Gizmodo

A Russian actor and director are currently in training as the pair prepare to film scenes aboard the International Space Station later this year. New details are emerging about the project, such as the movie’s plot—and how Russian cosmonauts will be expected to take part.

Amid water shortages during a historic megadrought, California regulators have moved to restrict thousands of farmers’ access to water.

Careening through the Milky Way at nearly 2 million miles per hour, the star LP 40–365 shows no signs of stopping. A team of astronomers recently figured out that the star was propelled into its current speedrun by a supernova explosion millions of years ago.

Anyone who has seen the trailer for Free Guy probably thinks they know exactly what the film is going to be—and that’s partially true. Directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Stranger Things), it’s a big-budget, video game-influenced movie about Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a NPC (non-playable character) in a massive…Read more...

A town in Northern California has been nearly completely destroyed after the Dixie Fire charged through late Wednesday. The state’s largest wildfire tore through the downtown, destroying historic buildings and prompting panicked evacuations in a dramatic scene of destruction.Read more...

We were huge fans of Star Trek: Lower Decks’ first season—a very funny, near-perfect blend of endearingly flawed characters, wild space adventures (but also wonderfully mundane “day in the life of Starfleet” stuff), and Star Trek in-jokes galore. With season two almost upon us, we jumped at the chance to chat with the…Read more...

A large iceberg wall at the Titanic Museum Attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, collapsed on Monday, which sure seems it might be an allegory for current circumstances that happen to be eluding our minds at the moment.Read more...

It hard enough to buy a home, but the climate crisis is making it even more challenging. Will a prospective house be underwater? Catch on fire? Real estate brokerage firm Redfin is offering a new tool to assess those and other climate risks.Read more...

Members of a New York University research team studying political advertising and covid-19 misinformation on Facebook found their accounts suspended Tuesday night, with Facebook pinning the action on the privacy settlement it reached with federal regulators in 2019.

The second uncrewed test of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is on hold, as mission teams with Boeing and NASA troubleshoot an issue having to do with the spacecraft’s propulsion system.Read more...

After months of preparations, Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents was finally set to reopen on Tuesday with a new star taking center stage: RoboBiden. Clips taken of the 46th president’s wrinkly animatronic doppleganger show him proudly reciting the Oath of Office while standing among the likes of Ulysses S. Grant,…Read more...

More than 80 wildfires have been reported around Greece between Monday and Tuesday evening, the Greek government said Tuesday, as the country grapples with a record-breaking heat wave that is forecast to continue through this week.Read more...

Prolific author and Lucasfilm editor Jonathan Rinzler, better known by his pen name J.W. Rinzler, died July 28 at his home in Northern California after an 11-month long bout with pancreatic cancer, according to a local news outlet. He was 58 years old.Read more...

New research from the UK provides the clearest indication yet of how protected fully vaccinated people are from the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Based on ongoing surveillance data, researchers estimate that the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford University/AstraZeneca are 50% to 60% effective at…Read more...

The Walt Disney Company—worth an estimated $122.18 billion—would like you to pay $6,000 to take a family of four to its new, immersive Star Wars hotel for two nights.

A lawyer in Portland, Oregon, suspected that a city contractor was illegally trashing property belonging to people living at an encampment for people experiencing homelessness, so he covertly attached Apple AirTag tracking devices to some of the items. Sure enough, the items ended up in a landfill, and now there may…Read more...

As part of its ongoing efforts to build out its 4G and 5G coverage, T-Mobile has announced that it will be shutting down Sprint’s old LTE network next year in June.Read more...

In each episode of What If, different characters from the MCU and Marvel’s comics are spotlighted in self-contained stories that reimagine them as distinctly different versions of themselves than we’re used to seeing on either the big or small screens. What if, the show asks, T’Challa was abducted by the Ravagers?…Read more...

Smartphone photography has improved by leaps and bounds over the years, but if there’s one thing that’s annoyingly remained, it’s that damn green dot that randomly pops up in certain photos. However, there’s some good news for iPhone users. It appears that the latest iOS 15 beta has quietly added a feature that…Read more...

Scream (aka Scream 5) is apparently going to take some “risks.” Joe Manganiello gives some more details on Moonhaven. Plus, updates from all the Ws: Westworld, What We Do in the Shadows, What If, and more. Spoilers away!

There’s not a whole lot innovation happening in kitchen appliances these days (unless you count wifi connectivity, voice assistant integration, or the addition of an unnecessary screen). That’s why Heatworks’ Tetra countertop dishwasher that doesn’t require any plumbing connections was so exciting when it was first…Read more...

Like most kids at the turn of the century, my two sisters and I were obsessed with Pokémon. We had the GameBoy games, the VHS tapes, binders bursting at the seams with trading cards— you name it. And when we finally got our first video game console in 2000 (after years of begging our mom), it was Pokémon-themed too:…Read more...

An 84-year-old man in Germany has been hit with heavy fines after a Nazi-era tank and other weapons from World War II were discovered in his garage, according to a report from Germany’s DPA news agency. The tank and assorted weapons were uncovered after a tipster told authorities there might be art stolen during World…Read more...

Citizen, the self-proclaimed crime-fighting app, has launched a new premium service that, for $20 a month, lets you do something you can already do for free.Read more...

The dead speak! On the official Star Wars website in fact! In a new blog post on the site today, Lucasfilm Story Group member Emily Shkoukani explained “The Contingency”—the canon name for exactly how Emperor Palpatine died, came back to life, and returned to power in Star Wars. A plan that was, according to the site,…Read more...

