Gizmodo

Invasive tawny crazy ants are spreading wildly in the southern United States, but these problematic insects seem to have met their match in the form of a highly infectious fungal pathogen. Scientists are now using this naturally occurring fungus to combat crazy ant populations, with surprising success.

In terms of sci-fi, Dune’s six Oscar wins last night was by far the biggest success. Behind that however was Coda, the first-ever Sundance film and streaming film to win Best Picture. Following a young woman named Ruby (Locke and Key’s Emilia Jones) who is able to hear, while the rest of her family is not, it’s a…Read more...

Scientists with the Environmental Protection Agency have called the handling of pet deaths linked to a popular flea and tick collar a “travesty” and have bemoaned how the agency is trying to “cover [its] ass for doing nothing” about tens of thousands of customer complaints, according to emails released last week. The…Read more...

A 19-year-old Tennessee man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly attempting to surreptitiously track his partner using an Apple Watch hooked around the wheel of her car.Read more...

The European Space Agency is scrambling to figure out the ExoMars rover’s next-possible launch window after the agency suspended cooperation with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Read more...

Well, that certainly took long enough. After weeks of back and forth between Walt Disney Company employees and the company’s executives—a tense exchange that included a walkout last week—Disney just released a full statement condemning Florida’s terrible “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which was signed into law today by Florida…Read more...

Moon Knight, the latest Marvel Studios show coming to Disney+, is unlike any Marvel show we’ve ever seen. Mostly that’s because it doesn’t require an encyclopedic knowledge of the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to enjoy it. The show is filled with new characters, mythologies, and plenty of inspiration from…Read more...

Citing unacceptable levels of “high risk,” NASA and the European Space Agency have made key adjustments to a highly complex future mission that will attempt to bring Martian surface samples to Earth.

A team of researchers say they’ve found an effective way to block the most common source of cat allergies using the gene-editing technology CRISPR. Their findings also suggest that hypoallergenic cats can be just as healthy as the typical feline.Read more...

It’s, uh, taken a rather surprisingly long time to get here, but if you’re one of the many, many people who find themselves under the strange circumstance of not living in the United States, you’re finally going to get the chance to read DC Comics in the way the publisher prefers. DC has announced its premium digital…Read more...

Apple refreshed the iPad Air at its “Peek Performance” event earlier this month, trading the tablet’s A-series processor for an M1 chip. With the iPad Air matching the Pro’s performance, purchasing the more expensive model seemed like a waste of money. Apple could soon give us a reason to buy it in the form of even…Read more...

The Oscars has long been struggling for relevance for a number of reasons, and this year their floundering seemed more like a cry for help than an actual attempt at importance. Amid a confusing year for cinema, the Academy decided that the best way to get people to tune into the broadcast was to conduct two Twitter…Read more...

Like Doctor Who’s Sonic screwdriver or Inspector Gadget’s entire body, multi-tools are designed to squeeze a tool box’s worth of functionality into a pocket-friendly accessory, and with the Volty Bit, Leatherman’s folding multi-tools gain another neat trick: the ability to test the voltage of batteries and other DC…Read more...

Even more Teen Wolf stars are confirmed to return for the new movie. There’s somehow still hope Steven Spielberg’s Blackhawk DC movie could still happen. James Gunn teases major Marvel arrivals in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Plus, the battle for Riverdale’s soul begins. Spoilers, away!

One of the most entertaining trends YouTube makers have latched onto is turning contraptions from the movies into real gadgets. We’ve seen Spider-Man’s web shooters recreated with an impressive level of functionality, but Nick O’Hara’s club-launching golf bag is a near perfect recreation of an over-the-top gag from …Read more...

After a very long, very weird lead up which included fan votes, important categories cut and so much more, it’s no surprise that the 94th Annual Academy Awards celebrating them were equally weird with a few examples being an alt version of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” Will Smith literally smacking Chris Rock and lots…Read more...

Two weeks ago, The Walking Dead offered an episode that was its version of a political thriller. Last week, there was a multiple murder mystery, beginning with a fatally wounded kid arriving at Hilltop’s door. But The Walking Dead still isn’t done messing around with genres, because tonight’s episode was a heist,…Read more...

