Gizmodo

The Targaryen family had a rough time of it in Game of Thrones, but they never had to fight each other. But that’s exactly what will happen in House of the Dragon, HBO’s prequel to the hit fantasy series, which depicts the civil war which erupted in Westeros 200 years in the past over the rule of the Seven…Read more...

Like millions of people around the world, Valve’s Steam Deck console is struggling to beat the heat. As temperatures reach record-breaking highs across Europe, the company warned customers that its handheld console will throttle, or slow down, when it gets too hot.

A new investigation from the Hollywood Reporter has uncovered the kind of compensation that character creators are receiving from Marvel, and the figures are staggeringly low—with the co-creator of Black Widow’s breakout character Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, serving as just one example.Read more...

Amazon is hosting its annual Alexa developers annual conference, called Alexa Live, today. The event will introduce a heaping of new APIs for developers to build with, meaning new abilities coming to an Echo speaker or smart display near you. Many of the tools being introduced are there to drive the idea of Amazon’s…Read more...

San Diego Comic-Con 2022 will mark the return of the Vindicators from Rick and Morty. The show’s superhero squad first appeared in the show’s season three episode “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender,” a memorable debut that inspired a comic—and now, some prequel digital shorts about the team.Read more...

It looks like the time to scrounge around for leaks about Samsung’s next foldable smartphones will soon end—at least for now. Samsung has announced that it will reveal more about what’s to come from its foldables division on Aug. 10 at 9 a.m. ET / 6 a.m. P.T. during its next virtual Unpacked event.Read more...

Sony just made a few changes to its upcoming release schedule, including the placement of two new horror movies next year. However, it also moved an “Untitled Sony/Marvel Universe” movie from release in late 2023 into summer 2024, and that has us wondering... is that when Tom Holland might be back as Spider-Man?Read more...

Private space companies Impulse Space and Relativity Space have announced an ambitious joint venture poised to be the first commercial mission to Mars, which will feature the launch of a payload as soon as 2024.

The UK just smashed temperature records, in another startling sign of how climate change is altering everyday life. But according to some climate deniers, it’s still not hot enough to be concerned.Read more...

A big part of how a pair of wireless earbuds sounds is how well they fit, and how effectively they can channel music into your ears. It’s why most earbud makers will include a handful of silicone ear tips, as everyone’s ears are different. But Ultimate Ears’ new UE Drop buds are guaranteed to fit every user perfectly,…Read more...

Bearing nearly as much suspense as the end to Strangers Things’ fourth season, Netflix dropped its second quarter earnings Tuesday. And guess what? Things aren’t as bad as Netflix itself predicted.Read more...

Qualcomm today launched a new wearable chip platform for smartwatches that promises significant improvements to battery life and performance. Called the Snapdragon W5+ and W5, the next-gen chips appear, on paper, to solve some of the most pressing issues plaguing current smartwatches.

Comic-Con is back in San Diego this week, returning for an in-person event for the first time since 2019. And alongside all the big news and amazing cosplays that can only mean one thing: there’s suddenly going to be a lot of very cool things that you can spend lots of money on. And hey, some of them will be available…Read more...

Back in 2018, European internet authorities passed one of the toughest pieces of privacy legislation in the world to date. Four years later, they’re being sued for violating the very same laws.Read more...

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The Department of Justice says that it has seized approximately $500,000 in ransom payments made by a Kansas medical facility to a North Korean ransomware gang called “Maui” last year. The money included the payments themselves along with cryptocurrency that the criminals were using to launder the hospital’s cash.Read more...

Well well well. Internal reports by WarnerMedia discovered that a disproportionate amount of those calling for the creation of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the return of the director’s vision for the DC Extended Universe of movies were allegedly online bots.

The company behind the Haunted Mansion is getting ready to tell another tale of ghosts and goblins. Disney has just hired director Marc Forster (Christopher Robin) to direct The Graveyard Book, a film based on the award-winning novel by Neil Gaiman.Read more...

Apple has long treated its own tap-and-go Apple Pay platform like a prized fruit tree in a verdant garden, where only they could dictate who gets to nibble on its succulent delights. Now a new suit from an experienced anti-big tech firm is looking to take a rather ravenous bite out of Apple over its miserly attitude…Read more...

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With the release of a redesigned MacBook Air M2, there is only one good reason to purchase the MacBook Pro 13: active cooling. As we’ve recently learned, Apple wasn’t exaggerating when it justified the existence of the MacBook Pro by claiming the MacBook Air isn’t designed for sustained performance, particularly when…Read more...

After Game of Thrones wrapped in 2019 after eight years of massive success, HBO was eager to find the next epic fantasy drama that could take on the mantle. HBO had never pursued spinoff series before, but according to a new account on the Hollywood Reporter, it was willing to take the risk in order to create a …Read more...

Torrential rains poured over New York City yesterday, flooding streets, highways, and subway stations.Read more...

A team of physicists say they’ve discovered two properties of accelerating matter that they believe could make a never-before-seen type of radiation visible. The newly described properties mean that observing the radiation—called the Unruh effect—could happen in a tabletop lab experiment.

Twitter’s lawyers laid into Elon Musk Tuesday with blistering, blunt language in opening arguments of the multi-billion dollar court case that will decide whether the richest man in the world will purchase one of the internet’s most influential social networks, as he agreed to months ago.

Dean Fleisher Camp, the director of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, had the best excuse ever to be late to an interview. Last week, at the exact time he was scheduled to talk to io9 about his incredibly charming feature debut, news broke that he’d been hired by Disney to direct a live-action film version of Lilo and…Read more...

