Gizmodo

As part of its plan to elbow its way into every corner of commerce, Amazon has now partnered with Starbucks to open a new cashierless cafe in New York City. With around 30,000 locations, the coffee franchise represents an opportunity for Amazon’s camera-based payment system to see exponential growth if the pilot’s a…Read more...

New research Thursday aims to quantify a life-altering aftereffect of covid-19: a lingering loss of smell, also known as anosmia. The study estimates that up to 1.6 million people in the U.S. have experienced chronic anosmia lasting at least six months following their coronavirus infection.Read more...

MultiVersus, Warner Bros.’ forthcoming free-to-play video game, is one of the many attempts that companies have made at recreating the madcap perfection of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros., a multiplayer fighter built on the premise of mashing up characters from different franchises as part of a wholly new, out-of-canon…Read more...

The new trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s next film has arrived, and boy... Nightmare Alley looks good. It also has a hell of a cast, but there’s so much going on it’s difficult to parse what’s happening in the final trailer for the film other than it’s set in the first half of the 20th century, Bradley Cooper appears…Read more...

There’s nothing quite like finding a piece of pop culture you connect with on a visceral level. This connection can manifest in different ways, whether it’s relating to a fictional character on screen or a real-life person with whom you share your obsession. No matter what, being a fan can show you that you’re a part…Read more...

Replaying the favorite video games of your youth isn’t as easy as re-reading a loved book or re-watching a movie you’ve already seen 100 times. And Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Gaming, thinks that’s a problem the games industry needs to address by embracing emulation with open arms.Read more...

Get a look at Kate Bishop and her friends in some new Hawkeye character posters. Doctor Who teases a dire season finale. Legends of Tomorrow gets riveting. Plus, what’s next on Yellowjackets and Batwoman. Spoilers now!

An Alienware executive once told me that Alienware would never make a thin and light gaming notebook, because the company preferred to deliver systems with good value and performance without compromising on thermals. But that exec doesn’t work at Alienware anymore, and after years of waiting for a system I thought…Read more...

From dimming the screen brightness to switching on airplane mode to carrying around a portable charger, keeping a smartphone battery alive as long as possible between charges is a challenge that we’ve faced for as long as smartphones have been around. With the many upgrades we’ve seen from smartphones over the years,…Read more...

You’ll no longer have an excuse to mess up the lyrics of every song. Spotify is finally adding a live lyrics feature, so all you have to do is play a song to finally find out if Taylor Swift is singing about “Starbucks lovers” (the answer, sadly, is no).

A scientist who works on the AstraZeneca vaccine with Oxford University in the UK has come out to defend the decision to sell its covid-19 vaccine at a profit, according to a new report from the Financial Times. AstraZeneca was previously unique because it sold the covid-19 vaccine at cost, unlike most other vaccine…Read more...

Whenever an app on my iPhone doesn’t work, I tend to open it and close it over and over again to try to will it back to life. If that doesn’t yield results, I tend to stare at my device and attempt to burn an imaginary hole through it with my annoyance. Yet, I have never been filled with “rage” about an app not…Read more...

More than a week after popular investment and trading platform Robinhood revealed that hackers had obtained access to a “limited amount” of its customers’ personal information, the company has now stated that some of the stolen information included thousands of phone numbers.Read more...

It’s not that uncommon for a director or writer to also star in the movie they director or wrote. What’s less common, by far, is when writer-director also plays the horrifying monster in their movie—but that’s the case with Death Valley, Matthew Ninaber’s new sci-fi horror movie coming to Shudder next month. The…Read more...

Still excited by last night’s Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer? Well, you can prolong those Marvel Cinematic Universe endorphins by checking out Hot Toys’ new figure of the upcoming movie’s Spider-Man. Not only is it gorgeous (as usual) but it offers a great look at the new costume Peter Parker (Tom Holland) will be…Read more...

TerraPower, an experimental nuclear power company backed by Bill Gates, could open its first site as early as 2028 in the coal mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming. Adding a touch of symbolism for out with the old, in with the new, the company says their plant would be constructed near the premises of a pair of coal…Read more...

