Gizmodo

A New York City legislator has introduced a bill that would let the police department use radar and artificial intelligence to surveil noise levels related to traffic in the city. If you got caught making a ruckus in violation of city code under the new law, the NYPD could use the tech to identify your car and send…Read more...

Earlier this year, a group of people working with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and other writing guilds formed the “Disney Must Pay Task Force.” This was the result of a public disagreement between the studio and Star Wars and Alien tie-in novelist Alan Dean Foster over Disney holding back on…Read more...

Archaeologists in southeastern China found evidence of ancient beer consumption tucked away in some of the ceramic vessels at the site. Because the excavation also turned up two human skeletons, the research team believes the beer was ritually consumed, perhaps to honor the dead.Read more...

Author Salman Rushdie is joining subscription newsletter service Substack, telling the Guardian that hardcover books remain “incredibly, mutinously alive” and he is “having another go, I guess, at killing it.”Read more...

A Syrian power plant began leaking oil last week, and now the spill is heading for Cyprus. The effects on marine ecosystems and communities could be devastating as it spreads across the Mediterranean.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Apple is working on a number of advanced health features for the Apple Watch, including the ability to measure your blood pressure and body temperature. This is definitely in the realm of possibility, but just because Apple’s working on a feature doesn’t mean it’ll land on…Read more...

This month we’ve got stories galore to keep you entertained as the seasons change. Read on for kingdoms in rebellion, magical murder mysteries, space shenanigans, parallel dimensions, vampires, a new Dune novel, haunted houses (and forests and lakes), short-story collections, and so much more.Read more...

In both Marvel’s What If animated series and the comic books they’re based on, Uatu the Watcher is committed to a life of unceasing, removed impartiality and sworn to never become directly involved with any of the events he witnesses across the multiverse. Episode four of Disney+’s What If was a reminder of the…Read more...

In the same way that the Doom Patrol is seemingly always open to the idea of adding new members to their heroic group, they’re just as willing to haphazardly accept newcomers into their rogues’ gallery. After two seasons of fighting demons, aliens, and oversized vermin, Doom Patrol’s on its way back to HBO Max for a…Read more...

Apple wants to hold all of our most important stuff in the Apple Wallet: a tempting offer we’re declining for now because we don’t need the pain of losing the phone compounded with also losing our credit cards, house keys, and car keys. But if you’re willing to roll the dice, Apple has announced that eight states are…Read more...

Like so many of us, Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant just wants to be heard and understood, but is often drowned out by the discordant cacophony of 21st century life. But no longer: Amazon is reportedly rolling out a new adaptive volume feature that will allow Alexa to respond more loudly if you happen to be in a noisy…Read more...

An international collaboration of scientists say it’s safe for astronauts to fly to Mars and back, provided the length of the mission does not exceed four years and that crewed flights to the Red Planet coincide with a well-known solar cycle.

The meat culture wars have shone a light on the uncomfortable truth: As delicious as they are, hamburgers aren’t so great for the planet. Agriculture makes up one-third of total methane emissions worldwide. While that encompasses a lot of different components, like land use and manure management, emissions from the…Read more...

We already know Microsoft is launching Windows 11 on Oct. 5, but what would a new operating system be without new hardware to showcase it? Microsoft is having what many have pegged as a Surface hardware event on Sept. 22 at 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET. It’s all virtual, of course, and there’s a link available if you want to…Read more...

The average pooch may know when you’re choosing not to give them treats, new research from Germany suggests. The study found that dogs reacted differently when people withheld food from them intentionally or seemingly by accident, indicating that they could tell the difference. The findings could mean that dogs…Read more...

It’s still kind of a bummer that Charlize Theron won’t be returning as Furiosa in the Mad Max: Fury Road role she played so indelibly that it earned the character a prequel. But since the Furiosa movie takes place in the Imperator’s past, you can’t do much better than rising star Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch and The…Read more...

Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast this weekend, but we’re still getting a handle on the damages from the storm. While New Orleans made it through the storm without much flooding (though the city is suffering from widespread power outages and sewage problems), other parishes around the city were hit hard.

