Gizmodo

This year, you’re going to hear a ton about the new Matter smart home standard. It’s not technically live yet, and the first compatible devices are just starting to roll in this week for CES 2022. But in preparation for the onslaught of marketing and movement around the new connect-it-all smart home platform, Comcast…Read more...

A lot of people complain about how dark and gritty the Star Trek franchise has become nowadays, having moved away from the idealistic future presented by the original series and The Next Generation. But the first time Star Trek revealed the shadows hiding in the cracks of that future, the result was one of its most…Read more...

The set-up for Claude Cloutier’s animated short Bad Seeds is very simple: two hungry carnivorous plants wage a turf war over the flies that enter their shared airspace. But the execution—a surreal series of gorgeous drawings that change as the battle heats up—is simply brilliant (and often hilarious). Check it out!Read more...

Acer’s place in the laptop industry is a strange one. For a long time, the brand was associated with budget laptops and often shared design elements with its Taiwanese rival, Asus. Recently, though, the company seems to have found its niche, and in an unlikely place.

The last season of Doctor Who, subtitled Flux, had more downs than it did ups—a mess of plot threads, unconvincing resolutions, and nebulously high stakes that never really lived up to the series’ attempt to return to a serialized story format. Thankfully, its return on New Years Day was pretty much the exact opposite.

If you’ve ever attempted to color your hair using a home kit, you get why salons charge an arm and a leg for good color. In an attempt to take the mess out of the process and make the results a little more salon-quality, L’Oréal has created a handheld device that sounds as easy to use as simply combing your hair.Read more...

It’s no secret that we here on io9 love Hasbro’s Black Series of Star Wars toys. We write about them every chance we can, often in serious news breaking fashion, other times with heartfelt yearning, and even sometimes with silly adoration. Basically, if we can cover these 6-inch beauties, we will.Read more...

Of all the iPhone features Apple has upgraded over the years—from the camera to the screen to the software—the built-in speaker remains disappointing at best. A good pair of headphones solves that problem, but so does Scosche’s new BoomCanMS Portable Speaker, a tiny Bluetooth boombox that secures itself to modern…Read more...

Cobra Kai season four is now out in the world and it’s another exciting, surprise-filled ride through the world of The Karate Kid. Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) have teamed up to take down Cobra Kai and its sensei, John Kreese (Martin Kove). Kreese has recruited his best friend…Read more...

Until batteries are capable of keeping our most power-hungry devices running for days on end, it’s a good idea to travel with a charger close at hand. And if your travels are primarily road trips, Scosche’s new AC-DC travel charger looks like a near-perfect option, allowing tablets and laptops to be charged from a…Read more...

When you think of the smart home, you think of obvious gadgets like lightbulbs, thermostats, and robotic appliances like vacuums. But there are decidedly less cool ways to smarten up your home that could actually help you save money and do some good for the environment.

Some time ago I came to feel, in a very literal way, the speed of semi-recent technological progress. My roommate—a gamer—had gotten it into his head, possibly via some other gamer, that ‘90s video games look best when played on ‘90s televisions. This led him to secure one on Craigslist, which led in turn to my…Read more...

It’s a gamer’s nightmare scenario, and one that happens all too often. You get back from work ready to unwind, and a roommate, spouse, or sibling is hogging your gaming desktop or laptop. Or, in an equally stressful scenario, someone is binging the entirety of Squid Game on the monitor or TV you use to gun down…Read more...

I didn’t think one of the coolest things at CES 2022 would be a remote. And yet, here we are. Thanks, Samsung. Seriously though, Samsung’s new remote is pretty damn neat.

Samsung is debuting new TVs at CES 2022, and some of them will let you play games from the cloud, no console required, with platforms you might have heard before: Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now.

Apparently eager to shepherd us into a world where people proudly display their non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, on their smart TV screens, Samsung has announced that its 2022 TV lineup will include built-in support for browsing, purchasing, and showing off NFT art.Read more...

