Gizmodo

Panera Bread isn’t telling its legion of customers to shove their hand directly into their broccoli and cheese bread bowl, but a few Missouri franchisees are letting their customers know they can throw their palm onto the kiosk to pay for their meal. It’s not the first time Amazon’s palm-reading payment tech has been…Read more...

At this weekend’s WonderCon 2023, JAKKS Pacific will host a panel to reveal its line for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. io9 got an exclusive sneak peek of the iconic Mario Kart, inspired by Nintendo and Illumination’s new animated adaptation, which will be part of JAKKS Pacific’s 2023 toy and collectible releases.Read more...

In an effort to reshape the growing satellite market, a group of private companies led by Arkisys is preparing to test a system that would enable the construction of spacecraft directly in orbit.Read more...

I like my AI like I like my foreign cheese varieties, incredibly weird and full of holes, the kind that leaves most definitions of “good” up to individual taste. So color me surprised as I explored the next frontier of public AI models, and found one of the strangest experiences I had since the bizarre AI-generated …Read more...

Last year, io9 featured A Fractured Infinity, the debut novel from Nathan Tavares. The sci-fi fantasy author has a new release coming later this year, and it’s another mind-bending tale with a queer romance at its center. Read on for an excerpt from Welcome to Forever, as well as the full cover reveal.

We return to tabletop with clear eyes and fingers itching to roll some dice. As reviews and social reactions start rolling in for the Dungeons & Dragons film, we’ve begun collecting creative, unique, and independent games from across the community. Crack open a tome of Shakespearean drama, solo psychological horror,…Read more...

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In yet another late-night video, former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social claiming that there is a “witch hunt” against him, even as he claims he will be arrested on Tuesday. No arrest has been made, nor has it been confirmed by authorities, and Trump’s lawyer says the former president isn’t afraid of the…Read more...

The loudest voice calling for dramatic Big Tech break up in the upcoming 2024 presidential election might not come from President Joe Biden or progressive lefties, but rather, from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The conservative governor and probable presidential candidate revealed his views at a private event caught…Read more...

Like her titular protagonist, when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, she knew not what she had wrought into the world. Her tale of science taken too far birthed what many consider the first science fiction novel… and what some don’t. As it turns out, there are several tales told before the 19th century that…Read more...

Allergies plague millions of people each year once spring hits, the trees bud, and the flowers bloom, but the worst areas for allergy sufferers have been narrowed down to 20 locations in a study by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.Read more...

After Elon Musk’s Boring Company received approval to construct one-lane tunnels in the bowels of Las Vegas last year, the company has recently submitted plans for an expansion that will bring a total of 65 miles (105 kilometers) of criss-crossing tunnels beneath the Nevada city.

The United Nations wants Big Oil to have a seat at the table when it comes to climate solutions—an idea kind of like inviting a fox into a henhouse.

Journey back to sixth-century England—by way of 1981 fantasy-movie aesthetics—with Dragonslayer, the tale of a sorcerer’s apprentice (Peter MacNicol) who must tangle with the local fire-breathing menace, delightfully named Vermithrax Pejorative. The cult-classic film has a sparking new 4K Ultra HD release, and io9…Read more...

HBO’s post-apocalyptic show about society destroyed by a devastating fungal pandemic, The Last of Us, is fiction. However, lethal fungi that can infect humans are very much a reality, and one of the biggest threats today is Candida auris.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket is being readied in anticipation of the Artemis 2 mission, with engineers putting the rocket together at a facility in New Orleans.Read more...

The identity of who mothered Goofy’s son Max remains an unsolved mystery. While attending a preview of Disneyland’s revamped Toontown, io9 investigated Goofy’s home and small-batch candy factory, hunting for answers left out of A Goofy Movie and the Disney Channel series Goof Troop.Read more...

After an initial announcement in February, Google has officially opened limited beta access to its AI chatbot, “Bard,” which it describes as a companion to its primary service, search. Google calls the chatbot an “experiment” and has reminded users that it is still very much a work in progress and may not always…Read more...

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

It hasn’t quite been two years since season one of Sweet Tooth, based on the post-apocalyptic comic by Jeff Lemire, ended, but it must seem longer to fans who’ve been wondering what happened to Gus and his hybrid friends after they were captured by General Abbott and Last Men. As this first trailer for the…Read more...

Scientists have spotted a relict glacier on Mars, near the equator—far from the parts of the planet where water ice is known to exist today. While this leftover glacial structure may not contain any water now, the fact that it exists where it does suggests that water ice had a more expansive footprint in the Red…Read more...

A new report claims Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam may have actually changed the hierarchy of power in the DC universe as he claimed it would, but not in the way it was originally attended. Instead, he may have blown it up completely, whether he planned to or not.Read more...

A planned Gears of War universe is about to be unleashed on Netflix. Game developers the Coalition have partnered with the streamer and Dune adaptation scribe Jon Spaihts to kick off the franchise with a live-action film.

We need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by more than half over the next decade in order to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, says a blockbuster new report. The next few years represent a crucial crossroads, the international group of scientists said, as the choices we make could make or break our…Read more...

The U.S. Space Force has submitted a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and in it the military branch is asking for $60 million over the next two years for tactically responsive space, which could see Space Force partners launching satellites within a 24 hour window.

Organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics are hoping to keep world athletes cool during the summer without relying on air conditioners. Their goal is to use an underground water cooling system beneath the Athletes Village instead.Read more...

Glass can be cleaned and reused many times, but it doesn’t break down in the environment and can sit in landfills for thousands of years. A team of scientists tried to tackle this problem by developing biodegradable glass that can safely break down over a much shorter period of time.Read more...

Taking to social media to assuage concerns and quash rumors, Oscar winner Daniel Kwan (one part of the Daniels, alongside Daniel Scheiner) posted on an Instagram story that the Daniels were only directing one episode of upcoming Star Wars Disney+ series Skeleton Crew... and that it had, in fact, already happened.

Researchers at Stanford University have taken down their short-lived chatbot that harnessed Meta’s LLaMA AI, nicknamed Alpaca AI. The researchers launched Alpaca with a public demo anyone could try last week, but quickly took the model offline thanks to rising costs, safety concerns, and “hallucinations,” which is the…Read more...

After traveling through space for more than three months, Japan’s Hakuto-R lander has entered lunar orbit, as it prepares to land on the dusty surface of the Moon.Read more...

The Biden Administration considered looking into Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter over national security concerns, Bloomberg first reported. Musk bought the company for $44 billion in October which lead to questions about whether any of the foreign investors involved in the acquisition could gain access to users’ data.Read more...

On Tuesday, Adobe introduced its own generative AI model family called Firefly, claiming—like young people tend to do in the throes of pubescence—it’s not like the other scrappy AI image generators. Instead of using training data dredged up from the internet, Adobe said its crafted its service only using images on its…Read more...

Eighty years ago Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, imprisoned in the Nazis’ Czechoslovakian ghetto at Terezín, wrote Der Kaiser Von Atlantis, a one-act opera that imagined a world where the famous underwater kingdom never actually sunk. While the two didn’t live to see their work performed, now it’s been transformed into…Read more...

Cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges have gotten all sorts of federal attention in recent years. From the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Department of Justice to the U.S. Senate—many government agencies and lawmakers have begun to weigh in on blockchain business. Now, for the first time, the Supreme Court…Read more...

Late last night, Above the Line reported that screenwriters Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers) and Justin Britt-Gibson are no longer attached to the Star Wars universe. They were originally tied to an untitled Star Wars project alongside Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Obaid-Chinoy is an Emmy and Oscar winning…Read more...

With a nationwide TikTok ban on the table, the app that has brought us so much comfort (and endless scrolling) is shifting its approach to content moderation. Today, TikTok unveiled new content moderation policies that vaguely target AI-generated content and climate misinformation ahead of CEO Shou Zi Chew’s…Read more...

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse teases a secret dimension for Miles and friends to visit. Seth McFarlane still has hopes for another season of The Orville. Plus, what’s coming on Syfy’s The Ark. To me, my spoilers!Read more...

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On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before Congress, marking his highest-profile speaking opportunity to date. He wants you to hear this message: TikTok is not a threat, and it has become too important to too many Americans to ban.Read more...

ChatGPT users reported a strange bug letting them see the chat history titles of other users. It’s just another quirk of the closed environment of OpenAI’s super-popular AI chatbot and sets another grim reminder that despite what you might think, other people, especially the company itself, has access to what you send…Read more...

Last fall, NASA’s DART spacecraft smashed into Dimorphos, a small asteroid some 7 million miles away, in an unprecedented attempt to change the orbit of a natural body in space. Now, two teams of astronomers have released images of the collision’s aftermath taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large…Read more...

China’s new state-sponsored dating app, Palm Guixi, is something right out of the dystopia fiction handbook and is receiving mixed responses. The app was reportedly created to streamline the dating process for residents in Jiangxi by matching single users based on background data uploaded by the app itself.Read more...

With two massive canines, an L-shaped jaw, and a pouch to carry its young, the saber-toothed marsupial Thylacosmilus atrox sounds like an evolutionary Madlib. But researchers have now described an extra quirk: surprisingly wide-set eyes, more typical of horses and cows than carnivorous animals.

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Before this month, it had been years since Lego had made any sets based off the Lord of the Rings movies. But the iconic brick maker came to us at the turn of the tide with the latest adult collectors set—a recreation of Rivendell from The Fellowship of the Ring as epic as an extended edition trilogy marathon, and…Read more...

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Update 3/20/23 at 5:27 PM ET:

A federal judge heard oral arguments in a lawsuit filed by four major book publishers against Internet Archive for alleged copyright infringement on Monday. The lawsuit was first filed in 2020 and could be a landmark case when it comes to digital libraries and copyright.Read more...

A wildly cool rumor running rampant around the Star Wars community might actually be true. It says that Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the Oscar-winning directors of the Best Picture-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, directed an episode of the upcoming Star Wars Disney+ show, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.Read more...

A few names have been attached to every single Marvel Studios movie since the first one, Iron Man, in 2008. Kevin Feige is the one most people know. Louis D’Esposito is another, and a third is Victoria Alonso. Together, those three producers have worked together to build Marvel Studios into a history-making juggernaut…Read more...