Gizmodo

Behind every TikTok, Zoom call, and cat meme is a data center that stores, processes, or reroutes that data around the world. The more we do online, the bigger these data centers and their energy footprint get.

The year 2021, like 2020 before it, has been rough for us all. In many ways, it’s been defined by a continued sense of loss. As the year comes to a close, we’re looking back on a few of the notable actors, directors, artists, writers, and sci-fi icons we lost this year, in tribute to their influence on some of our …Read more...

One of Norway’s largest local news publishers, Amedia, had its operations come to a screeching halt on Tuesday following a major cyberattack on its central computer systems. The 78 newspapers that the company owns can’t be printed, readers can’t subscribe (or unsubscribe) from their local paper, and there’s no clear…Read more...

I love my old car. It’s officially a teenager—13, to be exact—but its in-dash entertainment setup makes it seem a whole lot older. For the longest time, I’ve been using the Android Auto app on my smartphone as my car’s “infotainment” system. Years ago, I yanked out the 30-pin proprietary iPod hookup in my glovebox to…Read more...

Dehydration is already a leading cause of death among migrants crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S., and conditions will become worse as the climate continues to warm, according to new research published earlier this month in Science.Read more...

“Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia,” the new Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix Resurrections. In a blockbuster space addled with reliving the days of the franchise’s past, seeing it cut into the film’s trailers can almost come across as biting—a knowing tut at an emotional panacea. But Resurrections’…Read more...

Ah, another day, another incomprehensible temperature record. This time, the unwanted accolade goes to Alaska, which set a statewide temperature record for December just days before the end of the year, according to the National Weather Service. The Kodiak Tide gauge recorded temperatures for the state hovering at 67…Read more...

Did LastPass get hacked?Read more...

The Webb Space Telescope left Earth safe and sound on Christmas morning, and astronomers across the world breathed a sigh of relief. But the weeks ahead contain a series of hurdles that must be cleared for the $10 billion telescope to begin its scientific duties. On Monday night, Webb officially passed the orbital…Read more...

Microsoft hasn’t quite stuck the landing with its Surface Duo folding smartphone attempts, but the company is already eyeing the next major advancement, and it could be as simple as adding another screen.

The battle between the mascots for Nintendo and Sega may never end. It of course has raged on for years on gaming consoles, but in recent years, first Sonic had a hit movie, and now Mario is getting a movie. Then Mario got a Lego set, and now Sonic is getting one too. Sonic’s set, however, seems way more fun than…Read more...

We’ve reviewed a ton of laptops and played around with even more. Whether you’re looking for a cheap device or a powerful gaming machine, we’ve put together a list of the very best laptops and convertibles you can buy right now.

Flying during the holiday season is already stressful enough, but the rampant spread of the Omicron variant is quickly making people’s travel plans even more hellish. More than 2,500 flights have been canceled on Tuesday alone, according to the airline tracking website FlightAware, with over 5,500 more delayed across…Read more...

“If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from,” says Luke Skywalker in response to C-3PO’s query about where he and R2-D2 have landed. The first time we watch Star Wars: A New Hope, we have no reason to disbelieve him: The desert planet of Tatooine is almost nothing but sand…Read more...

Fresh off the Christmas holiday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its guidance on how long people should isolate away from others if they’ve been infected by or exposed to the coronavirus. The change effectively cuts the waiting period in half for many people, particularly those without…Read more...

A series of winter storms in California over the Christmas weekend dumped snow all over the Sierra Nevada mountains. This is good water news for the upcoming year following a bone-dry summer that set several worrying new records for water scarcity.Read more...

While the world was busy trying to fight off supply chain delays for their holiday presents, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sealed the deal on an expensive year-end purchase of his own: a $17 million plot of land in Hawaii’s Kauai island. That land grab, first reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, adds to the…Read more...

Watching The Matrix Resurrections is like eating a huge holiday meal. You love it, but you need a few minutes to digest. Well, that time is over. Last week, we posted about how co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon got on board the project with friend and collaborator Lana Wachowski, and what they had to say…Read more...

