Gizmodo

As much as Netflix anticipated the launch of its ad-based tier as a means for generating new subscribers on the most popular streaming service, it turns out customers really haven’t been too interested in a cheaper ad-filled service with fewer shows on offer.

The Keystone Pipeline spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of tar sands oil into a creek in northern Kansas earlier this month. TC Energy, which operates the pipeline, says it has recovered a small amount of that oil, but experts say the full cleanup will take a long time.

Lee Cronin promises the new Evil Dead is like “a rocket fueled by blood.” Director James Mangold drops some cryptic clues about the Indiana Jones Disney+ series. Plus, get a retro look at the final season of Riverdale, and what’s next on His Dark Materials. To me, my spoilers!

Finding our way around the Moon is likely to be a tricky proposition. Unlike Earth, there are no roads, signs, or common landmarks on the lunar surface—at least not yet. Until that happens, we may want to rely on an artificially intelligent system that’s currently in development.Read more...

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

If you haven’t read or watched His Dark Materials, it’s hard to explain how weird it is. This is its greatest strength, I believe, but also its biggest weakness, because while each part is intensely creative, when more closely examined in isolation, these parts can be utterly bizarre. Case in point: I just watched…Read more...

The Tollywood cinematic spectacle RRR has become a global phenomenon and an awards-season hopeful—and now it’s getting a sequel.Read more...

Turns out the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny might only be the second-best thing to happen with the movie this month. The top spot might be reserved for the film’s director James Mangold, who’s been patiently, but directly, explaining to people on Twitter he knows more about his movie than they do.Read more...

House of the Dragon elevated itself very quickly from being “that new Game of Thrones spin-off” to must-watch appointment TV, thanks in no small part to the extreme drama experienced by its well-acted characters. Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower—daughter, queen, mother—had more than her share of trials, but the actor…Read more...

Much has changed since Mark Zuckerberg last year boldly proclaimed the company once known as Facebook would charge the world headfirst into the so-called metaverse. A historic tech downturn grabbed hold of Meta and left it with 11,000 fewer employees and a stock price down a whopping 65%. Meta reportedly burned over…Read more...

Director Jason Eisener is clearly a fan of to-the-point titles; previously, he made Hobo With a Shotgun, about a hobo (Rutger Hauer) toting a you-know-what, and his latest has a similarly literal title: Kids vs. Aliens. A Fantastic Fest selection earlier this year, the film will soon be in theaters—with a new trailer…Read more...

Scooter rental company, Bird, has officially boarded the struggle bus. The micro mobility provider sent out emails to current and past customers requesting that they settle their lingering debts earlier this month. And the company left no stone unturned in its quest to recoup revenue.

I’ve got good news for you... and bad news. Literally. We’ve combed through the io9 archives to discover all the news stories in 2022 that either delighted us or really bummed us out—and compiled them so you can remember the good times and what you should still be angry about in 2023.

The Vatican removed anti-abortion activist, Frank Pavone, from the priesthood after he made incendiary posts on social media. The decision to defrock the Florida-based priest was made on November 9 with no chance for an appeal, U.S. Archbishop Christophe Pierre said in a letter obtained by several news outlets.Read more...

As the dust settles from last week’s DC Studios shakeups, between Henry Cavill being done as Superman and Wonder Woman 3 not moving ahead, new co-chair and co-CEO James Gunn once again took to Twitter and Instagram to address the internet’s rumor mill of speculation.Read more...

New details about a hack from last month show that tens of thousands of users happily gambling away on DraftKings may have had their personal information stolen thanks to account info purchased off the sports gambling site.Read more...

Google Workspace is rolling out a new security update on Gmail, adding end-to-end encryption that aims to provide an added layer of security when sending emails and attachments on the web. Customers will continue to have control over encryption keys and identity services that provide access to those keys.Read more...

