Gizmodo

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of all the latest and greatest toy news—but there’s a twist this week, as Spider-Man: No Way Home has sneakily swung onto the scene and introduced us to a first look at the movie through its action figures, Funkos, and Lego sets! But beyond that, we’ve got Batwoman,…Read more...

Netflix just brought Gundam fans something they’ve been waiting over a year to see: Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, the long-delayed latest film in the beloved mecha franchise. But if you’re looking to dive in to see what the fuss behind Gundam is for the first time, you might want want some context before getting in…Read more...

A team of Korean researchers have made a membrane that can turn saltwater into freshwater in minutes. The membrane rejected 99.99% of salt over the course of one month of use, providing a promising glimpse of a new tool for mitigating the drinking water crisis.Read more...

Last year, we invited cosplayers to show off their best social distancing cosplay for Comic-Con@Home—and they delivered. The cosplay we saw and shared was so amazing, we decided to do it again! As the country prepares to open its convention doors in 2022, we’re once more asking our cosplaying friends to help us bring “…Read more...

Google will start imposing a change that would clamp down on the Android apps distributed through the Play Store. This week, the company announced that beginning in August, developers will have to publish apps as a proprietary Android App Bundle rather than the standard APK publishing format.

Google just rolled out a new feature in Google Photos that will help you hide your sensitive images from prying eyes.Read more...

Omega is safe, but the galaxy is still in turmoil. What’s a group of enhanced clones to do? The latest episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch sent Clone Force 99 on yet another side mission, one that reminded us where the galaxy has been, where it is now, and that the Bad Batch are the right heroes for the moment.Read more...

A senior Exxon lobbyist was caught on tape admitting that the company has been running a behind-the-scenes campaign to combat regulation on plastics and PFAS, a video released Thursday shows. The tape is the second installment of an undercover investigation conducted by Unearthed, the investigative arm of Greenpeace…Read more...

Over the course of DC’s upcoming Fear State event, present-day Gotham City will increasingly begin to look like its Future State incarnation as the Scarecrow ushers in a new era of terror with the widespread use of his fear toxins. As Gotham plunges into chaos that brings the entire Bat Family to the front lines,…Read more...

In 2014, two 12-year-old girls lured their best friend into the woods before stabbing her more than a dozen times—and leaving her for dead—in an attempt to satiate the internet horror meme Slender Man. Now, after spending the past three and a half years confined to a state facility, one of the attackers has will be …Read more...

GETTR, the new social media platform from the brilliant minds employed by our loser ex-president Donald Trump, has a lot of problems.

Going ahead, we may need to rethink fashioning the household robot maid in the likeness of a woman with a human name. In hindsight, assigning them common human names in order to do our bidding was probably not a great idea. Only with the wisdom of years could we know that this could have gone wrong. Now that at least…Read more...

A huge lake on the east coast of Antarctica has disappeared, causing 200 billion gallons of water to vanish without a trace.

A study looking at the impacts of covid-19 vaccination—condemned by other scientists as seriously flawed and irresponsible—has now sparked a mutiny of sorts. This past week, several well-respected researchers have resigned from their involvement in the journal that published the paper, which argued that vaccines are…Read more...

Huawei has had a bumpy road since it was banned from doing business with Google. It has shifted its devices away from Google’s Android and the Google Play Store and launched a homebrewed solution called HarmonyOS. It is, for all intents and purposes, Huawei’s version of Google’s Android. But despite it having all the…Read more...

“Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.” OK, but how exactly? That’s one of the many, many questions that could be answered in a future Avatar: The Last Airbender series, as creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino launch Nickelodeon’s Avatar Studios. The pair have hinted at years of ideas—each…Read more...

Much to the dismay of countless users, Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) has been a mainstay in Windows throughout the years, but now for Windows 11, it looks like the BSOD is getting a makeover with a brand new color: black.Read more...

