Gizmodo

With our more recent Open Channels, we’ve tried to keep the focus on a particular topic, be it a new Marvel movie (real or eventually real), a horror series, whathaveyou. But since this weekend in particular is a pretty packed one, it made sense to do a free for all.

League of Legends: Arcane is pretty awesome. Netflix’s first foray into Riot Games’ extremely popular MOBA and its focus on the sisterly duo of enforcer Vi and explosives anarchist Jinx has been met with pretty strong acclaim from those who’ve watched it. Whether it’s because of French studio Fortiche’s animation or…Read more...

Eiichiro Oda’s legendarily long pirate manga One Piece has been around forever, just a little bit long than a good amount of its fans have likely been alive, and ditto its anime adaptation. Last night, the anime hit episode 1000, and to celebrate the occasion, the episode brought back the very first OP from alllllll…Read more...

After months of mixed messages over whether they could talk about their wages, Apple has explicitly told employees they are free to talk about the money they make, their hours, or their working conditions.Read more...

These days, it seems almost like a guarantee that a comic book will eventually become a TV show or movie. Though most of the heavy hitters are from publishers owned by big name corporations, the more independent and less flashy ones can still get a deal off the ground, and that’s what’s happening with TKO Studios.

When John Cho was initially cast as Spike Spiegel for Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop adaptation in 2019, the reaction was pretty positive. After all, people love themselves some John Cho and consider him a reliably engaging actor. Come six months later, Cho had an on-set injury that saw production being halted while he took…Read more...

After three weeks of various ups and downs, Doctor Who: Flux reaches the second half of its truncated run this week with the return of some old foes. “Village of the Angels” sees the Doctor and her entourage hop over to the county of Devon in November 1967 to investigate a series of disappearances that may be from…Read more...

For better or worse, each of the different “Phases” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had a goal for its various films to strive for. The first brought our disparate heroes together, while two and three showed them fracture and eventually reassemble for a saga of infinite proportions. Because nothing could really…Read more...

The Tor browser, arguably the best privacy-protective internet browser available for most people, is running low on bridge servers. The decline in servers affects the browser’s ability to combat censorship and provide a gateway to the open internet in places where governments and other entities tightly control access…Read more...

There are people who think it’s silly to dedicate your life to movies. Movies are frivolous. Fleeting. Unimportant. To that, writer director Jonathan Nossiter says, those might be your famous Last Words.Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly excuse to flop into a Gengar-shaped chair and read the latest toy and merchandise news. Don’t have a Gengarmchair, you bemoan? Well, good news: this is the week for you! Especially if you also like Mandalorian toys, pricey turtle vehicles, and more. Check it out!

Ever since we’ve seen deepfakes cropping up across porn, e-commerce, and literal bank robberies, there’s always been concern that this same tech could be used to interfere with future elections. Well, according to one new study, that might be tougher than we thought. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of…Read more...

If you’ve been watching Batwoman, you know things have gotten... thorny for Dr. Mary Hamilton (Nicole Kang), Kate Kane’s stepsister, illegal Gotham City clinic operator, and O.G. member of the Batwoman support team. Poor Mary was infected by one of Poison Ivy’s vines and turned into, well, Poison Ivy. That’s a shame…Read more...

The risk of the plague spilling over from humans to animals in the western U.S. has increased since 1950 thanks to climate change, a new study has found. Importantly, the research gives valuable insights into how this deadly disease has historically moved and developed in the U.S., which can help us understand more…Read more...

Clan Wren flies once more: Lucasfilm’s Mandalorian spinoff revolving around the post-Return of the Jedi life of Ahsoka Tano has found another rebel ally for the force user.

If you’re the type of person who finds fulfillment and meaning from your job and can’t shut up about it at the bar, congrats, but it seems you’re among a dwindling minority. At least that’s the sense from a recent massive Pew survey which found a 7% decline in U.S. adults who said they derive meaning and purpose in…Read more...

