Gizmodo

The story of Warcraft is a story of, well, war. Orcs against humans, Horde against Alliance, time and time again the story of Blizzard’s fantasy saga—told across the classic strategy games and, for the past 18 years, groundbreaking MMORPG World of Warcraft—has turned back to stoking conflict between its two biggest…Read more...

Just when you thought having TV shows based on Star Wars, Marvel, DC, The Lord of the Rings, Halo, and about 50 other major franchises wasn’t enough, one of the biggest and baddest is finally rolling its way into the mix. eOne just announced that Rawson Marshall Thurber, the writer and director behind Netflix’s smash…Read more...

We know for a fact that fracking sucks for people and literally poisons the area where it occurs. So many of us have seen terrifying videos of rivers and other bodies of water on fire, and reports of seemingly healthy people suddenly plagued with headaches, random nosebleeds, and rashes. Now, a new study has linked…Read more...

It’s been over a year since we last saw Luci the demon, Elfo the elf, and Bean the newly crowned Queen of Dreamland on Netflix, and things weren’t looking good. Luci had died and gone to heaven. Elfo had been carried away by angry ogres for blinding their prince. And poor Bean had been dragged off to hell by her evil…Read more...

A New York Police Department officer is reportedly being investigated after Suffolk County prosecutors charged his spouse with allegedly carrying out a $1.5 million scheme to sell fake coronavirus vaccine cards to anti-vaxxers and others looking to dodge work or government mandates.

The E-N-E-M-Y of the people has struck A-G-A-I-N.

Last night we got our first proper extended look at Paramount+’s long-awaited Halo: The Series, the latest in a long line of attempts to bring the Master Chief out of video games and into live-action. But not only is the new show about to be the biggest attempt to do just that, it’s also going to be diving into Halo…Read more...

Computer researchers have discovered a new, experimental way to track you across the internet using information culled from your computer or phone’s graphics processing unit.Read more...

Android Auto has been rumored to be getting a huge overhaul for months, but now we know what Google’s in-car navigation system will look like.

Welcome back to io9's 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 new mosaic image taken by the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa has revealed nearly 1,000 multi-light-year-long electron strands at the center of the Milky Way. The strands are huge streaks of cosmic ray particles; though they were discovered nearly 40 years ago, researchers never knew there were so many.

Even after it became the highest-grossing film of all time, George Lucas still wasn’t completely satisfied with Star Wars. Sure, the filmmaker obviously was happy with much of what’s on screen, but the visuals and scope he had in his mind in when he made the movie in the 1970s didn’t line up with the final product. He…Read more...

Joe Rogan has an important message for Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and any other major artist that’s removed their music from Spotify’s platform in response to his podcast’s habit of hosting well-known antivaxxers: he’s sorry, but not sorry enough to stop doing it.Read more...

If you just downloaded the latest version of macOS, 12.2, keep an eye on your MacBook’s battery life. Furious Apple laptop owners are reporting across various forums and social media platforms (Reddit, Twitter) that their MacBooks are experiencing excessive battery drain while in sleep mode (via MacRumors).

Snowed in? A loather of Valentine’s Day? Feeling sluggish on the doom-laden treadmill of life? Perk up with this robust list of brand-new sci-fi and fantasy books coming out in February. We got Jedi! We got space nuns! We got monsters, slippery royals, thieves, and even a taser-wielding librarian! Read on!Read more...

Being cast as Batman isn’t the same as being cast as most other characters. There’s a never-ending legacy to it. A long and storied tradition. And that’s something the new Batman, Robert Pattinson, not only is aware of, but relishes. Speaking to Total Film Magazine about the March 4 release of The Batman, Pattinson…Read more...

Sony is acquiring Bungie for a reported $3.6 billion in the latest move of what has been a string of blockbuster purchases within the gaming industry.

An international team of scientists says all-female termite colonies from Japan are the result of accidental hybridization, and that their highly robust nature makes them an ecological threat.

Fallout from a devastating tropical storm that hit several countries in southern Africa is building as the death count continues to rise and communities struggle to recover. The death toll from Tropical Storm Ana, which blew through Madagascar, Mozambique, and Malawi last week, stood at nearly 80 on Monday, while…Read more...

Leonardo da Vinci is best known for works like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, but what you might not know is that in the 1480s—hundreds of years before the first flight—the polymath sketched a design for an aircraft. Lacking the right materials, da Vinci never built or tested the helicopter-like device, leaving us…Read more...

As convenient as self-checkout machines can be for quickly getting out of a store, they’re also a convenient way to expose yourself to a touchscreen that thousands of others have used. To make the machines more sanitary, some 7-Eleven stores in Japan will be installing floating holographic displays that work without…Read more...

Just like their murderous stars, you can’t keep a venerable horror franchise dead for long. In fact, it’s only been five years since chainsaw-enthusiast Leatherface appeared on screen in 2017's Leatherface, which served as a prequel to the original 1974 film. Now he’s back, and ready to slaughter the real enemy:…Read more...

Every new technology has attracted scam artists throughout history. But the cryptocurrency space is particularly infested with fraud at the moment.

Another familiar face signs up for the Disney+ Santa Clause revival. Get a creepy glimpse at the new adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos. Star Trek: Picard’s showrunner teases the futures not told in season two’s time travel twists. Plus, what’s coming on Resident Alien and more. Spoilers, away!

After days of intense scrutiny, Spotify on Sunday said it would add content advisories on podcast episodes that include discussions on covid-19 to combat misinformation on its platform.Read more...

