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RIP Syd Mead, Legendary Designer of Blade Runner and Tron

Science fiction would not be what it is today without the influence of Syd Mead. Mead, a futurist and industrial designer whose work on films such as Blade Runner, Tron, and Aliens, died early this morning at the age of 86. Curbed confirmed the sad news. The spinner from Blade Runner, the lightcycle from Tron,…

Movies Germain Lussier

LOL The Uncharted Movie

Much like its protagonist, Nathan Drake, the Uncharted movie keeps falling off a cliff. Deadline reports that due to “scheduling” issues, Travis Knight, the director of Bumblebee, will soon join the growing pile of directors who have been attached to, and subsequently departed, a movie based on the Naughty Dog Sony PlayStation game Uncharted. This…

Movies Germain Lussier

Sonos Doesn’t Understand How Recycling Works

Trashing your old electronics is bad for the planet—a big reason why you might’ve noticed tech companies push sustainability programs in recent years. Sonos recently joined the recycle brigade in October, launching its Trade Up hardware upgrade program that gives users discounts if they “responsibly recycle older products.” It’s a good idea in theory. The…

Tech News Victoria Song

The Chaos of California’s New Privacy Law Has Already Begun

California is becoming a monument to how much businesses surveil and abuse its residents, as apps and stores are scrambling to put up “Do Not Sell My Info” notices in compliance with the state’s hefty data privacy law. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, which goes into effect on Wednesday, January 1, 2020, businesses operating…

Tech Policy Whitney Kimball

The Rise of Skywalker Writer Says Rey Reveal ‘Doesn’t Negate’ The Last Jedi’s Message

“Let the past die, kill it if you have to.” That was the takeaway from The Last Jedi, and a message that was largely lost in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which felt preoccupied with its own legacy. This was perhaps most notable in the reveal about Rey, one that seemed to conflict with…

Movies Beth Elderkin

Facebook Is Finally Removing Some—But Not All—Misleading Preventive HIV Drug Ads

Following pressure from dozens of LGBTQ groups, Facebook is finally pulling down some ads linking the HIV prevention drug Truvada to serious complications like bone and kidney damage—ads these groups have called false or misleading. In early December, 50 LGBTQ-affliated groups such as GLAAD issued an open letter to Facebook asking them to remove the…

Health Ed Cara

What The Witcher Gets Wrong (and Right) About Disability Narratives

The world of fantasy has been one of the few genres to regularly include disabled characters, though this inclusion has always come with the concept of disfigurement and grotesquerie. One of the most famous disabled fantasy characters, George R.R. Martin’s Tyrion Lannister, is described in the first volume of the A Song of Ice and…

io9 Kristen Lopez

Don’t Trust Netflix’s ‘Most Popular’ List

Netflix’s “best of” content rankings reek of bullshit. And based on Netflix’s own metrics for popularity, they are. The streaming giant on Monday tweeted a series of “What We Watched” lists that immediately raised suspicions among the Gizmodo staff about how the company arrived at its top-ranking winners. For example Murder Mystery, a crime comedy…

Tech News Catie Keck

The Satellite Images That Show a Decade of Climate Change

The 2010s will be remembered as the decade when we could no longer deny climate change. I mean, it’s not like any rational person could deny it in the preceding decades, but the past 10 years have seen scientists’ predictions become reality. Our world has entered an unsteady state, one where the things previous generations…

Earther Brian Kahn

ProtonMail Just Launched A Calendar So You Can Encrypt Your 2020

ProtonMail—an email service that makes it stupid-easy to encrypt communication—has now made it stupid-easy to encrypt your schedule. The Switzerland-based company uses open source cryptography and end-to-end encryption to secure emails. The free service is about as simple to use as Gmail and has made it easier for anyone to take a big extra step…

Privacy & Security Jennings Brown

Prehistoric Stone Monument in Scotland May Have Been Intentionally Built to Attract Lightning

Researchers working in the Outer Hebrides island chain off the west coast of Scotland have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown rock monument located within a stone’s throw of the iconic Calanais Standing Stones. The newly discovered monument featured standing stones that were arranged in a circular pattern around a spot bearing the distinctive traces…

Human History George Dvorsky

Thing I Instinctively Hate Likely to Become Wildly Popular

In its quest to create new ways to make its denizens dissociate from reality, Snapchat is launching a cartoon series that puts user avatars in the episodes. Snapchat first started placing Bitmojis into content in November 2018 with the launch of Bitmoji Stories—regularly published comic strips that make the beholder the protagonist of various scenarios…