The BBC is getting widespread criticism for creating a study guide for teens that includes arguments about how climate change could make our world better, actually.Read more...

Loki’s fourth episode, “The Nexus Event”, saw the god of mischief and his new ally Sylvie’s bond grow even stronger, as the pair stared down their imminent destructions in one of the countless apocalypses taking place throughout the multiverse. Though the pair of Asgardians had found themselves in similar situations…Read more...

The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season has gotten off to a record-setting pace with five named storms. And now, Elsa, one of that early spate of storms, has become the season’s first hurricane.Read more...

Jennifer Tilly takes us behind the scenes on the Chucky TV series. Van Helsing’s got a fun trick up his sleeve in new Hotel Transylvania: Transformania footage. Plus, what’s coming to Walking Dead and Evil. Spoilers get!

Windows 11 might be grabbing most of the headlines at the moment, but Windows 10 remains Microsoft’s current operating system, and it’s received a fair few updates and new features since it launched six years ago. Windows 10 will continue to be supported until the end of 2025, and it still has some parts you may have…Read more...

Netflix has pulled a spy drama called Pine Gap from the video streaming platform in Vietnam after the government complained about maps that appear in at least two episodes. The maps are a “misrepresentation of Vietnam’s sovereignty,” according to officials in Hanoi.

Virgin Galactic founder and billionaire Richard Branson announced Thursday he will travel beyond the Earth’s atmosphere in a test flight set for July 11. If the launch goes according to plan, he’ll be the first billionaire in space, setting the record just nine days ahead of the first planned spaceflight of another…Read more...

Cops are handing over body camera footage and testimonials to Wrap Technologies to help the security firm market its controversial high-tech lasso, the BolaWrap, to other police departments, the Daily Dot reports. In some instances, Wrap purportedly sweetened the deal by offering a free device to departments that…Read more...

An elite team of hackers connected to Russian military intelligence have been using brute force attacks to target hundreds of organizations throughout the world, according to officials with U.S. and U.K. security agencies.

It hasn’t even been a whole week, and Windows 11 has already been successfully ported over to a smartphone. A very committed student of engineering, Gustave Monce, published a video to YouTube showing the latest developer preview of Windows 11 running on an old Windows Phone.

Over the course of Marvel’s X-Factor—from writer Leah Williams and artists David Baldeón and Carlos Gómez—the eponymous team did the important work of making sure that mutants were actually dead before they were brought back to life with the use of Krakoa’s unique resurrection process.Read more...

Dear readers of io9, I’m worried about Space Jam: A New Legacy. You see, I’m a child of the 1990s. Like so many of us, I grew up idolizing Michael Jordan and was the perfect age to see the 1996 original Space Jam when it was released. So the news of the long-gestating sequel, featuring this generation’s closest Jordan…Read more...

Do you think your Philips Hue bulbs could be a little brighter? Well, you’re in for some good news. A leak from HueBlog points to improvements on the horizon for the Hue lineup of smart bulbs. If it’s true, the new bulbs will be brighter by up to several hundred lumens.

To accompany every new major Magic: The Gathering set, the Magic website usually serves a series of short stories in the run-up to release to get fans ready for the setting and story arc being introduced through the new cards’ art and flavor. The game’s next set is a bit thematically different... which calls for a…Read more...

New research published this week is the latest to indicate that vaccinated people have much less to fear from covid-19. The study found that even in the rare cases when people given mRNA vaccines developed infections, they tended to experience shorter illness and produce less of the virus than unvaccinated people—both…Read more...

Today, the Trump crew flies closer to that social media platform in the sky. Gaze upon GETTR, the “marketplace of ideas,” possibly the news cycle’s next black hole, and possibly the target of the next greatest cyberattack of all time.Read more...

Last week, we got a glimpse at what the rumored Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 4 might look like. This week, Android Headlines leaked what it claims are renders for the flagship Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. But, looking at the design itself, perhaps Samsung is going a little too classic.Read more...

