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Beer, Rich People, and Racing Horses All Made Out Better Than Renewable Energy in Congress’ Budget

The House approved a 1.4 trillion spending package on Tuesday, which extended a slew of expiring and expired tax breaks. Lots of environmentalists are pissed because it barely did anything for renewable energy. Tax breaks for onshore wind energy got a yearlong extension, but offshore wind and solar didn’t get shit. Well, we at Earther…

Climate Change Dharna Noor

My Dad Was a Spy, Maybe

I remember my first phone call from the FBI clearly. It was mid-May 2015. I was sitting in my dreary Midtown cubicle, chugging iced coffee and trying to hold out for the end of the day as a lowly junior reporter. My eyelids were drooping when my wrist buzzed. Someone was calling me. My fitness…

Tech News Victoria Song

Apple, Google, and Amazon Are Joining Forces to Help Smart Home Devices All Play Nicely Together

In an effort to make it easier for consumers to transition to a smart home setup without having to buy into a proprietary system, Apple, Google, Amazon, and the rest of the Zigbee Alliance announced today they’re forming a new working group that will (hopefully) develop a new connectivity standard allowing hardware from all these…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Australia Just Set a New Heat Record [Updated: Again]

There’s heat, and then there’s Australia heat. The country set a new record for its hottest day Tuesday as the average maximum temperature across Australia reached 40.9 degrees Celsius (105.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in January 2013. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology announced this…

Earth Science Yessenia Funes

Is It Too Late to Stop Amazon?

The brain-splitting moment happened about a week ago. A video (watermarked with the logo of a camera from Ring, an Amazon company) showing a man delivering an Amazon package, finding a box of snacks on a porch, then dancing went viral. My mind failed to find joy in the moment. Think of the moving parts.…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

The First Tease for A Quiet Place 2 Ushers in a Sinister Fall

You don’t really think about it, even in the wake of A Quiet Place, but in a world where making even the tiniest bit of sound can have you set upon by horrifying monsters, navigating falling leaves in autumn is suddenly the scariest thing in the world. We just got our first incredibly fleeting glimpse…

Trailers James Whitbrook

Utility Companies Spent $1 Billion Covering Their Asses

In September 2016, massive utility company Duke Energy announced they planned spend $300,000 on a new solar program. Partnering with a local nonprofit, NC GreenPower, they used that money to install solar panels and provide curricula about them to 10 North Carolina schools. If you just skimmed Duke’s press release, you’d be forgiven for missing…

Environmental Justice Dharna Noor

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Show Just Cast a Young Version of a Major Character

Van Helsing will return for one last season. The CW is getting into the spyfi game. Plus, another clip from Doctor Who’s New Year return, and what’s to come on the His Dark Materials finale. We’ve passed on all we know. A thousand generations live in you now. But these are your spoilers. Malignant Production…

Television James Whitbrook

Judge Rules Edward Snowden Can’t Profit From His Book Because It Wasn’t Cleared by NSA and CIA

Edward Snowden will not be allowed to profit from sales of his book Permanent Record, after a federal judge in Virginia ruled Tuesday that Snowden should have sought approval from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). It’s not clear if Snowden, who was previously a CIA employee and contractor for the…

Tech News Matt Novak

Things Take a Dramatic Turn for Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian’s Penultimate Episode

After a few tangent episodes, The Mandalorian is back on target with its latest episode, which turns the focus back on The Child himself, Baby Yoda. Chapter seven of The Mandalorian season one is called “The Reckoning” which, if you’ve seen the episode, is kind of a spoiler, right? We knew to return to Navarro…

io9 Germain Lussier

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Is a Disappointing Way to End a Saga

If there’s something you always wanted to see in a Star Wars movie, but haven’t yet, odds are it’s in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The film plays like a 150-minute checklist of cool stuff and surprises designed to please as many fans as possible. That may sound great, but in the process, that…

Movies Germain Lussier

SEC, DOJ Bust Alleged Insider Trading Scheme by IT Admin That Made Over $7 Million

