Gizmodo

The West hasn’t totally cooled off, but the region has gotten a slight reprieve from the heat that has dried up reservoirs, curtailed hydropower, and otherwise wrought havoc on the megadrought-afflicted region. Unfortunately, all good(ish) things must come to an end.Read more...

Rumors are swirling around Samsung’s next-gen smartwatches, but so far, they’ve focused mostly on whether Samsung would truly switch to Wear OS. Now that it’s been confirmed that the company is joining forces with Google, we’re waiting to see what that new watch will look like. Leaked renders of the Galaxy Watch…Read more...

Critical Role’s seemingly endless quest to bring itself beyond the tabletop (and your eyes and ears) to everywhere from comics, books, and even D&D itself continues with its next big step out of the world of Exandria with The Legend of Vox Machina. First a Kickstarter record-breaker, and now hoping to be Amazon Prime…Read more...

Dietary supplements don’t do much to help people lose weight—that’s the verdict from a large new review published Wednesday. The review found little high-quality evidence from studies trying to test these supplements’ claimed benefits and only inconsistent evidence that some supplements could possibly offer a small…Read more...

One of the biggest hurdles for augmented reality devices is design: No one wants to wear an obvious gadget on their face. Realizing the issues Google Glass had with gaining consumer traction, it seems Facebook may embrace a unique design for a future wearable. Folks, it’s a baseball hat.

It doesn’t matter how many times you tell people not to say his name five times, dammit someone’s going to do it anyway. The latest trailer for Nia DaCosta’s much-anticipated Candyman takes a peek inside the mind of an artist determined to find inspiration—and answers to his own story—at any cost.Read more...

Microsoft is warning that a cybercrime group named BazarCall is using call centers to trick users into installing powerful malware, ZDNet reported on Wednesday.

The $300 Wristcam is a futuristic Apple Watch accessory that asks the question: What if you put a camera on your smartwatch? When we first heard about it, it seemed like the band was teetering on the edge between genius and ridiculousness. The same can be said of Wristcam’s latest feature: live video messaging.Read more...

After Marvel and Disney+’s Loki presented its audience with a twist on a twist last week, the time-bending series put the breaks on (albeit only figuratively) to turn once more to a question the show’s premiere was fascinated with: what makes Loki—what makes a Loki—Loki? The answer, give or take an explosive…Read more...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a Pennsylvania high school violated the First Amendment rights of a former cheerleader by punishing her for saying “fuck school” on Snapchat. The decision potentially restricts schools’ ability to regulate students’ off-campus speech.

Astronomers on Earth have spotted thousands of exoplanets since the 1990s, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that aliens, should they exist, would be capable of the same feat. Working under this assumption, astronomers have identified a surprising number of nearby stars from which alien astronomers could’ve detected…Read more...

I was going about my morning routine, just another normal Wednesday, when lo, the world’s most cursed tweet blessed my timeline from the @NetflixUK account. Behold.Read more...

Julia Pott’s aggressively charming series Summer Camp Island has returned to HBO Max for its fourth season just in time for the beginning of our actual summer. While the animated series is still every bit as adorable as it used to be, the latest batch of episodes all bring a sharper, quicker sense of humor to Oscar…Read more...

Recycling isn’t the end-all solution to our over-consumption of the planet’s resources, and the process comes with its own challenges and drawbacks, but generally, re-using discarded materials and turning them into something useful again is a step in the right direction. Today, Lego revealed its first brick made from…Read more...

When Game of Thrones debuted on HBO in 2011, fans were stoked to see how the story and world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire would play out on the small screen. But as the showrunners moved past the books, things went a bit off the rails. Now, the author is looking back with one thing on his mind:…Read more...

Peter Capaldi re-teams with Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat for a haunting new Amazon venture. Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson are getting time-bending with trauma for Alex Lehmann’s sci-fi rom-com. Plus, Godspeed’s back at it again on The Flash, and good news for Solar Opposites. To me, my spoilers!

The ThinkPad X1 Extreme was already a great system for people who needed a powerful and sturdy mobile workhorse, but for this year’s refresh, Lenovo has made pretty much everything better while still cutting down on thickness and giving the laptop a big boost in performance.Read more...

The U.S. Department of Justice seized 36 domains associated with news outlets in Iran, Yemen, and Palestine on Tuesday, according to a press release from the DOJ. The websites were taken for allegedly promoting disinformation campaigns and for violating U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and…Read more...

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives introduced legislation aimed at reigning in the powers of big tech companies last Friday, and... hang on... I’m getting word that the CEOs of those companies think that antitrust bills are actually a bad thing? And that their companies should just be left alone, with their…Read more...

Microsoft has officially joined the $2 trillion club.

If it wasn’t for Snow White, Disney wouldn’t be what it is today. It was director Walt Disney’s first feature length animated film and its success way back in 1937 is what got the ball rolling on the entire company. Mickey Mouse may be the star, but Snow White is right up there with him, and now there’s a new one.Read more...

One over-used description of Android is the “platform of choice,” but what happens when those choices all become...exactly the same? The recent news that OnePlus is headed for “deeper integration” with its overseas parent company, Oppo, could cause a shakeup in the Android smartphone landscape.

Google unveiled a new tool on Tuesday that will allow its employees to make specific requests about where they go to work — specifically, which of the company’s regional offices they work from, or whether they’re fully remote.Read more...

