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io9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “A Tableau of Things That Are” by Adam-Troy Castro. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on our website. Enjoy!Read more...

New research published this week suggests that dogs are born to understand people, at least to some extent. The study showed that 8-week-old puppies preparing to become service dogs were already capable of communicating with humans, even without formal training. Moreover, they found that genetics played a large role…Read more...

Back in January, researchers warned that the iPhone 12 lineup and MagSafe accessories could potentially deactivate implanted medical devices. Now, the American Heart Association has released a study that corroborates these findings on a larger scale, noting that several devices from three major companies were “found…Read more...

Exxon announced Wednesday that a third new member has been appointed to the company’s board, following a week of vote counting after the company was caught by surprise by a shareholder insurrection last week led by activist investor Engine No. 1. The new board member, Alexander “Andy” Karsner, currently works as a…Read more...

The Walt Disney Company’s latest theme park creation opens Friday at Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California and every corner of it is filled with winks and nods to all things Marvel. But the film, TV, and theme park giant’s new “Avengers Campus” won me over when I saw the Lego Death Star.Read more...

Tons of supplies, including tardigrades, baby Hawaiian bobtail squid, and a batch of fresh fruit and vegetables, are scheduled to lift off on Thursday aboard a new SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket bound for the International Space Station. You can watch the action live right here.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday said a Georgia police officer had not violated the country’s main anti-hacking law by improperly accessing a government database for financial gain, a decision likely to curtail prosecutions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of individuals who misuse computer systems to…Read more...

There was a time not too long ago when it felt like a lot of Google’s devices lacked an identity. But since the release of the Pixel 3a, Google has really carved out a niche when it comes to making simple but still affordable gadgets that are big on value. Google is now applying this approach to wireless audio with…Read more...

I assumed there was very little I couldn’t do with my Apple Watch given it has its own well-stocked app store, but Nick Bild has shown me the error of my ways with this delightful Commodore 64-themed C64 Watch that not only has a retro-inspired watch face but a built-in BASIC interpreter too for coding on the go.Read more...

A gateway to the land of damned opened late last night at Universal Studios Hollywood. Fire erupted near the park’s Despicable Me attraction after the giant Minion who overlooks the ride used his dark powers to call forth the other forces of evil into our world. Luckily, the forces of good, a.k.a. firefighters,…Read more...

Whales are some of the biggest animals on the planet, but new research shows that at least one endangered species is shrinking.

See Carlos Valdez bid Cisco farewell in new pictures from The Flash. Prepare yourselves, because Boss Baby is back. Plus, an explosive new clip from F9, and what’s to come on Legends of Tomorrow. To me, my spoilers!

A neo-noir mystery, a love story, and tech-assisted journeys through the darkest parts of the mind all factor into Reminiscence. Written and directed by Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, the sci-fi drama stars Hugh Jackman as a man who specializes in recovering memories—until he falls for an alluring client (Rebecca…Read more...

The gaming controller that came with your PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S can do double-duty on other devices, too. This means you can take advantage of your next-gen controller’s ergonomics and adaptability to play games on your computer, your smartphone, your tablet, and other devices, too. Here’s how…Read more...

TV newsman Bill Moyers likes to tell the story of how Edward R. Murrow, the preeminent U.S. broadcast journalist of his time, insisted on covering what became Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Murrow’s bosses at CBS News had other priorities; they ordered Murrow’s reporters to cover dance competitions in Hamburg,…Read more...

Grimes, the musician and romantic partner of billionaire Elon Musk, is a big believer in artificial intelligence, according to a new TikTok video she posted late Wednesday. What can AI do for humanity? Grimes insists that AI is a way to achieve Communism, something she says is good, while avoiding “collective…Read more...

Jupiter’s Legacy premiered on Netflix just a month ago, and the streamer has already decided it’s a wrap on the superhero series based on Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s Jupiter’s Legacy comics. But it’s not the end for this corner of the Millarverse; instead, the property is pivoting to an anthology format that will…Read more...

