Gizmodo

We’ve seen the trailer. We’ve broken it down. We’ve heard from star Ewan McGregor about his return to the Star Wars galaxy. Now it’s time to hear from McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series’ co-star Hayden Christensen, who will be putting on Darth Vader’s helmet again to menace his former Jedi master—and what he reveals…Read more...

You can turn your nose up at the thought of sticking a big button to the back of your smartphone, but PopSockets have probably saved millions of devices from falling to their doom, and the company’s latest innovation means PopSockets users don’t have to worry about a dead battery either.Read more...

Unlike Lego Vidiyo which was not long for this world, the company’s other interactive building line is thriving with reveals pf a bunch of new additions to its Lego Super Mario collection today. Perhaps most importantly, a Princess Peach figure featuring animated expressions like Mario and Luigi is on its way.Read more...

Kraven the Hunter might have found a very peculiar villain. The CW’s Gotham Knights show has found an unlikely Robin to cast. Annie Wersching teases her arrival as the Borg Queen on Star Trek: Picard. Plus, teases for She-Hulk, and Shawn Levy talks ending Stranger Things. Spoilers now!

When it rains updates in Android land, it pours. Google’s latest Android feature drop comes with a bundle of new messaging abilities that should help make you feel less of the Green Bubble struggle. Additional features are also en route to a few Android-adjacent platforms, including Google TV and Android Auto.

YouTube has stopped content creators in Russia from being able to make money with most ads that appear on their videos. But there’s one important caveat: YouTube creators in Russia can still theoretically make money when anyone outside of Russia watches ads on their videos.

Today is not only the 10th anniversary of the release of Disney’s John Carter, it’s probably the 10th anniversary of the death of its sequel. Everyone involved with John Carter, which was based on a legendary series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, saw it as the start of a franchise. Even the film itself, which…Read more...

Key members of an influential congressional committee asked the Justice Department to investigate Amazon for alleged obstruction Wednesday after the company allegedly went to great lengths to stall the committee’s recent antitrust probe. Lawmakers said the tech giant engaged in “potentially criminal conduct.”Read more...

Much of the modus operandi of Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight in The Batman is about the theatricality of his fearsome image. “They think I’m hiding in the shadows, but I am the shadows,” Bruce monologues at one point. But it’s far from the Bat himself who provides the film’s most fearsome theatricality: it’s his ride.Read more...

Unless you’re willing to only handle your touchscreen devices or camera lenses while wearing gloves, fingerprint smudges are inevitable. But if you still refuse to live a life with grease-covered gadgets, the WaterBear looks like a smarter alternative to a microfiber cleaning cloth because it sticks right to your gear…Read more...

In recent years, Star Wars has had lots of fun telling tales of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s time on Tatooine between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. But never like this. The first trailer for the Disney+ limited series Obi-Wan Kenobi was just released and it looks like Kenobi’s old apprentice, Darth Vader, hired a legion of…Read more...

British biotech firm Oxitec announced this week that it has received approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in parts of Florida and in California, following the completion of a pilot program last year. The modified male insects are designed to…Read more...

Facebook announced Wednesday that it is rolling out new anti-misinformation features aimed at reducing the amplification of potentially harmful content spreading within Facebook Groups.Read more...

Kickstarter has been used as a crowdfunding platform for tabletop role-playing games almost since its inception. In 2012, only three years after Kickstarter first launched, Jamie Chambers successfully ran a crowdfunding campaign in support of a new edition of the classic science fiction RPG, Metamorphosis.Read more...

A hidden impact crater in northwestern Greenland dates back some 58 million years, making it far older than previous estimates. The challenge now will be to find further evidence of what was surely a massively disruptive global-scale event.Read more...

Apps take up a ton of space. And although companies are making smartphones and tablets with more storage than ever before, the apps that fill them remain chock full of unnecessary bloat. Enter App Archiving for Android, announced today by Google.

The rise of Oswald Cobblepot is set to expand the world of Warner Bros.’ The Batman on HBO Max. With the film grossing $134 million at the North American box office and $124 million internationally, this announcement comes after director Matt Reeves revealed that plans for a Gotham Central show have “evolved” into …Read more...

Financial giant BlackRock, which has fashioned itself as a leader in a global transition to cleaner energy, seems more than willing to shrug off its climate commitments and keep investing in dirty fuels behind closed doors, according to an email released this week.Read more...

Heavy rain in Australia has caused flooding so dangerous and disruptive that Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared a national emergency this week. The flooding began in late February and has continued into March across the east coast states of New South Wales and Queensland. The disaster has killed 22 people so far,…Read more...

If you miss the days when Fox was running the X-Men movies, then I have exceedingly bad news for you. Had the franchise not been in such jeopardy, and The New Mutants delayed for so long, you could have seen Mad Men and Baby Driver star Jon Hamm wearing what is arguably the most preposterous cape in the entirety of…Read more...

Ever since it was announced, we knew Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would not only bring us back to Discovery’s take on the pre-Captain Kirk Enterprise crew, but push contemporary Star Trek back to a more adventurous, episodic style of storytelling. Now, we have a glimpse at just how—and also how it plans to bring back…Read more...

Now that The Book of Boba Fett/The Mandalorian season 2.5 is behind us, it’s time to look to the future—specifically, Obi-Wan Kenobi, thanks to this very first teaser trailer for the Disney+ show. The Star Wars TV series will not only star Ewan McGregor in the title role, but it will also see the Jedi knight come up…Read more...

A team of scientists recently modeled the likelihood of hauling a species back from dead, using the Christmas Island rat, a large rodent that went extinct between 1902 and 1908, as their hypothetical subject.Read more...