Tens of thousands of years ago, so-called dwarf elephants inhabited the island of Sicily off the coast of Italy. Apparently, it didn’t take long for these elephants to shrink after their arrival on the island. New research suggests that the 10-ton behemoths that originally came to Sicily slimmed down quickly, losing…Read more...

Netflix has just added to its ever-growing animated slate with a trio of new shows aimed at kids, and one of them has already captured our imagination. Thank the title—Dogs in Space—which not only represents two of our big interests, but also conveniently evokes “Pigs in Space,” the classic Muppet Show skit starring…Read more...

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of America’s most prominent labor organizations, is expected to launch a nationwide effort to organize Amazon workers.Read more...

Jay-Z’s debut studio album can’t be sold as an NFT, TMZ reported on Tuesday, with a court issuing a temporary ruling that Roc-A-Fella co-founder Damon Dash must call off the sale and halt any planned auctions in the future. And...

As part of Twitter’s long-term vision to emulate the worst parts of every other major platform, the company announced on Tuesday that it would start rolling out applications for its long-rumored “Ticketed Spaces” and “Super Follows” features.Read more...

One of the world’s most perfect couples has a daughter who may outshine them both—and they sing through it. That’s the idea behind the first trailer for Adam Driver’s Annette, a strange and surreal new film from the director of Holy Motors.

Early Tuesday morning, dozens of mineworkers from Alabama’s Warrior Met Coal Mine headed to New York City’s financial district. There, they protested outside the Wall Street firms that own controlling shares of their employer, including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm.

Airline trade associations and unions are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to do something about the inundation of soulless passengers raising drunken hell in the lawless skies. Specifically, they want them put in prison.

A project established to conserve Tasmanian devils has backfired, as the carnivorous marsupials have been a little too successful in their new habitat. They’ve killed scores of seabirds since their arrival nearly a decade ago, according to the local branch of the Birdlife conservation organization.Read more...

She, unlike some of her previous associates, has pages.

In order to help eliminate confusion about which displays works best with its latest consoles, today Microsoft is expanding its Designed for Xbox program to include new badges for TVs and monitors.Read more...

If you paid more than $4,000 for Peloton’s Tread+, you’d expect that treadmill to be yours. And it is. Kind of. But the thing you should know about connected devices is that ownership isn’t as straightforward as simply buying a gadget.Read more...

We finally know what’s next for the Transformers franchise. And it’s big.

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. I’m back at the wheel after several months of maternity leave, and I’m ready to dive back into the latest games and announcements. This time around, we’ve got an expansion for Marvel’s Villainous, more details about the…Read more...

An object of unusual size will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2031, during which time it will swing past the orbit of Saturn and possibly turn into an exceptionally large comet. Astronomers are already looking forward to the potential “fireworks” display.

We know all about Iron Man. We know all about Captain America, Thor, Hulk, and even a bit about Hawkeye. But until now, that fifth founding member of the Avengers, Black Widow, has remained mostly a mystery—until next month. That’s when, after being introduced to fans 11 years ago, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett…Read more...

If you’ve ever stood in line for a movie to ensure you got a seat smack dab in the middle of all the theater’s surround sound speakers, you’ll appreciate the idea behind the Flexound Pulse: a redesigned theater chair that gives every audience member their own private surround sound experience no matter where they end…Read more...

One of the hedge funds targeted by notorious Reddit investment board r/WallStreetBets is bust, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Buckle up, backseat investors and climate fiends. An oil and gas company with a sketchy history has become the target of a short squeeze, led primarily by Reddit investors who have been driving hedge funds wild this year.Read more...

It’s time to free the multiverse. HBO’s His Dark Materials has entered production on its third and final season, which sees Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Will (Amir Wilson) going to the ends of the earth to find each other, their friends, and eventually salvation.Read more...

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, there were few stories quite as strange as co-directing/writing duo Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s Strawberry Mansion. The movie is about a world in which people’s dreams are taxed by the government, which often populates them with ads meant to fill their subconsciousnesses…Read more...

Mark Zuckerberg’s ongoing quest to turn every Facebook property into ad-riddled real estate hit a snag this week when the only virtual reality game that publicly offered to onboard Oculus’s VR ads (rightfully) backed down.Read more...

It’s been clear the Great Barrier Reef is suffering for awhile. Now, the United Nations wants to make it official by adding it to a list of World Heritage Sites that are “in danger.” But Australia is not down with the change.

China has all but banned bitcoin—and bitcoin holders, whoever they are, have customarily panic dumped the cryptocurrency. As CNBC International’s Ryan Browne has pointed out, bitcoin nearly wiped out all of its gains this year this morning, which would turn into a loss if it reaches $29,388.30. Early this morning, it…Read more...

Plenty of other sites on the internet will clog your feeds today with all the somewhat decent deals you might actually want on Amazon Prime Day. We tip our hats to them and thank them for their service. Gizmodo, however, has an annual tradition of charging one poor schmuck (me) with wading through the internet’s…Read more...

You’d be forgiven for thinking Scott Ciencin’s 1989 Dungeons & Dragons novel Shadowdale primarily takes place in the city of Shadowdale. Or that Shadowdale would be mentioned at some point during the first half of the novel, or even that the main characters would enter Shadowdale before the 75% mark. You’d be wrong on…Read more...

If you’ve been running into an error message that says “Google keeps stopping,” you’re not alone as numerous reports have popped up saying the Google app on Android is suffering from instability. And while it seems Google is aware of the issue, there are some things you can do to address the problem in the meantime.Read more...