Last month, we looked back at 2021 somewhat fondly, recalling things we liked (or didn’t like), and things that surprised us. Now that 2022 has started, it’s time to look forward and think about what potentially exciting things are on the horizon for us to experience.

By all accounts, Netflix’s Cobra Kai sounds like a pretty awesome, if also utterly bonkers show. The follow up to the Karate Kid franchise dropped its fourth season on New Years Eve, continuing the adventures of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Maccio), Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), and their martial arts proteges. After the…Read more...

In the many prolonged months leading up to its release, No Time to Die was touted as the final outing for Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond. Since he first took the role in 2007's Casino Royale, Craig’s time with the character has been a fascinating one, and it was interesting to see how it would end for real this…Read more...

Airbnb is taking steps to tackle discrimination from hosts on its platform with a new update for guests who are residents of Oregon. Unfortunately, it seems like people in other states, and around the world, will just have to keep on fighting to be treated fairly on the platform.Read more...

Tens of thousands of people in the United Kingdom probably thought they had been especially good this past year when they saw their bank accounts on Christmas Day, all of which had more money than they expected. Alas, Santa Claus doesn’t have enough cash in his reserves to justify the roughly $176 million in payments,…Read more...

2021's been a not terribly great year and taken several talented folks from us, but it threw one final gut punch with the news of Betty White’s death on New Year’s Eve. Just a few weeks ahead of her much publicized 100th birthday, the vaunted actor passed away, leaving behind a pretty lengthy career spanning several…Read more...

It’s only a few weeks before Switch players can get their hands on Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The next big entry in the series is winding back the clock to the Hisui Region before it came to be known as Sinnoh, and tasks players with exploring the area to research the pocket monsters in their natural habitats.

For fans of the old superhero Miracleman, the last several years have been tumultuous. Created in 1954 by Mick Anglo and originally named Marvelman, the character’s been lost to time, even after his rights were eventually sold to Marvel back in 2009. It wasn’t clear if or when he’d return to the comics space, but this…Read more...

What better way to celebrate the start of 2022 than with some violence and a bald eagle? As the clock hit midnight for east coasters, James Gunn dropped a new trailer for Peacemaker, the spinoff of The Suicide Squad starring John Cena’s patriotic antihero. Rather than focusing on the titular character’s conflicted soulRead more...

No one really knows how to cure a hangover, a new roundup of scientific studies has found. The review found little good evidence for any one particular hangover cure, with existing studies generally being of low quality.

Amid a wave of in-person cancellations in recent weeks from big names ranging from Microsoft to Google and a surge of covid-19 cases caused by the omicron variant, CES 2022, the world’s biggest tech show, is cutting one day from its schedule.Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of all the cool toys we’ve found on the internet lately. This week we’re looking forward to 2022, mostly because there’s only a few more hours of 2021 left, making it very hard to release new toys this year. Check out what’s to come!

Scrutinizing Apple’s in-app payment system on the App Store is all the rage among government officials nowadays, with multiple countries taking cards in the matter. A new report claims that India’s competition authority has jumped on the Apple regulation bandwagon, too, a move that’ll no doubt bring more attention to…Read more...

And so, it’s come to this—the end of another long and winding year. It’s had ups and downs, things we loved and things we didn’t, and, frankly, Too Much Content. Speaking of which, should you find yourself wanting to look back at io9's 2021, here’s a nice big list of all our year in review pieces from throughout the…Read more...

I have spent, I would say, a distressing amount of the last month with my eyes streaming tears—not for work obligations, personal reasons, or even really “still in that Global Pandemic” reasons. If anything, I’ve been doing it for fun, as I’ve worked my way through Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, and the reasons it’s…Read more...

We’re at episode four of The Expanse’s six-episode final season, which means all the drama that’s been simmering is about to start boiling over. Thanks to a pair of exclusive clips io9 debuted this week, we know Amos and Naomi are going to confront Holden about one of the biggest shocks in episode three, “Force…Read more...

