Gizmodo

In yet another example of virtual goods selling for sky-high prices for no discernible reason, an investment firm just dumped roughly $2.4 million on a giant plot of... virtual land. Isn’t the future great?!Read more...

Cosplayers who look forward to comics conventions have had it rough during the pandemic, but the community’s spirit is still thriving. A new book, written by io9 alumni Andrew Liptak, spotlights the creative, awesomely nerdy folks who make dressing up an art form. Cosplay: A History: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who…Read more...

The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City uses roughly 400,000 cubic feet of helium gas in total to inflate its iconic giant balloons. Besides being lighter than air and nonflammable—hence its practicality for balloons—helium is incredibly useful as a superconducting agent, making it crucial to many…Read more...

It could be a rough Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, as parts of Southern California are facing “critical fire weather conditions” over the next few days. The National Weather Service is warning Santa Ana winds will kick up in full force in the Los Angeles area, bringing high fire risk, possible power shutoffs, and risky…Read more...

The fall’s product launch onslaught may have slowed down, but now we’re looking ahead to next year. A new Pixel 6 may be joining the lineup, according to 9to5Google. A leaked Pixel 6a spec sheet reveals the mid-range phone’s capabilities, and though it looks like the Pixel 6a will look like its pricier siblings and…Read more...

Popular body spray brands are being recalled over concerns of a carcinogen contaminant. This week, the Food and Drug Administration announced a voluntary recall of certain Old Spray and Secret products by Proctor & Gamble, following the discovery of benzene in certain lots. These sprays are not the only consumer…Read more...

Churchill, Manitoba, is a staging ground of sorts for polar bears. The bears hang tight there, waiting for sea ice to form on Hudson Bay each winter so that they can go for a hunt for seals.Read more...

Seeing The Matrix for the first time was one of the most formative experiences in my personal cinematic journey. It was a few weeks before release, the film was screening early at my college, and everyone piled in for the random, free Keanu Reeves movie. No one knew what we were in for. Minutes later, film history…Read more...

Every version of Windows is at risk due to a scary zero-day vulnerability after Microsoft failed to patch the flaw.Read more...

When I found tears in my eyes five minutes into the first episode of Hawkeye, I took that as a good sign. Marvel Studios’ latest show is finally on Disney+, with the first two episodes now streaming. It explores how Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) is processing life in a post Avengers: Endgame world while also showing …Read more...

Action cameras have continued to grow in popularity for the simple reason that their compact size makes them easy to mount, perch, and hide almost anywhere. But how do you shrink action cameras even further without sacrificing key functionality? DJI’s solution is a new magnetic modular design that assembles like…Read more...

Drivers interested in accessing Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta will now have to submit images and videos of themselves to the company in the event of a collision or other serious safety event. That’s according to new warning language from the company, first noted by Electrek, which requires FSD beta drivers to consent…Read more...

It may be bitterly cold, devoid of breathable oxygen, and baked in deadly radiation, but Mars has an undeniable charm. A new image captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover and colorized by mission team members is testament to the Red Planet’s aesthetic brilliance.

Just a few days before Star Trek: Discovery was set to begin its fourth season last week, ViacomCBS managed to do something impossible: basically unite Star Trek fans to agree on one thing. Unfortunately for them, that thing was agreeing that ViacomCBS sucked, for shockingly pulling Discovery in its entirety from…Read more...

Folks living on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, were greeted with a familiar but bizarre sight this week: thousands of bright red crabs scuttling en masse down roads, across yards, and over special bridges set up for them to cross busy streets.

Continuing to build out its inexplicable gaming roster, Netflix has announced that has expanded its lineup of free mobile offerings with two new games: Bowling Ballers and a rebooted version of Asphalt Extreme.Read more...

Apple is planting new flowers in its walled garden. And by that, I mean the company is reportedly designing more in-house chips to reduce the reliance on third-party chipmakers like Qualcomm.Read more...

Did you love Netflix’s The Mitchells Vs. the Machines movie? Odds are yes, given how much audiences and critics alike enjoyed it. Now, there’s so much more to love given that the movie is getting a physical release on Blu-ray, not only loaded with extras, but with a “Katie Mitchell” cut of the film that makes the…Read more...

The Pacific Northwest is still reeling from catastrophic flooding unleashed by heavy rains last week. But residents already need to prepare for the next round of calamity.Read more...

The world may never know a distraction and procrastination tool as effective as the social media feed: an endless list of bad news, takes, comments, and ego-trips. It’s become so much a part of our lives that companies are now building computer screens specifically designed for doomscrolling, presenting these feeds…Read more...

Game Boy modding has a thriving community spanning back decades, long before investor culture began creeping into retro video game collecting and shot their prices sky-high. And these mods can get really elaborate.Read more...

Clifford the Big Red Dog will strike again. Keanu Reeves talks about what sets Matrix Resurrections apart from your usual sequel. Bruce Campbell teases the tragic stakes of Evil Dead Rise. Plus, there’s a second sinkhole on La Brea now, and Jughead sells his soul to the devil on Riverdale. Spoilers get!

The news that President Joe Biden is releasing millions of barrels of oil from a federal stockpile raises a question. Well, a few actually. Namely, wait, what the hell? We have a huge stockpile of oil?Read more...

It’s finally here: the feature that I’ve been waiting for since Google introduced it back in 2017 at its Google I/O developer conference. I remember sitting in the crowd at the Shoreline Amphitheater when Sundar Pichai showed off Google Photos’ ability to remove a fence! From a photo of a kid playing baseball! And the…Read more...

The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban sent a letter to so-called “stablecoin” issuer Tether on Tuesday, asking for an explanation of how the company operates and “mints” tethers that can be exchanged for various forms of cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Why does it matter? Because some people believe…Read more...