After a four month journey through space, the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) has finally reached lunar orbit. The probe will spend the next year scanning the surface from above in search of water ice and suitable landing spots for future missions.Read more...

Google’s Pixel tablet isn’t supposed to come out until 2023, but we’re already seeing a supposed early unit up for grabs. This leak comes to us from Twitter, though it’s just a collection of screenshots from a Facebook Marketplace post that claims to be selling the announced-but-unreleased Google Pixel Tablet.

An earthquake that shook West Texas on Friday may be one of the strongest ever recorded in the state, the Associated Press reported. The magnitude 5.4 quake struck at around 5:35 p.m. local time about 14 miles (22 kilometers) north of Midland. It comes just a month after another 5.4 quake in the region, and officials…Read more...

The world created by J.R.R. Tolkien has carved out a new universe on Prime Video with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Season one recently closed out after a ton of world building, and the main players’ arcs are now gearing up for big moments in season two.Read more...

An extreme chill is set to sweep across most of the continental U.S. in the coming days, as a blast of Arctic air dips as far south as Texas. National Weather Service forecasters are predicting unusually cold temperatures from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast between Wednesday and Saturday, just days after…Read more...

Leg room, luggage space, in-flight meals, the actual cost of the ticket—these are all important considerations when booking a flight. But for some of us, perhaps the most crucial consideration of all concerns the on-board wifi options. Are you actually going to be able to get anything done mid-journey, or will you be…Read more...

Mutt Williams, Shia LaBeouf’s character from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is not in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This much has been known for some time. What hasn’t been known is if the film will just ignore him or make him part of the story—and now, we have a little more…Read more...

You wouldn’t want to swim in Late Cretaceous seas. If you’ve seen the first Jurassic World movie, you’ll recognize a mosasaur as the creature that leapt from the water to eat a great white shark. That film may have exaggerated the real size of mosasaurs, but the effect is genuine: some species could reach terrifying…Read more...

Radiant Black has become a smash hit for Image Comics, now playing host to a whole rainbow of Radiant heroes and villains. But its next big thing isn’t bright lights and big superheroics—it’s a multimedia thriller about murder in a world of heroes, and io9 has your first details.

You’ve probably heard about ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new AI chatbot that seems to be able to spin up essays, poems, Twitter replies, and short stories at the drop of a hat. We at Gizmodo had heard a lot about how good the program was at writing fiction, so we decided: why not have the robot write us some science fiction? It…Read more...

Fortnite-maker Epic Games has agreed to pay a massive $520 million fine in settlements with the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly illegally gathering data from children and deploying dark patterns techniques to manipulate users into making unwanted in-game purchases. The fines mark a major regulatory win for the…Read more...

In 2023, Marvel is going full multiverse. There’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and The Marvels to start, but don’t forget the show that started it all. That’s Loki and it too will be back in 2023.Read more...

As Twitter continues to circle the drain fueled by chaos from CEO Elon Musk, one user noticed something peculiar about tweet replies. After digging a little deeper, user Pieter Levels—who goes by @levelsio on the platform—found that some users are apparently now using the popular text-generating AI ChatGPT to reply to…Read more...

An inspection has revealed an 0.8-millimeter-wide hole in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft that sprung a coolant leak outside the International Space Station last week. Russian space agency Roscosmos will make a decision on the flight-worthiness of the spacecraft later this month, at which time Russia may choose to expedite…Read more...

For many Americans, soccer is a once-every-four-year thing. We watch the World Cup, the biggest and most important soccer tournament in the world, but once it’s over, it’s over. Then we forget about the sport until the next World Cup. Next time around, though, the 2026 World Cup is here in North America, so maybe you…Read more...

When it was announced that the main villain of the Into the Spider-Verse sequel was going to be D-List Spidey foe the Spot, many people shrugged their shoulders at the thought that someone who looks like a walking dalmatian zoot suit with portal powers could be a major threat to Miles and his amazing friends. But…Read more...

