Gizmodo

For most of 2021, if you wanted to see a major blockbuster that was coming to theaters, there was some kind of at-home option. Even this week you don’t have to go see The Matrix Resurrections in theaters; it’s streaming on HBO Max. However, as the year went on, some options began to go away and one of the biggest…Read more...

Fans of animation will probably not be shocked to hear that three of the four most nominated films for this year’s Annie Awards this year hail from Disney. Raya and the Last Dragon leads all nominees with 10 total, followed by Encanto with nine and Pixar’s Luca with eight. However, right on the heels of those films is…Read more...

The Spider-Man of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe was hailed when he truly arrived in Homecoming as the Spidey with no unnecessary origin—we’d all experienced Uncle Ben, great power, and greater responsibility enough that it was thought unneeded. But No Way Home ultimately concludes that in order to grow and move on, our…Read more...

U.S. carriers have talked a big game around 5G for years now, claiming its “blazing fast” upload and download speeds could usher in everything from driverless cars and smart cities to HD movie downloads in less than a minute. That clearly hasn’t happened, and until relatively recently most everyday consumers couldn’t…Read more...

OnePlus may have lost its steam this year compared to other Android phone makers—namely Google with its impressive Pixel 6—but the company has a new smartphone up its sleeve.

The phone of Hanan Elatr, the wife of slain dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was infected with sophisticated commercial malware in the months before he was murdered, according to a new report by the Washington Post.Read more...

You’d be forgiven for feeling blue today, what with Omicron ruining Christmas and Joe Manchin ruining everything else. But I say, rejoice! For today is the first day in six months when we can say, geophysically at least, that brighter days are ahead.

I don’t think it’s presumptuous of me to have assumed that Dragons of Spring Dawning, the third novel in Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s beloved first Dragonlance trilogy, would heavily feature… well, dragonlances. These books kicked off the brand-new Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, introduced the dragon-filled…Read more...

Attempts at recreating the hoverboards seen in Back to the Future II have so far been either disappointing self-balancing, two-wheeled vehicles that frequently catch fire, or jet-powered floating platforms that require a highly skilled pilot. But as MIT engineers have recently proposed, creating a levitating vehicle…Read more...

Before the pandemic in early 2020, as we basked in the enjoyment after the release of The Witcher’s first season, one thing above all stood out: everybody just could not stop thinking about the bardic release of the year, “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.” Its shadow lingers in the show’s newly-released second season, but …Read more...

Antarctica is often portrayed as a barren wasteland of ice and snow, about as inhospitable as any place on Earth. But a team of researchers just pulled up a huge amount of life from underneath the frozen continent, a testament to the tenacity of these extremophile organisms.Read more...

OnlyFans CEO Tim Stokely is calling it quits and will step down five years after starting the online creator platform that’s now synonymous with sex work. That’s according to a recent Bloomberg report, which revealed former OnlyFans spokesperson Ami Gan would take over as CEO.Read more...

Spider-Man is just right in threes. Tobey Maguire got all the way to Spider-Man 3. The recent Spider-Man: No Way Home is part three in Tom Holland’s trilogy. Two more planned Spider-Verse films will make three for Miles Morales. And yet fans never got to see a third film in Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man…Read more...

Last week at the Game Awards, host Geoff Keighley introduced the first of many game reveals of the night. “I hope you’re ready,” the host teased, before revealing a cinematic trailer for Star Wars Eclipse, a new action game set in the franchise’s recent The High Republic publishing initiative. What Keighley and…Read more...

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union are fighting to uncover more about the FBI’s role in helping local police acquire powerful cellphone surveillance devices known widely as “stingrays.” The true scope of their use against Americans has, by design, remained a closely guarded secret for more than a decade.…Read more...

Let’s be clear: if Hollywood mega-producer-turned-convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein had actually fired Peter Jackson as director of Lord of the Rings and replaced him with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Quentin Tarantino, it probably wouldn’t have cracked the Top 100 of the most monstrous things the former Miramax…Read more...