A former content moderator for TikTok is suing the social media giant and its parent company, ByteDance, for reportedly failing to take measures to protect her mental health after she watched countless hours of traumatic videos involving cannibalism, rapes, animal mutilation, and suicides, among numerous other…Read more...

Apple’s App Store payment policy was just dealt another blow in the Netherlands, where the Authority for Consumers and Markets, or ACM, the country’s top competition regulator, determined the rules violated Dutch competition law by not allowing dating apps to offer users alternative payment options.Read more...

For as bad as 2021 could get, pop culture provided us some bright spots. Be it pretty good movies, solid video games, or enchanting novels, there were plenty of ways to escape a year that bounced erratically back and forth between being tolerably bad and agonizingly painful.

The second season of Netflix’s The Witcher brings a lot of good material with it, from the growing relationship between Geralt (Henry Cavill) and Ciri (Freya Allan) to Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) growing into her magical power. For Geralt and Ciri in particular, a lot of their relationship is rooted in him training her…Read more...

Yep, that didn’t take long. After a massive opening weekend and continually earning money over the week, many predicted that Spider-Man: No Way Home would cross a billion dollars by the end of Christmas weekend, and they were proven right.

Of the many things that MCU fans have wanted from the Disney+ shows, bringing back actors from the short lived Marvel Netflix run is high on the list. This month, those fans have certainly got their wish: not only is Charlie Cox set to return as Daredevil in the near future, his archnemesis Wilson Fisk has already…Read more...

Ahh, crypto. We’ve all heard the seductive, utopian platitudes sung by digital currency evangelicals: It’s changing the world (or, as BitConnect guy once put it, “The world is not anymore the way it used to be!”)! It’s revolutionizing finance (no more banks)! It’ll make you fucking rich, you idiot! It’s all good…Read more...

Here comes Tesla with the gift you never knew you wanted (or don’t really want but hey, you know what they say about looking a gift horse in the mouth). Last Christmas, it gave its cars the ability to fart and bleat like goats. Apparently feeling more generous this year, Tesla decided that everyone needed a feature to…Read more...

After nearly three months of wreaking destruction on La Palma with its lava, ash, and earthquakes, in recent days the Cumbre Vieja volcano fell silent on the island. Experts officially certified that the eruption was over on Christmas Day. Some media outlets, and even Spain’s president, said it was the volcano’s…Read more...

Did you remember there’s two versions of Pinocchio we’re supposed to be graced with in 2022? One of them comes from Disney, obviously, but the other hails from acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro . The director of the recently released Nightmare Alley and Shape of Water has a new take on the classic character for…Read more...

Earlier this year in May, the manga community was shocked at the news that Berserk mangaka Kentaro Miura had passed away at the age of 54. Since it first debuted in 1989, the dark fantasy manga has been incredibly popular and influential, becoming one of the best-selling manga of all time and spawning multiple anime,…Read more...

To say that Spider-Man: No Way Home is a success would perhaps be understating things. Tom Holland’s third solo outing as the webhead is a multiverse breaking hit and is currently expected to break $1 billion at the box office by the end of the holiday weekend. But that’s not enough for Marvel, whose movies this year…Read more...

It’s been a year of highs and lows, but some—whether they were the fictional stars of our favorite stories this year, or the real-world figures behind them—made the most out of the wild times in which we live to make 2021 a highlight. Here’s a few of io9's select 2021 heroes, fictional or otherwise, who can count the…Read more...

Fans know to stay put through the credits on a Marvel movie, but maybe not on a Matrix movie. However, they definitely should when it comes to The Matrix Resurrections, which is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.Read more...

Sun-gazing spacecraft managed by NASA and the European Space Agency are providing unique views of Comet Leonard, an ultrafast chunk of rock, dust, and ice that’s currently traveling through the inner solar system.

Boba Fett is dead no more, long live Boba Fett! Next week, The Book of Boba Fett will kick off a new adventure with Temuera Morrison’s legendary Bounty Hunter, paving a new way forward for his criminal empire while exploring just how he cheated his (rather goofy) death in Return of the Jedi. But this is Star Wars: of…Read more...