Apparently seeking to bring users more access to the wonderful world of sports, Apple is reportedly hard at work on a new framework that would potentially improve streaming coverage within its iOS and Apple TV apps.

Oh, Riverdale, please never change. Your ridiculousness is always a delight, and you somehow manage to keep getting more ridiculous. However, last night’s season six premiere on the CW set a bar so high I honestly don’t know how you’ll top it. It was also the beginning of a five-part Riverdale “event” and it kicked…Read more...

TikTok just agreed to settle a massive $92 million class action lawsuit, and anyone who used the app prior to Sept. 30 of this year could be entitled to a payout.

By this point, you are probably already sick of the metaverse, and it hasn’t even arrived. Though the term has existed in science fiction for decades, it quickly became tech’s hottest buzzword and greatest source of marketing material since Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook (now Meta) would become a metaverse company…Read more...

Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, the far-right Republican conspiracy theorist who unsuccessfully tried to launch a white nationalist caucus with QAnon-loving Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene earlier this year, was censured in a full vote of the House on Wednesday. At issue was an anime video that Gosar shared…Read more...

Hubble Space Telescope, with all but one of its science instruments currently in safe mode, could soon be back in business, as mission team members prepare to roll out a recovery plan.

Our latest look at Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home is here, and Peter Parker’s got new mentors, new foes, and a whole new multiverse of mess to deal with in his latest superhero movie. Let’s break down the new trailer and see what secrets we can speculate about for our latest trip into the Spider-Verse.

Farmers in British Columbia are working overtime to save their livestock from devastating floods, including leading cattle through neck-deep water using jet skis and pulling calves onto motorboats. While the images of the cow rescue may seem a little ridiculous, it’s a deadly serious sign of the destruction wrought by…Read more...

On Thursday, ConstitutionDAO might realize the blockchain’s fullest democratic potential and purchase a copy of the United States Constitution at Sotheby’s auction house. It’s reminiscent of the group of collectors that bought the single-edition Wu-Tang album this past summer, except it’s open to all, and it’s…Read more...

In the dead of night, Malik Khan (Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed) suddenly turns up at the home of his young sons Jay (Lucian-River Chauhan) and Bobby (Aditya Geddada). Though he hasn’t seen them in years, he’s intent on whisking them away on top-secret business. But is the mission—and the implied alien threat behind it—real,…Read more...

The world got a stark reminder this week that Earth’s orbit is increasingly a crowded and potentially dangerous place. After the Russian military destroyed one of its defunct satellites in a weapons test early Monday morning, the crew of the International Space Station was forced to take shelter as high-speed debris…Read more...

In the not-so-distant future, campers and hikers may be able to get a shot that not only protects them from Lyme disease but also from the bloodsucking ticks that spread it—at least if Yale-led research into an anti-tick vaccine continues to show promise. In a new study involving guinea pigs, an experimental…Read more...

Tidal, the premium streaming music service geared toward audio enthusiasts with artist backers like Jay-Z, is making some significant changes to its subscription plans to bring in more listeners.

I don’t have to see more than the two-and-a-half-minute trailer for Don’t Look Up to feel confident in saying that it will almost surely be the best climate film made to date.

It’s standard procedure for comic book heroes and villains to come back from the dead. But sometimes they come back but stay dead, and that’s the case in DC Comics’ new series Task Force Z. io9 has your exclusive preview today.

Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon shaman” who became one of the leading faces of the January 6 Capitol Hill Riots, was sentenced to 41 months in prison after pleading guilty to civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, and disorderly conduct in a restricted building, according to The Daily Beast.Read more...

The 14 books that comprise Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy series were released over 23 years. Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming TV adaptation can’t possibly last half that long, but if the show is successful, it’s still going to be a massive time investment for every actor on board. When io9 asked star Daniel…Read more...

My biggest takeaway from last year’s Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. was that Nintendo could have, and should have, included more games. It was a complaint the company has more or less addressed with the new Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda, resulting in a better handheld for casual play. It’s arguably a must-have…Read more...