On Wednesday, Tim Berners-Lee sold off a copy of the source code of the world wide web (that he’d written) for a mind-boggling $5.4 million at Sotheby’s. Apparently, though, the lucky anonymous buyer should have gotten a bit of a discount. Not long after the sale, a security researcher uncovered some errors hiding in…Read more...

Last fall, Facebook announced a preview for its cloud gaming service, and today, Facebook is updating its cloud gaming efforts with expanded coverage and a new injection of content from Ubisoft.

He-Man was the most powerful man in the action figure universe during the ‘80s, a pioneer in kid’s cartoons that made the toy company Mattel $400 million in 1986 alone during the height of his popularity. But after that, he and the other Masters of the Universe fell from grace to near total obscurity, minus the…Read more...

The Pacific Northwest’s hell is just beginning. After being seared by record heat, the fires arrived with a roar.

Whether Tucker Carlson is an actual victim of government spying or a fraud trying to rile up his viewers, Americans should remember: no matter how much you hate the smug, punchable face of said Fox News darling, the National Security Agency is not your friend and surveillance in our country is out of control.

As Loki’s become more familiar with the inner workings of the Time Variance Authority over the course of his Disney+ solo series, the Asgardian’s conceptualization of reality’s been repeatedly torn asunder, in moments where he’s presented with truths about the wider multiverse the MCU takes place in. Take, for…Read more...

Word of warning: A simple Google search in defiance of a judge’s order can result in huge fines, one juror learned that the hard way recently when he tried to alert his fellow jurists that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer involved in an assault case may actually a white supremacist.Read more...

For Dungeons & Dragons fans, TSR: The Game Wizards conjures up memories of gathering around the tabletop for a friendly gaming session. Now, the folks who are trying to revive the company have chosen to give up the name they worked so hard for—because of Gary Gygax’s son’s troubling comments about race, gender…Read more...

The record-breaking heat wave that’s blanketed the Pacific Northwest this week has quietly killed dozens across the region. Not everyone is affected equally, though. A disproportionate number of the elderly, the poor, and the alone have died of heat-related illnesses.Read more...

Of all Apple’s OSes, macOS is the one most people delay updating. How many of you, when you boot up your Mac, banish update reminders for days—sometimes weeks or even months—with a click of “remind me later” rather than wait to finish the task you sat down to accomplish? I would guess a large number. In the days…Read more...

Most of the marketing around Amazon’s The Tomorrow War has focused on Chris Pratt’s character, a regular dude who becomes a time-traveling soldier to help Earth fight an ongoing war with aliens in the year 2051. But in this clip io9 is debuting today, thanks to a military scientist played by The Handmaid’s Tale’s…Read more...

Last week, NBC White House correspondent Geoff Bennett tweeted the banal observation that he couldn’t remember the last time he saw Democratic and Republican senators having a laugh in public. It was in the wake of the so-called Gang of 10 bipartisan group of senators showing up at the White House to pitch their…Read more...

With hot vax summer already in full swing, Google is now making it easier to keep your vax card handy by building support for digital vaccination cards into Android itself.Read more...

Looking a bit like a beached whale on the ocean floor, the Titanic has been a perpetual state of decay since it settled there on April 15, 1912. This week, a exploration company may launch an expedition to survey the wreck’s current state, the first of what would likely become an annual trip to the site.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning doctors about a strange cluster of illness in three states caused by a rarely seen bacteria in the U.S., one that’s killed at least one person and hospitalized two others so far. The illness, called melioidosis, can be highly fatal but isn’t normally considered…Read more...

On Tuesday, a group of protesters showed up at the Alameda Courthouse in Oakland, California, for the pre-trial hearing for Jason Fletcher, a police officer who was charged with manslaughter for shooting and killing Steven Taylor, a Black man, inside of a Walmart last year. Along with Taylor’s family, advocates for…Read more...