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Joe Biden To Name Gina McCarthy As White House Climate Coordinator

President-elect Joe Biden has reportedly tapped Gina McCarthy — the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and current chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council — as his White House climate coordinator. In her new role, which does not require Senate confirmation, McCarthy will be tasked with spearheading the effort to slash greenhouse…

Earther Brianna Provenzano

Bic Buys Notebook Company That Lets You Easily Upload Your Dumb Scribbles to the Cloud

If you’re anything like me, your unmanageable luddite tendencies will have, by now, made you the proud owner of probably well over 100 notebooks. Spiral-bound, composition, Moleskine; the type doesn’t really matter, but what DOES matter is your unfettered ability to tote these notebooks around from apartment to apartment, until the day you die probably,…

Gadgets Brianna Provenzano

Disenchantment Season 3 Trailer Puts Princess Bean (and Her Beer Stein) on the Throne

The land of magic and fantasy has been torn asunder, but the only woman who can save it might be suffering from a hangover. Netflix has the first look at season three of Disenchantment, which sees Princess Bean (Abbi Jacobs) coming into her royal and literal powers, as enemies conspire to take her down. Netflix…

Trailers Beth Elderkin

Superhuman Hack Brings Real-Time 3D Ray Tracing to the SNES

With the help of an extra graphics processing chip inside the cartridge, Star Fox did the impossible by bringing 3D graphics to the 16-bit Super Nintendo. The decision to engineer the SNES’ hardware to allow for this upgrade was a clever one on Nintendo’s part, and 29 years after its debut, Ben Carter has used…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Bill Resurrected to Stop Feds From Reading Your Old Emails Without a Warrant

Decades before cloud computing was invented, the government decided it should have the power, after 180 days, to read anyone’s emails, and that it shouldn’t need a warrant to do this. While no lawmaker today would seriously suggest passing such an incredible invasive law, Congress has found itself incapable of closing this privacy loophole for…

Tech News Dell Cameron

Star Wars: The High Republic‘s Team on The Acolyte‘s Reveal

In just a few weeks, The High Republic ushers in a bright new era of Star Wars storytelling—but last week, we learned that one of Lucasfilm’s big new Disney+ projects will show us a glimpse of its twilight in the form of The Acolyte, the new series being worked on by Leslye Headland. For the…

Books & Comics James Whitbrook

Twitter Kills Periscope Because It Was a Broken Cash-Suck

Livestreaming app Periscope, beloved by far-right conspiracy theorists and child predators alike, will be put out of its misery by the end of this coming March, Twitter announced on Tuesday. Shutting down the app was apparently a no-brainer that was a long time coming. According to Twitter, which purchased Periscope in 2015, the app was…

Tech News Andrew Couts

In the Super Mario Cartoon’s Holiday Episode, the Greatest Gift Is Attempted Murder

Happy holidays, everybody! Now with that out of the way, I need to talk to you about this “Worst Episode Ever” featuring the Super Mario Bros. Normally I take something dumb or weird out of the cartoon and try to put it in the weirdest, funniest, and most extreme light. But in the Christmas episode…

io9 Rob Bricken

We Already Have the Technology to Decarbonize U.S. Electricity

It’ll take a lot to transition the U.S. off fossil-based energy: money, political will, labor. But a new report shows it won’t take new technological innovation. The study, published in the journal Joule last week, shows U.S. electricity demand can be met with currently available carbon-free tech, like solar panels and wind turbines. And we…

Earther Dharna Noor

A 22nd Century Gumshoe Makes a Grim Discovery in the First Peek at Sci-Fi Noir Midnight, Water City

Hawaiian author Chris McKinney’s new sci-fi noir Water City Trilogy begins with Midnight, Water City. The book, set in an underwater world filled with keenly brutal crime, isn’t out until summer 2021, but today, io9 has an exclusive look at its neon-drenched cover, as well as a peek at the first chapter. To set the…

Books & Comics Cheryl Eddy

The Best Gifts and Gadgets to Help Your Youngest Child Build Character

Children are wonderful miracles. The way they go from babies to chaos to creatures with genuine personalities and feelings all their own is remarkable. But youngest kids of a multi-child household are another story. They are nightmare hellions with little regard for others, an incredible capacity to care only about themselves, and a tattletale cry…

Gadgets Alex Cranz

Feds Still Trying to Determine How Screwed They Are After Massive SolarWinds Hack

A cyberattack that began by targeting an IT firm used by numerous federal government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and other high-value targets is shaping up to be a historic event. The U.S. government is still reeling after the detection of a massive foreign intrusion into federal computer systems at agencies including—at a minimum—the Department of…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Japanese Probe Returned More Asteroid Than Expected—Including Pebbles and Gas