Forget quitting booze or starting an exercise regime—the only New Year’s resolution worth making (because it’s the most fun to stick with) is “read more books.” io9's got you covered with a robust list of sci-fi and fantasy releases coming in January, including new titles from James Rollins, Charles Stross, Nnedi…Read more...

A team of archaeologists and geoscientists just found victims of an ancient tsunami on the Turkish coast. The victims—a human male and a dog, now just skeletons—were likely killed in the aftermath of a gargantuan volcanic eruption 3,600 years ago.

Get another look at Rob Zombie’s Munsters reboot. Star Trek: Discovery teases its return in February. Plus, a new clip from the latest season of Cobra Kai, and what’s coming on Outlander for Brianna, and an adorable new clip from We Baby Bears. It’s the last spoilers of 2021!

It turns out 2021 wasn’t the mental reprieve we’d all been hoping for after the challenges of 2020, and unfortunately, the finalists of this year’s Best Illusion of the Year Contest aren’t going to leave your brain feeling any less raddled, confused, or exhausted as we quickly approach the new year. As they do every…Read more...

If you’ve spent even a minute on the internet this week, you have surely seen something about Don’t Look Up. The Adam McKay-directed flick is Netflix’s top movie. It’s also perhaps the top reason for people shitting their pants online recently.Read more...

We review a lot of gadgets here at Gizmodo, and honestly, many of them are good. We detailed our favorites here. But we also see a lot of really bad products—some are just plain bad, while others are capable and well-designed but fatally flawed in one way or another (usually when it comes to privacy). Still others…Read more...

Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver who unintentionally helped originate the viral rightwing chant “Let’s Go Brandon” (which many people believe means “Fuck Joe Biden”), has decided to partner with a memecoin based on the slogan.Read more...

Before I joined the cult of iPhone, of which I have happily been a member of for many years now, my first big phone purchase was a BlackBerry. Time made it as slow as a turtle, and it began its new life in a drawer in one of the many apartments and houses I’ve lived in. Over the years, I forgot about BlackBerry…Read more...

Release dates rarely, if ever, have an impact on storytelling. Maybe a movie is set during a specific holiday so a studio wants to release it around that time of year. But even then, you can watch a Halloween or Christmas movie anytime you want. One place where release dates have everything to do with story, though,…Read more...

A series of unprecedented December wildfires coupled with raging winds of more than 105 mph (169 kmh) forced the evacuation of thousands in northern Colorado on Thursday. It’s the latest freak weather calamity to unleash chaos in a bizarre December of chock full of them, one that has taken an unimaginable toll.

Kyoto University, a top research institute in Japan, recently lost a whole bunch of research after its supercomputer system accidentally wiped out a whopping 77 terabytes of data during what was supposed to be a routine backup procedure.Read more...

Despite some truly important medical advances this year, the covid-19 pandemic is far from over, both in the U.S. and even more so in poorer countries with low vaccination rates. But there is hope on the immediate horizon. Cheap, easily stored, and effective covid-19 vaccines are set to be mass-produced and…Read more...

Bad news for furniture shoppers out there: on Thursday, IKEA confirmed that the company would be raising prices on a good chunk of its historically budget-friendly catalog. The culprit IKEA’s blaming for the price hike is—you guessed it—the dreaded supply chain.Read more...

The third act of Ghostbusters: Afterlife is filled with huge reveals. Some of them, even if you haven’t seen the film, you probably know about—like the fact that Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson all appear, reprising their roles from the original. Others, however, have still remained relatively secret…Read more...

Welcome back to io9's the Nerd’s Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you’ll like most.Read more...

A critically endangered Malaysian tiger living at the Naples Zoo in Florida died this week after being shot by a deputy trying to save a 26-year-old maintenance worker from being mauled to death.Read more...

If you watched the finale of The Witcher’s second season, you got a good look at what will be season three’s new villains—the Wild Hunt, a group of seven spectral riders on skeletal horses who travel through the sky and are deadset (pun obviously intended) on capturing Princess Ciri and magic-granting Elder blood.…Read more...