We’re nearly halfway through the year and it looks like the meme stocks haven’t ended their run just yet: As of Wednesday, shares of movie theater chain AMC Entertainment were up as much as 3,200 on the heels of a newly launched initiative to provide free popcorn to shareholders.

In late April, officials with the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority discovered that someone had penetrated several of the agency’s computer systems, exploiting a zero day vulnerability in the network’s VPN service as a way to get its foot in the door.Read more...

The “them” is Winterfell, of course.

The 1984 adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter was only Drew Barrymore’s third film—but it, along with E.T., catapulted the 9-year-old to stardom. Those are some big, fiery shoes for a new young actor to fill, but the team behind the Firestarter remake thinks they found the right spark in Ryan Kiera Armstrong.

The crypto world saw a dizzying surge this year of NFTs being used to sell ownership of everything from works of online art to random tweets, though it was never clear just why NFTs were commanding such staggering prices. Bragging rights? Status symbols? Or just pure speculation driven by skyrocketing cryptocurrency…Read more...

If you have observed the emergence of Brood X, the one-in-17-years cicada swarm, and thought, I want that in my mouth, you are not alone. The cicada consumes the plant fluids; the American consumes the cicada; the FDA warns Americans about consuming cicadas. It is the natural order.

The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, already seven years behind schedule, will not launch on Halloween as planned, which is just as well, given the ominous date and this project’s history of bad luck. For once, the delay is not due to the telescope, but rather the rocket that will deliver it to space.Read more...

It’s hard to tell what will go viral online at any given time. Carp? Sure. Andrew Cuomo’s Nipples? That happened. The latest darling of the internet’s eye is less fishy and less... fleshy than both of the above, but no less bizarre: a low-grade knock-off of Apple’s Notepad app that was developed by a tiny Korean…Read more...

At the end of Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett was on cloud nine—or rather, Cloud City, thinking he’d just secured himself the bounty of the century in Han Solo’s carbonite-encased form. It turns out though that Fett couldn’t get himself straight to Jabba’s palace without some complications... and now we know those…Read more...

From the desk of medical irony comes this recent case study from Germany. Doctors there say a patient of theirs ended up sick in the emergency room after being poisoned by a homeopathic remedy—quack treatments that by definition are supposed to contain virtually no active ingredient. Thankfully, the man recovered…Read more...

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the savviest person when it comes to shopping online. Sure, I can spot obvious scams without much work, I’ll sometimes spend hours poring over product reviews and still end up falling for products that faked their way to earning five stars. While I can’t stop shitty sellers from…Read more...

The Universal Monsters—Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon—are some of the most iconic, unforgettable characters in cinema history. They’re characters so famous almost every single pop culture artist has done an interpretation of one or the other.…Read more...

A light-powered microscope has a resolution limit of around 200 nanometers—which makes observing specimens smaller or closer together than that all but impossible. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have found a clever way to improve the resolution of a conventional microscope, but surprisingly it…Read more...

Not content with having attacked our nation’s beer, hamburgers, and oil, ransomware hackers now also want to ruin Americans’ summer vacation, too.Read more...

Hey, queer people, listen up: Chevron is totally cool with you, and that’s super cool of them! At least that’s the message Chevron is sending this month, as it lines up its advertising to once again celebrate Pride. But Chevron’s Pride celebrations can’t hide the fact that the politicians the company props up each…Read more...

I mean, DC’s got Warner Bros.’ gaming studios. Marvel went big to get Spider-Man and Avengers games out. So it kind of makes sense that Dark Horse wants a piece of the pixelated pie for its bevy of comics licenses—there’s a lot of potential.

Scientists in the UK say the same sort of echolocation practiced by bats may also help people living with blindness better navigate the world. In a new study, they found that blind and sighted participants who took part in a 10-week training program were able to learn how to perform echolocation, and the blind…Read more...

The board game formerly known as Settlers of Catan isn’t hard to learn, but there are elements that are hard to master, like always remembering to claim resource cards after the dice is rolled. Sam March’s gorgeous custom Catan board solves that with tiles that automatically light up so it’s much easier for players to…Read more...