Since the original Halo released in 2001, Microsoft has been trying for a long time to get Bungie and 343 Industries’ sci-fi shooter into live action beyond excellent commercials and webseries tie-ins. After several aborted attempts at making a movie, Halo is now finally a TV show for Paramount+ (with some speed bumps…Read more...

It’s the end of the month, gang, and what an eventful month it’s been. Like the beginning of every year, there were some solid releases throughout January, but there’s a chance that much of the things you watched or read for the first month of the year were catchups from during the holidays. Now we want to know about …Read more...

Film adaptations of popular YA books were all the rage during the early and mid-2010s, but with few exceptions and a jump to television, have largely fallen to the wayside for the 2020s. That makes it all the more interesting that Marissa Meyer’s beloved YA sci-fi series The Lunar Chronicles is not only being adapted…Read more...

Studio Ghibli is one of the most beloved animation studios around, and their whimsical, resonant worlds are often worth revisiting every now and again just to feel something. For years, we’ve wondered what it would be like to have a theme park based around the studio’s various films, and later this year we’ll finally…Read more...

Days after veteran rocker Neil Young decided to take down his music from Spotify over covid-19 misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience, musician Joni Mitchell has joined him, saying she will also pull her work from the streaming platform.Read more...

As The Batman gets ever closer to release, some of the conversation surrounding Matt Reeves’ upcoming film is what the movie almost ended up being. Namely, that it was originally meant to star and be directed by Ben Affleck, the Dark Knight of the DCEU prior to Robert Pattinson’s casting.Read more...

Guardians of the Galaxy is typically credited with Dave Bautista’s rise to cinematic stardom, but his short turn in Blade Runner 2049 is what drew attention to the actor’s dramatic chops. Thanks to 2049 (and its short film Nowhere to Run), Bautista’s since gone on to show up in pretty good genre work like Dune and …Read more...

The Flash has been through several speedsters (both fairly good and pretty bad), alien invasions, and universe ending crises through its lifetime. Lest you think the current eighth season would be the last of the CW’s Scarlet Speedster, you are mistaken, because the show is coming back for season nine.

I like mock meat. I like tofu, I like tempeh, I really like wheat gluten and seitan.

A free non-fungible token minting tool from OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces online, is being overwhelmingly misused to commit fraud and create spam, the company said on Thursday.

Social media has become an increasingly popular tool among scammers in recent years, which is bad news for those of us that frequent the platforms. A new report from the Federal Trade Commission published this week called social media a “gold mine for scammers,” reminding us all of a guiding principle we should live…Read more...

Just in case you missed some Morning Spoilers this week, we’re trying something new: highlighting some of those stories in video format. But don’t worry, here are links to all those articles below—and you can still read new Morning Spoilers posts every weekday right here on io9!Read more...

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest and coolest toy news on the internet. This week, Hasbro goes ‘90s with a trio of animated X-Men icons, MAFEX swings between the worlds of DC Comics and the Terminator, and Hot Toys returns to The Mandalorian for a few more Nite Owls. Check it out!

The Federal Bureau of Investigation spent two years considering whether it should procure a clandestine commercial spyware tool that could reportedly hack any phone within the United States, according to an investigation by New York Times Magazine.

If you’re also someone who’s waited in line for hours to get a COVID test—or faced similar frustrations trying to buy them at your local drugstore—then you’re in luck. A group of scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara say they’ve developed a new kind of COVID-testing system that only involves some…Read more...

An apartment building with ties to the occult. A person obsessed with a mystery they uncover in found footage. The blurring of media and reality. Surveillance and paranoia. The possibility of other dimensions! Netflix’s spooky series Archive 81 combines all of these elements, and it does it so well it’s no shocker…Read more...

Oil prices are rebounding as global economic activity picks back up. But the boom could likely be a mirage as governments finally get their act together on climate change—and it could lead to financial ruin if Big Oil ends up chasing it.Read more...

Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week suggests that two recently resurfaced drugs are now contributing to the ongoing overdose crisis in the U.S. Among both reported overdose deaths and drug busts, officials are seeing an increase of the drugs para-fluorofentanyl and metonitazene,…Read more...

In 2017, io9 wrote about a short film titled Brian and Charles, dubbing it “beautifully shot and equal parts poignant and wryly hilarious.” So we were thrilled to see that director Jim Archer made a feature film based on his short It just made its debut at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and is an early contender for…Read more...

In a major victory for open internet activists, a federal court has once again shot down the telecom industry’s challenge to a California state net neutrality law.

As noted philosopher and Poison frontman Bret Michaels once said back in 1988, “Every rose has its thorn.” Alas, it’s a truth that even applies to roses that bloom as beautifully as the Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise. We’ve known for a while that the third movie, Vol. 3, would be the last for director James…Read more...

Big businesses are throwing a tantrum in New York over a new pay transparency law requiring all employers with more than four employees to post minimum and maximum salary ranges for posted positions. Those rules are significant and would apply to the majority of New York’s 8.5 million residents.Read more...

As apex predators, orcas can basically feed on whichever marine animal they want, but biologists weren’t entirely sure if these aquatic killers feast on the biggest of them all: blue whales. New evidence suggests they very much do, and it ain’t pretty.

When Star Wars fans think of Corellia, they think of Han Solo. They think of Qi’ra. Maybe they think of piloting the Millennium Falcon there for Hondo Onaka. What they don’t think of is Jedi roaming the streets, but that’s going to change in Star Wars: The High Republic: Midnight Horizon by Daniel José Older—and we’ve…Read more...

Researchers in western Uganda found a new species of leafhopper insect, the first sighting of any animal from its genus seen since 1969. The red-eyed, metallic-looking animal resembles the legendary Mothman and is nearly as rare.Read more...