracked both Tesla’s infotainment and Gateway networks in a Model 3 car, as…Read more...

After undergoing a procedure aimed at restoring her hearing after 12 years of silence, college student Chloe (Chucky’s Lachlan Watson) heads to her family’s Cape Cod cottage to recuperate. It’s lonely—but as The Unheard explores, she finds she’s not alone, seemingly in both natural and supernatural ways.Read more...

Months after Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster went up in flames, the company released a report pinpointing the cause of the rocket anomaly that halted its operations.Read more...

Star Trek: Picard’s third and final season is shaping up to be a fitting, nostalgic farewell to its titular hero so far—but is the journey of boldly going ever over when there are both the vast reaches of the final frontier and the capitalist mechanism of the mega-franchise to consider? Not really, but hey, at least…Read more...

Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk once played the Mr. Money Bags role to Silicon Valley’s newest darling OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT and DALLE-2. The nonprofit has become the center of the tech world’s new obsession with AI, but a new report claims that back in 2018 Musk proposed he take over the nonprofit research…Read more...

British satellite company OneWeb is gearing up for the launch of its final batch of internet satellites, completing a constellation in low Earth orbit despite some hiccups along the way.Read more...

If you were already stressed about increased air pollution and more frequent heat waves, well, you can add another disturbing health impact of climate change to your list: the flesh-eating bacteria Vibrio vulnificus, which is thriving in warming U.S. waters.Read more...

National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has officially stated that employers cannot offer non-disparagement agreements in severance packages and that any previous non-disparagement agreements are void. In other words, the NLRB has made it official that after you move on from your place of…Read more...

There’s a long-standing tradition in the arts, whether it’s literature, film, music, or all pop culture in general: every once in a while, someone comes along and proclaims a genre irrevocably dead. The jury’s been out on cyberpunk for decades.Read more...

Former President Donald Trump appeared to suggest there could be “death and destruction” if he is indicted in the Stormy Daniels investigation. Trump, who called the investigation a “witch hunt” in a video posted to his Truth Social platform earlier this week, is once again trying to ramp up his supporters.

A controversy in the world of shark science has come to a close. A group of scientists who published a record of what would be the first-ever goblin shark found in the Mediterranean Sea have retracted their work. The retraction, submitted March 20, follows Gizmodo’s earlier reporting on the saga.

Like a marshmallow roasted by a God, the plot thickens for the sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Actors Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt have joined the cast of what’s being referred to as Ghostbusters: Firehouse, along with Gossip Girl’s Emily Alyn Lind and comedian James Acaster.Read more...

A fiery coalition of more than two dozen TikTok content creators gathered outside the steps of the nation’s capitol Wednesday to fiercely oppose growing lawmaker calls for a nationwide ban. Every one of those protesters had their expenses covered by TikTok.Read more...

Balancing both old-school leitmotifs and modern musical themes, the score for Star Trek: Picard is getting a brilliant vinyl release. We have an exclusive interview with the composers and a comment from showrunner Terry Matalas on the music of the show.Read more...