Gizmodo

A movie about killing is scary enough. A movie that could actually kill you is something else entirely. And yet, that’s the fear the new Scream movie is facing when it hits theaters Friday. While film fans returned to theaters in droves last month for Spider-Man: No Way Home, the omicron variant of covid-19 might keep…Read more...

“Smart guns,” the personalized firearms once heralded as tech’s solution to rampant U.S. gun deaths before quietly pittering out of the mainstream conversation, are gearing up for a 2022 comeback.Read more...

On Monday, the U.S. government released data showing that 2021 was the third-costliest year for extreme weather on record. It was also the highest tally for the number of disasters that cost $1 billion or more, beating 2020, and the deadliest year in a decade.

The American Red Cross is facing a major blood donation shortage. On Tuesday, the organization announced its first-ever national blood crisis, citing the damaging effects that the winter covid-19 surge has had on the blood supply. They’re now calling for eligible people to donate as soon as possible.Read more...

I hate to break it to you, but Alligator Loki—the sensational character find of 2021—was not a real alligator someone had cruelly glued an adorable Loki hat on. Instead, the Marvel TV series Loki was forced to summon the real world’s foremost illusionists, i.e. Industrial Light & Magic, to create the Gator of Mischief…Read more...

A 57-year-old man is recovering in a Maryland hospital after receiving a genetically modified pig’s heart, in what is a groundbreaking medical achievement.

We can say with some certainty that Apple is working on an AR/VR headset scheduled to arrive as early as this year, but the details of this mysterious product are a puzzle being solved one piece at a time.

It’s taken more than four full years since it was initially announced, but we finally have our first look at The Bob’s Burgers Movie and I very much suspect fans of the long-running Fox animated series will be satisfied with this first trailer. Nothing’s changed but the aspect ratio.

Lee Cronin finds the sounds of hell in a tease from Evil Dead Rise’s editing process. Peacemaker attempts to find his own brand in a new clip from the HBO Max show. Plus, James Gunn teases audience expectations of Adam Warlock in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and new The Book of Boba Fett posters drop in. Spoilers…Read more...

A bill before the New York State Assembly could finally impose some standards on an incredibly polluting but little-regulated industry: fashion. The proposed law, known as the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, would make New York the first state in the U.S. to have any sort of environmental…Read more...

If you have an Android phone, you probably already know you can customize your home screen in a variety of ways. In addition to widgets, you can also set up single-tile shortcuts—buttons that take you straight to a particular setting, or a particular function in an app, or a particular contact.

The U.S. covid-19 vaccination rate has slipped to 59th in the world, right behind Iran and Sri Lanka, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. was ranked 55th in November of 2021, 40th in September, and 18th back in July, but has struggled with an onslaught of medical disinformation…Read more...

Once again, people are talking about how Apple won’t play nice with Android devices. This time Google Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer, who oversees Android, is taking Apple to task over the green bubble struggle and urging the company to embrace a new text messaging standard that will make cross-platform…Read more...

Google just quietly revealed an open-source API standard called Ripple based on the company’s Soli radar technology. Radar was partly responsible for the Google Pixel 4's most gimmicky features, but it’s also how Google tracks sleep in the the newest Nest Hub, and it opens the door for really interesting use cases.

The eccentric developer behind two immensely popular open-source NPM coding libraries recently corrupted them both with a series of bizarre updates—a decision that has led to the bricking of droves of projects that relied upon them for support.Read more...

Invincible was one of io9's favorite animated series of 2021, and we weren’t the only ones who enjoyed it; Amazon Studios has already renewed the adult animated series for a second and third season. But with sweet success comes some saltiness, as an artist who worked on the original Robert Kirkman comic has filed suit…Read more...

When Microsoft released its first Surface devices 10 years ago, people were quick to make comparisons to Apple products not only because of their minimalist aesthetic, but also because they were impossible to repair at home. For years, these machines were so difficult to crack open that attempting to do so was as…Read more...

Apple’s new Private Relay feature for iPhones isn’t sitting well with carriers, and some operators are doing all they can to squash the privacy setting before it reaches your iPhone.

There are few pop culture stories more fascinating than those about projects that were in development but never happened. George Miller’s Justice League. James Cameron’s Spider-Man. Tim Burton’s Superman. And that last one has an even better origin story than the Man of Steel himself. At one point, it was Kevin…Read more...

There hasn’t seemed to be a lot of promotion for the next TV series to join the CW’s Arrowverse, Naomi. This is strange because it comes from Selma’s Ava DuVernay, and unfortunate because this new trailer for the show—which premieres tomorrow night—makes it look unlike any other DC superhero series on the network.

Regular Earther readers will know there was no shortage of apocalyptic weather disasters plaguing the U.S. last year, from pipe-bursting freezes in Texas to road warping heat in the Pacific Northwest to an endless parade of wildfires mixed in for good measure. Now, a new report from the National Centers for…Read more...

Researchers in Finland say they’ve created a novel nasal spray treatment that can provide brief but effective protection from the coronavirus and its many variants, including Omicron. In a recent preliminary study of cells in a petri dish as well as mice, the nasal spray appeared to block the virus from infecting…Read more...

In the age of streaming, dedicated “special features” are hard to come by. Sometimes you have to wait for a rare home release, sometimes they’re made online-only, sometimes what’d be a bonus documentary just drops on the appropriate streamer. But apparently, to change that, all that’s needed is a desire to push your…Read more...

The routine draining and maintenance of a lagoon has resulted in the discovery of the largest and most complete ichthyosaur skeleton ever found in Britain. Excitingly, it’s the first species of its kind to be discovered in the country.