There are times in life when you have to chose between paying a boatload of money or watching a very big explosion. Well, not really, but Finnish man Tuomas Katainen sure did. Katainen is a 2013 Tesla Model S owner who was told he would have to pay more than $22,600 to replace the battery on his car. For him, it…Read more...

Season six of The Expanse is ripping right along, as Avasarala discovers trouble brewing on Ceres, Drummer builds a key new alliance, and the Rocinante crew’s brief breather after last week’s big discovery is rudely interrupted by a certain Mr. Inaros. And has a smidge of Pet Sematary has entered the chat? Let’s get…Read more...

We’re nearly a year into the Joe Biden presidency, a presidency the man himself declared would be devoted to combatting climate change. He arrived in office at the start of a critical decade, and the Biden years will play a major role in shaping it.Read more...

Humanity’s reach into space has never been greater, with 2022 promising to be one of the most thrilling yet. Here are the space stories we’ll be watching in the coming months.

Apple’s AirTags and Samsung’s SmartTags this year joined an already crowded Bluetooth tracker market. These little devices attach to key rings, backpacks, and luggage or can be tucked inside a bag or attached to any other possession you’re afraid to lose, sending you alerts when it leaves your side and even enabling…Read more...

Just in time for cold and flu season, a Japanese professor has reportedly invented the first lickable TV, which will let users taste while they watch for a 4D sensory experience.

If you’re a fan of the games, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the long-in-development-hell Uncharted movie would be about protagonist, adventurer, and treasure hunter Nathan Drake. However, this newest trailer for the Sony movie seemingly wants to remind you that this is a prequel to the games where Drake (Tom…Read more...

The Webb Space Telescope, after years of delays, has finally reached the launch pad. It’s a momentous occasion, but the observatory still needs to go through a complex and unprecedented commissioning process that will require a nerve-wracking six months to complete. The hard part, it would seem, is still to come.

We know the man who brought Doctor Who into the 21st century is returning to the series he helped revitalize after showrunner Chris Chibnall and current Doctor Jodie Whittaker depart the TARDIS after three specials scattered throughout 2022. But now we know when the second era of Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who will…Read more...

Houston area residents were startled awake early this morning by a thunderous boom followed up by smoke-filled, orange-tinted skies. The boom, felt at least 20 miles (32 kilometers) away by residents in the Clear Lake suburb, originated from Exxon’s Baytown refining and petrochemical facilities.Read more...

Flexible screens are now used in smartphones and even laptops, but LG thinks they should be the centerpiece of your home and it’s hauling two wacky concepts to the CES 2022 show floor to convince you.

The weather, it’s just like us. As Omicron rages across the U.S. and people are forced to decide whether to travel amidst murky public health guidance, the weather also seems to have thrown its hands in a collective atmospheric “fuck it.”Read more...

Writer Kyle Higgins and artist Marcelo Costa’s Radiant Black has been quite the hit for Image Comics. Issue #11 isn’t even out yet, but the Power Rangers-influenced superhero comic has already had a spin-off of Rogue Sun, and a crossover event with Mat Groom and Erica D’Urso’s Kamen Rider-esque Inferno Girl Red. Now…Read more...

Bryan Fuller promises maximum horny for his Christine remake. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 asks you to pick between the red quill and the blue quill. HBO Max’s 2022 glimpse offers new looks at the Gremlins TV show and House of the Dragon. Plus, what’s coming on Legends of Tomorrow and Naomi. Spoilers, away!

In 2021, archaeologists learned more about a famous bog body known as the Tollund Man, daily life in Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius’s fateful eruption, some of the oldest human handprints on Earth, and much more. Enjoy these 11 postcards from humanity’s ancient past.Read more...

As if you needed another reason to be angry about the world in 2021, there’s been a spate of seal killings in Hawaii. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed this week that a young female monk seal found dead on the island of Molokai in September was shot in the head. The tragedy marks at least…Read more...