Gizmodo

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in Tonga on January 15, the result was devastation. The eruption literally blew up an island, caused mass flooding in the surrounding areas, coated whole communities in a thick layer of ash, and took out telecommunications for weeks. Yet in that eruption, we got…Read more...

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No longer just a (very popular) game, League of Legends has spawned a Netflix series in Arcane (an awesome show)—and now the first novel set in the League universe is coming: Anthony Reynolds’ Ruination. Ahead of its release September 6, io9 has a sneak peek at the first chapter.Read more...

Did you know Waze was offering carpooling through its app? I did not. I own a car, so it was not something that was on my radar. But the folks who might currently rely on it will soon find they’ll have to figure out new ways to get around.

The biggest problem with Samaritan, a brand new superhero movie starring the one and only Sylvester Stallone, is a lack of identity. That’s oddly fitting since the movie itself is about a young boy trying to figure out the identity of a man who lives in his neighborhood. Is he the long-lost superhero Samaritan? Will…Read more...

A 36-year-old man in Italy appears to be uniquely unlucky, after he was hospitalized and diagnosed with covid-19, monkeypox, and HIV over a span of a single week in July. Thankfully, his covid and monkeypox co-infections did successfully clear up without issue, and he has since been placed on HIV treatment.Read more...

A little more than a week ago, marketer Tom Orbach absolutely delighted Twitter when he unveiled his LinkedIn Viral Post Generator, a website that uses AI to ape viral LinkedIn posts, cringe and all. The internet absolutely ate it up, so much so that a company decided to pay real money to own the thing.Read more...

Where many have tried and failed, the man behind The Hunger Games will once again give it another shot. Francis Lawrence, director of the last four Hunger Games movies including the upcoming prequel, has been signed to direct an adaptation of the popular sci-fi horror game BioShock for Netflix.Read more...

The problem with making low-rank Starfleet officers the heroes of your Star Trek show is that, at some point as it keeps going, they’ve done enough being heroes that it starts feeling a little weird that they’re still low-rank officers. Star Trek: Lower Decks, thankfully, is back to remind us that it’s very clever,…Read more...

Once again, the second episode of She-Hulk had some really excellent connective tissue for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. New characters and situations are introduced that not just explain where and when the show is happening, but tease what’s going to come next.Read more...

In a drastic step to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions, California is expected to ban the sale of new gas powered vehicles by 2035. It’s a huge move from a state that buys the most trucks and cars in the entire country, and which is often a national trendsetter for environmental standards.Read more...

Landing safely on the Moon is one thing, but surviving through the cold temperatures of the two-week lunar night a whole other challenge That’s why NASA has recently contracted Astrobotic to develop a small rover for the Moon’s nighttime environment, with battery and communications technology meant to withstand…Read more...

On board a rocket named the Vulcan, a symbolic portion of Star Trek legend Nichelle Nichols’ ashes (donated by her son, Kyle Johnston) will be sent into space as a part of a deep-space trip that will honor many Star Trek luminaries. Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, James “Scotty” Doohan, and…Read more...

Webb Space Telescope has detected “unequivocal” evidence of carbon dioxide in a distant exoplanet’s atmosphere, according to a European Space Agency release. According to the ESA, “it is the first clear, detailed, indisputable evidence” of carbon dioxide in a planet outside of our solar system.Read more...

New “Ghost Run” regulations set to take effect today could help close a half-century-old loophole that made guns developed using 3D printers or assembled with homemade parts essentially invisible to law enforcement.Read more...

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Fans of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films have a fairly set image of Elven ruler Galadriel: an etherial, mystical figure who looks a lot like Cate Blanchett. Prime Video’s new series Rings of Power, however, gives us a younger, more grounded and fiery take on the character, courtesy of actor Morfydd Clark.

Privacy-minded web browser DuckDuckGo has a new, free service they’re making open for all users who like the idea of stopping companies from tracking your data through emails.Read more...

Scientists in the UK say they’ve pulled off a feat of genetic engineering: creating a “synthetic” mouse embryo without the need for egg or sperm cells. The embryos were created with stem cells instead and were able to begin developing a brain, heart, and other organs for up to a week. The researchers believe that…Read more...

Whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko will testify before a U.S. Senate committee about the social media company’s alleged security failings, in accordance with a congressional subpoena. Zatko, previously Twitter’s head of security, was also subpoenaed by Musk’s legal team earlier this week, to testify in the ongoing…Read more...

In only its second episode, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is already separating itself from the rest of the Marvel Disney+ family. So much happens in such a small amount of time that it feels like it should only be six episodes, tops, like a few of its predecessors. But no, She-Hulk is nine episodes and this second one …Read more...

As mind-blowing as it is to see a screen bend and even fold in half without taking any damage, we haven’t quite figured out the perfect use case for flexible OLEDs yet. Corsair is taking a swing at the technology with its new Xeneon Flex gaming monitor that allows users to bend in each side to create a more immersive…Read more...

Jameela Jamil (dressed as her She-Hulk character Titania) vandalized some She-Hulk posters in Los Angeles as a bit of PR. Christian Slater has been cast as the villain in the new live-action Spiderwick Chronicles. There’s so, so much horror coming, you guys. But is there more? There’s more!

If you haven’t managed to snag the much coveted PS5 yet, even though the damn thing’s been out for nearing two years, you won’t be happy to learn that it will now cost you even more to snag one if you happen to live outside the U.S.Read more...

SpaceX might have its sights set on Mars, but Rocket Lab is seeking to become the first private company to reach Venus and explore its clouds for signs of potential habitability.