Crypto King and Tron founder Justin Sun is pivoting to politics but not exactly where one would expect. The 31-year-old billionaire announced he’s stepping away from his previous cryptocurrency projects and will instead take on a role as ambassador of the Grenada government to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Sun…Read more...

Apollo mission planners were really smart. Recognizing that future scientists will have better tools and richer scientific insights, they refrained from opening a portion of the lunar samples returned from the historic Apollo missions. One of these sample containers, after sitting untouched for 50 years, is now set to…Read more...

Did we mention she was an elf? No? OK well, bonus wanting.

We all remember the “What color is this dress?” phenomenon followed by “Yanny vs. Laurel.” Now the world has a new puzzle to obsess over, and it will pit Apple users against their longtime rivals.

Starting in January, a huge boat will attach itself to an enormous kite in a first-of-its-kind test to try and alleviate harmful carbon emissions from toting stuff to and fro across the high seas.

Worried about crossing the line while posting in China? Never fear, for Chinese industry group the Netcasting Services Association has posted a helpful list of 100 topics that should never be broached in short videos on apps like Douyin.Read more...

Ahead of the planned launch of its own proprietary streaming service, CNN is shuffling some of its original programming off of HBO Max so that it can have more content in the can to populate CNN+ with when it launches in 2022.

While us average folks enjoyed the incredible footage captured by a floating drone in the midst of a Category 4 hurricane, scientists were geeking out on the data. And now, they’re ready to share some of the results and insights into how the fiercest storms on Earth can gain strength.Read more...

We’re two episodes into The Expanse’s six-episode final season, which means things are already heating up—though there’s still time for some excellent character moments, including Bobbie calling Amos “Pee-Wee.” Also, Filip flails, Clarissa steps up, and somebody finally tells Marco Inaros to get his head out of his…Read more...

Author Chuck Wendig is a favorite here at io9; we’ve featured excerpts from his books before, including his 2019 sci-fi smash hit Wanderers. Today we are thrilled to be debuting the cover and first excerpt from its follow-up, Wayward, which will be out next summer.

The Food and Drug Administration has now permanently lifted a restriction on abortion medication. On Thursday, the agency made official that it would no longer require the drug mifepristone—one half of a combination abortion regimen—to be dispensed in-person, following years of pressure from public health and…Read more...

While the covid-19 pandemic has dominated headlines this past year, other maladies continued to trouble humanity—and some of them were extremely bizarre. In a few cases, a person’s own unfortunate decisions landed them in the pages of a medical journal; in others, it was sheer bad luck. Warning: some of the stories…Read more...

The fourth installment in The Matrix franchise won’t arrive until next week, but critics have gotten to see Resurrections and started sharing their early reactions. If you’re a fan, there’s some extremely good news—they (mostly) loved the film, and how it cleverly both recontextualizes and builds upon the original…Read more...

The long delayed next Minions movie now has another release date. Good Omens season 2 re-recruits a familiar heavenly host. Superman & Lois teases the return of Lucy Lane. Plus, get a glimpse at the King of New York’s criminal underworld in footage from the Hawkeye finale. To me, my spoilers!

It seems like it would be considerably difficult to tarnish the cool-factor of Ray-Ban—one of the most canonically hip sunglasses brands of all time, best known for its signature Wayfarer frames—but, impressively, Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) has managed to do it just by association.

Educators across the U.S. have been put on high alert after claims surfaced that a meme was circulating on TikTok encouraging young people to call in violent threats against their own schools on December 17. Some school districts have even canceled classes in response to the meme. Strangely, Gizmodo couldn’t find a…Read more...

Guitarist Eric Clapton has successfully sued a woman in Germany who listed a bootleg CD on eBay for roughly $11. The woman didn’t even sell the CD, but the listing will set her back at least $2,000 in court costs for copyright infringement, according to the German news outlet DW.