The very real RentAHitman.com website asks visitors a simple question: “Got a problem that needs resolving?” Although the majority of people would recognize the website for what it is, a joke, there are remarkably still some that take it seriously and submit a request for murder. Wendy Wein, a 52-year-old Michigan…Read more...

The first three episodes of Prime Studios’ live-action adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series arrived just this past Friday, and if you haven’t read the books it can be... a bit much. There’s a lot of names to learn and places to keep track of, plus organizations, cultures, mythology, and lingo that…Read more...

There are only two episodes left in Doctor Who’s 13th season, a single, serialized story subtitled Flux. But when it’s over, Jodie Whittaker won’t be done playing the Thirteenth Doctor quite yet. That will only happen during the last of three Who specials that will be airing over the course of 2022. As usual, the BBC…Read more...

No doubt buoyed by word that Wheel of Time is a hit out of the gate, Amazon Studios is once again reaching into its alarmingly deep pockets to fund another genre show: an adaptation of popular BioWare and Electronic Arts video game Mass Effect.Read more...

The first stage of Star Trek: Prodigy’s launch has come to a close, as the series makes way for the arrival of Discovery’s fourth season with a brief hiatus after just five episodes. But Prodigy’s debut has temporarily ended on quite the high, both in what it wants from its young heroes, and what it might want out of…Read more...

Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are drawing Android enthusiast attention away from OnePlus, but the underdog in this battle of Android phones could be months away from regaining the spotlight.Read more...

Some bees have developed a taste for carrion, in a delightfully twisted evolutionary turn. These vulture bees, as they’re known, feature unique gut microbes that help them digest meat.

Jurors on Tuesday handed down a mixed but sweeping victory for the plaintiffs in a sprawling suit against the organizers of the disastrous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a horde of white supremacists, Nazis, and other neo-fascists descended on the town, resulting in violent rioting and…Read more...

Though still in the early stages, it appears the U.S. appetite for experimental nuclear energy technology is on the rise. Last week, Bill Gates-founded TerraPower announced it had selected Kemmerer, Wyoming, as the site for its first “Natrium” 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor. Now, the company’s technology will…Read more...

One of the big reasons Comic Book Workers United has been so vocal about its efforts to unionize within Image Comics is to show the staffers at other comics publishers who have or are currently thinking about organizing that they are not alone. Though CBWU hopes to one day play a direct role in helping workers…Read more...

Wirecutter employees are asking us to resist the temptation of their own excellent deals this Black Friday weekend and boycott the site. The Wirecutter union announced today that every member of its unit has agreed to walk out from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in protest of the New York Times management’s alleged…Read more...

Marine biologists expect to find all sorts of strange stuff in the deep sea, but a mammoth tusk ain’t one of them.

The U.S. military is the single-biggest institutional source of carbon pollution on Earth. But the Pentagon would like you to know that it could absolutely be part of the climate solution.Read more...

Being thankful doesn’t only have to apply to the big stuff. Each day we’re all thankful for our health, friends, family, and more. As we should be. But sometimes it’s just fun to think about the less obvious stuff we’re thankful for and there’s no better time to do that than Thanksgiving. That’s why each year, io9…Read more...

New research affirms the added risk that pregnant people and their families face from covid-19. Data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that pregnant people infected with covid-19 are more likely to have a stillbirth; this link appears to have become stronger after the emergence…Read more...

Ghostbusters: Afterlife finally premiered last Friday, raking in more than $44 million over its first weekend—far more than critics and its studio, Sony, had predicted. That doesn’t mean the movie’s better than critics are saying, of course, but that’s not why I’ve brought you here today. We need to talk about a…Read more...

Tile, which dominated the Bluetooth tracker market for years, is reportedly being acquired by family location-sharing service Life360 in a deal valued at $205 million.Read more...

Apple has filed a lawsuit against Israeli surveillance-for-hire company NSO Group over its Pegasus spyware that has been used to target Apple devices.Read more...

Astronomers announced this week the discovery of the fastest-rotating white dwarf star on record, with a spin rate of once every 25 seconds. The star is about the size of Earth but, by the team’s measurements, contains least 200,000 times more mass, making the dense little object a spinning freak of nature.

Usually your foes at school are bullies, mean teachers, and homework deadlines. But when you’re a student in Dungeons & Dragons, and the school is a magical crossover with the world of Magic: The Gathering, dangerous encounters are going to get a bit tougher to face than a paper written an hour before it’s due.

Snowflake alert. Repeat, snowflake alert: conservatives are super mad about vaccinated puppets and won’t let them into their little safe space next year, Insider reported on Monday.

Krypto, Superman’s dog and the star of Warner Bros.’ upcoming DC League of Super-Pets animated feature, is one of the more famous superheroic pets running around DC’s universe of comic books. His whole deal needs little explanation—but League of Super-Pets’ other headliners, like Ace the Bat-Hound, Chip the squirrel,…Read more...

The slow creep of U.S. carrier consolidation continues. In this installment, Verizon is getting ready to gobble up millions of new wireless subscribers now that the Federal Communications Commission has officially approved its acquisition of Tracfone, one of the country’s largest providers of subsidized mobile phones…Read more...

The company that reduced peak Arnold Schwarzenegger to a ghastly golem and brought us the friendly but dimwitted Times Square diarrhea probe is offering $200,000 for your face. Forever. Plus, your voice for free. Ominously, according to the site, a robot version of the winning face should “start its activities” in…Read more...

A processing anomaly has caused an unexpected vibration to course through the entire Webb telescope just weeks before launch. An investigation is now underway to determine if the incident somehow damaged the observatory.