Since The Dark Knight debuted Heath Ledger’s Joker, the Clown Prince’s scars have been played up to a greater degree in later interpretations. As played by Barry Keoghan, the Joker of The Batman’s has scars that are far more than just his chilling smile. Fans got a look at that earlier in the week when WB released a…Read more...

HBO is no stranger to hit comedies like Barry or The Righteous Gemstones, and their new pirate series Our Flag Means Death is another addition to that great lineup. Created by David Jenkins, the series stars Rhys Darby as 18th century aristocrat Stede Bonnet, who decided to leave his life of luxury and become a pirate…Read more...

The month of March has been pretty good for Marvel fans. Last week saw the first trailer for this June’s Ms. Marvel, and in a few days, we’ll finally get to see Oscar Isaac step into the supernatural side of the MCU and become the Moon Knight. Just before the weekend, the news broke that another of Marvel’s heroes is…Read more...

For anime fans, it’s always exciting when a new season brings new anime courtesy of Crunchyroll. The anime streaming service, which became acquired by Funimation this past August, has widely touted itself as the prime place to watch anime for years. But in addition to the exciting new anime debuting with the spring…Read more...

Three days after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, 19-year-old Harvard University student Avi Schiffmann published a tweet in the middle of the night: “a cool idea would be to set up a website to match Ukrainian refugees to hosts in neighboring countries.”

The 2022 Oscars are this weekend, and it’s shaping up to be one of the messiest versions of the annual film awards show for a variety of reasons. Before its controversial category omissions and foolish decision to bring back the “most popular film” category (but this time stupidly dictated by Twitter), one of the most…Read more...

Like Iron Fist and Shang-Chi before him, the comic book character of Moon Knight is built around several orientalist tropes that have not aged well in the slightest since these characters were first created in 70s. In the same way that Marvel’s been recently trying to untangle those tropes from Shang and Iron Fist in…Read more...

Universal’s Dark Universe died before it could even get off the ground, one of multiple attempts at building a cinematic universe after Marvel’s made it look so cool in the present day. But audiences very much said “yeah, no” to its debut film, the Tom Cruise-led The Mummy, back in 2017. Among the various plans there…Read more...

It’s been a long, delay-heavy road for Morbius, which releases next week. Sony’s been trying their best to build Jared Leto’s tragic-ish vampire as another big part of their Spider-Man adjacent cinematic universe that so far has only led to Venom and whatever the heck that Kraven the Hunter movie is going to be. But…Read more...

For the past three months, a mysterious hacker gang has been giving Silicon Valley a migraine of epic proportions. LAPSUS$, a band of cybercriminals with unorthodox techniques and a flare for the dramatic, has been on a white hot streak—lining tech companies up and knocking em’ down like bowling pins.Read more...

March is Women’s History Month, so it seems like the perfect moment to celebrate women who are making history in genre film and television. We’ve compiled a handy list of movies and series, broken down by streaming service, that all highlight the bold (and sometimes legendary) voices of the women behind a lot of our…Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's round up of the latest and greatest in wallet-draining plastic fun. This week, Hasbro returns to Mighty Morphin nostalgia with new retro Zords, we get our first glimpse of Lightyear’s toy line, and Mattel’s Masters of the Universe toys revisit a classic. Check it out!

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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its fourth mass bleaching in only six years, with corals severely damaged by warming sea temperatures. Earlier today, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which oversees the reef system, confirmed the mass bleaching and expressed hope for a potential…Read more...

By now, Star Wars fans have all read reviews of Galactic Starcruiser, the new immersive (and expensive) attraction at Walt Disney World set aboard the Halcyon, a hotel designed to make guests feel like they’re traveling within the galaxy far, far away. As you might imagine, the “journey” required a hell of a lot of…Read more...

A small army of overworked content moderators is the public’s last line of defense against a flood of depraved and horrific content uploaded to social media. While the moderators help us normal users avoid the worst of the worst, constant exposure to humanity’s darkest impulses can wreak havoc on their mental health.…Read more...

