Gizmodo

The ongoing eruption of a Canary Islands volcano is raising concerns about the release of toxic clouds now that lava is actively pouring into the sea.

Forging ahead with its bizarre plans to expand into the video game space, Netflix has reportedly acquired Night School Studio, an indie game developer that will mark the first acquisition of its kind for the streaming platform.

Remember the Exxon lobbyist who got caught on tape admitting that the company had poured money into “shadow groups” in order to fight against climate science? He’s officially out of a job. E&E News confirmed with Exxon on Tuesday that Keith McCoy, the lobbyist in question, was no longer at the company.Read more...

We may have only just gotten one Star Wars show, and another series on the way this week, but one fans have been waiting for ever since The Mandalorian season two came to a close is going to keep us waiting a little longer. Boba Fett is sneaking his way into the end of the year with his very own TV show.

Sony’s headphones and earbuds have long been some of the best you can buy, and its latest devices, the WH-1000XM4 wireless headphones and WF-1000XM4 wireless earbuds, offer incredible audio and industry-leading active noise cancellation—for a price. For those looking to spend a little less cash, Sony’s introducing…Read more...

Earlier this year, social media was briefly taken over by seemingly everyone using MyHeritage’s Deep Nostalgia feature to bring old photos to life. The company whose AI technology powers Deep Nostalgia, D-ID, is taking that technology one step further, turning still headshot photos into videos that move and say…Read more...

When we got our last look at Disney’s upcoming movie Encanto, we met the Madrigals, the magical house that gave the intergenerational Colombian family their unique superpowers, and Mirabel (Brooklyn 99's Stephanie Beatriz), the lone Madrigal member who never received a gift. It looked great, but somewhat…Read more...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose removing 22 animals and one plant from the endangered species list on Wednesday, declaring them extinct. The casualties—11 birds, eight species of freshwater mussels, two fish, one bat, and a flower—are victims of the climate crisis and habitat degradation. It’s a sign…Read more...

If you were born after wifi, the dial-up modem noise is what electronics used to sound like: dated, from the era of the fax machine and the non-customizable ringtone. To me, it’s more than that. The sound symbolizes the limits of what whole generations had agreed was basically tolerable to get online.Read more...

Netflix bags a few more names for its Enola Holmes sequel. Aeon Flux is on its way back. Paradise Hills’ Alice Waddington is turning Matt Kindt’s Dept. H into a movie. Plus, what’s coming on Supergirl and La Brea. Spoilers, go!

Your next window unit air conditioner is in for some big changes over the next decade. The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule last week to largely phase out the chemicals in air conditioners that keep your room cool but damage the climate.Read more...

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has threatened harsh retaliatory measures against YouTube after the video sharing service suspended two German-language accounts run by Russian state media, according to a report from Russia’s TASS news outlet. Russia went so far as to call the suspensions “information warfare.”

Amazon has a new robot—a sly little cyber-pet called “Astro” who is supposed to be a goofy domestic helper reminiscent of R2D2 but is, in reality, both a privacy nightmare and a dysfunctional mess.

No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond movie, almost feels like 25 movies in one. So much happens in its complex story—filled with so many sprawling, varied set pieces—that by the time you get to the end, the events of the beginning feel like they happened 18 months ago. Which, if you remember, they were supposed to.…Read more...

AirTags, Apple’s Bluetooth-powered item trackers, were designed with good intentions: They’re useful for attaching to important things like keys and luggage to help you find them if they get lost. However, said devices also apparently come with a small design flaw—one that could allow an unscrupulous individual to…Read more...

A three-year coma couldn’t kill Sterling Archer—or his namesake animated series. FXX has just ordered up an eight-episode 13th season of Archer, which will air next year and will presumably see the gang continue to carry on with top-secret spy missions, international intrigue, dirty jokes, and snarky-as-hell humor...…Read more...

The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday published the latest in its investigative series “The Facebook Files,” diving even deeper into the ubiquitous platform’s efforts to target and recruit young children.

It’s getting harder and harder for Google to pretend it’s not the anticompetitive bully we all know it to be. Case in point: as part of the company’s ongoing battle to fend off the largest antitrust fine ever imposed by the European Union, the company argued in an EU court on Tuesday that it’s... the most-searched-for…Read more...

Warhammer is an expensive hobby and has been for a very long time. Grabbing yourself a viable force of Games Workshop’s tabletop miniatures—whether it’s in Age of Sigmar’s fantasy or 40K’s far future flavors—can cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars, even before all the kit to build, paint, carry, and play with it.…Read more...

Rideshare companies’ big pitch has always been about efficiency. Cities, the argument goes, would reap the benefits of fewer cars on the roads. Fewer greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution along with less congestion, the rare triple win.

A new approach to treating covid-19 may be on the horizon. Clinical trials of several antiviral candidates are expected to finish within the next few months, all taken as a simple pill provided before or soon after an infection is confirmed.Read more...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is deploying the Amazon-owned encrypted chat app Wickr across “all components” of its operations, Motherboard reported on Tuesday, citing procurement documents from the agency.Read more...

George Lucas has joined the Galactic Empire. It’s tragic, but it must be true, since he’s the newest figure in Hasbro’s beloved Star Wars: The Black Series toyline, sporting Stormtrooper armor and a E-11 Blaster Rifle, the standard-issue weapon for the Emperor’s soldiers. I doubt this turn to the Dark Side will…Read more...

An effort to find hidden passages and chambers at the Gorham’s Cave Complex in Gibraltar has paid off after nearly 10 years of searching.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is weighing changes to how the city responds to extreme weather in the wake of Hurricane Ida.Read more...

