Gizmodo

Veterinarians in the UK aren’t too pleased with the breeders behind the country’s first known litter of hairless French bulldogs. They argue that it’s only the latest example of how “extreme breeding” is harming the long-term health of these short-faced dogs, who already face a higher risk of certain medical problems.…Read more...

The former Alaska governor and disastrous presidential running mate is in the Big Apple to sue the New York Times for libel after it insinuated that her rhetoric was tied to the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, which left six dead and Rep. Gabby Giffords with massive brain injuries. While she’s around, Palin …Read more...

For years, Art Spiegelman’s acclaimed graphic novel Maus has been taught in schools across the world, both because of the digestible, but chillingly authentic way it depicts the horrors of the Holocaust, and because it’s one of the masterpieces of the comics medium. It’s the only graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer…Read more...

Meta is making it more difficult to secretly snag a screenshot of someone’s disappearing encrypted message on Messenger. That new notification system, part of a broader effort to bolster Messenger’s end-to-end encryption functionality, will alert someone using the “vanishing messages” feature if someone tries to…Read more...

Critical Role’s first adventuring team Vox Machina are making the leap from tabletop to animation tomorrow with the long-awaited launch of Amazon Studios’ latest series, The Legend of Vox Machina. But before you see them venture forth, you can listen to them introduce themselves in style with io9's sneak peek at the…Read more...

A workshop filled with cordless power tools is also a workshop filled with battery chargers gobbling up outlets and power strips. Ryobi’s new USB Lithium cordless power tool system trades proprietary chargers for USB-C ports on the battery themselves, allowing them to share the chargers your phone, tablet, and laptop…Read more...

Karen Gillan must fight herself to the death. That’s the premise of Dual, a weird, funny, new sci-fi film from director Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defense). Gillan plays Sarah, a disconnected woman who is diagnosed with a terminal illness. She’s going to die, there’s no way around it. And so she does what many…Read more...

Is there a more satisfying experience in video gaming than clearing four lines at once in Tetris? (A move technically referred to as a tetris.) It turns out there is: watching an AI developed by Greg Cannon play Tetris flawlessly while prioritizing clearing four lines as frequently as possible.Read more...

Just as humanity has learned to fight off pathogens—through strategies like sanitation and medicine—those pathogens are learning to fight back. Some infections are now getting harder to treat, as many microbes have evolved ways to survive the drugs that previously vanquished them with ease. According to a recent study…Read more...

I was sitting on the couch one evening over the holidays, watching a college bowl game as one is wont to do. Football is usually my tune-out time where I can forget the world is on fire and the fossil fuel industry is hellbent on stoking the flames.

Good Omens’ second season has lost some divine voices. Showtime’s Let the Right One In adaptation starts growing its cast. Get a dark look at what’s coming in Raised by Wolves season two. Plus, what’s next for Kung Fu, Legends of Tomorrow, and more. To me, my spoilers!

Spotify has started to take down songs by Neil Young after the veteran rocker said he didn’t want his music appearing on the same platform as anti-vaccine podcaster Joe Rogan, who has a $100 million deal with the service, according to reports from several news outlets. Young had about 6 million monthly listeners of…Read more...

Star Trek: Picard was never envisioned as a long-legged series in the style of the Treks of the ‘90s—hell, when it was first announced there wasn’t any particular certainty as to whether or not it would be more than one season long. But, as the series looks to second and third times around aboard La Sirena, its future…Read more...

Privacy groups are demanding transparency following news that ID.me—the biometric identity verification system used by the IRS and over 27 states—has failed to be entirely transparent in how its facial recognition technology works.Read more...

Ever since mutantkind became ascendant in the Dawn of X—and the establishment of the mutant nation state Krakoa—enemies of the children of the atom have been lying in wait to strike out at mutants all over the place. But one with sinister connections to mutantkind’s greatest foe has been revealed, and now poor Scott…Read more...

The New York City Tri-State area is in for a bomb cyclone this coming weekend. But how much snow the city and surrounding area will see is still up in the air. Big time.Read more...

