Gizmodo

Instagram’s DM’s just got a major makeover. The overhaul, which adds seven new features to enhance the platform’s messaging functionality, comes amid a broader reimagining of Instagram away from image sharing and toward super-app status.Read more...

With Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi rapidly approaching, interest in the character is running sky-high, with a new novel on the way that’ll examine another key period in the Jedi’s life. Mike Chen’s Star Wars: Brotherhood will explore how Count Dooku’s Sith apprentice Asajj Ventress first met Kenobi at the very…Read more...

Welcome back to io9's monthly Nerd’s Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you’ll like most.Read more...

Serving as a robotic security guard might feel like a dystopic use of the amazing technology powering Boston Dynamics’ Spot, but the robotic dog is actually well suited to protecting a historically significant area like Pompeii, whose crumbling ruins still pose a safety hazard, especially when it comes to protecting…Read more...

The world’s most powerful banks have funded fossil fuel projects to the tune of $4.6 trillion in the six years since the Paris Agreement, a new report from a group of NGOs finds. A quarter of that funding comes from just four U.S. banks—JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—all of which have signed…Read more...

Scientists have finished mapping the entire human genome, about 20 years after most of the map was complete. In new research this week, a team reports they have achieved a gapless genome sequence, accounting for 8% of genetic information not previously known. The missing data may provide more insights about the…Read more...

If you have a Wyze security camera, my suggestion would be to rip it out of the wall and throw it in the nearest trashcan. For the past three years, a glaring security vulnerability has sat festering in the company’s V1, V2, and V3 internet-connected cameras—the likes of which would have allowed hackers to access…Read more...

A UK Twitter user with few followers was sentenced to 150 hours of community service for an anti-military tweet deemed “grossly offensive” by a court. The sentence highlights fundamental differences in online speech protections in the UK and U.S. at a time when both countries are considering new legislative efforts to…Read more...

Michael Bay has regrets. During a press interview for his upcoming film Ambulance, the director revealed that the significantly better director Steven Spielberg once advised him to stop making Transformers films, advice I desperately wish Bay had taken. What’s surprising to me is that Spielberg only told him this…Read more...

Black Widow and Captain America are going to space. Apple just picked up the rights to a new movie called Project Artemis which will star Scarlet Johansson and Chris Evans and be directed by Jason Bateman, who will also co-star. The script is by Rose Gilroy, who’s the daughter of Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy and …Read more...

The Hubble Space Telescope recently observed the light of a star that existed in the first billion years of the universe. It is the most distant individual star ever seen.Read more...

Even at three-quarters scale, Arcade1Up’s miniaturized arcade cabinets can quickly fill up a room, and at several hundred bucks apiece, can just as quickly wipe out a budget. For those tight on room, Arcade1Up’s new Couchcade puts arcade-style controls in your lap and retro gameplay on your TV.Read more...

Climate change is bringing rain and humidity to usually dry and arid Northern Chile, causing ancient mummies to decompose as they are exposed to increased moisture and the elements. The phenomenon puts some of the world’s oldest known mummies at risk of deteriorating after thousands of years of artificial and natural…Read more...

Star Trek: Picard has made much this season of trying to evoke the feel of what Star Trek could be like in its past—classic premises like evil alt realities and retro-contemporary time travel. This week, a chaotic bit of stage setting managed to turn it into a Borg horror, a prelude for a heist movie, and even a…Read more...

To keep its customers as happy as Apple’s—and save the planet, I guess—Samsung has announced that Galaxy device owners will no longer have to seek third-party help to repair their smartphones and tablets.Read more...

In our second installment of “Which Gadget Should You Buy?” our consumer tech experts help a reader choose a full-fledged smartwatch that is not only capable of fitness tracking, but also productivity tasks.

The cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace is filled with scammers. Investors lost over $1.7 million to grifters in March alone, with project founders draining all the liquidity in a given project.Read more...

Apple is reportingly considering adding to its fleet of memory chip producers after contamination at key NAND production facilities earlier this year.

Ewan McGregor revealed today that the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ show has adjusted its premier date by two days and will now include two episodes rather than the previously-expected one episode. The new release date is now Friday, May 27th, coinciding with the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim.Read more...

What is happening to OnePlus? This year, the brand scaled down on its flagship launch to the singular OnePlus 10 Pro. The upside is that there’s only one OnePlus model to consider among the sea of Android smartphones currently offered. The downside is that OnePlus’s options have become severely limited.

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It’s getting harder and harder to find the perfect birthday gift for friends and family after the world has spent several years stress shopping online while trapped at home. But the perfect gift is now just a few clicks away because American Greetings has finally introduced “Weird Al” Yankovic as an option to its…Read more...

Ethan Hawke shares a delightful scene with Willem Defoe in The Northman. James Gunn talks the melancholy of filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Hayden Christensen reflects on returning to Darth Vader. Plus, what’s up on the next episode of Halo, and a glimpse at The Walking Dead’s midseason finale. Spoilers now!

It’s not pleasant seeing a once-beloved laptop (or desktop) computer slowly slide into obsolescence as it gets too old and tired to keep up with the demands of modern-day computing, but Google has now provided an option for these ailing machines in the form of Chrome OS Flex.

Morbius, the long-delayed next film in Sony’s Spider-Man universe, is like a roller coaster without a pulse. There are highs, there are lows, there’s plenty of disorientation, and by the end, you aren’t upset with the ride, but largely underwhelmed because you have the sense it should have been better.Read more...

