Gizmodo

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts may not have been the box office beast Paramount wanted it to be, but those who saw it surely won't forget its ending. It's an ending that required lots of planning and even more approvals, with one in particular being the most difficult to get: producer Michael Bay.Read more...

Elon Musk's rebrand of Twitter to X" faces yet another setback this week after it was blocked in Indonesia for violating local pornography and gambling laws. Musk informed X" users in a tweet on Sunday that X.com will now redirect users to Twitter.com, but Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Informatics said...Read more...

Secret Invasion's finale was released today, and man, did it land flat on all points. After a lackluster five episodes, I didn't have high expectations for the Marvel Disney+ series' sixth, but the circular ending and failure to meaningfully engage in any emotional beats truly left me cold.Read more...

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It took all of five days, but 8,000 people pledged $500 each and made it certain that Hasbro would be making its mega version of the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka. The project, which was announced last week at San Diego Comic-Con, is the latest in Hasbro's Haslab series. It's the company's version of...Read more...

As covid vaccines started to roll out in February 2021, misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the shot were on the rise-as were the deaths of Republican voters.Read more...

A new generation of the heroes in a half-shell is nearly upon us as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem gets ready to hit theaters in a few weeks. But that generation is going to continue-not just on the big screen, but on smaller ones too.

With vibes that are part District Nine, part Arrival, and part Annihilation, Apple TV+'s Invasion takes a very restrained view of what a first contact might look like. While the first season of the show established the stakes and provided a global backdrop to what was happening as various countries and cultures came...Read more...

While U.S. east coasters were still scrambling out of bed and west coasters were sound asleep, Samsung unveiled its latest, now-flattenable foldable phones from Seoul. Samsung didn't debut many major innovations, instead offering new performance improvements and small enhancements at similar price points to previous...Read more...

The Exorcist: Believer's sequel has already set its release date. Thomas Hayden Church talks up his Twisted Metal character. Plus, the Secret Invasion finale is heralded with a new clip. To me, my Spoilers!

If you're not Google (or, to a much lesser extent, Apple), map apps are damned hard to make. Last year, several major heavy hitters in tech, including the likes of Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Amazon, decided to lay down their arms and meet under a flag of parlay held aloft by the Linux Foundation to make mapping just...Read more...

Five years ago, a partially crusted, dark red meteorite crashed in the Sahara desert and was sold in Morocco. Meteorites, almost exclusively, are of extraterrestrial origin, but this chunk seemed weirdly familiar, leading scientists to believe that it originated from the same planet where it ended up thousands of...Read more...

Held for the first time in its home country of Korea, this summer's Samsung Unpacked event is happening this morning in Seoul, featuring new iterations of the Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Flip foldable phones, plus new Galaxy Watch models and new Tab S9 tablets.Read more...

In a world of touchable glass screens, sometimes all users really want is to feel the classic, clicking sensation of older electronics. While a few are still clamoring for the return of physical keyboards on phones, Samsung was on to something with its physical rotating bezel on the Galaxy Watch Classic" series....Read more...

The biggest new product at Samsung Unpacked is probably its smallest folding phone. The Galaxy Z Flip 5 makes bigger changes to its design and functionality than the larger Fold 5, largely on account of having a bigger, more functional exterior screen.Read more...

Introduced at the latest Samsung Unpacked, the Tab S9 series of tablets may not get the same level of attention as the Galaxy Fold 5 or Galaxy Flip 5 (or even the Galaxy Watch 6), but it's still a great example of Samsung's premium consumer product design.Read more...

The latest Samsung Galaxy Unpacked brings us a lot of flash and a lot of folds. Samsung's latest Z Fold 5 phone may look very similar to last year's counterpart the Korean electronics giant is betting that a few tweaks to last year's model will entice a new crowd of buyers. The phone's next iteration features a...Read more...

The crypt doors are about to be kicked open with the release of Disney's Haunted Mansion, helping to usher in spooky season at the movies.

When the covid-19 pandemic delayed the releases of major movies, there was nothing the studios could do to stop it. Genuine health risks meant theaters had to close and without theaters, there wasn't anywhere to screen new movies. Now movie delays are starting to happen again-only this time, the studios could very...Read more...

There are some incredible games in this week's issue, and I'd like to point out a couple of my favorites. Likeness Machine by Pearse Anderson is about what happens when corporations take the likeness of actors and use AI to replace their performance (all proceeds go to the Entertainment Community Fund!). There's also ...Read more...

New research funded by the Pentagon suggests that artificial intelligence can scan and analyze blocks of text to discern whether the humans who wrote it have done something wrong or not.Read more...

I'm an image goblin. I can't help it: I see something funny or cute, and I'll scrape it from the internet to share with friends and family, far and wide. But I often forget that I saved the image to a particular phone until the next day, and by then, I'm usually at my PC, working with another batch of devices.Read more...

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UPS has avoided a strike only one day after 340,000 employees threatened to walk out over an unsustainable pay rate for part-time workers. The Teamsters Union, which represents UPS workers, opened contract negotiations on Tuesday to secure higher pay, but the union vowed to go on strike if a deal could not be reached...Read more...

In the sixth season premiere of Netflix's Black Mirror, a fictional streaming service named Streamberry uses artificial intelligence to deepfake an actor's likeness onto a double's body while creating an ongoing storyline crafted beat-by-beat after a woman's life. Black Mirror is science fiction, but Netflix is...Read more...

As the WGA and SAG-AFTRA's strikes march on, one genre production has had perhaps the dubious spotlight for carrying on regardless: HBO's House of the Dragon. The Game of Thrones prequel's second season has spent the past few months continuing production in Europe, even as writers have remained off-set and now as...Read more...

