Gizmodo

It’s been nearly four months since the devastating Texas blackouts. And thanks to a relatively speedy peer review process, we now have an academic accounting of what exactly went wrong—and how to prepare the grid for future extreme weather.

Apple’s decision to spin-off a separate version of iOS for the iPad (and to stick its M1 processor inside the devices) makes even more sense with the arrival of iPadOS 15 that continues to push the tablets away from being just media consumption devices to serviceable laptop replacements with improved multi-tasking,…Read more...

We’re all hopelessly addicted to our phones, and we’re all incredibly irritated by the way our devices suck up so much of our time and attention. Apple just showed off iOS 15, a software update coming to iPhones this fall that will solve some of those annoyances.

For season three, Amazon’s The Boys is diving into its past and there is no past without Soldier Boy. As was previously reported, Soldier Boy is being played by none other than Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles; in the world of the show, he was basically the original superhero, long before the Seven were a thing. Now we’ve…Read more...

The hat. The whip. The ability to take a punch. It was 40 years ago this week that audiences fell in love with Indiana Jones’ best attributes in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Released June 12, 1981, this brainchild of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (with plenty of Lawrence Kasdan, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy,…Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the drug aducanumab as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, the first ever intended to slow the progression of the incurable dementia. The go-ahead marks a rare case in which the FDA went against the recommendations of the outside panel it solicited for advice, who…Read more...

For the second year in a row, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote will be all virtual. And while we miss the rush of a swarm of developers and journalists swarming Cupertino, that won’t stop us from liveblogging the hell out of this keynote from the comfort of our couches.Read more...

Like the Darking himself, the Grishaverse lives another day. Netflix has announced that season two of the TV adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy novels has been summoned out of the darkness.

The new Locked Folder in Google Photos, which the company debuted at its developer conference last month, is officially rolling out today. It’s part of the latest feature drop for Pixel users, which includes a new way to take a video of the night sky, plus better copy and paste in Gboard and a Digital Wellbeing mode…Read more...

HBO Max just debuted a more affordable pricing tier with ads, and now Paramount+ is following suit with a new Essential plan that starts at just $5 per month.Read more...

Last week brought some good news for an at-risk desert flower. The Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it will propose listing the Tiehm’s buckwheat flower, a cute little puffball-style plant with yellow-orange petals, as an endangered species. But doing so could make it harder to mine lithium, a key metal for…Read more...

A lone rotifer has awakened after spending the past 24,000 years in frozen hibernation. Scientists hope that further studies of this multicellular animal may lead to better ways of cryopreserving human cells, tissues, and organs.

Though Marvel’s WandaVision’s first few episodes evoked the aesthetics of previous eras of TV by relying on a variety of practical effects, one of the most impressive things about the Disney+ show is how the vast majority of its shots featuring Vision required a sizable amount of modern technology you’re not meant to…Read more...

One of the world’s longest-lived chimpanzees has died. Officials at the San Francisco Zoo announced Sunday that Cobby the chimp passed away this weekend at the ripe old age of 63. Cobby was the oldest male chimp living in an accredited North American zoo.Read more...

For the past month, Blue Origin has been auctioning off a ride to space. Previously billed as just an open “seat” on a “crewed trip.” Now, Jeff Bezos has slipped a little detail in the mix: he and his brother Mark will be coming. You would have thought they would have mentioned that earlier? Would have been nice. The…Read more...

The Toxic Avenger may have found its villain. Get a glimpse of Diggle’s return on Batwoman. Filming beings on Evil Dead Rise. Plus, new clips from Luca, and what’s to come on Legends of Tomorrow. To me, my spoilers!

There are only two things we absolutely know for sure about WWDC21. The first is that the all-virtual developer’s conference will kick off June 7, at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT. The second is we’ll hear what the company’s got in store for the latest versions of iOS, macOS, and its other software platforms.Read more...

If you’ve invested in a decent gaming PC, you’ll probably want to capture and share some of the highs and lows of your gaming exploits. If you haven’t gotten started yet, we’re here to introduce a few of the best software options available to you right now.Read more...

It appears that not just anyone will be able to make bank for the time they spend on Twitter. If you’re looking to get people to pay you for your “exclusive” Twitter content and become your Super Followers, you might have to meet a certain set of criteria and fill out an application.Read more...

Top officials in Turkey have vowed to defeat a plague of “sea snot” that has coated a shoreline near Istanbul in a slimy film of beige sludge that reeks.Read more...

[Editor’s Note: Sorry, folks! Happens to all of us. - Jill P.]Read more...

One day after it banned Twitter, Nigeria announced that authorities would arrest and prosecute users who attempted to use the social network, whose app and website were still available to some in the country on Saturday despite the ban.Read more...

What do Doctor Strange, Anthony Bourdain, and Indiana Jones have in common? Well, writer Michael Waldron, of course.

El Salvador may soon become the first sovereign nation in the world to adopt bitcoin as a legal tender, Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele announced Saturday.Read more...