Whether you’re running it for a nostalgic feel or you’ve held on to a device for too long, it’s time to say goodbye to the decade-old Android Gingerbread. Google is officially laying it to rest.

Martial arts movies that double as historical epics are supposed to be set in Asia. They’re not supposed to take place in the opulent, luxurious, ostentatious mansions of the bewigged aristocracy of 1760s France. Yet 2001’s Brotherhood of the Wolf has the audacity to take these wildly incohesive elements, along with…Read more...

Zoe Saldana has starred in some of the biggest, most successful films in history. Next up, she’ll try to make more history by teaming up with the hugely successful anime brand Crunchyroll to create a franchise of her own.Read more...

If you follow tech news, you may have been wondering to yourself—what the hell is a metaverse? That’s fair. But if you are wondering what the metaverse is, please, do not go to Jim Cramer for answers.Read more...

Giraffes are way more socially competent than we give them credit for, a team of scientists from the University of Bristol say. They’re calling for an updated understanding of the incredibly tall artiodactyls.

Henry Bonsu’s Lazor Wulf, an off-kilter animated series about a talking wolf armed with a laser gun, was one of Adult Swim’s most refreshing shows. It switched up the usual late-night cartoon bloc by spotlighting a bevy of Black talent and creativity. Though the show met its untimely end earlier this year after just…Read more...

A NASA flight director has provided new details about last week’s scary incident in orbit, in which a freshly docked Russian module inadvertently fired its thrusters, causing the International Space Station to roll backwards.Read more...

He’s played J.R.R. Tolkien, the X-Men’s Beast, and a romantic zombie—plus, we all witnessed him in Mad Max: Fury Road. Now Nicholas Hoult is adding another notch to his already impressive genre resume, signing on to star as the title character in Chris McKay’s Dracula-adjacent Universal monster movie Renfield.Read more...

The United States is at no risk of being confused for a country with serious cybersecurity defenses.

Recent preliminary research from India may offer some more good news for people who have gotten covid-19 vaccines, even in the face of the more virulent Delta variant. The study found that fully vaccinated people who ended up hospitalized—itself a rare risk among the vaccinated—still had a lower chance of becoming…Read more...

Last fall, Apple reimagined its classic MagSafe magnetic charging tech in the form of a slim puck for charging the iPhone 12. Now Realme is bringing wireless magnetic recharging to the Android ecosystem for the first time with its new MagDart chargers.

Maybe it’s just us, but when we see people in period clothing singing catchy modern pop songs, we’re instantly transported back to 2001. That was when a young actor named Heath Ledger (along with Paul Bettany, Alan Tudyk, and others) gave us A Knight’s Tale, a fun medieval adventure film filled with modern music. What…Read more...

Wildfires are raging out of control amid blistering heat in Turkey and Greece. New data shows that ground temperatures in parts of Greece and Turkey reached more than 127 degrees Fahrenheit (53 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday.Read more...

Not to be outdone by the young upstart Perseverance, NASA’s Curiosity rover has spent recent days imaging interesting rocks at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars, near which the rover landed in August 2012. One of those features is an arch, similar to some of the towering geology present on parts of Earth—but this arch…Read more...

China’s state propaganda institutions are urging companies like ByteDance, the owner of music app TikTok/Douyin, and Tencent Holdings, owner of messaging app WeChat and numerous streaming platforms, to limit the role of algorithms in content promotion, the South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.Read more...

Passengers aboard American Airlines flights will soon have an in-flight entertainment option that’s not “La La Land, but you fall asleep 20 minutes in and don’t rewind it so now you’ll never really know the plot of that movie”: TikTok, which just became available for free in 30-minute increments.Read more...

While companies like Nothing are working to deliver a fully-featured set of wireless earbuds for less than $100, companies like JLab are lowering the bar even further. Its new GO Pop AIR wireless earbuds promise eight hours of battery life, or 32 when paired with its charging case, for just $20.Read more...

NASA is scheduled to launch a Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on Tuesday, August 3, in what will be the second uncrewed test of the commercial crew vehicle. You can watch the action live right here.

Windows 11 is arriving later this year, and with it, a new refreshed version of MS Paint and Photos. Initially spotted by Windows Latest, Microsoft has quietly posted pics of the two refreshed apps on Unsplash.Read more...

Regardless of how you feel about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it’s difficult to deny that the movie could have used just a little bit more of Poe Dameron, everyone’s favorite space-bound hothead with excellent hair. While Poe’s live-action adventures might be done for the time being, Lucasfilm’s set to bring him…Read more...

In an effort to expanding its offerings and potentially give customers more flexible pricing, Spotify has begun testing out a new super-cheap subscription that starts at just $0.99 a month.Read more...

Apple finally brought Touch ID to its desktop computers earlier this year with an upgraded version of its wireless Magic Keyboard featuring an added fingerprint sensor. To date, it’s been exclusively available with Apple’s new M1-powered iMac, but it now finally appears to be available as a standalone accessory…Read more...

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ next live-action feature film just picked up a pair of writers. Marvel’s What If cast is missing at least one popular actor. Plus, the Munsters are going to be looking pretty swank when they return to the screen. Spoilers right this way...

The Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con controllers are capable of more than just gaming. If Joy-Con drift hasn’t made you bananas, then you can detach the controllers (on the bigger, non-Lite Switch) and use them in a variety of different ways. Here are three of the most useful ones we’ve found.