Gizmodo

YouTube updated its ads policies on Monday to ban any ads featuring gambling, alcohol, prescription drugs, and political content from prominently playing at the top of its homepage.Read more...

The covid-19 vaccine might be coaxing more people to get out of the house, but video games are doing their darndest to make them stay put. This year’s E3 has unveiled looks at several exciting releases—one or more of which may feature a “butt stallion.”

A Northrop Grumman Minotaur 1 rocket is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at 7:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, June 15. Conditions permitting, the launch will be visible from New York City and other locations along America’s northeast.Read more...

The G7 ended this weekend with its traditional communique. These statements are engineered to precision, crafted by some of the most powerful governments in the world to express their vision for, in this case, recovering from the pandemic and addressing the climate crisis.Read more...

If you’re still on an Apple gadget running iOS 12, Apple’s rolling out an important security update that patches three vulnerabilities, including some that may have been exploited in the wild.Read more...

In brightest day, in blackest night, no new Stargirl cast member shall escape our sight. Season two is coming to the CW on August 10 and the new trailer reveals a whole new level of cosmic power hitting the scene in Blue Valley.Read more...

Whether you’re showing off your gaming skills, trying to troubleshoot a problem, or capturing someone’s terrible tweet before it’s inevitably deleted, screenshots are an essential part of our digital lives. It’s not always obvious just how to pull off a screengrab though, especially if you’re jumping between different…Read more...

Reality Winner, the whistleblower jailed in 2017 for leaking classified NSA documents to the press, has been released from prison, her attorney confirmed to Gizmodo on Monday.

We still don’t know what’s next for Windows, though we will almost certainly find out at Microsoft’s event on June 24. Both Nvidia and Microsoft are urging users to upgrade to the latest, lest they get left behind in unsupported software land.

Loki introduces us to a strange world filled with equally strange new characters, but one of the most mysterious and intriguing so far is the Time Variance Authority’s Judge Ravonna Renslayer, played by Doctor Who and Fast Color’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw. While Ravonna’s name might be familiar to Marvel Comics diehards,…Read more...

Louisiana’s looking out to protect its pipelines and chemical plants from drones, raising the specter of nefarious climate protesters to pass the legislation. But the main pilots they’ve busted so far appear to be literal children.Read more...

Videos of multiple arrests in Ocean City, Maryland, have gone viral showing the violent extremes that local police will go to when upholding the state’s ban on disposable e-cigs. In one, a group of cops tackled and pinned a teen to the ground before violently kneeing him in the ribs. In another, a teen was tased…Read more...

In DC’s new take on the classic Milestone hero Static, Virgil Hawkins is a Black teenager who comes into his new superpowers after being exposed to a mysterious gas fired by the police into a crowd of protestors. Horrific as the attack is, Virgil emerges from it imbued with abilities that quickly put him on a path to…Read more...

For a period of several months, a huge star located more than 25,000 light-years from Earth got increasingly dimmer before eventually returning to its usual brightness. An obstruction of some kind likely caused this strange effect, but astronomers aren’t exactly sure what it is.

The Honolulu Police Department spent $150,045 in CARES Act funding to buy Spot the robot dog from Boston Dynamics, the world’s sickest dogbot famed for backflips, games of fetch, and also hanging out with law enforcement. As the Honolulu City Beat reported last week, some feel that the expense was a bit excessive.

We’ve already seen the stars of Star Trek’s new animated kids’ show Prodigy, and a look at the venerable captain who’ll guide them on their new journey. But the time has come for us to actually meet the characters of Trek’s next adventure, and the voices behind them.

Record heat is searing the West for the second time this month. A massive heat dome is building over the region and is set to intensify for the latter half of this week. The heat wave could cause some all-time records to fall while worsening the region’s already catastrophic drought.

The wait for Mamoru Hosoda’s next animated adventure may be coming to a close in Japan next month, but international audiences will have to wait until later this year to get the chance to see his new virtual fantasy, Belle. Thankfully, there’s a new gorgeous teaser to tide us over.Read more...

Even the most hardened soldiers can’t resist a little song and dance. Netflix has released the first trailer for Megan Nicole Dong’s (How To Train Your Dragon 2) animated spectacle Centaurworld, about a war horse who embraces her inner diva to save a world filled with strange magical centaurs.

One of the most popular rumors for the forthcoming Apple Watch Series 7 was the inclusion of non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. Well, a recent Bloomberg report puts the kibosh on that, citing anonymous Apple sources as saying that feature is unlikely to be ready for consumers for “several more years.”Read more...

I have some issues with Apple’s AirPods Pro. I dislike the design with its awkwardly short stem—at least the regular AirPods fully lean into it—and having to squeeze said stem to control audio playback is damn near impossible to do while working out. I’ve also never been able to find a comfortable fit, so the things…Read more...

One of Godzilla’s most dynamic adversaries is about to fly into your home and while it’s not quite life-size, it’s probably closer than you’d imagine. io9 is excited to exclusively debut a few new pieces from Mondo that are all about Mothra. That includes a massive, limited-edition statue based on Godzilla: Tokyo SOS…Read more...

Bikes have long been a greener (and cheaper) alternative to cars, assuming you actually know how to ride one, but a talented Chinese engineer is taking that requirement out of the equation with a self-balancing electric bike that’s smart enough to get around a city all by itself.Read more...

Mindy Kaling’s Velma animated series is taking some surprising turns. Gugu Mbatha-Raw teases her Loki role. Plus, what’s next on Charmed and Batwoman, and there are some suitably mysterious set pictures from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Spoilers get!