Just a few months after DJI officially announced its folding Mini 3 Pro drone with improved obstacle avoidance, the company has followed up with another release for 2022: a radical redesign of the DJI FPV called the Avata, which is the company’s first drone with full propeller guards and is its second drone focusing…Read more...

A mission to Mars takes a distressing turn in Deus, a new sci-fi film starring and produced by Claudia Black (whose many credits include Farscape and Stargate SG-1, as well as voicing characters in major video game franchises like Uncharted and Mass Effect). io9 has an exclusive new trailer to share today!Read more...

We’ve all grown accustomed to hearing about foreign-seeded disinformation campaigns, but we seldom hear about America’s own covert influence operations. On Wednesday, however, social media researchers revealed details about what appears to have been a long-running U.S. disinformation effort aimed at web users in…Read more...

Earlier Wednesday, Facebook endured the digital equivalent of what happens when you drink one too many and your body says: “No, ma’am.” It filled users’ news feeds across the globe with very weird posts that random people had sent to celebrities like Eminem, Taylor Swift, and Nicki Minaj—stuff that wouldn’t turn up…Read more...

These days, Star Wars works better if you know Star Wars. Knowing that Obi-Wan Kenobi will let Darth Vader kill him makes the Obi-Wan Kenobi show richer. Hearing Ahsoka Tano say “Thrawn” on The Mandalorian will be that much sweeter to fans of Star Wars Rebels. The examples go on and on. And while playing to nostalgia…Read more...

On Wednesdays we wear black and watch the latest behind the scenes featurette for Tim Burton’s Netflix series centering on Wednesday Addams. In it, the master of cinematic oddities like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands discusses Wednesday star Jenna Ortega’s take on the classic Charles Addams character.Read more...

Black Adam will be the only new DC movie you see in theaters this year. Warner Bros. just moved Shazam: Fury of the Gods from its original December 2022 release date to March 17, 2023, a date originally intended for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. However, that has now been pushed back as well, to December 25, 2023, so…Read more...

Pour one out for the dugong today—the bulbous yet endearing undersea mammal has hit a worrying new benchmark of species decline. Scientists have declared the animal “functionally extinct” in part of the South China Sea, in a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Hunting, the fishing industry,…Read more...

I either didn’t know or utterly forgot a movie adaptation of Windsor McKay’s early 20th-century comic strip masterpiece (well, minus the racism) Little Nemo in Slumberland was in the works. But thanks to Slumberland’s first teaser, I will never forget it again, thanks to the glorious sight it contains: Jason Momoa as…Read more...

I’ve always been a huge fan of NASA’s concept art—sometimes you need to see what the future might be like to get sufficiently hyped. Missions to space often involve cameras that document these journeys, and it’s always fun to compare what we thought something would look like to how it actually appears. But in cases…Read more...

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This week just keeps getting worse for Jack Dorsey-aligned products.Read more...

Better late than never, the meme of the summer is here. Which is a relief, since the meme cycle has been grim, lately. We just went through a brief flirtation with the “Dark Brandon” series, in which libs appropriate the type of fascist imagery involving “God Emperor Trump” that was popular with the MAGA crowd a few…Read more...

Conditions in China are devastatingly hot and dry—and they’re dragging on. Government officials say that the heat the country has been experiencing for weeks is the most intense heat wave China has seen since modern records began in the early 1960s. The heat wave, which has now lasted for 72 days, has beaten out an…Read more...

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Entertainment trends are always shifting, but you can always count on more zombies, eternally heaving themselves out of the grave and invading screens large and small. While, of course, there’s a certain (splattery) sameness across the genre, these 10 recent projects show just how diverse zombie stories have become—a…Read more...

Researchers involved in a large peer-reviewed study published Wednesday say that “pre-bunking” is the best method yet developed to stop people from believing the misinformation that they see on the internet. The study was carried out by researchers with the British universities of Cambridge and Bristol, who worked…Read more...

About 900 years ago, a woman between 17 and 25 years old died and was buried near the modern border of Chile and Argentina. But unlike other people buried nearby, she was entombed in a canoe.Read more...

On November 9, 1967, a 363-foot-tall (111-meter) Saturn V rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, generating 7.5 million pounds of thrust. The blast created by the Apollo 4 liftoff was among the loudest noises ever produced by our species, scientists calculated at the time. In fact, the roar was so loud that…Read more...

Disney’s quest to create live-action remakes for all its animated classics takes another step forward with Pinocchio, which hits Disney+ on September 8 as part of the streamer’s anniversary celebration. Today’s new trailer—equal parts fantastical and sentimental, as expected—gives us our best look yet at the Robert…Read more...

A team of scientists has determined that a large mound on the campus of Louisiana State University is the oldest known human-made structure in the Americas, according to a paper published in the American Journal of Science.Read more...

If you love fantasy, 2022 is the place to be. Not only did a brand new Game of Thrones show just roar its way onto HBO, but Prime Video is gearing up to debut the latest installment in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series. And apparently, it’s quite good.Read more...

Yes, you read that right. BlackBerry might be dead as a phone, but at least its memory will be a major feature on the silver screen. As much as I would prefer an Emoji Movie-like animated film of walking talking BlackBerry phones punching each others’ physical keyboards (Hollywood, if you’re listening, I have a script…Read more...

When I was growing up, the cultural impact of Star Wars as a global phenomenon is something that felt like it was just a regular part of life. The first movies I was exposed to were the original Star Wars films—my father, who immigrated from Mexico City with my mother in 1989, used them as a tool to learn English…Read more...

Twitter is facing challenges on multiple fronts. The company is tied up in a legal fight over Elon Musk’s will-he-won’t-he acquisition. And earlier this week, whistleblower allegations brought renewed scrutiny to the platform’s possibly sub-par security practices.Read more...