The private space race continues with a shuffling of personnel between companies: astronaut Chris Sembroski announced via Twitter that he’ll will be joining Blue Origin after previously working with SpaceX.

Travel this summer has been hectic. We’ve seen flights being delayed for hours or just plain canceled, airlines and airports have reduced the number of flights because of packed airports and planes, and to add to it, there’s now a greater chance your luggage will be mishandled or lost.

Most wireless earbuds that offer noise cancelling also use the microphones for an ambient sound mode for when users want to hear the world around them. JBL’s new Tune Flex takes a different approach, with buds that can switch between an open or sealed design, naturally blocking or allowing ambient sounds to get…Read more...

Top Gun: Maverick has consistently been crushing the box office since it came out this past May, earning more than $618 million in the U.S. and another $620 million worldwide. With the possible exception of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever coming out in November, Maverick looks like it’ll end up the highest-grossing…Read more...

Nvidia is expected to launch next-gen GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs later this year, and now a new leak is giving us a sneak peek at the possible performance of these highly anticipated components. According to notable Twitter leaker @kopite7kimi, Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 4090 desktop GPU scored higher than 19,000 points on…Read more...

As the nerd world prepares for San Diego Comic Con, gaming communities are getting ready for Gen Con, the early August gaming convention in Indianapolis that serves as the yearly hub for creators and fans. Over here on io9, we’re looking forward to all the great reveals that will happen, but until then, here are some…Read more...

If there was any doubt that Lego is leaning hard on nostalgia to empty the pockets of kids who grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, its latest video game console recreation is a brick-built Atari 2600 that includes a collection of classic carts and that all important faux wood grain finish.Read more...

Uber now has to pay an unspecified millions of dollars over allegations it was milking every cent it could from disabled riders who dared take an extra minute or two longer to get inside a car.Read more...

Amazon warehouses are notoriously dangerous, unpleasant places to work. Now, the Department of Labor and Federal Prosecutors in New York are probing the company’s warehouses across the country as part of a civil investigation into alleged unsafe workplace conditions.

The ongoing megadrought in the American West is bringing about a new kind of patrol. Workers with the Department of Water and Power walk around the city looking for sidewalk puddles—a potential sign of misused water—and investigating community complaints about water waste.

There are new details about M. Night Shyamalan’s next mysterious movie. Matthew Modine wants in on more Stranger Things. Get another close look at Prey’s newest Predator. Plus, what’s coming on Westworld, and our first look at the new Quantum Leap. Spoilers now!

Amazon has filed lawsuits against the administrators of over 10,000 Facebook groups that are allegedly part of a network to recruit individuals to leave fake reviews for products on Amazon in exchange for money or free products.

Foam darts have been Nerf’s mainstay for decades, but in recent years, the company has been expanding to other foam projectiles, like the tiny balls its powerful Rival blasters fire. But today, Hasbro revealed a new twist for Nerf: a blaster that instead fires tiny pre-hydrated super absorbent polymer rounds that…Read more...

Is it a bad sign for an industry when technical issues and ending a little-known promotional campaign lead to immediate concerns that one of the biggest players in the crypto game is in financial danger? Let me just answer that question: yes, of course it is.Read more...

Marjorie Taylor Greene, an anti-trans bigot and congresswoman from Georgia, sent a hateful tweet on Monday, using the deadname of U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health, Rachel Levine, and referring to gender-affirming surgery using a derogatory phrase. And while Twitter has affixed a warning on the tweet saying that it…Read more...

In a recently released featurette for HBO Max’s Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon, showrunners Ryan J. Condal and Miguel Sapochnik along with book series creator George R.R. Martin dove behind the scenes into what some of the prequel series is all about.Read more...

Globally we are in the midst of the sixth wave of the covid epidemic, and with visitors to San Diego Comic-Con International coming from all over the world for the latest in pop culture, the convention has underlined its safety protocols for attendees.Read more...

Federal agents have identified 244 victims who lost some $42.7 million to fake cryptocurrency apps during the past year, according to a Monday announcement from the FBI. There are plenty of ways to lose money on the internet, and, unfortunately, there are tons of people who fall for these scams, forking over ungodly…Read more...

A novel nasal spray treatment appears to show promise in quickly clearing the coronavirus that causes covid-19 from our nostrils. In a recent Phase III trial in India, the spray was found to significantly reduce people’s nasal viral load within days and at a faster rate than those who received a placebo. Treated…Read more...

I certainly hope that Peter Dinklage enjoys a tipple or two. Otherwise, I’m not especially sure why the actor, after playing Tyrion Lannister, the fan-favorite lush of Westeros, in Game of Thrones would want to play an arguably more infamous boozehound in another major genre series.

The British Isles were a very different place some 10,000 years ago. For one thing, the land mass was still connected to mainland Europe. The last ice age was ending, and glaciers were receding. And bison may have been roaming—specifically, a now-extinct species known as the steppe bison. (Even farther back, in the…Read more...

If Intel’s long-in-the-pipe lineup of discrete GPUs were like childhood fantasies of Santa, then the most wise amongst us would ascribe to the axiom that “seeing is believing.” As far as the rumored Arc A780 graphics card is concerned, it’s pretty much confirmed nobody’s going to be getting one in their stocking this…Read more...

Firefighters across southern Europe and northern Africa have been battling intense wildfires this week as areas across the region have experienced record-setting temperature spikes.Read more...

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