Gizmodo

If you’re on Twitter, you’ve had your timeline taken over by Elon Musk at some point. This past Wednesday, it was his secret twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. On Thursday, it was news that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter was in “serious jeopardy.” Finally, on Friday, Musk finally did what he had been…Read more...

NASA’s Earth Observatory has been presenting us with images of our pale, blue dot since it began in 1999, allowing us to get a birds eye view of what different parts of our planet look like. While Earth Observatory has a ton of photos accumulated by satellites orbiting the planet and astronauts aboard the…Read more...

The summer of superheroes and pop culture conventions is upon us! Fans can now glimpse the Mighty Thor from Thor: Love and Thunder at Avengers Campus, take a booze cruise on the Disney Wish with Marvel and Star Wars-themed drinks, visit the fictional Nope amusement park at Universal Studios, and preview what’s on the…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular roundup of the latest in nerdy toy news. This week, Lego’s Speed Champions line takes a dip into the licensed world, and not to be outdone, Mattel’s Mega Construx line heads to Snake Mountain for a mighty He-Man set. Plus, you’re going to need some swanky accessories to build…Read more...

As the Game of Thrones television universe expands with the upcoming prequel show House of the Dragon, George R.R. Martin, creator and author of the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, has provided a sort-of update on his long-awaited Winds of Winter.Read more...

On Friday evening, Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally made it crystal clear that he has no interest in adding “owner of Twitter” to his list of titles. The move was months in the making. Twitter is planning to sue in response.Read more...

Residents of Los Angeles and San Francisco each have awesome pop culture art shows to visit this weekend—but if you don’t live in those cities, io9 is bringing the shows to you, right here, right now.Read more...

You don’t realize how cyclical life is until you return to a gadget trend after a decade. When I shut my Verizon-provided Samsung flip-phone, I figured that was the last time I would be flirting with that form factor, as candy bar-style smartphones were now taking over the general gadget zeitgeist.

Dig way back into the recesses of your brain and you may recall something called a “Steve Bannon.” The Breitbart News guy. “Alt-right” racist extraordinaire. Former Trump Chief Strategist and advisor. Cursed countenance, with watery eyes that convey a haggard contempt.

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News coverage of wildfires tends to focus on the acute events: A blaze erupts, people are evacuated, homes burn down, sometimes lives are lost. And rightfully so—it’s important to know what’s happening as it’s happening. As a result though, there are lots of articles and images out that describe and show flames…Read more...

Marvel Studios has found the man who’ll bring Captain America back to the big screen and it’s director Julius Onah. Onah, who made The Cloverfield Paradox, has been tapped to direct the next Captain America film which will star Anthony Mackie as the hero. Malcolm Spellman, who helped Mackie’s character become Captain…Read more...

A team of researchers say they’ve found some building blocks of RNA in a molecular cloud close to the center of the Milky Way. The discovery has implications for theories about how life began on Earth—and perhaps elsewhere.

“If you were presented with a life threatening situation, would you make an effort to save yourself?” That’s a question a therapist might ask you after you disclose suicidal ideation. It also happens to be the thesis statement of Max Mayfield’s journey through grief in the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things.…Read more...

Standing at 30 feet tall, with a trunk scarred by fire and a severe fungal infection, is the Chisos Mountains oak, or Quercus tardifolia, a species thought to be extinct. The tree is likely one fire or drought away from death. Researchers are now keen to protect this lonely survivor.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has the ability to control the conversation about him with a single tweet, even when the news is a sticking point about his treatment of employees. That’s why this week he’s managed to turn a story about him having children with a subordinate at one of his companies into one about his strange…Read more...

Today, the MCU re-introduces us to Jane Foster, now flying high with thunder in her veins as the one and only Mighty Thor. Jane’s tenure of the Goddess of Thunder is a highlight of Asgardian comic book action in recent years, so to celebrate, here’s a few of the moments big and small that made us fall in love with her…Read more...

Raise your hand if you had this on your 2022 bingo card: Natural gas is now climate-friendly.

Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, signed a bill into law this week that, with few exceptions, makes it a misdemeanor to stand within eight feet of a police officer and film them without their consent. The law, authored by a former police officer, has brought renewed attention to the legal fight over the …Read more...

In response to Russian cosmonauts promoting the ongoing attack on Ukraine, NASA issued a rare statement calling out its Russian counterpart for forcing politics on board the International Space Station.Read more...

Canada’s Rogers Communications is working to resolve its ongoing network outage, which has resulted in major internet cable and cellphone network disruptions across Canadian provinces.Read more...

New York is adding new restrictions to the state’s gun applicant screening laws. Among them is a rule that any person applying for a concealed carry handgun permit will need to submit a list of all of social media accounts for review. The legislation goes into effect starting September 1, and is part of a large…Read more...

President Joe Biden signed an executive order in an effort to protect access to reproductive health care services. This comes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion, effectively giving individual states more power to regulate abortion access.Read more...

On July 12, it’ll be 199 days since the Webb Space Telescope launched from French Guiana. Momentously, it’ll be the first day that the public actually sees full-color images taken by the advanced telescope.Read more...

Hulu’s Solar Opposites is known for its hilariously twisted point of view on American pop culture—thanks to its protagonists, aliens who’re sent to Earth after their home planet, Shlorp, is destroyed. While they’re technically an Away Team on a sci-fi mission, the dynamics among them have settled into something…Read more...

Social media sites and video platforms are grappling with whether or not to pull videos depicting the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.Read more...