Going into Apple’s “Peek performance” event on Tuesday, we hoped—however unlikely it was—that Apple would debut a new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to replace the products released back in 2020. Alas, when Time Cook walked off the virtual stage, no laptop had been revealed. Instead, we got a new iPhone SE, iPad Air, Mac…Read more...

Since day one, Disney’s John Carter had all the promise in the world. It’s the live-action debut of Andrew Stanton, who directed the masterful Wall-E and Finding Nemo at Pixar. The source material by Edgar Rice Burroughs is steeped in original sci-fi fantasy and mythology that has permeated history beyond the page.…Read more...

David Bennett, the world’s first human to receive a genetically modified pig heart, has died just two months following the historic transplantation. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center, where the surgery was performed, announced his passing Wednesday morning. At this time, the cause of death is…Read more...

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s standalone show, expected to release on May 25th on Disney+ still doesn’t have a full trailer. This is, as we can all agree, a travesty. But earlier today after a cheeky “Hello there” on the official twitter account for the series, EW released an exclusive series of photos and an interview with …Read more...

An international expedition has finally found the wreck of Endurance, a British ship that got hopelessly stuck in the dense ice pack and sank in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea in 1915.

One of the U.S. West’s most important water reservoirs is about to hit a new low.Read more...

Joe Biden is dipping his toes into crypto. On Wednesday, the president signed a first-of-its-kind executive order outlining a path to regulation of cryptocurrencies and encouraging federal agencies to study the creation of a U.S. digital dollar on the blockchain. Bitcoin’s price surged in the glow of the president’s…Read more...

Fans of Natasha Bowen’s 2021 fantasy Skin of the Sea—and anyone who enjoys stories about mermaids and West African folklore—will be thrilled to hear sequel Soul of the Deep is arriving this fall. io9 interviewed the Nigerian-Welsh author over email to learn about the anticipated release; we’ve also got a first look at…Read more...

Google’s FloC was killed because it was a bad idea for privacy on the web. But we didn’t know exactly how bad until two MIT researchers tested it—over months, using technical approaches and an expensive, private dataset. That it was this difficult to add some transparency is unacceptable for a fundamental change to…Read more...

Ernie Hudson has joined the Quantum Leap reboot. Could The Flash be running out of time after a ninth season? Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, and Octavia Spencer are getting festive for Apple. Plus, what’s coming on Superman and Lois, Snowpiercer, and more. Spoilers get!

As powerful as touchscreen devices like smartphones and tablets have become, physical buttons and controls are often still a better way for users to interact with devices. (Think typing or playing action games.) So researchers at Texas A&M have come up with a novel way for touchscreens to feel more than just perfectly…Read more...

A Redmond, Washington man was sentenced to just five years of probation and a $246,000 fine on Monday for selling his own homemade covid-19 vaccine, which he offered to inject during the earliest days of the pandemic. The judge admitted he could’ve sentenced the man to jail time, but opted for a longer probation…Read more...

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There’s a moment in the climax of Star Trek: Picard’s season two premiere when Q, the omnipotent bane of Jean-Luc’s life, appears in the latter’s humble French estate. He has had, like so many returning figures of classic pop culture of late, the process of time smoothed out by CG, to give us a semblance of the Q we…Read more...

Behold, Ormeus Coin! A glittering digital asset, a massive investment opportunity, and yet another grand example of everything the cryptocurrency industry has to offer the world.

Unless you spend your time in a cave with flying nocturnal animals, you’re probably aware there’s a new Batman movie in theaters this week. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is the first live-action Batman solo film in a decade, if you can believe it. Of course, Ben Affleck played the role in a few other films in between, and…Read more...

Apple hosted its “Peek Performance” live-stream event and revealed a whole host of new products aimed at creators and those living on a budget. There were also some smaller announcements for folks who can’t get enough of their Apple TV+ subscriptions, plus a new highly anticipated phone color for iPhone users.Read more...

Florida’s controversial anti-LGBTQ “Don’t Say Gay” bill has passed the state senate, heading to the desk of governor Ron DeSantis, all but guaranteeing its entry into state law—and one of the state’s biggest businesses, the Walt Disney Company, has largely chosen to stay silent.Read more...

The longtime chairman of the street-brawling Proud Boys group was arrested in Miami and charged with conspiracy Tuesday over his role in the failed insurrection at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.Read more...

Firearm owners may be finally cozying up to the idea of personalized “smart guns,” and it only took them twenty years to hop on board.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 “Bhatia, P.I.” by Shiv Ramdas. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on our website. Enjoy!

Like a sandworm rumbling through the desert, Dune: Part Two is coming to the surface, and now one of its biggest missing pieces may have been found. Florence Pugh (Midsommar, Black Widow) is reportedly in talks to play Princess Irulan, daughter of the villainous Emperor Shaddam IV, in the upcoming sequel starring…Read more...

Game of Thrones feels like a franchise that is both never-ending and completely paralyzed within its own epic scope. After the finale in 2019, HBO quickly announced a slate of new shows and proposals that it was working on. This came as a surprise to absolutely nobody who was paying attention to the state of…Read more...

The CERN Council convened today to discuss how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affects the scientific collaboration’s ability to pursue its goals and ensure the safety and wellbeing of its members. The council meeting resulted in a resolution to condemn the Russian invasion, to suspend Russia’s Observer status to the…Read more...

A prolific state-backed hacker group from China has penetrated the networks of at least six state governments in the U.S., new research from cybersecurity firm Mandiant reveals.Read more...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has allegedly operated a “bulk surveillance” project responsible for collecting financial records on money transfers greater than $500 sent to Mexico and certain states, a previously unknown practice lawmakers and civil liberties experts claim may violate U.S law. The DHS data…Read more...

Apple just re-entered the mainstream monitor space with the Studio Display, a 27-inch, 5K monitor meant for creative professionals with smaller budgets than those who can afford Apple’s top option.