Peloton has taken down its viral parody video of the Sex and the City sequel after two women came forward with sexual assault allegations against Chris Noth, the actor who portrays the character Mr. Big and appeared in the company’s video. Noth has denied the allegations and said the sexual encounters were consensual.Read more...

LG announced today an update to its UltraFine OLED Pro monitors, and while we usually wouldn’t get excited about what looks like a standard refresh, the new panels ship with a unique tool for photo and video editors.

I’ve always wondered when smell-o-vision would make its debut in the gadget world, but I didn’t imagine that Amazon would be the company to make it happen. Given that fact, you might not be surprised to learn that its actual implementation sounds a little problematic, to say the least.Read more...

Although Marvel Studios tries to keep a complete lockdown on spoilers, sometimes things slip out, whether via the loose lips of the actors involved, or via images of merchandise that arrive earlier than planned. However, unless someone at Hasbro screwed up, these Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Marvel…Read more...

A purge of creeps from some of the web’s most widely used social media platforms has just taken place—a welcome turn-of-events for some 50,000 people who may have been targeted by them, not to mention the rest of us.

Star Wars? Indiana Jones? The Godfather? Back to the Future? Stephen Colbert says screw ‘em. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the Late Show host decided to declare Peter Jackson’s trilogy as the best of all time. And he did it in as unique a way as…Read more...

Hundreds of people who were coerced into performing sex acts by GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys now have the full rights to their videos, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. Given that revenge porn distributors have historically evaded punishment due to insufficient legal guidelines, copyright is a useful tool—copyright…Read more...

Apple may be one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive companies but its plans to move all component production in-house has been well established. Already on track to remove Intel and AMD chips from Macs, Apple is now reportedly working to replace wireless components supplied by Broadcom and Skyworks Solutions for its…Read more...

Every look back at the year behind us is filled with sad moments as much as it is joyful ones, and 2021 was no exception. The real world was up-and-down enough, and yet we also had to say some fictional farewells too—whether it was favourite shows coming to their end (naturally or before their time), or losing some of …Read more...

Similar to the system Apple has long used for its own podcast app, Spotify announced on Thursday plans to begin rolling out a five-star rating system for its podcasts in order to make content more discoverable for potential listeners.Read more...

The Texas company allegedly responsible for spilling hundreds of gallons of oil near Huntington Beach, California, in October is facing criminal charges. A federal grand jury indicted Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp. and two of its subsidiaries this week, charging them with a single misdemeanor count of illegally…Read more...

On December 16, 2016, the first standalone Star Wars film was released. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story told the tale of the people who valiantly stole the plans for the first Death Star—a tale that ended with all of them dying. Of course, most fans didn’t know that until the end of the movie, but it was a bold move in a…Read more...

Apple is on track to complete its two-year transition to custom silicon, but the company’s Mac Pro (the cheese grater-looking desktop) still runs on a combination of Intel and AMD chips. Given that the Pro is Apple’s most powerful, capable computer, it seems like an overhaul with Apple silicon is just about due.

An excavation in Germany appears to have uncovered the oldest evidence of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers making impactful alterations to the local environment.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is so full of big, huge, spoilerly surprises, somehow, its two credit scenes may not even register. Part of that is because almost every single Marvel movie to this point has had at least one scene, so everyone knows to sit in the theater until the very end to see some kind of a surprise. It’s…Read more...

The covid-19 pandemic is once again resurging throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, and while now we have many more tools available against the viral illness than we did last winter—namely, a full armada of preventive vaccines and soon-to-debut treatments—the emergence of the Omicron variant around Thanksgiving tossed a…Read more...

IDW Publishing is a master of bringing two beloved franchises together in comics form. It’s created crossovers between Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe and Street Fighter, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Doctor Who, and Transformers with... pretty much everybody. Which is why I am shocked—…Read more...