We die and decompose, but a growing portion of our garbage lives on. Your great-grandfather’s bones have become organic matter in the soil, but the same cannot be said for the Mr. Goodbar wrapper he discarded 80 years ago today. Our landfills are poorly organized museums, robustly endowed and expanding by the second.…Read more...

Elon Musk sent the price of bitcoin soaring Sunday night after a positive tweet about the cryptocurrency, which has tracked closely with Musk’s tweets over the past six months. The SpaceX founder also revealed his electric car company Tesla has sold roughly 10% of its bitcoin holdings.

Have you seen that screenshot from an ad by Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw? The Republican congressman is throwing a party for Independence Day and an image from the ad has been making the rounds on social media sites like Twitter. But the graphic has actually been photoshopped, however slightly.Read more...

Once a meme that delighted the internet, the Xbox Series X-shaped mini fridge is becoming a reality. At the end of its E3 2021 showcase on Sunday, Microsoft announced that it would be selling “the world’s most powerful mini fridge” this upcoming holiday season.Read more...

With the weather heating up, hot vax summer is in full swing. Unfortunately, that also means anti-vaxxers are back on their faux-self-righteous bullshit, and they’ve reportedly been review-bombing bars that attempt to isolate vaccinated customers from unvaccinated ones.

Censor is a 2021 Giallo film written and directed by Prano-Bailey Bond, and co-written with Anthony Fletcher. The story follows Enid Baines (Niamh Algar), a woman who works at the British film censor board. She is part of a team that decides which movies make it into theaters and which films will never see the light…Read more...

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is now an official member of the Marvel gang as she stars in Disney+ newest show, Loki as Revonna Renslayer.

Amazon warehouse employees may soon get a couple of new co-workers: Ernie and Bert.

Someone with deep pockets just shelled out $28 million to fly to space with Jeff Bezos, the richest man on Earth, on Blue Origin’s first crewed flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know who the mystery bidder is, although Blue Origin promises we’ll find out in a few weeks.

The finale of Invincible showcased the true destruction that can happen when a city is turned into a battlefield by two overpowered people. Robert Kirkman and the team behind Amazons’ animated series Invincible went balls to the wall with death and chaos, showing how people caught in the middle of personal vendettas…Read more...

Jessica Henwick has already tackled some iconic sci-fi and fantasy roles, with her most notable being Nymeria Sand in Game of Thrones and Colleen Wing Netflix show Iron Fist. Next up on her resume is an undisclosed role in Lana Wachowski’s fourth Matrix movie.

Although it’s been proven that Apple absolutely does not need any help selling its devices, the company was apparently feeling creative and in the mood for song when it created a parody ad based on The Little Mermaid for its new M1 iPad Pro. For unknown reasons, Apple hasn’t publicly premiered the ad, but it looks…Read more...

Google is speeding up the update release schedule for Chrome OS to a four-week cycle in the third quarter of this year, the company announced Friday.Read more...

During the Netflix Geeked Week reveal event, the streamer dropped a clip and some first look photos for its animated adaptation of Riot Games’ Arcane, which is based in the League of Legend universe and premieres on Netflix this fall. Christian Linke of Riot Games is showrunner and series co-creator with Alex Yee.

Apple didn’t know the Department of Justice was requesting metadata of Democratic lawmakers when it complied with a subpoena during a Trump-era leak investigation, CNBC reports. And it wasn’t the only tech giant tapped in these probes: Microsoft confirmed Friday it received a similar subpoena for a congressional…Read more...

The past few years have taught us that our faces, voices, and lips can be copied and replicated with artificial intelligence. Now, an AI model created by Facebook researchers can imitate, edit, and replace handwritten and scene text using just a single word in an image.Read more...

I know we’re all fawning over John Cho as Spike Spiegel in the live action series Cowboy Bebop, his newest role is voicing a curly-haired, hot-pink fire-breathing Dragon named Long in the new animated film Wish Dragon which premieres June 11. The film follows the friendship of Din (Jimmy Wong) and Long, and explores…Read more...

Apple TV+ released a teaser trailer for the second season of the original streaming series See. August 27 marks the worldwide debut of the second season’s first episode, and new episodes will premiere weekly (not bingeable, sorry). A third season is already greenlit, and shooting is already underway in Canada.

Actor Kevin Bacon has joined Legendary’s reboot of Troma Entertainment’s 1984 film, The Toxic Avenger as the film’s antagonist.

A humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod bit off more than it could chew on Friday when it accidentally caught a commercial lobster diver in its mouth. Michael Packard told CNN affiliate WBZ he was diving off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts when he unwittingly became a modern-day Jonah.Read more...

In a huge win for internet service providers, a federal judge on Friday granted a preliminary injunction to stall a New York law mandating affordable internet for low-income households.Read more...

A bipartisan coalition in the U.S. House of Representatives has introduced new antitrust legislation aimed at prying open Big Tech’s death grip on our lives. If the lawmakers get their way, it could mean that some of America’s largest tech companies will actually be broken up.Read more...

We’ve featured the world of filmmaker Luther Bhogal-Jones on io9 before, but his latest is quite different from his John Carpenter-ish short film Goodnight, Halloween. That said, Snore is still very much in the horror genre—it just involves a lot more puppets.Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest toy news. This week, Super7 turns its eyes to SilverHawks for its latest Ultimates line, Red XIII joins the Final Fantasy VII Remake figure line, and Hasbro slimes the Ghostbusters real good. Check it out!

After reports broke yesterday about a whopping 780GB of data being swiped from the gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA), we already know how the heist was pulled off, at least according to the hackers’ telling.Read more...

Donald Trump’s longtime spokesperson and noted lawsuit loser Jason Miller is reportedly planning to enter a cocoon and re-emerge as an even fouler kind of insect: a social media tycoon.