Gizmodo

When you woke up this morning, we bet you didn’t expect to see an official E.T. sequel—but that’s kind of what’s happened, just in a slightly unconventional, very commercial way.Read more...

Eric Tien’s favorite dish at Thanksgiving is one his dad makes.Read more...

Home is where the heart is where you’ll find some killer deals. You’ve reached our Black Friday deals hub for all things home, including all the smart home gear your house can handle, plus furniture, kitchen accessories, tools, and more. Stay tuned, we’ll be updating this post as deals go live, and throughout the…Read more...

California’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, was burned by the courts in an attempt to reduce its liabilities from wildfires in 2017 and 2018 linked to its faulty electrical grid on Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it would soon be launching a purge of inactive users to free up choice usernames for others, potentially allowing users to claim sweet handles like @badguy, @vomit, @logoff, or @gillbates. Just one problem: Twitter forgot that some of those accounts may belong to people who are dead.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us in the United States. A time to reflect on all the good things we have in life. Usually, this means health, family, friends, and maybe even food. But don’t forget the other things that bring you joy—mainly, mountains of popular culture.

Earlier today, Moscow-based BBC journalist Will Vernon noticed that Apple appears to have quietly ceded to Russia’s stance on Crimea by redrawing national borders on the Russian version of its Maps app and labeling the region as “Russia.” When viewed from the US, Crimea is listed simply as “Crimea” and no home country…Read more...

Disney’s Star Wars land is unlike anything else at its plethora of theme parks across the world. It doesn’t feel like you’re in a theme park, even as people queue across the courtyards of Batuu for a chance to get to fly the Millennium Falcon. But as fascinatingly unique as that is, it already feels like it’s going to…Read more...

China’s ByteDance, owner of wildly popular (and often deeply annoying) music app TikTok, has moved to segregate much of the app’s operations from the rest of its business in a bid to convince the U.S. government user data is safe from the prying eyes of Chinese spies, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

A man’s love of delicious hot pot led him down a far more perilous path than he expected. His doctors in China say that the undercooked meal exposed him to a tapeworm infestation that riddled his brain with larval cysts and caused him to have seizures. Thankfully, though, he’s now on the mend.Read more...

Mark Zuckerberg cares deeply about the voice of the people, so this year, he invited a bunch of white dudes to discuss that and other Big Stuff in six pre-recorded conversations. This was Zuckerberg’s 2019 “personal challenge”: A series of “public discussions” aimed, in his words, to “engage more in some of these…Read more...

A telescope in Hawaii has captured a close-up view of comet 2l/Borisov—only the second known interstellar visitor to our Solar System.Read more...

One of the world’s top human champions of Go has decided to retire from playing the strategy game professionally, citing AI as a reason he feels he can no longer compete.Read more...

It’s no secret that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Donald Trump gives zero fucks about the planet. So imagine the irony of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler urging Americans to “fill bellies, not landfills this Thanksgiving.”Read more...

Apple TV+’s mysterious Servant—from M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop—begins streaming tomorrow. The unsettling atmosphere of the show is achieved in part due to its fantastically moody score. Today, io9 is debuting an exclusive track from the show and we got to talk to composer Trevor Gureckis, too.Read more...

Paleontologists in China have discovered the fossilized remains of a rodent-like creature that featured an auditory system unlike anything seen before.Read more...

New York City is poised to bar all flavored e-cigarettes and e-liquids, meaning it would be sayonara for all the good vape flavors—and yes, that means menthol too.Read more...

DC Universe’s very adult Harley Quinn animated series is almost here and we’re so ready for it. But Harleen isn’t the only DC Comics character set to get wild. Are you ready to see what the Legion of Doom’s breakroom is like?Read more...

You’d think it would be hard to talk the federal government into giving you some random town’s .gov email address. You’d hope the process would be rigorous. But as one hacker explained to security researcher Brian Krebs, securing a government-endorsed top-level domain is actually frighteningly easy.Read more...

A future where a key ingredient of psychedelic mushrooms called psilocybin is regularly used to improve our mental health is none too far off. This month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted a “breakthrough therapy” designation to a non-profit company developing psilocybin as a treatment for clinical…Read more...

The sun has set on the Navajo Generating Station, which burned its last pile of coal earlier this month. Economics finally caught up with the West’s largest coal plant, forcing it to shutter as cheap natural gas and renewables made it irrelevant to the energy grid.Read more...

Everyone gets frustrated with their mobile phones at some point, leading many of us to fantasize about throwing our shit into the ocean and just living without one. And back in the ancient world of 2007, that was a much more reasonable possibility. A Wired article from July 31, 2007 made the case that there were…Read more...

At this point, it’s no secret that Apple’s working on augmented reality glasses. However, a patent reveals that the company is also tinkering around with augmented audio in headphones.

New research results show how sound below the range of human hearing can help scientists predict and track tornadoes.

“Quantum dot” technology sounds like a fake invention, something made up by a well-meaning marketing team. Well, it is, and it isn’t. Although different companies have different brand names for their own recipes, quantum dot displays are a real innovation that allows TVs to show off a wider range of colors, and…Read more...