I’m rarely a fan of when actors, directors, etc., tell obvious bald-faced lies to journalists and fans about upcoming projects. The most infamous example will likely forever be J.J. Abrams and Benedict Cumberbatch’s promise that the actor wouldn’t be playing the villain Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness; comparatively, …Read more...

If you don’t want your 2021 tax returns delayed for some ridiculous amount of time, the Internal Revenue Service has one request: file things electronically. Please.Read more...

Covid-19 caused a dip in greenhouse gas emissions, only for them to rebound in the U.S. in 2021.

Yes, you are reading that right. This year, the Sundance Film Festival was set to premiere a remake of the incredible Japanese horror comedy One Cut of the Dead made by Michel Hazanavicius, director of Oscar-winning film The Artist. The film is called Final Cut—but now, in lieu of the festival going fully virtual, the…Read more...

We’re all aware of the chip shortage, but while you might have read about its impact on PC and cars, countless smaller industries are also struggling to operate due to ongoing supply issues. One of those is the printer business, and now a popular brand has been forced to take an aggressive action that’s bound to piss…Read more...

Moxie Marlinspike, creator and CEO of the popular encrypted chat application Signal, says that he will be stepping down as head of the company this year but plans to name a successor in the coming months.Read more...

Every year at CES, we see innovative TVs. Some are gimmicky—3D TVs and rollable screens, anyone?—but some are flat-out stunning. This year was all about a new display technology called Quantum Dot OLED (QD-OLED), and it’s definitely different from your standard OLED flat-screen.Read more...

Europol—the government body responsible for quashing organized crime and terrorist activities across the European Union—has long been in the crosshairs of privacy advocates over its judicious use of citizen surveillance. Now, it’s looking like some European authorities are starting to feel the same; the European Data…Read more...

Bitcoin, the wildly wasteful, inherently speculative cryptocurrency is celebrating the new year by flatlining.

The Perseverance rover has run into a snag, after a Martian rock sample extracted on December 29 didn’t transfer correctly into the rover’s long-term storage. NASA is currently working on how to remove debris from the rover’s machinery before proceeding with more sampling.Read more...

An apartment fire broke out on Sunday in the Bronx and killed 19 people, including nine children younger than 16. It was the deadliest New York fire in more than three decades. Initial reports indicate that the fire was caused by a malfunctioning space heater—which demonstrates how energy efficiency upgrades to…Read more...

You don’t have to be a comic book or movie fan to know the names Riddler, Penguin, or Catwoman. Villains in the Batman universe are as famous, if not more so, than the Caped Crusader himself. And so someone who hasn’t been following every morsel of information about Matt Reeves’ new film, The Batman, might assume they…Read more...

Halloween Kills arrives on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD tomorrow—and we’ve got a peek at one of the bonus features. All told, the release includes the original theatrical version of the film as well as an extended cut with an alternate ending—plus extended and deleted scenes, a gag reel, and behind-the-scenes footage.

Patriots, rejoice. While President Joe Biden may be trying to do things like “make the government slightly more functional,” there is one area where his radical socialist agenda is failing: Appliance efficiency.Read more...

The left wing of Webb’s primary mirror unfolded and locked into position on Saturday, in what was the final step of the major deployments phase. The space telescope finally looks like a telescope, but the commissioning phase is far from over.

Humans and dolphins have even more in common than we might have thought, new research suggests. Biologists say they’ve found clear anatomical evidence that female dolphins have a fully functional clitoris that helps them experience pleasure during sex—just as it does for humans. The findings may one day help…Read more...

Tesla has brought back its Full Self-Driving (FSD) profiles around three months after pulling the feature from an October update. The three driving profiles, labeled “Chill” “Average” and “Assertive,” dictate the ways FSD equipped Tesla’s behave in certain scenarios and the amount of risk the vehicles may take when…Read more...

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio and Surface Pro 8 stole the spotlight from the Surface Go 3 when the company revamped its PC portfolio last year, but now there is another reason to check out the diminutive convertible tablet.

While the real world goes to hell, there’s a comfort—a very small, cold comfort—in knowing that democracy is still holding strong somewhere, namely over at Marvel Comics. Well, not really Marvel Comics, just the X-Men... and even then, that’s kind of overselling it. Look, you just get to elect the team’s new…Read more...

Apple apparently doesn’t want anything to do with tech’s most obnoxious buzzword—I’m referring, of course, to metaverse (a pass for guessing NFT).

Disney offers a tiny glimpse of the return of Hocus Pocus. Kung Fu’s sophomore season adds a trio of new stars. The returning stars of Scream discuss the new movie. Plus, a look at the returns of Resident Alien and Batwoman, and what to expect from the debut of Naomi. Spoilers away!

Panasonic has announced plans to offer a four-day workweek to employees in Japan in an effort to improve productivity and attract better workers, according to a new report from Nikkei Asia. The move comes after the Japanese government made official recommendations to private employers in 2021 that included a shorter…Read more...

The metaverse may be headed to a Disney theme park near you.Read more...

These past few years have felt like a trial run of living through the end times. Thankfully, 2022 seems like it’s off to a promising start: Turkmenistan plans to close the blazing natural gas crater known as the “Gateway to Hell,” presumably to keep the other three horsemen of the apocalypse from following their buddy…Read more...

The movie community wept when news broke earlier this week that Jared Leto’s Morbius was delayed to April. Marvel’s vampiric antihero is meant to be the next addition to Spider-Man’s cinematic world, which has expanded in some interesting ways recently, but it just hasn’t come to fruition for the frontman of 30…Read more...

For Bob’s Burgers fans, the wait for the theatrical movie has been quite a lengthy one. The movie was originally announced in 2017 with a planned release for 2020, but the merger between Disney and Fox has meant the latter company’s movies have been in a strange state of limbo. There would be few or no updates at all…Read more...