Cowboy Bebop fans have been waiting for the live-action Netflix adaptation to reveal the fourth member of the Bebop crew (well, fifth if you count Ein the Data Dog). It took until today, the day Cowboy Bebop premieres on Netflix, for the streamer to do so, but it has finally announced newcomer Eden Perkins has nabbed…Read more...

Coming down with seizures would be a scary experience no matter what, but for one unfortunate man, that experience was compounded by the discovery that dead tapeworm cysts lodged in his brain for decades were the root cause. Thankfully, his seizures were treated successfully, and the man seems to have made a recovery…Read more...

After raising nearly $49 million in ether in just a few days, the ConstitutionDAO that galvanized blockchain idealists did not win a copy of the US Constitution at Sotheby’s. Last night, the document, one of 13 surviving first edition copies, hammered for $43.2 million (going to—sigh—hedge fund billionaire Ken…Read more...

Games Workshop has had a long time to reckon with just how explicit the “Grimdark” satire of its tabletop wargaming universe is. It portrays a fascist, zealous imperial regime as heroic—in a universe of demonic horrors and alien invasion—to players who might find themselves fond of such ideals in real life. But the…Read more...

The U.S. recently passed a $1 trillion bipartisan spending bill aimed at improving and repairing the country’s decaying infrastructure, but a new report on flooding risks resulting from climate change warns even more investment might be needed.Read more...

If you have an Android phone, you’re probably used to seeing a line from an iPhone-using friend or family member that they’ve “emphasized” your previous message. What does that even mean? In iMessage speak, that’s a double exclamation mark, or the ‼ emoji.Read more...

Though it’s been over five years since Paul Feig’s reboot of Ghostbusters, it’s been 32 years since audiences first spent time in a world where Peter Venkman, Ray Stanz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore existed. That changes today as Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife finally hits theaters.Read more...

Michael Keaton says he strapped on the Vulture wings this week but the question is, for what? Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live Wednesday night, the actor best known for playing Beetlejuice and Batman spoke a little bit about reprising the latter for The Flash and then about his role in 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming. He…Read more...

Days after a Pennsylvania lab was locked down because a worker discovered vials labeled “smallpox” in a freezer, the CDC says there’s no reason to fear a viral outbreak. Late Thursday night, federal officials announced that the vials did not contain the deadly and eradicated variola virus. Instead, they held a related…Read more...

New research shows that feral hogs are hungry wrecking balls in the Southeast’s salt marshes. Their appetite for mussels could end up undoing a key symbiotic relation that keeps marshland intact, right at a time when coastal ecosystems are coming under increasing pressure from climate change. As if we needed any more…Read more...

So far, 2021 has been a banner year for nonsense words. The metaverse—more of a concept than an actual entity at this point—was embraced as the central initiative of Facebook Meta; NFTs, which are quite literally intangible assets, have taken on a life of their own, and now, DogPhone is here to be exactly what it…Read more...

Though Ingenuity continues to break its own records as the first powered, controlled flying machine on another planet, we haven’t had have much visual evidence of its exploits. There’s the telemetry data that NASA scientists receive on Earth, but not much in the way of photos and videos. Happily, NASA has now released…Read more...

In a ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last night, Scarlett Johansson become the 35th actor to win the American Cinematheque Award, which is “presented annually to an extraordinary artist currently making a significant contribution to the art of the Moving Picture.” People who came to praise her and her work…Read more...

While it wasn’t available when the Pixel 6 first went on sale last month, Google has finally added an official listing for the Pixel Stand 2 on the Google Store.

From the moment that Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop was announced, fans of the original anime wanted to know what showrunner André Nemec could possibly bring to the classic story that wasn’t already baked into the source material. Rather than simply wondering, io9 asked Nemec directly.

The House of Representatives just narrowly passed a more than $2 trillion spending package that will include the first true climate change legislation passed since 2009.Read more...

George Lucas once told Mark Hamill, “If I could find every copy of that holiday special, I’d smash them with a hammer.” Lucus was referring to, of course, the legendarily awful Star Wars Holiday Special, which aired once in 1978 and has never been seen in an official capacity since. If he had, then I would have been…Read more...