More than 100 subreddits with tens of millions of users between them are all going dark this week in protest of Reddit’s inexplicable decision to allow communities to spread misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines. Reddit’s stance became clear last week when the company’s CEO, Steve Huffman, responded to a…Read more...

Taking a page from Apple’s playbook, it looks like Google is working on its own processors for Chromebooks and tablets. And according to a Nikkei Asia report, we could see in-house Google chips as early as 2023, and devices powered by those chips soon after.

Here’s one way of making yourself look totally innocent: issuing wild threats against anyone who dares cooperate with investigators.Read more...

“You know, I’ve always wanted a child. And now I think I’ll have one on toast!” We’re two months out from Halloween, and since it’s never too early to start planning for the best day of the year, io9 is thrilled to be sharing four recipes inspired by one of our favorite seasonal films (which has a sequel on the way),…Read more...

Amid a pandemic-induced labor shortage that has forced some businesses to stretch their existing workforces to the breaking point in order to meet demands, Agility Robotics released a video on Wednesday that shows a bunch of robots that can lift boxes at least 40 percent as well as a human, but still can’t write a…Read more...

The popular crypto exchange Coinbase freaked out a helluva lot of people this past weekend when it sent them erroneous alerts telling them that their 2-factor authentication settings had been messed with.Read more...

DoorDash is clearing a suite of class-action lawsuits from Massachusetts and California off its plate, just as it marches ahead with extended battles in those states against employee classification. The company’s proposed settlement for claimants in 11 cases results in a predictably lousy payout for workers who’ve…Read more...

Tardigrades are famous for their extreme durability, but new research shows how good they are at walking, despite their teeny size and squishy bodies.

Get another cryptic look at Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Shazam: Fury of the Gods has wrapped filming. Netflix bares its teeth for vampire antics in Night Teeth. Plus, a glimpse at today’s What If episode, and what’s to come on Y: The Last Man, Archer, and more. To me, my spoilers!

I was just settling into a new home, town, and life when I realized my older brother Wes and I had left something terribly precious behind in our family’s move: a Sega Dreamcast. With it, my childhood fantasy of hauling ass around San Francisco in a yellow Cadillac Eldorado slipped beyond reach.Read more...

Sony has made a great deal of noise about their new 2021 Bravia XR OLEDs, which makes sense. The TVs are the first to feature Sony’s new Cognitive Processor XR, which sounds an awful lot like a proto-supervillain brain. The company says the processor will recreate how humans actually see things in real life.Read more...

The Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee has been cancelled due to flooding from Hurricane Ida, which was Tropical Depression Ida by the time it hit the state on Tuesday. The four-day festival was scheduled to start Thursday with headliners like the Foo Fighters, Run the Jewels, Tyler the Creator, Lizzo, Tame Impala,…Read more...

A 24-year-old woman from Illinois was arrested on Sunday while trying to enter Hawaii with a fake covid-19 vaccination record card. How did authorities know it was fake? For starters, the counterfeit card said the woman had received the “Maderna” vaccine rather than the Moderna vaccine.Read more...

Smart lights are the cheapest, easiest way to get started with a smart home. Philips Hue, one of the most popular smart light markers, just took the wraps off a whole new lineup of smart lighting for various rooms in your house, along with built-in Spotify integration within the Hue app to make it all sing and light…Read more...

Last year, Funimation brought the iconic original Mobile Suit Gundam to streaming for the first time, giving people the chance to experience what makes the franchise so influential and special in the first place. Now, at long last, they’re also going to get a chance to experience its fascinating follow up.

It looks like Big Tech workers won’t be returning to a physical office this year after all. After exhaustively detailing the measures it would be taking to help ease employees back into the office, Google is pushing back the official return date from Oct. 18 to Jan. 10, 2022.

Alien 3 has some issues. Even the movie’s most ardent fans have to admit this, given that it went through countless story, script, director, and editing changes, leaving what many feel is the most muddled of the four classic Alien films. Legendary Neuromancer author William Gibson was one of the (many) writers to give…Read more...