Showing quite the penchant for survivalist roles, Ella Purnell (star of Showtime’s plane-crash drama Yellowjackets) has signed onto another with Amazon’s Fallout adaptation. And she’s no stranger to genre: she was also in Zack Snyder’s Oscar “fan favorite” zombie flick Army of the Dead, and voices one of the kids on …Read more...

The makers of your favorite personalized pillow cases and DIY jewelry on Etsy are preparing for a digital strike in protest of what they see as exorbitant seller fees.Read more...

Last year, cybercriminals used phony law enforcement data requests to steal an unknown amount of user information from Apple and Meta. The data requests were submitted to the tech companies using hacked police email accounts, making them appear to be from legitimate government sources.

Moon Knight is a series that goes to some rather unfathomable places for a Marvel TV show. It’s darker and more mysterious than perhaps anything since the studio’s Netflix endeavors. It, with rather considerable restraint, chooses not to constantly reference its place in Marvel Cinematic Universe. Perhaps most…Read more...

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Eiichiro Oda has been playing the long game. That’s not news to anyone reading One Piece, his globally popular manga, which has been dropping Easter eggs and seeding revelations for two and a half decades. The biggest one—and certainly the most divisive one among its many fans—was revealed this past weekend, and it…Read more...

Recent images captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter reveal large craters in Utopia, the largest known impact basin in the Solar System.Read more...

The handheld console gamers have been dreaming about for years is now shipping. I’m referring, of course, to Valve’s Steam Deck, a portable handheld similar to the Nintendo Switch that plays PC games.Read more...

An international team of scientists has formulated an updated, binary-coded message that could eventually be transmitted to aliens in our galaxy. It’s jam-packed with details, including the chemical makeup of humans, a map of Earth, and even our precise location in the Milky Way. What could possibly go wrong?

Fans of Oscar-winning visual effects artist Phil Tippett—whose many credits include RoboCop, Return of the Jedi, Jurassic Park, and Starship Troopers—will finally get a chance to see Mad God, his long-in-the-works stop-motion animated film. After its festival release, the film will hit Shudder (and a few theaters)…Read more...

The future of eye care looks poised to involve specialized contact lenses filled with medicine. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new type of contact that releases an antihistamine to help prevent itchy eyes from allergies for up to 12 hours. Similar treatments for other eye diseases may be on the way…Read more...

The raven that flew in earlier today carrying news of Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon’s August premiere date was swiftly followed by another bird laden with new images from the much-anticipated HBO Max series. We’ve had a few glimpses of a handful of characters before, but this is our best look yet, at…Read more...

Meta allegedly has a new preferred strategy for dealing with its social media competitors: If you can’t beat them, smear them!Read more...

With the arrival of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Punisher, Iron Fist, and Defenders on Disney+ earlier this month, the streamer also introduced more stringent content filtering controls to allow the graphically violent series to co-exist with the platform’s all-ages content. But while this meant those series…Read more...

Taking inspiration from some stalwarts of seafaring media, The Sea Beast looks to take kids off the edge of the map with a fun, original animated adventure. Academy Award winner Chris Williams (Moana, Big Hero 6) directs a heavy-hitting voice cast that includes The Boys’ Karl Urban as well as Zaris-Angel Hator, Jared…Read more...

While Star Wars and Marvel shows like The Mandalorian and Moon Knight will always get the most attention, Disney+ has also created a great many original documentaries that you shouldn’t be sleeping on. But Disney+’s next documentary will tackle one of the most beloved people in children’s entertainment: Jim Henson.

Google is reinventing the Chrome OS launcher for the first time in years as it marks the one-hundredth update of its Chromebook operating system.

It’s been a few years since we last left Westeros in... well, it was certainly a state. But as we’ve waited to return to George R.R. Martin’s fantasy world and go back even further into its past with the Targaryen-focused prequel series House of the Dragon, we now know that we don’t have much longer to wait for that…Read more...

Scientists in South Africa recently lured captive lions up to a fence with raw meat and then puffed the hormone oxytocin into their noses. The unusual experiment aimed to find out if the so-called love hormone could make the big cats friendlier to each other—and that’s exactly what happened.Read more...

Intel’s highly anticipated Arc discrete graphics have arrived, and they intend to disrupt a long-running two-horse race between Nvidia and AMD.

As Season Three of Umbrella Academy wraps, the cast and production have revealed that Elliot Page, who uses both he and they pronouns, is returning to the show as Viktor Hargreeves. Previously playing a character named Vanya, the change comes in the wake of Page’s own announcement of their transgender identity, and…Read more...

Aside from going digital in the late ‘70s and then the rise of cheap electronic Casio keyboards in the ‘80s (blasting Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up in demo mode) the piano went mostly unchanged until 2013 when Roli first revealed its squishy-keyed Seaboard Rise. Nine years later, Roli is introducing version 2…Read more...

Rob Zombie shares more from behind the scenes on The Munsters. Joel Edgerton has boarded a new adaptation of Dark Matter. Plus, get a new sneak peek at what’s coming on The Walking Dead, and a glimpse of tomorrow’s episode of Star Trek: Picard. To me, my spoilers!

I am weird about eating meat. I generally prefer not to eat it at all, but since I’m already such a picky eater about everything else, I try to incorporate it into my diet lest I disappear into nothingness.

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