It looks like coffee beans in a grinder, but it’s actually bits of dust and pebbles scooped up from the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The Japanese space agency confirmed the presence of these precious samples earlier today, following the recent return to Earth of its Hayabusa2 spacecraft. For only the second time in history, a…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Image: Cartoon Network / Image: The CW / Image: Lucasfilm / Image: Netflix / Image: HBO Max

The 12 Best (and 7 Worst) Television Shows of 2020

We might have seen a shortage of new movies in 2020, but one thing we still got a lot of was television shows. This was a year of saying goodbye to many beloved series while introducing some new ones into the fold. Some sparked, others fizzled. Here are the TV series the io9 staff felt…

io9 io9 Staff

The Amazfit GTR 2 Raises the Bar for Budget Smartwatches

Generally speaking, budget smartwatches tend to keep things simple. You usually get one advanced feature, cheaper materials, a fuzzier display with big bezels, and a barebones companion app—basically, a fitness tracker in a smartwatch form factor. The affordable Amazfit GTR 2, however, blows up that formula. For $180, you get on-demand SpO2 readings, two voice…

Accessories & Wearables Victoria Song

Stranger Things‘ Cast Is Getting Together to Play Dungeons & Dragons (For Real This Time)

It’s in the show. It’s become its own D&D box set. And now, we’ve come full circle: the stars of Stranger Things are getting into Actual Play tabletop streaming, for one day only! Netlfix has just announced, in partnership with Wizards of the Coast, Lost Odyssey: Toy Time for Ten-Towns, a festive-themed one-shot Dungeons &…

Trailers James Whitbrook

The Biggest Climate Wins of 2020

Somehow, not everything was bad this year. Don’t get me wrong, 2020 was terrible. Covid-19 caused unprecedented suffering around the world, hitting the environmentally exploited communities the hardest. It also interlocked all kinds of other crises, like poverty and climate disasters. The oil industry went belly up, but even that’s not worth celebrating, because so…

Earther Dharna Noor

Chemicals in Plastics Are a Global Health Threat, Says New Report

A new scientific report out Tuesday concludes that plastics and the chemicals they leave behind in the environment are a major threat to human health. It identifies over 140 chemicals readily found in plastic products that can harm our bodies, particularly through interfering with the endocrine system. The report is the result of a collaboration…

Health Ed Cara

Wonder Woman 1984‘s Powerful Message Soars Above Its Superheroic Excess

The first 10 minutes of Wonder Woman 1984 moved me to tears. Part of it was the long-awaited return to Themyscira, seeing a young Diana (Lilly Aspell) battle her fellow Amazons in an epic action scene set to an incredible new score by Hans Zimmer. But another part was just that after a year of…

Movies Germain Lussier

Find Focus With This DIY Distraction-Free Editor

I’ve tried way too many distraction-free writing devices, from the Freewrite to an old Brother typewriter. As a glutton for punishment, however, I may just build the FeatherQuill while I’m trapped at home. The FeatherQuill is a project by Cameron Coward, a writer and hardware hacker who focuses on 3D printing. The project consists of…

Tech News John Biggs

Joe Biden To Name Gina McCarthy As White House Climate Coordinator

Bic Buys Notebook Company That Lets You Easily Upload Your Dumb Scribbles to the Cloud

Disenchantment Season 3 Trailer Puts Princess Bean (and Her Beer Stein) on the Throne

Superhuman Hack Brings Real-Time 3D Ray Tracing to the SNES

Bill Resurrected to Stop Feds From Reading Your Old Emails Without a Warrant

Star Wars: The High Republic‘s Team on The Acolyte‘s Reveal

Twitter Kills Periscope Because It Was a Broken Cash-Suck

In the Super Mario Cartoon’s Holiday Episode, the Greatest Gift Is Attempted Murder

We Already Have the Technology to Decarbonize U.S. Electricity

A 22nd Century Gumshoe Makes a Grim Discovery in the First Peek at Sci-Fi Noir Midnight, Water City

The Best Gifts and Gadgets to Help Your Youngest Child Build Character

Feds Still Trying to Determine How Screwed They Are After Massive SolarWinds Hack

Japanese Probe Returned More Asteroid Than Expected—Including Pebbles and Gas

The 12 Best (and 7 Worst) Television Shows of 2020

The Amazfit GTR 2 Raises the Bar for Budget Smartwatches

Stranger Things‘ Cast Is Getting Together to Play Dungeons & Dragons (For Real This Time)

The Biggest Climate Wins of 2020

Chemicals in Plastics Are a Global Health Threat, Says New Report

Wonder Woman 1984‘s Powerful Message Soars Above Its Superheroic Excess

Find Focus With This DIY Distraction-Free Editor

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