SpaceX is finishing off the year strong, flying its Falcon 9 rocket three times in less than 34 hours to deliver various payloads to low Earth orbit.Read more...

Google has proposed a remedy for the doctor’s note. The tech giant is working on an AI technology tool to decipher hard-to-read handwritten medical prescriptions, as announced at its yearly Google for India conference on Monday and described in a company blogpost.

On Monday, the European Commission accused Meta of going against its antitrust laws by using its Facebook Marketplace to promote ads and distort outside competition. The commission warned Meta of the breach in an official statement and said if the company is found guilty, it could receive a fine of up to 10% of its…Read more...

Meta’s pivot away from social media and into virtual reality has hit another snag. One of the company’s executives, John Carmack, who helped build Meta’s Oculus company as Chief Technology Officer—is stepping away from Meta amidst frustration over the company’s efficiency.

At this point, Tom Cruise is well known for doing as many of his own stunts as possible, no matter how dangerous they are or needless they seem to be. But that doesn’t make it any less impressive learning how much work and care goes into these stunts/keeping Cruise alive, as this behind-the-scenes look at Mission:…Read more...

Twitter has once again rushed to undo an impulsive new policy less than a day after introducing it. This week’s victim: Elon Musk’s sudden decision to ban external links to other social media sites.Read more...

The FTX founder whose alleged fraud has sent the entire crypto industry reeling may be finally coming home to the U.S. Over the weekend, Reuters first reported the 30-year-old FTX founder was going to return to court in the Bahamas Monday and relinquish his bid to fight extradition to the U.S., an unnamed source…Read more...

Get another look at the cocaine bear in, well, Cocaine Bear. Jenna Ortega promises more for her character in Scream 6. Plus, get a gory new look at The Last of Us, and a sneak preview of Fantasy Island’s return. Spoilers now!

Keyboards have become as much of a form of self-expression as the outfits in your closet, but instead of just showing off color-changing LEDs, the Centerpiece keyboard puts an entire interactive display beneath a set of transparent keys, which will have touch typists staring at their keyboards again.Read more...

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

Twitter’s chief twit Elon Musk hinged his future at social media app to a poll, one of his favorite ways to make decisions, on Sunday evening. In the 12-hour poll, Musk asked whether he should step down as head of Twitter and promised to “abide by the results.” Well, the results are in, and the “yes” votes won.Read more...

Last week, we got a staggering price reveal for Dyson’s first-ever audio product, the Zone. The combination headphones-air-purifier will already cost you your privacy, as folks are bound to shoot stares at you from across the train or plane while you’ve got it on. But it’ll also run you $950—at least.Read more...

Throughout the year, there’s been plenty about discussions online about what kind of reception Avatar: The Way of Water would have at the box office. Boosted by solid social media impressions and reviews but understandably putting some folks off because its three-hour runtime, all eyes have been on James Cameron’s…Read more...

After 13 years of repeated delays and consistent smack talk from its director James Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water is a real thing that people can see in theaters. Boosted by a fairly recent re-release of its predecessor and strong premiere impressions on social media, Disney and Cameron have been working hard to…Read more...

For one reason or another, the idea of a live-action Barbie movie coming to theaters has seemed bewildering for quite some time. But now that the first look at Greta Gerwig’s take on the popular Mattel toy is out, those concerns seem to have been largely vanished, as the trailer playing in front of Avatar: The Way of…Read more...

Just as its pretty stellar first season is about to come to a close, it was confirmed that Spy x Family’s anime will be returning. During this weekend’s Jump Festa, representatives for the series confirmed that a second season is in active development and will be hitting sometime in 2023.Read more...

Throughout the last 30 years, Akira Toriyama has become best known as the man behind Dragon Ball Z and artist of acclaimed JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, and Blue Dragon. As a manga creator, his career goes all the way back to the mid 70s, though not all of his pre and post-Dragon Ball work (most of them…Read more...