Fresh is a nearly two-hour movie that doesn’t let you in on its secret for almost a quarter of that time. It starts all quirky and nice with a young woman named Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) navigating the world of modern dating. She’s on all the apps, meets guys who are real assholes, some of them send her unsolicited dick…Read more...

Terry Pratchett’s work in Discworld may have flung us into a magical world of animated luggage and daring sorcery, but its insightful, often furious view of class dynamics and social injustice is what made it such a powerfully enduring series. Now it’s lending some of that fury to highlight a new campaign against…Read more...

It’s a well established fact on the internet that when you don’t pay for something, you are the product. This is the way companies like Facebook operate: You, a user, don’t put down cash every time you log in to see what your friends/family/exes are doing; instead, you hand over your personal data to the company, and…Read more...

General Motors helped hook Americans on gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs that have been a disaster for the climate. Now, it’s getting serious about a pivot to electric vehicles amid increased electrification efforts from other top automakers. On Tuesday the automaker announced it will invest roughly $7 billion to build…Read more...

Frogs, unlike their salamander cousins, cannot regenerate lost limbs, but a fascinating new experiment suggests it’s possible for frogs to partially regrow their missing body parts under the right conditions.

Patch alert: You’re going to want to run—not walk—to your iPhone and iPad to update them right now.Read more...

A young couple moves from New York to Bucharest for the husband’s big promotion—he’s half-Romanian, speaks the language, and is immediately pulled into a busy schedule. The wife is left to spend her days alone, feeling out of place, and becoming more and more fixated on the man across the street who’s always staring…Read more...

The latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett has nothing to do with The Simpsons. There’s no green carbon rods, donuts, or Time magazine declarations. The image above, however, will make sense if you keep reading. We just felt we wanted to be as spoiler-free as possible.Read more...

A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere say their robot was able to pull off a complicated and delicate surgical procedure on a pig without the assistance of humans for the first time. What’s more, the robot even appeared to do the job better than human surgeons.Read more...

The past few years have been testing gamers’ patience, with everything from the OLED Nintendo Switch to the PS5 to the Analogue Pocket seeing delays as a result of the pandemic. Valve’s Steam Deck also fell victim—the company announced shipping delays back in November—but today the company said that the eagerly…Read more...

Congrats to some weirdo who got a great deal! Melania Trump has ended up auctioning her stupid hat, as well as an NFT of it, for 30% less than her initial asking price after she asked for payment in one of the many cryptocurrencies now crashing in price.

Since the second season of Superman & Lois premiered two weeks ago, poor Clark (Tyler Hoechlin) has been dealing with painful visions of some creature locked in the nearby Shuster mines. In last night’s episode, aptly titled “The Thing in the Mines,” the titular thing burst free and beat the crap out of Superman and …Read more...

Did a hacktivist group hack the Belarusian railway system or not? Confirmation of the alleged breach remains elusive, though the allegations continue to intrigue security experts and commentators.Read more...

Please be warned: I am about to type out a deeply cursed sentence. In a new episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson talked at length about climate change in an exchange that makes Rogan’s recent anti-vax content seem scientifically sound enough to win a Nobel Prize.

Everyone knows a battle in Mortal Kombat can’t end in round one. There needs to be at least a round two and now, thanks to New Line Cinema and writer Jeremy Slater, there probably will be.Read more...

Spyware developed by Israeli surveillance for hire company NSO Group was reportedly used to spy on yet another member of civil society, this time targeting a senior member at rights group Human Rights Watch. That revelation comes despite NSO’s own rules against spying on activists or journalists and comes less than 24…Read more...

The aid effort to help volcano- and tsunami-stricken Tonga is running into a covid-19 roadblock.Read more...

A debilitating parasitic worm could soon be eradicated as one of humanity’s longtime foes. On Wednesday, the Carter Center announced that only 14 cases of guinea worm disease were reported worldwide in 2021—the lowest toll yet and a sharp decline from the year before. There are still ongoing challenges impeding…Read more...

