Gizmodo

Critical Role, the popular Dungeons & Dragons actual play that raised $11 million dollars a few years ago to bring its first campaign to life, will probably never need to resort to fan fundraising again. Amazon Studios announced a multi-year “exclusive overall television and first look deal” with Critical Role,…Read more...

The right-wing outrage machine has moved on from gas stoves to a seemingly innocuous Xbox console update that focuses on power-saving features for lower energy consumption.

Mexico’s government is building a new train project that could have big economic benefits, but the tracks are going to be laid at the expense of fragile ecosystems and indigenous artifacts, alarming the country’s environmentalists.Read more...

Today Dungeons & Dragons, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, announced the next book in its quarterly publishing schedule: a heist-themed adventure anthology titled Keys From the Golden Vault. The book has been in production for years, and while its release date is unfortunately close to the controversy surrounding …Read more...

The vetting process on dating apps may become more stringent as governments around the world look at perhaps implementing mandatory background and ID checks for those who use the apps. Strategies and considerations of how to better protect people searching for love online were discussed at roundtable talks in Sydney,…Read more...

Shutterstock, one of the internet’s biggest sources of stock photos and illustrations, is now offering its customers the option to generate their own AI images. In October, the company announced a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of the wildly popular and controversial DALL-E AI tool. Now, the results of that deal…Read more...

Social media and peer pressure can be powerful tools in modern society and both play a huge, horrifying role in the super smart and scary new film Talk to Me. Directed by YouTubers RackaRacka (real names Danny and Michael Philippou), this Australian horror film follows a group of friends who meet up to try this new,…Read more...

NASA says the Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph is currently unavailable for science operations following a software glitch earlier this month.

Amazon fulfillment center laborers in the United Kingdom have launched the first company strike involving warehouse employees in the country’s history. The strike began yesterday in Coventry, demanding more than the 50 pence per hour wage increase that the company offered.

AstroForge has announced an ambitious commercial mission to observe a distant asteroid—an important step for the California startup as it strives to become the world’s first deep space mining company.

Contestants on the upcoming Squid Game reality show reportedly faced hardships that even the contestants of the satirical hit Netflix series didn’t even have to face. Reports out of the UK where filming for Squid Game: The Challenge is taking place noted sub-zero temperatures early this week, and contestants…Read more...

Science fiction is often several steps ahead of the real world when it comes to conjuring up new technologies. Back in 1991, ground breaking visual effects helped bring the shape-shifting liquid metal T-1000 robot to life in James Cameron’s Terminator 2, but 32 years later, shape-shifting robots now exist in real like…Read more...

Common viral infections may be having far-reaching effects on our brain health, new research suggests. The study found a link between dozens of different viral exposures and a later increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders. More research will be needed to untangle the true role, if any, these…Read more...

Most typical detective shows are all about “whodunit.” The lead character pieces together clues to ultimately unmask a person who committed a crime. The new Peacock show Poker Face, however, takes that inspiration and evolves it. Each story, confined to its own episode, shows you who committed the crime in the very…Read more...

Jonathan Frakes has thoughts on the still very mysterious Star Trek: Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover. Daredevil: Born Again gets a slew of intriguing new writers. Superman & Lois has found its new Lex Luthor in a Walking Dead star. And more, of course. Spoilers, spoil away!Read more...

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Today sees the launch of TMNT: The Last Ronin - The Lost Years, a new anthology series looking back at the past and to the future of IDW’s beloved apocalyptic Ninja Turtles offshoot. But it’s not just a return for these beleaguered iterations of the turtles, but for Last Ronin artist Ben Bishop—and the continuation of…Read more...

It’s not just you. Microsoft 365 services, including popular apps like Outlook and Teams, are down in countries throughout the world. Microsoft is aware of the problem and has rolled out fixes to address it.Read more...

On closing day for Splash Mountain at Walt Disney World, wait times exceeded three hours. Fans of the Magic Kingdom’s 1989 water log attraction gathered to say goodbye; among them were folks genuinely looking forward to the Tiana’s Bayou Adventure re-theme. Then there were the disgruntled extremists who were still…Read more...

The FBI says that cybercriminals connected to the North Korean regime are responsible for an attack on a U.S.-based crypto project, Harmony Protocol, that led to over $100 million in losses last year.

As the old adage goes: Time is money. And now there’s one more reason to watch the clock. Lyft has quietly added wait time fees to its cost scheme. If you request a car and aren’t present at the pick up point within two minutes (or 5 minutes for luxury rides) of the scheduled arrival time, the rideshare app will now…Read more...

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SoundHound, a voice AI company that laid off 40% of its employees earlier this month, announced Tuesday that it had successfully raised $25 million in equity investment. That funding brings good news for the laid off staff, three of whom previously said what measly severance they were offered—just two weeks, no health…Read more...

Here’s the answer for all the Rick and Morty fans who were wondering what was going to happen to the popular Adult Swim series after it came to light that its co-creator and distinctive voice actor, Justin Roiland, had been charged with felony domestic violence: Roiland is off the show, and for that matter—he’s off…Read more...

