Gizmodo

Many, many stories have been told about groups of friends banding together to defeat the forces of evil. In a way, almost all stories are about something like this. But in The Dead Friends Society, authors Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman flip that tried and true tale on its head. Not all of the friends are alive.Read more...

Gaming headphones with special features that make them suited to the trials of competitive gaming are everywhere, but gaming earbuds are few and far between. There are plenty of Bluetooth earbuds and wired earbuds that market themselves for gaming, but the EPOS GTW 270 Hybrid buds and HyperX Cloud MIX buds are two of…Read more...

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At the recent BoxLunch Holiday Gala in Los Angeles, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Simu Liu was on hand as the pop culture retailer’s Giving Ambassador for the holiday season. io9 caught up with the Marvel Studios star to talk about the season of giving—the event celebrated 150 million meals donated to…Read more...

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The prospect of losing critically important satellites during war has led to “Victus Nox”—a rapid response experiment in which private Space Force partners will need to launch a satellite within 24 hours of receiving the “go” order.Read more...

Soon after bringing ads onto Netflix through its Basic With Ads tier, the streaming giant is now ready to introduce a brand new feature that will make “Netflix history.” Are you ready for this? Buckle up. It’s… it’s a livestream.

Earlier today, the news broke that Kevin Conroy passed away at the age of 66. Conroy was best known for being Batman—not just in the iconic ‘90s Animated Series and its fellow DCAU sequels Justice League and Batman Beyond, but nearly every Batman game within the last 20 years, a theatrical movie, and very briefly in…Read more...

In 1991, a pair of climbers encountered a human body sticking out of the ice high in the Italian alps. Though its skin was preserved—complete with tattoos—the body turned out to be 5,300-year-old remains, mummified by the frigid, dry conditions in which the man died. Now known as Ötzi, the famously well-preserved…Read more...

Believe it or not, the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, first released in November of 1982, is actually older than the company’s most iconic product: Windows. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, today the company released a free major update to the latest version of Flight Simulator that, among other aircraft,…Read more...

The smartphones that we carry around with us everywhere are fantastic little devices, capable of entertaining and informing and communicating with the rest of the world—but they can be incredibly distracting too. If you’ve decided that your phone is sucking up too much of your time and attention, there are numerous…Read more...

It turns out “effective altruism” isn’t so effective when a billionaire donor’s money dries up.Read more...

Studios have long realized that a great way to get people to interact with their intellectual properties, even offscreen, is to turn that IP into board games. With so many great creators out there—Ravensburger, Gale Force Nine, Renegade, Fantasy Flight—there are tons to choose from for your next game night.

A hodgepodge of Twitter’s worst individuals were sporting shiny blue check marks on Friday, including notorious punching bag and literal neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, thanks to the ill-conceived money grab of the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.

In this exclusive clip from the finale episode of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire, Louis, Lestat, and Claudia approach local businessman, Tom Anderson, with a proposal. Episode seven airs on AMC this Sunday, November 13. The following clip isn’t all that spoiler heavy, but if you’re protecting your viewing…Read more...

Android Auto’s new look is rolling out to testers today, though it’s not ready for primetime just yet. The makeover teased earlier in the year is still only a beta. It won’t be available in full until 2023.

Journalists like me often seek out academics for comment and insight on stories related to the energy transition, since these professors have often done in-depth research into various fuel sources and their impacts. The hope is that these sources are relatively unbiased; their loyalty is to the data. But a study…Read more...

J.K. Simmons is Santa in Dwayne Johnson’s Red One. The Batman’s HBO Max spinoff for the Penguin will be set after the events of the movie. Plus, what’s coming on Stargirl, American Horror Story: NYC, and more. Spoilers now!

Kevin Conroy—the actor who became Batman for generations of fans when he voiced the Dark Knight in the iconic Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League cartoons, as well as a plethora of video games, including the Batman Arkham franchise—has died. He was 66.

Elizabeth Holmes and her legal defense team are asking for an 18-month period of house arrest, as opposed to the maximum 80 years of potential jail time the Theranos founder faces. In a lengthy memo pleading for leniency, Holmes requested that the court “look beyond that caricature,” of her in the media and “examine…Read more...

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and sometimes you just want to stay at home and drink in silence. There’s no judgment here, but a night in doesn’t mean you have to serve yourself, not when a bit of over-the-top engineering can turn a side table and your favorite voice assistant into a…Read more...

When Studio Ghibli, the maker of acclaimed anime films like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and more, tweeted the Lucasfilm logo yesterday, people lost their minds wondering what it might be. Now Ghibli has issued an even more intriguing tease, and I expect everyone will be losing their minds even harder.

RIP FTX. The company announced Friday morning that they were starting Chapter 11, AKA reorganizational bankruptcy proceedings. In addition, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s other crypto firm, Alameda Research and Weste Realm Shires Services, which is also known as FTX.US, are also tangled up in the proceedings.Read more...

The year of our lord 2022 could be accurately described as the rise of AI. Instead of Skynet raining fire on our heads, we have AI image generators creating a different kind of apocalypse, especially for artists who promote their work online. So far, few have tried to answer how creators can actually respond to…Read more...

Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion just two weeks ago and he’s already made a complete mess of the social media company. Advertisers are fleeing, literal neo-Nazis are getting verified, and impersonator accounts are running rampant. And Musk needs to figure out a way to make $1.2 billion in debt payments each…Read more...