The western remake of Train to Busan may get a truly dreadful title. Neo and Trinity are on the march in another new Matrix: Resurrections poster. Video game icon Earthworm Jim is getting a new animated series. Plus, another look behind-the-scenes on Hawkeye. To me, my spoilers!

Just as the U.S. barreled toward 2 million confirmed covid-19 cases in mid-2020, Charter Communications gave a carefully worded pat on the back to its “employees” who kept the country connected in dire times. “They’ve been asked to go well above and beyond the regular duties and they’ve delivered easing the strain for…Read more...

On Wednesday, amid a fresh surge in gas prices, the Biden administration announced that it had asked the FTC to investigate whether oil and gas companies were doing anything illegal to manipulate prices. Republicans have countered that it’s a cheap political stunt and blamed President Joe Biden’s energy policies.Read more...

Several European countries introduced new restrictions this week on people who refuse to get vaccinated against covid-19, and there was even an announcement from Austria on Friday that covid-19 vaccinations will become mandatory in February.Read more...

The boss has spoken (again): Apple employees will return to the office on Feb. 1, 2022.Read more...

One of the things that makes Hawkeye of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so unique is that he’s not unique. He’s just a regular person, same as you and me. He doesn’t have a super suit or come from outer space. Hawkeye is a human being who just so happens to be great with a bow and arrow. And that regular-guy persona…Read more...

A diplomatic meeting between two parties is tense, but seemingly successful—until the leaders rise to shake hands in front of the assembled group as flashbulbs pop and cameras roll. A firm handshake is one thing, but the characters in Ennio Ruschetti’s short film Hand in Hand take it to an extreme new level.

A bipartisan coalition of at least nine state attorney generals are investigating Meta over the potentially harmful effects Facebook and Instagram have on young users.Read more...

The S&P Dow Jones Indices is monitoring stock Twitter in real-time to see how positively people feel about 200 S&P 500 companies (Tesla) with the top sentiment scores. Today, it launched two Twitter sentiment analysis tools to measure the level of positivity toward companies (or their profit potential) via…Read more...

MediaTek’s smartphone chips typically play second fiddle to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, but MediaTek just announced its new flagship Dimensity 9000 system-on-chip, and it features a number of notable firsts.Read more...

If you’re tired of the apps on your Android device doggedly tracking every move you make even after opting out, then good news. On Thursday, the privacy pros at DuckDuckGo announced a new feature meant to kneecap the invasive trackers and third-party players that might come bundled with the apps they download.Read more...

Federal health officials are expected to sanction covid-19 boosters for most Americans this week—a decision that’s become well-supported by the science. While the original shots still provide plenty of protection, booster doses are clearly restoring or even surpassing the high levels of effectiveness seen against…Read more...

Although fans have debated about the nature of the relationship between Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and the alien that lives inside him in the two Venom movies, sequel director Andy Serkis explicitly called Let There Be Carnage a “love story.” This makes the fact that this clip, released by Vudu, was taken out of the…Read more...

The fourth episode of Gizmodo’s podcast Gadgettes just dropped, and this week, we’re getting ready for the holidays. Your hosts, Gizmodo reporter Florence Ion and senior editor Caitlin McGarry, womansplain the latest gadgets we’re testing and reviewing. Usually, we interview our fellow Gizmodo reporters about the…Read more...

Our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is 4.37 light-years from Earth, which is super close from a cosmological perspective but achingly far from a human point of view. A new telescope promises to bring this intriguing star system, and any habitable planets it holds, into closer view.

Star Wars’ Expanded Universe has lived on in myriad ways since it came to an official end in 2014, when Lucasfilm and Disney wiped the slate of continuity clean. While some elements and characters have rejoined canon, and re-releases of classic EU comics and books give chances to re-explore what was, one enduring EU…Read more...

Apple’s long-rumored but not officially announced electric vehicle has hit a number of bumps and detours during the course of its development, but now a new report is claiming that Apple has solidified the Apple Car’s roadmap, which will result in a fully autonomous self-driving electric vehicle by 2025.Read more...