Paul Gosar, Republican representative from the state of Arizona and, some say, a friend to white nationalists, recently posted a picture of himself on Twitter that appears to show a long green arrow pointed at his penis.Read more...

The world probably doesn’t need any more aftershows, no matter how good the show itself is—and FX’s brilliant supernatural comedy What We Do in the Shadows is one of the very best around. However, we could all do with more Harvey Guillén in our lives, so we’ll be happily tuning in for After the Shadows, hosted by the …Read more...

There appears to be growing tension between the Biden administration and at least some people affiliated with public health agencies over recommending covid-19 booster shots for all next month. Two senior officials with the Food and Drug Administration are leaving, reportedly in part due to the White House’s decision…Read more...

On top of all the Star Trek we’ve got to look forward to soon, we’re getting a brand new show in the form of the animated series Prodigy on the immediate horizon. And while we wait to see something a little more substantial beyond the teaser we got at Comic-Con this summer, we’ve now got a glimpse at its opening…Read more...

At my therapist’s office, there’s a small portable AC. It’s a loudly humming, short monster that grunts at me, disapprovingly, from a foot away. I’ve coped with this by annunciating my anxieties. It’s actually cathartic at 45-minute intervals. But for my work-from-home pandemic setup, that kind of pandemonium is…Read more...

You may be thinking to yourself, “Why the hell did LinkedIn, the purgatory of social media, rip off the Stories format?” LinkedIn has asked itself the same question less than a year after doing so and apparently concluded there is no good reason for it to have shamelessly followed every other app with the launch of …Read more...

While most of us understand that non-fungible token’s are a tremendous scam, it’s not every day you see full-on art capers happening in the world of digital NFT’s. But we got a taste of what that might look like on Tuesday when one anonymous investor spent $340,000 on an NFT from Banksy’s website, only to learn it was…Read more...

Lucasfilm’s version of faster-than-light travel—hyperspace—is as fundamental to the worldbuilding of Star Wars as the Force. It’s the backbone of making its galaxy an interconnected universe of potential, a concept that has become more and more integral to some of the franchise’s biggest storytelling pushes. But how…Read more...

Amid the human carnage that was wrought by Hurricane Ida this past weekend, the brutal rain and wind conditions that slammed the Louisiana coasts have left some awful infrastructural damage in their wake. Power grids were shattered. Buildings collapsed. And in the middle of it all, countless 911 calls failed to go…Read more...

You quite literally can’t write this joke: Exxon, one of the companies most responsible for the climate crisis, tweeted Monday that it was keeping people in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast affected by Hurricane Ida in its “thoughts and prayers.” Wow, where have we heard that phrase before?

The Marvel Comics Universe is about to be changed forever. Actually, it seems like it’s about to be changed forever on multiple occasions between December of this year and February 2022, as the publisher has announced eight new “tentpole” series, at least half of which sound like mega-events. Curious? Here’s the…Read more...

A 71-year-old Louisiana man is presumed dead after an alligator lurking in Hurricane Ida’s floodwaters attacked him on Monday.Read more...

Series bibles are a staple of television production. Part early pitch, part worldbuilding exercise, they form the fundamental basis for the earliest concrete visions for a TV show on the road to production. And now you can get a glimpse at the documents behind decades of Star Trek TV, giving access to some truly…Read more...

Until today, it was widely expected that the Apple Watch Series 7 would make its debut at the same time as the iPhone 13 lineup. Now, as Apple’s long-rumored September event approaches, it appears that the Series 7 might be delayed due to production issues.Read more...

Some things were always meant to be partners. Batman and Robin. Chocolate and peanut butter. New Marvel movies and beautifully rendered 12-inch action figures of their stars, courtesy of Hong Kong-based toymakers Hot Toys. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Simu Liu and Tony Leung are the latest beneficiaries…Read more...

This piece was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet. Click here to become a subscriber.Read more...