Everybody loves a Christmas horror movie—and there are more than enough to fill up every night of December. For this list, we’re celebrating 11 of our all-time favorite holiday monsters as featured in some of those bone-chilling Yuletide classics: killer toys, killer treats, killer trees, monsters, and jolly demons…Read more...

After a year filled with massive hacks and lord-knows how many exploits, you’d think we would all learn to be a bit—just a bit!—more cyber-savvy as 2021 comes to a close. But if this year’s list of the 200 most popular passwords is any indication, we’re just as dumb as we’ve ever been. Perhaps even dumber.Read more...

Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home certainly looks exciting, but it sounds like things were equally exciting on the other side of the camera, too—especially in terms of the movie’s casting, which may hold a clue to some of the surprise cameos that may be in the film.

Addressing world leaders at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow earlier this month, President Joe Biden declared this to be a “decisive decade in which we have an opportunity to prove ourselves” on climate. Less than a week after the end of that UN meeting, the Biden administration will hold the largest…Read more...

The trade organization once central to Big Tech’s intensive lobbying efforts appears to be slowly fading into the background as companies increasingly opt for a go-it-alone approach. That decline escalated this week with a new report from Axios revealing Microsoft and Uber, among two of the group’s largest members,…Read more...

As much as the new Cowboy Bebop takes notes from the original show in terms of its story beats, John Cho, Daniella Pineda, and Mustafa Shakir all bring a difference to their performances as Spike, Faye, and Jet that immediately sets them apart from their animated counterparts. io9 recently got the chance to speak with…Read more...

Once dubbed “one of right-to-repair’s most powerful villains,” Apple made the surprising announcement on Wednesday that it will begin accommodating DIY repairs by selling customers the parts and tools they need to repair their iPhones and Macs at home.

Amazon will stop accepting credit cards from Visa as early as January, according to multiple reports early Wednesday. Why? It’s yet another thing that can be blamed on Brexit, the UK’s split from the European Union in 2020.

The Staples Center in Los Angeles, home to the Lakers and Clippers basketball teams, will become Crypto.com Arena, according to an announcement from the cryptocurrency company late Tuesday. And it’s just one more sign that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum have become mainstream, despite being highly…Read more...

Poor Peter Parker. All he wanted was a magical undo button of the worst day of his superheroing life—the one where his identity got exposed, not the one where his work dad died saving the world—and all he got was multiple guys he’s never even met who want him dead.

In the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, it seemed like every character, no matter how minor, had had a run-in with Han Solo. In the new canon, everyone will somehow be connected to the Halcyon, aka the Galactic Starcruiser, aka Walt Disney World’s ludicrously expensive hotel/Star Wars LARP zone. Or at least they will…Read more...

Things are a deadly, dangerous mess in the Pacific Northwest right now. An atmospheric river dumped rain across the region over the weekend, prompting widespread flooding and mudslides. Much of the damage occurred in places still trying to recover from a devastating wildfire season this summer, showing how climate…Read more...

Samsung may finally have some rivalry in the Android-compatible wearables department—though it’s pretty easy at this point as the Galaxy Watch 4 is one of the few smartwatches worth buying. The competition comes from an unlikely brand.

New research out this week suggests that a tea or coffee habit in your later years could help your brain stay in tip-top shape. The study found that healthy older adults in the UK who regularly drank coffee and/or tea were less likely to develop stroke and dementia over an 11-year period than those who drank neither.…Read more...

Elon Musk’s bonkers Twitter behavior has landed Tesla in hot water yet again. This time, it’s with JPMorgan Chase, which sued the auto manufacturer in Manhattan federal court on Monday for a hefty $162 million over the chaos that ensued following the Tesla CEO’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet back in 2018.Read more...

For three seasons, most of the world has watched Star Trek: Discovery through Netflix, the streaming platform that was, outside of the U.S. at least, also home to most of Star Trek’s past as well. But in a shocking move, days before the series was set to return to the streamer for its fourth season, now those fans…Read more...