Nigerian American author Nnedi Okorafor is a name fantasy fans are well familiar with-she's won Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Lodestar Awards-and an even bigger audience awaits, since her Who Fears Death is being developed into an HBO series. In November, she'll release Like Thunder, the sequel to Shadow...Read more...

The global rise in extreme weather is likely to bring along more fatal heart attacks, new research this week suggests. The study found that exposure to heat waves and cold snaps was associated with higher odds of heart attack deaths. This associated risk was even greater on extreme heat days that also featured high...Read more...

Flight tracking data may soon come from space with the design of a new aviation surveillance system that will rely on satellites in Earth orbit.Read more...

Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, has had a lot of not-very-flattering press written about him recently, and the quotes and soundbytes he's given out to the trades have not helped matters. The oft-referenced quote that he gave to CNBC in mid-July about the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA demands remains particularly condescending.

Threads users are asking for new feature updates and it seems Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking their opinions into account. The app's update will include a Following" feed and Translations" which will register the original language and translate it to the language settings of the user reading it, Meta announced on...Read more...

San Diego Comic-Con 2023 is officially in the books and it was a weird one. For the first time in years, Hollywood's presence didn't dominate the event, thanks to studios failing to meet the demands of striking writers and actors. And so, when that big shining star goes away, what happens? Does SDCC just die? Or does ...Read more...

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is seeking approval from the FTC to implement facial age estimation technology to stop kids skirting parental controls. If the industry's self-regulating body gets its way, kids and their parents may need to get used to taking selfies to sign up for games.Read more...

Researchers think they've gotten a glimpse at how gas giants like Jupiter form, thanks to a remarkable image of a distant star system.Read more...

Hasbro launched its Haslab" crowdfunding campaign platform in early 2018 with a Star Wars project-a 3.75" scaled replica of Jabba's Sail Barge. But since then, despite several attempts, only one other Star Wars project beyond it successfully made it through the campaign process. At least now... there is anotherRead more...

Conservative grifter and disgraced country musician Jason Aldean has been under the microscope for his maligned anti-protest track Try That in a Small Town." After a barrage of bad publicity accusing Aldean of promoting lynching and violence via the song's lyrics and video, a TikTok user debunked Aldean's claims that...Read more...

Dungeon Masters Guild, a subsidiary of OneBookShelf and the largest digital third-party Dungeons & Dragons marketplace, officially announced a policy change that would restrict the sale of standalone" AI-generated products. Additionally, it is enacting a Creation Method Filter" which requires sellers to indicate if...Read more...

TikTok is set to launch an e-commerce platform to sell Chinese-made goods to its millions of American users, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The new shopping experience is a new attempt by TikTok to compete with Shein and Temu, two Chinese companies dominating the online retail scene with fast...Read more...

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Stop us if you've heard this one before, but David Gordon Green and Blumhouse are reviving an iconic horror franchise with a fresh reboot-sequel saga that tells a new re-treading of classic ground but doesn't quite cast away a history of messy sequels. Oh, and this time it's The Exorcist rather than Halloween.

Sotheby's is selling a limited edition pair of Omega Sports Apple Computer Sneakers from the 90s in new condition for the exorbitant price of $50,000. The shoe was distributed at an Apple event but was never made available to the public, making it a highly coveted item.Read more...

The next Samsung Unpacked event will come alive July 26 at 7 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT, with the company hosting a live event at its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. At the same time, Unpacked should be livestreamed on the company's website and YouTube channel. Based on the artwork for the event (and online rumors and...Read more...

Ryan Reynolds wants to bring back the Biker Mice From Mars. Meet Ice Cube'sTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem villain. Gamera gets ready to rumble in a new look at Netflix's latest Kaiju anime. Plus, what's coming on Riverdale. Spoilers now!

Waste is sort of the thesis statement of modern economics, and big tech is no different. Google recently published its 2023 Environmental Report which sheds some light on its water consumption-and a more aggressive foray into artificial intelligence could make it worse.

Despite Elon Musk's intentions to rebrand the bird app into a dull, bland, easily copied X," the billionaire tech mogul might have a few roadblocks standing in his way since every company under the sun has already called dibs on the letter. There are hundreds of companies with a trademark on X," and many could be...Read more...

Movie stars make millions, but many working actors struggle to make ends meet-an issue that's gotten more awareness thanks to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. While union members fight Hollywood studios for fair contracts, one of the most famous performers in the world is sharing some of his good fortune.Read more...

A new report suggests that the lax content moderation policies of Mastodon and other decentralized social media platforms have led to a proliferation of child sexual abuse material. Stanford's Internet Observatory published new research Monday that shows that such decentralized sites have serious shortcomings when it...Read more...

Last year's loss of fan-favorite actor Jason David Frank was a blow to us all. His commitment to not just his star-making role on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, but his love and passion for the pop culture community at large, was truly unique and special. Now, we get a chance to celebrate that with what's being sold as...Read more...

Sam Bankman-Fried's legal defense tried to convince a judge nothing improper or impermissible occurred" last week when the disgraced crypto founder leaked former Alameda Research CEO and on-again-off-again girlfriend Caroline Ellison's personal diary to The New York Times. The former FTX CEO's defense says the leaked...Read more...

Another San Diego Comic-Con is in the books, and this year was perhaps one of the weirdest in recent history-even counting those @Home" years. As the lack of major attendees and the lingering shadows of Hollywood's labor movement saw a more muted Hall H at San Diego this year, earth-shattering nerd news wasn't to be...Read more...