As Twitter continues to wait to sell itself to Elon Musk, who seems like he’s been trying to find a way out of the $44 billion deal for months now, it has joined the slew of tech companies laying off employees amid a tumbling stock market and signs of a recession.Read more...

You’re hiking through glorious nature when you see it—a dirty, squished plastic water bottle along the trail. Instead of picking it up and impotently cursing the litterer, you can now take another small helpful step—you can report the trash to a new data project that aims to inspire policy change. Environmental…Read more...

Thor: Love and Thunder is the rare Marvel movie where its end credit scenes aren’t its biggest teases. We’d argue the film’s natural ending is probably a bit more revealing when it comes to the future of Thor, but there are still two scenes in the credits and each has a strong significance. Let’s break them down.Read more...

California Governor Gavin Newsom says California is moving forward with a plan to produce its own insulin after he signed a $100 million budget to produce the drug at a cheaper price point.

The after shakes of the recent crypto earthquake have brought down the roofs of several crypto lenders and exchanges, and some of those who once happily played in the crypto sandbox with the big players are now racing to sue before all the money is shaken out of their pockets.Read more...

Despite all their useful functionality, which includes potentially saving your life one day, smartwatches aren’t exactly cheap. But shelling out several hundred dollars for a wearable seems like an absolute bargain when compared to the prices you’ll find on some of the most unusual and original mechanical watches…Read more...

Kazuki Takahashi died this week. The creator of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga, anime, and trading card game, he was an artist who meant a great deal to me. A strange and surprising grief struck when I heard the news, both for the man himself, only 60 years old, and for his game. With his death, I feel the final loss of an…Read more...

This week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the winners of a global competition to create new encryption standards. Somewhat mind-bogglingly, these algorithms have been designed to defend against a cyber threat that doesn’t even exist yet: quantum computers.Read more...

John Carpenter teases something a little different for Halloween Ends. Get a glimpse of Lucifer from Netflix’s Sandman. Meet the wild villains of the new Resident Evil show. Plus, what’s coming on Tom Swift and Riverdale. To me, my spoilers!

Having all of your music, audiobooks, podcasts, movies and TV shows stored in the cloud is a fine idea—you can get at them from any device, and it frees up storage on your gadgets. The only time there’s a problem is when you can’t connect to the cloud: Your internet goes down, or you can’t get a strong cell signal, or…Read more...

While we wait for Taika Waititi to decide what his Star Wars movie is going to be and he wraps up promotion for his latest Marvel flick, we’re just trying to figure out what’s really going on with his cryptic humor about his plans to shake things up in a galaxy far, far away. But anyone in doubt that the director…Read more...

Solar Opposites returns for its third season next week on Hulu, bringing with it some wild and surreal new adventures for its alien characters—as well as its tiny-human characters and its regular human characters, to boot. Coming from one of the creatives behind Rick and Morty and Star Trek: Lower Decks, you’d expect…Read more...

The angry Florida man who perpetually has “nothing to hide” is reportedly trying to squirm his way out of yet another potentially dubious business deal.Read more...

io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Critical Mass” by Peter Watts. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on Lightspeed’s website. Enjoy!

Just as Google announced it would be adopting virtual cards for shopping through Chrome, Apple is likely also implementing virtual cards in its Safari browser. The news comes from 9to5Mac, which is currently digging through the iOS 16 beta 3, released yesterday afternoon for developers. According to code the site has…Read more...

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment team has announced the results from its first scientific run today; the experiment is the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, and though it did not find any dark matter in this first round, the team confirmed that the experiment is working as expected.

Amazon, like many folks still struggling to locate an affordable apartment in and around New York City, can’t find anywhere that will let it settle down. First the company tried Queens, but found the neighborhood was too rowdy. Now, the area across the bay is no longer so keen on letting the retail giant set up shop.Read more...

What could’ve gone wrong when 19-year-old Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes founded blood-testing company Theranos in 2003? Apparently everything, including Theranos ex-president and former COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani being convicted of fraud in a federal court earlier today.

Birthdays come every year, but since your favorite films only celebrate landmark anniversaries every so often, we like to acknowledge them here at io9. And so, just as we did last year, every few months we’re going to let you know which major sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and genre movies are marking significant…Read more...

Researchers are looking for a few good pets to donate their time, blood, and feces for science. Mars Incorporated—the makers of several popular candy and pet food brands—recently launched its Pet Biobank project. The study is expected to track the health of 20,000 domestic dogs and cats over a 10-year period. The…Read more...

New gadgets are fun to speculate on, especially if it means a distraction from the everyday mess that is society. This summer, we’re expecting Samsung to launch the next generation of its foldables. But we’re also hoping to see the reprise of the only Android smartwatch worth wearing, the Galaxy Watch 4. According to …Read more...

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a show both in love with, and unable to escape, its place in the Star Trek timeline. From the get-go it’s known that inherently—as a series following the captain of the Enterprise we know is going to be replaced by the captain of the Enterprise—Strange New Worlds would as much about…Read more...

There’s some big news from Meta today. First, Meta is set to release its newest, mysterious, high-end virtual reality headset sometime this year. The company has been referring to the forthcoming VR hardware under the codename “Project Cambria,” but the actual headset will probably be called the “Meta Quest Pro,”…Read more...

We did it, my dudes. We got through Stranger Things season four, which took almost as long to arrive as it did to watch. io9 already had a lively roundtable discussing the ins and outs of season four’s second installment, but we also wanted to break down our favorite (and least-favorite) parts of volume two.Read more...