He’s wanted to be the very best for a very long time, but perpetual kid/two-and-a-half-decade-long professional Pokémon battler Ash Ketchum is, at long last, an official Pokémon world champion.

Twitter has reintroduced the “Official” gray verification badge for high-profile accounts like brands and celebrities, according to the Twitter Support account. The Official badge was first introduced on Wednesday, only to see new CEO Elon Musk get rid of the badge the very same day. But by late Thursday, the official…Read more...

It makes perfect sense that Shudder is adding The Last Broadcast to its library. Last month’s V/H/S/99 was the streamer’s most-watched debut film, eclipsing a viewership record previously held by V/H/S/94. Clearly, audiences are still fiending for found-footage horror. Why not provide them with one of the original…Read more...

It all changes during the end credits. Since the beginning, Marvel Studios has put scenes during and after its credits to keep fans in the seats and tease what’s to come. It’s where Nick Fury debuted, where we first met Thanos and Wanda, and were teased about Captain Marvel. These are all crucial, unforgettable, …Read more...

Twitter is going to Hell in a handbasket. Wait no — that’s a dumpster.

Prior to Andor, the Star Wars universe never really got down to the grit of how and why the Rebellion came together outside of the Skywalker saga. Disney+’s Rogue One prequel series led by Tony Gilroy has injected the franchise with complex, heady themes that have astounded and made Andor can’t-miss, weekly …Read more...

Tropical Storm Nicole made landfall as a hurricane early Thursday morning, unleashing strong winds on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) where the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was left stranded on the launchpad.Read more...

The six-episode animated anthology Tales of the Jedi isn’t required Star Wars viewing, especially when compared to its marvelous contemporary Andor. But for three of its episodes, it offers an important if abridged reminder: The Jedi are terrible and Count Dooku was right to become disillusioned and leave the Order.

Juul, the vape industry giant that found itself a puff away from business death earlier this year, has managed to secure enough financing to avoid bankruptcy. Its temporary survival, however, will cost the company nearly a third of its workforce.Read more...

As a rule of thumb, people with hay fever may want to avoid going outside after 2pm. A new study released this week found that pollen counts tend to be lowest during the morning hours and highest during mid-afternoon into the late evening.Read more...

If you thought you’d have to wait until next year to see the first story for David Tennant’s shock return as Doctor Who’s 14th Doctor, then think again: his first adventure is already here, just not in the format you were expecting.

It’s yet another slap in the face for the Nerf blaster, which once again found itself as a runner-up as the National Toy Hall of Fame announced its 2022 inductees: the spinning top (which is among the world’s oldest toys), Lite-Brite, and Mattel’s Masters of the Universe toys.Read more...

Directly inspired by Tibetan folklore, Hayao Miyazaki’s early graphic novel Shuna’s Journey is a look into the themes, stories, and character archetypes that define his more well-known work. Translated by Alex Dudok De Wit and published in English for the first time since its original Japanese release in 1983, this…Read more...

Tens of thousands of people are gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for the annual UN climate change conference this month—and that includes hundreds of representatives from the fossil fuel industry who are sitting in on the talks and outnumbering representatives from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, a…Read more...

Sam Bankman-Fried is having a hard week (along with FTX users and investors.) The CEO and co-founder of FTX, the rapidly collapsing cryptocurrency exchange, is facing newly expanded federal investigations, as a liquidity crisis tanks the value of the firm’s native token, FTT. His billions in personal wealth have all…Read more...

Amazon’s new hit show, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, brought viewers back to the gorgeous world Middle-earth, once again filmed in New Zealand. But the country’s pristine landscape may be suffering under this production and others, as workers speaking to The Guardian described vast waste and lack of care…Read more...

Dell’s back with the latest iteration to its XPS 13 line. While Dell also introduced a radically new design this year with the XPS 13 Plus, it’s also offering a tamer redesign to the line up with its new non-”Plus” XPS 13 models. These are the base of the family, and they’ve got the configurations and features to fit…Read more...

KFC customers in Germany were shocked on Wednesday to receive a push notification encouraging them to indulge in fried chicken on the eve of the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht. “It’s memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken,” read the message from the fast food…Read more...

With seemingly every single episode of Andor season one, it’s only gotten better. Every character gets richer, the Star Wars lore gets deeper, and the grip on your chair gets tighter as the tension mounts and mounts and mounts. That was the plan for showrunner Tony Gilroy, and in a new interview, he looks ahead to the…Read more...

It’s now all but impossible to predict what Teenage Engineering’s next musical contraption will be. As the company has started to extend its design prowess to other products, like the Playdate handheld, it seems more comfortable getting experimental with its own hardware, as is evident by this collection of wooden…Read more...

Fitbit, now a Google brand, is reportedly working on a wearable device for preteens. Business Insider reports that it is internally code-named Project Eleven. The team behind the gadget aims to “help older kids form healthy relationships with their phones and social media.”

Amazon’s adding a new AI infused package grabbing robot to its growing army of soulless, metal warehouse workers.Read more...

After launching an inflatable heat shield experiment to space on Thursday, NASA has now recovered the device after its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The space agency is seeking to learn whether this kind of heat shield can protect precious payloads from the high temperatures of atmospheric reentry.Read more...

We already know the “pro” models of the iPhone 14 and Pixel 7 smartphones are the best ones you can get, but what about the non-pro variants? The iPhone 14 and Pixel 7 are for the same user, albeit different platforms: someone who wants to upgrade but doesn’t want to shell out too much cash.

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