Twitter has reversed course on its extremely unpopular decision to make an algorithmically generated timeline the default for all Twitter users. On Tuesday, the company’s support page said that Twitter users could again default to seeing posts from accounts they follow in chronological order.Read more...

Crash diet alert: Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf has slimmed down by about 256 billion tons. As part of a major calving event, an iceberg nearly the size of Houston, Texas, separated from the continent on Sunday, according to the British Antarctic Survey.

N.K. Jemisin made history when her trilogy of books—The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky—each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in the year of its release. After a few delays, the world of the Broken Earth trilogy is finally coming to a roleplaying game.Read more...

One of the bigger questions surrounding NASA’s interest in sending a crewed mission to Mars surrounds the best way to get there, and it appears the agency might have found its answer. NASA announced today that it will be developing a nuclear thermal rocket engine in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research…Read more...

Some unsettling imagery out of Europe last week: The Drina river, a 215-mile waterway that constitutes much of the border of Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia, has been covered in trash.Read more...

Heartbreak and body horror intersect in Laura Moss’ Birth/Rebirth, a homage to Frankenstein and David Cronenberg’s visceral nightmares that also puts motherhood—in various senses of the word—under the microscope. It just premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and will stream on Shudder later this year.Read more...

The next version of Android isn’t due out until late this year, but it’s as good a time as any to start sniffing around for what’s to come. A recent edit to the Android 14 source code shows that Google is working on stricter API requirements to prevent Android users from installing old apps. It’ll be a boon for…Read more...

Everything Everywhere All at Once, the little multiverse film that could, has received 11 Academy Award nominations. The Daniels’ transcendent film from A24 nabbed recognition in the most coveted category—Best Picture—along with acting nods for stars Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis. W…Read more...

Nick Fuentes, a known white nationalist streamer who pushes Holocaust denial conspiracies and other anti-Semitic hate, has a lingering, if not growing presence across social media. He has followers subtly spreading his ideology on sites like Instagram, but now Elon Musk and Twitter has done the overt racist,…Read more...

With Tuesday’s Oscar nominations celebrating the best in film from 2022, it might be easy to forget today is also the day you can celebrate not just the best film of 2023 so far, but maybe one of the best ever. I’m talking, of course, of M3GAN.Read more...

An experimental treatment that uses donor white blood cells to fend off cancer continues to show promise, early research in humans has found. The therapy appeared to be relatively safe and tolerable, and over half of patients with difficult-to-treat multiple myeloma responded to it.Read more...

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Google Tuesday, accusing the tech giant of using its market power to create a monopoly in the digital advertising business over the course of 15 years.

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The U.S. has just given the green light to its first-ever small modular nuclear design, a promising step forward for a power source that remains controversial among some climate advocates but is experiencing a popular renaissance.

A woman and her 1-year-old son were fatally attacked by a polar bear in the small whaling village of Wales, Alaska, last week. A recent lapse in polar bear patrolling in the small West Alaska town may have contributed to the attack, the first fatal mauling by a polar bear in Alaska in 30 years, according to the AP. As…Read more...

We’re only two episodes into HBO’s adaptation of The Last Of Us but as the season goes on, one thing is going to become abundantly clear: there’s less action on the show than in the video game.Read more...

A new era of rocket launches from NASA’s facility on Wallops Island in Virginia is set to begin tonight with the anticipated launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron small-lift launch vehicle. Here’s how you can take in the action.

Universal Studios Japan has long outdone both Universal Studios Hollywood and the Universal Parks and Resorts in Orlando on both the cute merch and foodie game. Whether it’s Minions, Jaws (look up the Jaws hot dog pocket), Nintendo, Chucky, Casper, Back to the Future, or E.T. the Extraterrestrial—the the adorable and…Read more...

When you hear the name “Weird Al” Yankovic, you think of music. You think of parody songs. You think of all the unforgettable music videos he’s made over the years. But Weird Al has always been about spreading his wings. A biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, was released late last year, and now he’s got his very own…Read more...

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

On Monday, SpaceX completed its first attempt to load a fully stacked Starship rocket with propellants, and it did so with surprisingly little fanfare. The seemingly successful test marks a major milestone for the company, setting the stage for a static fire test and an eventual orbital launch.Read more...

If there’s one thing the polarized body of the U.S. Congress can agree on, it’s that Ticketmaster sucks. After a spectacular failure of Live Nation Ticketmaster’s sale systems during presale for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour, the company was under the microscope of a Senate hearing today.

It’s no secret that Twitter has fallen on hard times. And things aren’t quite looking up for Elon Musk’s most recent acquisition. The company is facing two fresh lawsuits from different landlords, adding onto a plethora of existing legal trouble.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk, known as “Mr.Tweet” by some attorneys, will resume testifying Tuesday before a nine-person jury in a securities fraud trial stemming from his 2018 tweets proclaiming his intention to take Tesla private at $420 per share. That figure, Musk said under oath, has absolutely nothing to do with cannabis.Read more...

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange has been linked to a federally charged crypto company and its founder to the tune of nearly $346 million in bitcoin. It comes after months of speculation that federal prosecutors are honing in on Binance over allegedly facilitating illicit money laundering.Read more...