Alas, we’ll be losing one of The Flash TV series’s best characters next Tuesday. Carlos Valdes, who plays Cisco Ramon (a.k.a. Vibe) is leaving the CW show after seven seasons playing the tech genius-turned-superhero-who-was-also-still-a-tech-genius. After The Flash debuted in 2014, Cisco quickly became the show’s…Read more...

The media layoffs continue unabated. The former president’s blog, From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, has ceased all editorial operations, deleted its website and all existing posts, and let go of what was presumably its only staffer (Trump).

Two Guyanese climate activists are taking their nation’s government to court. Late last month, the plaintiffs filed a lawsuit alleging that a deal Guyanese officials struck with Exxon allowing the energy company to expand its oil production off the country’s coast violates their right and the right of future…Read more...

The next SpaceX mission to the International Space Station will deliver more than 2,000 pounds of science supplies, including a batch of tardigrades, tiny Hawaiian bobtail squid, and tissue chips to help explain why astronauts are more prone to developing kidney stones in space. This will be SpaceX’s 22nd cargo…Read more...

The Huawei Watch 3 is here, and as far as smartwatches go, it looks pretty good on paper. It’s just that, on the heels of Samsung giving up on Tizen and partnering with Google for a unified wearable platform, this doesn’t feel like an auspicious time to launch a flagship smartwatch running a proprietary OS.Read more...

Californians, your state senators (who are not your mom), see that you trip balls and/or go on spiritual journeys, which is just fine. On Tuesday, the state senate voted to pass a bill that would legalize the possession and ingestion of psilocybin and psilocin, ketamine, LSD, MDMA, DMT, mescaline, and ibogaine. Ya…Read more...

When a filmmaker like Kevin Smith gets ahold of a popular franchise, it’s natural to be curious what he’ll do with it. That goes double for something like his new He-Man show at Netflix, because the streamer so successfully reimagined She-Ra and the Princesses of Power not too long ago. Recently, io9 spoke with Smith,…Read more...

For the past five years, researchers in Canada have been spying on their local wild cats, the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), using accelerometers and audio recorders. The instruments have given the researchers an intimate look at how the animals engage with their environments, from how they hunt down food to how they…Read more...

In the ongoing saga of Apple’s long-rumored plans to build an electric car, a new report claims the company has hit a bumpy stretch after multiple top managers from the auto development division have left the company in recent months.Read more...

When I was initially plotting out the review of the Eufy SoloCam E40, or SoloCam Pro, I was thinking about cheap security cameras, and the concessions we have to make to save money for convenience and peace of mind. I thought about what a bargain the SoloCam E40 might seem like to someone looking to expand their home…Read more...

If there’s one action figure from James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad we want, it’s King Shark, the break-out star of the DC Entertainment trailers. The adorably dumb, monstrously violent anthropomorphic Selachimorph has captured our hearts...and now he’s going to capture our wallets.

Sri Lanka is facing a rapidly unfolding environmental crisis after a cargo ship that caught on fire last month has sunk, pouring tons of plastic pellets and huge amounts of chemicals into surrounding fishing waters. Government officials worry an oil spill could come next in what’s shaping up to be one of the worst…Read more...

This is both textually, in that the Time Variance Authority does have some very nice jackets on hand to dress up its latest contractor in. But also, it just seems like the Loki crew have some good sartorial taste, too.

Twice a year, the #PitchYaGame Awards puts a call out for independent game developers around the world to share their latest creations, with cash prizes awarded to the best entries. The latest call for entries was yesterday, and it included a wonderfully original game called Viewfinder that’s part Portal, part …Read more...

Filming wraps on Thor: Love and Thunder with a suitably thor-some picture. Director Craig Gillespie already has thoughts about Cruella 2. Loki writer Michael Waldron says there could be some messes for the rest of the MCU to clean up after the show. Plus, what’s coming on Superman & Lois. Spoilers, away!