The iPad Air is one of the easiest products to recommend. Need a tablet? You should probably go with this one. That’s even more true today now that Apple has equipped the mid-range product with a more powerful engine. The supercharged M1 processor now powering this slate is a proven entity, having logged miles on the …Read more...

The American Psychiatric Association last week officially introduced a new diagnosable mental health condition: prolonged grief disorder. The news, while welcomed by some clinicians and researchers, has also been controversial. At the heart of the debate is the long-running question of how to define suffering, as well…Read more...

It should be no surprise to anyone that I love a TTRPG anthology, and as soon as I got my hands on Tiny Tome I knew that I was holding something special. Collected from an open call via itch.io, Long Tail Games has curated a selection that touches on every genre and gameplay style. Like a lot of games selected from an…Read more...

Using a microphone, a laser, and some crafty mathematics, a team of scientists has measured the speed of sound on Mars, in what is a scientific first and another cool finding made possible by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

Google is working on a new version of its Nest Hub with a different form factor than its predecessors: a dockable tablet, according to 9to5Google.

Having treated myself to several good Dungeons & Dragons novels in a row—mainly the original Dragonlance trilogy and R.A. Salvatore’s The Halfling’s Gem—in the last few D&D&N columns, I knew that I must pay a price in return. That price was reading Artifact of Evil, the second Greyhawk novel by D&D co-creator Gary…Read more...

The first episode of Halo is full of nods to the legendary Microsoft shooter franchise’s video game roots and its wider lore from generations of tie-in novels and comics. But it also managed to sneak in a lovely little nod to a fellow sci-fi gaming icon—one that itself has been aching for an adaptation for almost as…Read more...

Major Western oil companies including Exxon, Shell and BP have paid billions of dollars to the Russian government as it escalated tensions against Ukraine in recent years, a new analysis released Friday from a group of NGOs finds, illustrating how the oil and gas industry has helped prop up and enrich President …Read more...

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a movie you have to meet exactly where it is. It is not a subtle film, and it demands that when you watch it, you suspend all your disbelief at the door. As directing duo the Daniels (Swiss Army Man) propel us through a furious multitude of universes, the audience is left gasping…Read more...

An ice shelf the size of Hong Kong has collapsed in eastern Antarctica, spawning a large iceberg and concerns that unusually warm temperatures in the region might be responsible.

Regulators in the European Union’s Parliament reached an agreement on a package of laws aimed at curtailing technology companies’ anti-competitive practices late Thursday.Read more...

This Sunday, the 94th annual Acadamy Awards will grace your TV screen and with them, another cycle of film achievement comes to a close. Among the night’s nominees, the Acadamy rightfully recognized some of the best genre films of the year in various categories. But this slideshow isn’t about them.Read more...

Apple’s MacBook Air has received some crucial internal updates recently, but the larger design of this ultra-portable laptop has remained the same for nearly a decade—always a 13-inch screen. That could soon change with the introduction of a 15-inch model.

You Won’t Be Alone had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (we were big fans), and will be hitting theaters on April 1. It’s a movie full of imagery and ideas that hang out in your head for days, somehow making a gritty story about a shape-shifting witch into a startlingly lovely investigation…Read more...

Offering better visibility in bright conditions and lower power consumption, E Ink’s electronic paper screens are gaining in popularity as alternatives to LCD and OLED panels for digital signage, and the company has just made them even more appealing with an updated version of its color e-paper panels featuring much…Read more...

Just announced this morning, a new illustrated edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium, The Silmarillion, is going to be available in October 2022. This year is going to play host to Fantasy Rings Fall, with both the Amazon Studio’s show, Rings of Power out in September and now this new book, complete with Tolkien’s…Read more...

Mandy’s Panos Cosmatos is working on a new fantasy nightmare with A24. J.K. Simmons talks about being a dad for Batgirl. Jensen Ackles teases the infamous comic book moment coming to The Boys’ third season. Plus, more Moon Knight footage, and MST3K prepares for its next season. To me, my spoilers!