Gizmodo

Miranda Otto, who famously played Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings series, is slated to return to the character she portrayed in the early 2000s, Deadline reports. The new anime feature, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, will feature Éowyn as she narrates the legend of the Helm Hammerhand, a king of Rohan…Read more...

“Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely,” quipped Bill Gates this week. The Microsoft founder turned billionaire philanthropist spoke in a question and answer session at a Tech Crunch event focused on climate change and technology.

The Smurfs could return to the big screen with some help from Chris Miller. Michael Giacchino teases that we’ll learn more about Marvel’s mysterious Werewolf by Night special soon. Plus, another look at What We Do in the Shadows’ fourth season. To me, my spoilers!

The all-private Polaris Dawn crew has been hard at work preparing for its upcoming trek to space. The team recently shared an update of the mission, scheduled for later this year, revealing that the four-member crew has been training since May, indulging in activities like scuba diving and going on high-altitude hikes.Read more...

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Your skin regenerates itself roughly every 27 days, and the dead skin cells you shed in the process can make up almost half of the dust floating around your home. This dust, of course, eventually lands on your furniture and electronics. If you’re tired of stockpiling cans of compressed air to clean dust and dirt off…Read more...

Elon Musk voted for a Republican for the first time on Tuesday, according to a tweet the billionaire sent early Wednesday. Musk has insisted he’s only voted for Democrats but made a recent switch to Republicans—a change made, coincidentally or not, just after being contacted for comment by Insider about sexual…Read more...

English bulldogs are an unhealthy bunch, new research this week reaffirms. Scientists in the UK have found that these dogs are much more likely to develop a variety of health problems than other breeds—over 30 times more likely for some conditions. But the team says it’s still possible to steer bulldogs in a healthier…Read more...

The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is jam-packed with weird, wonderful, random moments that reward both the first-time and repeat viewer. Just one that stands out: the sight of Harry Shum dressed as a chef wearing a real raccoon on his head, in an alternate-timeline riff on Pixar’s Ratatouille.Read more...

Researchers at China’s Xidian University are claiming to have completed testing and inspection of a ground array that could pave the way to space-based solar power—a concept long heralded as a potential solution to our energy woes.

Despite what you may have heard or read, Amber Heard is still in Aquaman 2, aka Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.Read more...

Big tech companies are getting a kick in the keister to start sorting out the mess of disinformation on their online platforms or else face a financial spanking with a pretty massive paddle.Read more...

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Working on the VFX for a Halo TV show is a bit of a headtrip. You’re taking the imagery of assets made for over 20 years of one the most beloved shooter franchises around, translating them into the practical, “real” world of making modern TV, and then bringing them all back digitally to make the show’s big set pieces…Read more...

Ah TikTok, whether you love it or hate it, its effect on the music industry cannot be understated. TikTok’s ability to make a song blow up, firmly nestling it into our limbic systems for better or for worse, is one of the foundational parts of the app—and whether or not music labels buying in to that phenomenon is…Read more...

Sen. Ed Markey on Tuesday said that his office plans to push forward with an already yearslong investigation into “harmful surveillance practices” and “invasive data collection” facilitated by Amazon’s flagship home security product, Ring.

On a peninsula toward the northernmost tip of New Zealand’s North Island lies Ninety Mile Beach. Usually, the (actually 55-mile) expanse of sand and surf is a popular site for fishing, tourists, and recreation. In recent weeks, however, the beach has become a site of tragedy.

If you saw Jurassic World Dominion this past weekend—and the film’s very large box office suggests that you did—I’m so sorry. If you haven’t yet, please let me save you some time by answering all the questions you could possibly have about the staggeringly bad final installment in the Jurassic World trilogy, including…Read more...

California’s biggest hospital system has divulged a massive data breach that exposed sensitive medical information on some 69,000 patients.

Gig work companies were stymied this week in their quest to upend traditional worker classifications.Read more...

If you’re thinking about escaping the humdrum this summer, multiple apps are promoting new features that should make traveling a little easier or safer, but your mileage on each may vary depending on what routes you take, and whether you’re flying solo.Read more...

After putting nearly all of its eggs in one virtual basket, Meta is now looking for ways to make the metaverse a place that people actually want to visit, starting with giving users a surprisingly easy way to digitize themselves as a virtual reality avatar using just the hardware in their smartphone.Read more...

The European Space Agency’s Gaia observatory has just unleashed a “treasure trove” of data on nearly 2 billion stars in the Milky Way, revealing how fast they move toward or away from us, as well as unusual ‘starquakes’ that change the shapes of stars.Read more...

Another day, another antitrust investigation into a tech giant. This time, it’s Apple: Germany’s competition watchdog on Tuesday announced a new probe into Apple’s slate of anti-tracking tech that the company rolled out last year.Read more...

In a video career retrospective with Vanity Fair while promoting Thor: Love and Thunder, Chris Hemsworth reflected on one of his earliest roles, playing a small but pivotal role in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. In the opening of the 2009 film Hemsworth portrayed George Kirk, father to James T. Kirk.Read more...

Sonos customers should check their bank accounts for charges on products they never ordered. After receiving, and in many cases being charged for, extra goods, disgruntled customers took to Reddit late last week to warn others. As The Verge reports, one customer placed an order for a single Move speaker but received…Read more...

In possibly the most tone deaf attempt at cashing in on the most wildly successful television show it has ever produced, Netflix is in the process of casting contestants in a live-action reality show based on Squid Game. Titled Squid Game: The Challenge, the show will feature 456 players competing for $4.56 million,…Read more...