J.J. Abrams reveals the runtime of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. James Wan teases his next horror adventure. It’s bad news this Turkey Day for MST3K fans. Plus, new pictures from Nancy Drew amp up the lens flare, Barry succumbs to Bloodwork in a new Flash teaser, and Oliver Queen fights for the multiverse as Arrow…Read more...

Organizing a group of friends for an outing got significantly easier when smartphones came along, but even the best-laid plans can be thrown into chaos if your posse is headed somewhere cell phone service is spotty. The LynQ—a digital compass that points towards your friends instead of true north—works without…Read more...

Disbelief and disappointment are some of the more PG-rated reactions coming from the ocean conservation community on Tuesday in response to a decision not to protect mako sharks. A closely-watched measure to protect IUCN Red List Endangered fish failed to pass at an international meeting that ended Monday due to…Read more...

WEBSUN Silicone Egg Bites Molds | $8 | AmazonRead more...

A massive explosion rocked a chemical plant that produces petroleum products in southeast Texas overnight, sending fireballs into the air. The shockwave of the blast has damaged walls in nearby homes and even shattered windows miles away, according to early reports on social media, but the cause of the blast is still…Read more...

Facebook has lost its only fact-checking partner in the Netherlands, Dutch digital newspaper NU.nl, over its policy of allowing politicians to openly lie in ads on the platform, according to an article on NPO 3.

Jordan Peterson’s Thinkspot has not one, not two, but ten of my stinkin’ dollars, and I want them back.

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9's regular column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. It’s Thanksgiving week for some, meaning there will be plenty of time to enjoy (or escape) the family with board game nights. We’ve got some suggestions for games to look out for, along with some exciting…Read more...

When you get free technology, you can reasonably assume that you’re getting screwed. That’s infinitely truer if you’re in prison.

As Universal Pictures continues to diversify and surprise with its upcoming slate of monster movies, Elizabeth Banks is stepping into the mix.Read more...

Twitter is gearing up to remove scads of inactive accounts. That means one thing and one thing only: one lucky idiot might soon have rights to the handle @sexhaver, leaving the rest of us (losers; virgins) in their digital dust.Read more...

A new study this week highlights a unique, long-spanning crisis among Americans. For decades, it suggests, the U.S. life expectancy has lagged behind similar countries. And for close to a decade, young to middle aged Americans have actually been dying more than in previous years, thanks in part to worsening rates of…Read more...

Virtual reality gaming is a thing, but even so, you probably can’t name very many off the top of your head. And if you can, chances are the first one that pops into mind is Beat Saber—the One Good VR Game that any putz can enjoy without upchucking their lunch due to VR-induced motion sickness, or looking like a complet…Read more...

Valve’s Steam Box consoles weren’t the runaway success that the gaming giant hoped they’d be, but the accompanying Steam Controller still stands out as a truly innovative gamepad design. However, the time has come for it to ride off into the sunset, and Valve is now clearing out the last production run of the…Read more...

Elon Musk, who called a British national “pedo guy” for publicly flogging his fragile ego over the Thai cave submarine fiasco last year, will evidently defend himself during his testimony in court by claiming that he didn’t call Unsworth a pedophile.Read more...

An unassuming lick from a dog is being blamed for the death of an otherwise healthy German man. It’s a strange medical case involving a normally harmless bacterium, but experts say it’s nothing to worry about and that most of us can continue to let our dogs slobber all over us.

A leading digital rights organization on Tuesday said that Facebook was actively blocking its users from sharing a link to a web page critical of Amazon that labels its internet-connected home security products—namely, Ring doorbell cameras—a threat to “privacy, civil liberties, and security”.Read more...

On Tuesday, The White House was placed under lockdown after it appeared that an aircraft was flying in restricted air space over Washington DC. But was it really an aircraft...or was it birds?Read more...

The Food and Drug Administration still isn’t cutting cannabidiol, or CBD, much slack. This week, the agency updated their stance on the cannabis-derived ingredient, warning the public that most products made with CBD on the market are untested, unregulated, and have the “potential to harm” users. It also issued more…Read more...

When you have Mike Bloomberg money, there is no shortage of ways to spend it. And running for president opens up a whole new world of blowing through cash.Read more...

When something as adorable as The Mandalorian’s little green gremlin floats into our collective conscious, we find ourselves wading through an overwhelming flood of emotions. Some of us whisper that they would kill for the tiny baby of indeterminate origin and species. Others, that they would sacrifice themselves,…Read more...

One of the northern hemisphere’s most famous extinct birds could have disappeared at the hands of humans and humans alone.

Multiple worlds, armored bears, dust, daemons. BBC and HBO’s His Dark Materials can be pretty confusing. We’re here to open up the alethiometer and answer a few of your biggest questions about what the crap is going on.Read more...

The inferno that’s ripped through thousands of square miles of Australia has, as of four days ago, reportedly claimed six lives, around 600 homes, millions of acres of forest, and koalas en masse. Today we’ve lost another baby, whose rescue uplifted social media for a fleeting moment and whose death quashes joy.

A prepared speech that President Richard Nixon thankfully never had to make has been brought to life in an art project that poses the question: Can a deepfake rewrite history?Read more...