Television Jennings Brown

This Is the Decade Smartwatches Actually Became a Thing

Over the past ten years, smartwatches have gone from futuristic tech relegated to sci-fi flicks to something so common, it’s not a surprise to multiple people sporting them on your daily commute. These wrist-sized computers can’t do quite as much as your smartphone, but these days the modern wristable can do everything from tracking your heart…

Tech News Victoria Song

The 9 Best Star Wars Moments of 2019

Star Wars has dominated much of the pop culture landscape in the past several years, but 2019 was ridiculous. With one saga of films ending, a whole new era of TV starting, the hype leading to both, and then all matter of other media, there’s a chance we’ll never have as much Star Wars as…

io9 io9 Staff

Mom Who Injected Feces Into Cancer-Stricken Son’s IV Gets 7 Years in Prison

An Indiana woman who poisoned her 15-year-old son with his own feces while he was on chemotherapy in 2016 is now set to spend more than a half-decade behind bars. On December 26, the Marion County Superior Court sentenced 44-year-old Tiffany Alberts to seven years of prison, along with five years of probation. Alberts had…

Crime Ed Cara

Juul Employees Reportedly Can’t Stop Vaping at Work

Who’d have thought the company that developed a discreet and highly addictive nicotine product would have trouble preventing its very own employees from using it in the workplace? The Wall Street Journal reported this week that in spite of pleas from Juul management and threats of docked bonuses and fourth-strike termination for vaping at work,…

Tech News Catie Keck

Sharon Stone Was Blocked From Bumble, Just Like Us

Proles were enthralled to discover in the wee hours of this morning that Sharon Stone is on Bumble, the dating app where ~ladies~ make the first move. Around 1 AM EST, she tweeted a screenshot showing that her account had been disabled; after what must have been a furious few hours for the Bumble customer…

Tech News Whitney Kimball

CRISPR Scientist Gets Three Years of Jail Time For Creating Gene-Edited Babies

Disgraced Chinese scientist He Jiankui has been sentenced to three years in jail for creating the world’s first genetically modified human babies. The Nanshan District People’s Court of Shenzhen has sentenced He Jiankui to three years in prison and fined him 3 million yuan ($430,000) for violating a government ban on using gene-editing technologies to…

Biology George Dvorsky

Google’s Pixel Can’t Win on Software Tricks Alone

After four generations of Pixel phones, one might imagine that Google with its vast resources and massive reach would be enjoying a similar position to what Apple enjoyed following the launch of the iPhone 4, or at least something close to that. But even after accounting for a wildly different gadget landscape and the passage…

Tech News Sam Rutherford

Report: India Prime Minister Proposes Helping the Coal Industry Survive Amid Climate Crisis

Coal may continue to reign in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proposed to skip a carbon tax on this dangerous fossil fuel, according to documents Reuters reviewed. Given how urgent the climate crisis is becoming, the world simply cannot afford any more handouts to the coal industry. That’s especially true for India. The country…

Climate Change Yessenia Funes

RIP Syd Mead, Legendary Designer of Blade Runner and Tron

LOL The Uncharted Movie

Sonos Doesn’t Understand How Recycling Works

The Chaos of California’s New Privacy Law Has Already Begun

The Rise of Skywalker Writer Says Rey Reveal ‘Doesn’t Negate’ The Last Jedi’s Message

Facebook Is Finally Removing Some—But Not All—Misleading Preventive HIV Drug Ads

What The Witcher Gets Wrong (and Right) About Disability Narratives

Don’t Trust Netflix’s ‘Most Popular’ List

The Satellite Images That Show a Decade of Climate Change

ProtonMail Just Launched A Calendar So You Can Encrypt Your 2020

Prehistoric Stone Monument in Scotland May Have Been Intentionally Built to Attract Lightning

Thing I Instinctively Hate Likely to Become Wildly Popular

This Is the Decade Smartwatches Actually Became a Thing

The 9 Best Star Wars Moments of 2019

Mom Who Injected Feces Into Cancer-Stricken Son’s IV Gets 7 Years in Prison

Juul Employees Reportedly Can’t Stop Vaping at Work

Sharon Stone Was Blocked From Bumble, Just Like Us

CRISPR Scientist Gets Three Years of Jail Time For Creating Gene-Edited Babies

Google’s Pixel Can’t Win on Software Tricks Alone

Report: India Prime Minister Proposes Helping the Coal Industry Survive Amid Climate Crisis

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