If a significant portion of your time is spent cruising pop culture websites, you’ve seen roughly a million different pieces of Star Wars art. You’ve seen all the real posters, fan posters, artistic interpretations, parodies, and on and on. Star Wars art is everywhere. And yet, with this new piece, artist Daniel…Read more...

A Falcon 9 second stage has been tumbling uncontrollably in space since 2015, but experts say its seven-year journey is coming to an end, as the 4-ton rocket part is expected to hit the Moon in a matter of weeks.

Microsoft today previewed its first major Windows 11 update, which will bring taskbar improvements and long-awaited Android app integration. Also coming to the desktop OS are redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps and new ways to share windows. Windows head Panos Panay briefly teased the changes in a blog post that…Read more...

This week’s episode of The Book of Boba Fett has an energy quite unlike anything the show has delivered so far. It also has a story quite unlike anything the show has delivered so far. And a cast. And a premise. Because, as strong as it was, it wasn’t an episode of The Book of Boba Fett at all—and being as good as it…Read more...

The Supreme Court agreed this week to hear a case brought by two Idaho residents who have fought the Environmental Protection Agency for years over a wetland on their property. This isn’t just a simple case of some long-suffering landowners, though; it’s one that is backed by industry interests. And with the Court in…Read more...

In an effort to be at your beck and call 24 hours a day, your smart speaker or hub is constantly listening so that it can immediately respond to every inquiry. But for those times when they respond accidentally or ramble on too long with a response, Google Assistant devices can now be quickly silenced by simply saying…Read more...

Karen Gillan’s Dual has been acquired after its Sundance debut. Sam Raimi has an update on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ reshoots. Lucy Liu is joining the latest Stephen King adaptation. Plus, what’s ahead for Naomi and The Flash. Spoilers, away!

For years, Samsung laptops reminded me of a kid who was forced by their parents to play sports. They keep showing up, but the obvious lack of effort made you wonder if they even want to be there. Recently, though, Samsung has started to kick the ball in the right direction. Products like the Galaxy Book Pro 360 and …Read more...

The video game industry has more or less settled on a standard design for controllers with a pair of matching analog joysticks, a directional pad, four action buttons, and shoulder triggers on top. It’s a design that the PlayStation DualShock controller popularized, but one that I genuinely feel Nintendo perfectly…Read more...

Before the pandemic, Google would introduce a new version of its lower-cost A-series smartphone around the same time as its Google I/O developers conference. The company may return to that launch timeline with the Pixel 6a, and it could accompany the long-anticipated Pixel Watch, plus a wallet-friendly HD version of…Read more...

After over a month in theaters, Spider-Man: No Way Home is still number one at the box office. And while it’s rumored to be coming home for digital download in late February, today you can bring a piece of it home yourself. The entire script is online.Read more...

In his virtual introduction for Speak No Evil at the film’s 2022 Sundance Film Festival premiere, director Christian Tafdrup (and co-writer, with his brother Mads Tafdrup) explained that he set out to make “the most unpleasant experience for an audience ever.” With this grim exploration of social boundaries pushed to…Read more...

Apple has historically reeled in a wide range of users with the promise of top-notch digital security and a safe, walled-off ecosystem. However, its new(ish) AirTags, which critics warn can be manipulated by creeps and criminals to track users, have drawn Apple directly into the privacy spotlight. Those growing…Read more...

If you want to capture 3D photos or footage on a budget, Ricoh’s Theta line continues to be a relatively affordable alternative to multi-camera rigs. It’s a much easier solution now, too: The new Theta X is the company’s first 360-degree camera with a touchscreen and other upgrades that make it easier to use as a…Read more...

As a site that regularly reaches out to movie studios to comment on things, we have to say this is a bit of a shocker. But a welcome one. A potentially controversial problem was pointed out to Disney and the world’s biggest film studio has responded. Which, trust us, does not happen all that often.Read more...

Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked event is official: The company announced that it will be livestreaming something “epic” on Feb. 9 beginning at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT on Samsung’s website.