Gizmodo

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...

Even living in an age of climate denialism, pandemic denialism, and so on and so forth, you’d think a trailer for a comedy about humanity collectively burying its heads in the ground while a massive comet comes to wipe out life on Earth wouldn’t quite hit so disconcertingly hard as it does. And yet, here we are.

Spotify, Discord, and Snapchat were all experiencing issues on Tuesday, with early reports indicating that a brief Google Cloud outage could have been the culprit.Read more...

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One might think that after waiting around Dallas, Texas for weeks expecting JFK Jr. (a man who is dead) to emerge and give a surprise speech restoring Donald Trump to the presidency, one would simply conclude that JFK Jr. is dead and he’s not going to do that. That is not the case for QAnon supporters.Read more...

If your favorite part of the holidays is parking your butt on your couch and watching TV, good news. You are not going to lack for holiday entertainment as 2021 draws to a close. Alien shoppers, festive archers, a Santa suit-clad Satan, and a movie called A Boy Named Christmas—which seems to be about a boy who is very…Read more...

Batteries are the curse of every device not permanently tethered to a power cord, but wireless earbuds manage to eke out a decent amount of playback time through the use of charging cases—a minor inconvenience but an acceptable compromise. The new Relods buds manage to boost their battery life even further by…Read more...

In 1983, astronomer Michael Rowan-Robinson conducted a search for a proposed 10th planet (Pluto still being a planet at the time) using data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, the first infrared space telescope. Rowan-Robinson didn’t turn up a new planet, and by 1991, he was pretty sure that such a planet did…Read more...

Live-action adaptations of Sir Terry Pratchett’s beloved Discworld books have always been a mixed bag, but we might have finally found a winner. Penguin Random House has announced that it has commissioned new audiobook recordings of all 40 Discworld novels, using a variety of British stars to bring them to life.

A bizarre wildfire has ignited near Estes Park, Colorado, forcing residents to flee at a time of year when they’re usually gearing up for ski lifts to start turning.

An outbreak of flu at the University of Michigan has sickened more than 500 people since early October. Local health officials have now brought in help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the matter, which may offer a preview of the flu season this winter. One important consideration is…Read more...

We’ve known the young stars of Netflix’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender for a few months, leaving fans to wonder: who would play Uncle Iroh, the kindly former Fire Nation general-turned-mentor who travels with Prince Zuko, and one of the most beloved characters in the entire franchise?…Read more...

Expanse fans! You’re gonna need to stop what you’re doing right now and watch the trailer that Amazon Prime Video just released for the show’s upcoming sixth and (sob) final season. That teaser from October? Just a tiny, tiny taste. This new look is a juicy, nerve-wracking, revealing (but not spoiler-y) delight. Just…Read more...

Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy book series has traveled a weird road to get to TV. Now that the live-action adaptation of The Wheel of Time is here, the results are… well, weird. It’s a show that’s full of contradictions; it clearly loves the source material but constantly fights with it. The series is…Read more...

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has spoken out about an anti-satellite weapons test that potentially sent debris into the path of the International Space Station yesterday, saying it’s “unthinkable” that Russia would endanger both American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.

The volcano that has been erupting on the Canary Islands since September has claimed its first victim.Read more...

Renowned conservationist Jeff Bezos has shared his vision for planet Earth. It’s not enough to protect it for the humans living here. No. Instead, according to the second-richest man on this planet, future generations “will visit Earth the way you visit Yellowstone National Park.”Read more...

As part of its Disney Plus Day promotion last week, Disney partnered with TikTok to release a suite of text-to-speech voices featuring beloved characters like Chewbacca and Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, but wouldn’t let them say words like “queer,” “gay” or “lesbian.”Read more...

The folks at Adult Swim decided that there was not nearly enough anime Rick and Morty this year, or not nearly enough Rick and Morty shorts in general, so lucky us: we’re blessed with round two of Studio Deen’s samurai spin on the multiversal duo.

Wireless charging doesn’t facilitate as much freedom as the name implies—although it technically allows a device to be charged without plugging in a cable, that’s about it. True wireless charging isn’t that far off, however, as today Ossia announced a partnership with Archos to release the first gadgets that can be…Read more...