While he’s about to debut as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation, Stellan Skarsgård’s words from a film festival last year have been making the rounds and reminding us of some great points when it comes to money and the film industry.Read more...

The most wonderful time of the year is back, baby. On Wednesday, the National Park Service will kick off its annual Fat Bear Week competition.Read more...

Remember that time Donald Trump’s administration tried to strong-arm Beijing-based ByteDance into selling TikTok, its wildly popular music app, to a U.S. company? The CEO of Microsoft does, and he’d prefer that you recall it as a zany little corporate adventure instead.

This past Sunday, a new terror arose in the world of The Walking Dead. Well, I guess “arose” isn’t the right word—a new terror scuttled across the floor on all fours in the world of The Walking Dead when poor Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Virgil (Kevin Carroll) found themselves trapped in a spooky, run-down house full…Read more...

As the number of smart home devices continues to increase, Amazon and Ring’s latest device is designed to help consolidate your gadgets by combining a home security hub with a built-in router.Read more...

Tech companies are certain that you want a personal robot for your home, despite all evidence to the contrary. Amazon is giving it a shot with a bot named Astro who finally answers the question: “What if Wall-E were real, evil, and knew how to beatbox?”

Before he traveled to Arrakis to tell the story of Dune, and before he took on one of sci-fi’s most popular legacies with Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve tackled a genre tale that was equally epic in its ideas but far more intimate in its storytelling: 2016's Arrival. Its striking production design incorporates…Read more...

No, you’re not seeing double. The new Amazon Halo View looks almost exactly like a Fitbit Charge 5. Announced as part of Amazon’s devices and services event, the $80 tracker adds a color AMOLED display and two new fitness and nutrition modes for its Halo service.

In its never-ending quest to bring entire families into its ecosystem, Amazon has announced a new smart speaker/video chatting device called Glow. It’s meant for kids to video chat with other folks with Alexa-enabled devices in a controlled environment. Amazon says it “reimagines the way kids can connect with remote…Read more...

Star Trek wasn’t William Shatner’s only foray into science fiction. He also created TekWar, a nine-novel, cyberpunk-ish mystery series that was a big enough deal in the ‘90s that it spawned a TV series, four TV movies, a comic, and a video game. Now, TekWar is all but forgotten—although that may change in the near…Read more...

Archaeologists in Guatemala have uncovered a previously unknown structural complex next to the ancient Maya city of Tikal. But this district didn’t belong to the Maya, as it seems a foreign power was flexing its imperial muscles in the region.Read more...

The rumors turned out to be true: Amazon just introduced the Echo Show 15, a wall-mountable smart display.

A California woman charged with igniting the destructive Fawn Fire has a rather strange explanation for the blaze. This is all a huge mistake, you see. She was just trying to purify bear piss-contaminated water by boiling it.Read more...

Just like a magician that never reveals his tricks, Netflix—the undisputed king of streaming—has long been reticent to reveal its viewership statistics. At least, until now: On Monday, the platform released a list of top-10 rankings of its most popular original shows and movies, sorted by how many hours people watched…Read more...

Amazon today announced an ultra-cheap, ultra-basic, Alexa-powered smart thermostat. Its retail price is $60, but Amazon says you can probably get it for as little as $10 after energy rebates—and in some cases, for “nothing at all.”

Yesterday brought the shocking news that ‘90s sci-fi cult classic Babylon 5 would be returning to screens with a brand new reboot on the CW. But its original creator J. Michael Straczynski—who will write and produce the new series—wanted to calm fans down who were immediately concerned. He explained why now was the…Read more...

As much fun as the Nintendo Switch is, it’s not exactly the most portable or pocket-friendly device. There are much smaller alternatives out there, but the Thumby takes portability to another level with a tiny screen and even tinier controls on a handheld that looks no bigger than a postage stamp.

The brands are at it again, folks. Tech giant Samsung enlisted Vanilla Ice—yeah, that Vanilla Ice—in an energy conservation campaign that is part greenwashing and all cringe.

Though we knew that the world of Netflix’s The Witcher franchise would be expanding with Nightmare of the Wolf, an animated prequel about Geralt’s mentor Vesemir, and Blood Origin, a live-action series detailing the origins of witchers as a whole, Netflix surprised everyone this past weekend with the announcement of…Read more...

Last year’s iPhone 12 was a meaningful upgrade from the iPhone 11 and felt more premium than its $799 price tag. I was less sold on the $699 iPhone 12 Mini, which was a perfectly sized phone for those of us with small hands, but it had tragic battery life made worse by 5G connectivity. With the iPhone 13, Apple has…Read more...

Venom: Let There Be Carnage may seem like nothing more than the expected, logical follow-up to the 2018 hit Venom, but in reality, its roots reside in Middle Earth. Andy Serkis, the actor best known for playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films (and Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes films, Snoke in the …Read more...

New research this week may make diet soda lovers a bit less confident in their habit. The small experimental trial found that some groups of people seemed hungrier and consumed more calories after drinking something with artificial sweetener than they did after drinking a sugary beverage. In particular, those with…Read more...

With iOS 15, Apple added an iCloud feature that allows users to create “burner” emails when signing up for services. Now, 1Password is partnering with Fastmail, a privacy-minded email service, to introduce a similar feature.Read more...

Carnage is born in a new clip from Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Jay Garrick returns in new pictures from Stargirl. Plus, what’s coming on La Brea and Archer, and some very good footage of Cowboy Bebop’s very good boy, Ein. To me, my spoilers!

Finding a compact keyboard that’s as clean and minimalist as the Apple Magic Keyboard—but not so Apple-centric—isn’t easy. There are lots of options featuring fancy switches and RGB lighting targeted at gamers, but for the rest of us, Logitech has lopped off the number pad from its excellent MX Keys keyboard and…Read more...