Exandria Unlimited: Calamity is a four-episode miniseries produced by the Critical Role team that explores a time just before an unavoidable apocalypse. io9 spoke to three members of the Calamity cast—Travis Willingham, Aabria Iyengar, and Luis Carazo—about performance, improv, and how playing to an audience impacts…Read more...

Intense rain over Yellowstone National Park yesterday caused severe flooding that triggered massive mudslides, damaged roads, and even swept away a bridge.

A SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station has been pushed back to no earlier than July 11 after teams discovered elevated vapor levels of propellant. The mission was originally scheduled for launch on June 10, but ground teams noticed a potential hydrazine leak while loading cargo.

Researchers have detailed the life and grisly death of a male mastodon that died 13,200 years ago by scrutinizing the chemical composition of one of its tusks. The tusk revealed the mastodon grew up in the Great Lakes area and, later in life, made annual trips to a mating ground in northeastern Indiana—until it died…Read more...

Many performers, including singers and musicians, credit YouTube for giving them the exposure they needed to eventually gain fame and fortune. But one performer who’s yet to break into the record scene just received a major upgrade that could finally be their ticket to super stardom.Read more...

California-based Momentus is currently performing its first test of an orbital transfer vehicle known as Vigoride-3, but the 180-day demo mission is off to a rocky start.

Adobe Photoshop will soon be free to all users as a basic web-based version of the full photo editing app. This free edition is currently being trialed in Canada, where users can access Photoshop from a web address so long as they are logged into a free Adobe account, The Verge reports.Read more...

Spotify’s finally showing some semblance of an interest in crafting a more coherent content moderation policy.Read more...

While it certainly had its issues, we’re generally fans of the fourth season of Stranger Things here at io9—at least of the seven episodes that have been released so far. So we’re also excited to see the epic, nearly four-hour-long(!) conclusion next month... despite Netflix’s newest preview of the final two episodes.Read more...

The superhero genre has been trying its hand at various different tones in recent years, but the upcoming Joker sequel is really swinging for the fences. Yesterday evening saw the surprising news that Joker: Folie à deux won’t just be casting Lady Gaga in a role that’s probably his most notable gal pal Harley Quinn,…Read more...

Known for making some of the best third-party game controllers you can buy—including options for the Xbox—8BitDo is once again taking inspiration from Microsoft with a new compact gamepad designed to accommodate players with limited mobility that moves almost all of the functionality to dedicated buttons.Read more...

A new AI chatbot released Tuesday claims it uses the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when replying to questions such as “Is pizza better than burgers?” to “Is America quietly becoming an autocracy?” (The answers to both: “Big juicy burgers” over New York style pizza, and “No, I don’t think the…Read more...

As prices drop and availability increases, some of the last road blocks to mass adoption of electric vehicles is range anxiety and charging times. But a prototype test track in Italy solves both of those issues by borrowing the same technology that makes it easy to charge your smartphone without wires.

Saramonic is a company dedicated to producing professional audio and recording systems, from microphones to mixing consoles. For a few years now, more affordable wireless microphone systems have hit the market, aimed at beginners or enthusiasts who can’t afford to pay for thousands of dollars worth of equipment. The…Read more...

There’s goats and gods abound in new posters for Thor: Love and Thunder. Chucky’s second season adds a mysterious new guest. Lana Condor plays a ghost obsessed with social media in Netflix’s Boo, Bitch. Plus, once again it cannot be stressed enough: Riverdale’s got biblical plagues now. Spoilers get!

A recent competition organized by the European Space Agency asked art students to draw inspiration from the upcoming Artemis lunar program. The results are impressive.

The crypto roller coaster ride continues to plummet downhill fast. Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, is laying off 18% of its staff, or about 1,100 employees, according to a company SEC filing. The news also came in a letter to staff written by the CEO, Brian Armstrong, and tweeted out on…Read more...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk may as well be the living tech embodiment of Katy Perry’s 2008 hit song, “Hot N Cold,” given that it perfectly describes his state of mind with its insightful prose: “Cause you’re hot then you’re cold. You’re yes then you’re no.” In fact, that might be a good song to play at the Twitter town hall…Read more...

Ryan Petersen, the CEO of a logistics tech company called Flexport, tweeted out a photo that went viral Monday, purporting to show a time when McDonald’s used supposedly healthier cooking methods. Petersen suggested the people from this allegedly ancient photo were much healthier than the people of 2022, insinuating…Read more...

The world can be a dark and awful place. But as Brian and Charles so delightfully explores, the power of friendship can perform miracles, even when that friendship gets stormy at times—and even when that friendship is between a lonely inventor and the awkwardly bulky robot he crafts from random parts.Read more...

This is, to use the most obvious phrase on the table, not a joke: according to a new report, Oscar-winning singer-turned-actress Lady Gaga is in early negotiations to co-star as Harley Quinn opposite Joaquin Phoenix (also an Oscar winner) in DC Comics and Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel, recently announced to be titled …Read more...

Obi-Wan Kenobi is—was—a Jedi. A General of the Clone War. A warrior monk of such skill, such balance, such understanding of his form both spiritual and physical that he could sit atop the Jedi Order’s ranks as a Master of its Council. And here he is, stuffing a child under a trenchcoat on a wing and a prayer, and I’m…Read more...

When Taika Waititi took over the Thor franchise, fans began to hope that Natalie Portman would return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Jane Foster, especially since the two Oscar winners share similar indie dramedy sensibilities. In a new interview with Fandango, Waititi—along with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa…Read more...