The MCU is no stranger to time travel. It’s woven within the fabric of many of its stories, with Avengers: Endgame using it to change the course of Marvel.Read more...

A Quiet Place is becoming a cinematic universe as Paramount Pictures gave the greenlight to a spin-off film set in the same universe.

Fossil, the biggest Wear OS wearables maker, is planning to launch a new, premium Gen 6 smartwatch this fall that will run on Google’s revamped operating system for the devices.Read more...

Square, the digital payments firm led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is teaming up with blockchain technology provider Blockstream Mining to build an open-source, solar-powered bitcoin mining facility at one of Blockstream’s U.S. sites.

A group of Apple employees has written an internal letter to CEO Tim Cook and the company’s executive leadership team asking them to support employees that want to continue to work remotely or in location-flexible ways. The employees stated that many of them have thrived working outside the office and urged Apple…Read more...

Christina Ricci (Monstrous) is joining director Lana Wachowski’s fourth Matrix film.Read more...

The U.S. Department of Justice will no longer secretly obtain the records of journalists during leak investigations, the White House said in a statement Saturday.Read more...

Director Christopher MacBride is no stranger to pushing the limits of storytelling. His previous film, The Conspiracy, explores the world of conspiracy theories through its two protagonists. His new sci-fi thriller Flashback, starring Dylan O’Brien (Maze Runner), takes things to the next level.

One week after the successful premiere, Disney has greenlit a Cruella sequel.Read more...

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Dwayne Johnson are teaming up for the new Warner Bros. action film Emergency.

Typically when we talk about things that are “hidden” in websites, we’re referring to something malicious—data-hoovering cookies, for example, or massive amounts of malware. But not every website dev is trying to con visitors out of their personal info or utterly wreck their devices; some of them just want to say…Read more...

If you love things that sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow, glow in the dark, and seem to defy any definition of the term rock, you’ve got to visit the new Halls of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I recently got a preview of the new space, and as someone who grew…Read more...

Roughly 1,500 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a rogue drone crash-landed and scared off thousands of birds, the Orange County Register and New York Times reported this week.Read more...

AMC is the latest meme stock darling for hordes of online investors, and CEO Adam Aron has been leaning heavily into the company’s newfound virality. However, I doubt he ever expected to become a meme himself, as was the case this week after he appeared to be pantless during a live interview with a YouTuber.Read more...

There have been several documentaries about and tributes for Charlie Brown and Snoopy, along with their creator, Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. But there’s still plenty of room for more, which is good because Apple TV has a new one on the way titled Who Are You, Charlie Brown? and its first trailer is here.

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of everything good and plastic we’d like to spend all our money on. This week: Lego takes us back to the time of Batusi and “Let It Go” in new Batman and Frozen sets, Singular Point’s chonky new Godzilla puts the Big in Big G, and Hot Toys has spoken: it’s Blurrg time.…Read more...

It’s June 4, the 32nd anniversary of the infamous 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when Chinese troops crushed a pro-democracy protest movement by opening fire on and slaughtering hundreds of demonstrators in Beijing.

A ferocious bidding war over a misshapen chicken nugget concluded at $99,997 in the wee hours of Friday morning. Doesn’t seem weird at all, in a world where people are spending millions of dollars for blockchain tokens backed only by words. But wait, is this a sign of a healthy economy, us walking around like the…Read more...

N.K. Jemisin has already made history by winning three consecutive Hugo awards for each entry in her Broken Earth trilogy: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky. Now, the perhaps inevitable next step is here, with a just-announced big-screen deal with Sony’s TriStar Pictures that will see the author…Read more...

Dell is being taken to court in California over the company’s claims that its Alienware Area 51m-R1 gaming laptops can be upgraded.Read more...

In an apparent effort to kill fewer people, police departments across the country are investing in what is basically a high-tech lasso designed to automatically restrain suspects without cops having to electrocute or shoot them.Read more...

We don’t know what the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is actually going to be called yet, but its first new cast member has just been revealed. It’s Issa Rae, best known for creating and starring in the HBO show Insecure, who’ll be voicing Jessica Drew, aka, Spider-Woman. The Hollywood Reporter broke the…Read more...

For anyone naive enough to believe the forthcoming congressionally-ordered report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) observed by U.S. military personnel in recent years would shed some light on the issue, you’re probably about to be let down big time. Reports on Friday, citing people familiar with the inquiry,…Read more...

The first trailer for Mark Wahlberg’s upcoming sorta-sci-fi movie Infinite dropped a mere week ago, explaining how a select group of constantly reincarnating people keep their memories and fight each other. This new trailer drops all that to present the movie as a Fast and the Furious clone built on the bones of…Read more...

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new injectable medication for treating obesity—one shown to help people lose a significant amount of weight in clinical trials when taken regularly. The drug, called Wegovy, may just signal a new era in obesity treatment.