Any protected computer system is only as safe as whoever’s in charge of it, so hopefully that person doesn’t go rogue. Here’s a clear example: The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged an IT admin at Santa Clara-based Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and four others with an insider trading plot that reaped “over $7 million…

Crime Tom McKay

Study: Massive Blowout at Gas Well in 2018 Spewed 5 Times as Much Methane as ExxonMobil Estimated

Research published this week shows that the blowout of an ExxonMobile-owned natural gas well in Belmont County, Ohio in February 2018 released a hell of a lot more methane than previously thought. Per CNN, Dutch and American scientists published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that used satellite…

Climate Change Tom McKay

Unroll.me Settles With FTC for Rifling Through Its Users’ Email Inboxes to Find Receipts

Email cleanup service Unroll.me has settled with the Federal Trade Commission and must delete information it gathered from some consumers after it was revealed the firm was mining and selling data from users’ inboxes, the agency announced on Tuesday. In 2017, the New York Times revealed that once Unroll.me—which was supposed to help users unsubscribe…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

A Space Scavenger Makes a Very Strange Discovery in Sci-Fi Short Eden

Would you hand over your soul for the ultimate score? This FX-driven short from Canadian-American filmmaker Kristian Bakstad is about a sleazy artifact hunter who detects a valuable find on an out-of-the-way planet. When he arrives, however, he realizes this isn’t a typical scavenging mission, and what (and who) he finds makes it very clear…

Movies Cheryl Eddy

Image: Renegade Games / Image: Fantasy Flight Games / Image: USAopoly / Image: Windmaster Miniatures

Legendary Cats, a Barkham Horror, and More in Tabletop Gaming News

Welcome back to Gaming Shelf, io9’s regular column all about board games and tabletop roleplaying games. It’s almost the holiday season, which means it’s time to think about those last-minute gifts you forgot! Otherwise, maybe a couple of titles to bring for family game night during the holidays. Either way, here are some of the…

Games Beth Elderkin

This Is How You Paint Jeff Bezos

The National Portrait Gallery of Washington, D.C., is currently displaying a psychological thriller of a painting: “Untitled, Jeffrey P. Bezos,” 2019. We won’t ask why the gallery would choose to display a six-by-five-and-a-half portrait of the 2019 fundraising gala honoree as it enjoys a new spate of VIP interest and oh, by the way, reported…

Tech News Whitney Kimball

Investors Want to Exhume Body of Crypto-CEO Who Had the Password to Millions In Bitcoin

It’s been about a year since users of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX were informed that the company’s CEO unexpectedly died, taking the password that accessed most the money from their accounts with him to the grave. And now, those clients want to know what’s inside that grave. The majority of QuadrigaCX’s holdings were kept offline…

Tech News Jennings Brown

Disastrous NLRB Ruling Adds Another Hurdle for Tech Worker Organizing

Shortly after Google staffers engaged in the largest mass walkout at any tech firm in the United States, the company quietly lobbied the National Labor Relations Board in the hopes it would roll back a decision that safeguarded the only way protesters were able to organize that action as quickly as they did: email. Unfortunately,…

Tech News Avery Ellis

Rian Johnson Thinks Catering Foremost to Fanservice Is a Potential Mistake (and He’s Right)

As we sit waiting to see (and hear more about beyond vague social media reactions) just how Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker puts an end to the Skywalker saga, many people involved in the process have been reflecting on what it means to tell a story that caters to the passion of its audiences.…

Movies James Whitbrook

Beer, Rich People, and Racing Horses All Made Out Better Than Renewable Energy in Congress’ Budget

My Dad Was a Spy, Maybe

Apple, Google, and Amazon Are Joining Forces to Help Smart Home Devices All Play Nicely Together

Australia Just Set a New Heat Record [Updated: Again]

Is It Too Late to Stop Amazon?

The First Tease for A Quiet Place 2 Ushers in a Sinister Fall

Utility Companies Spent $1 Billion Covering Their Asses

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings Show Just Cast a Young Version of a Major Character

Judge Rules Edward Snowden Can’t Profit From His Book Because It Wasn’t Cleared by NSA and CIA

Things Take a Dramatic Turn for Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian’s Penultimate Episode

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Is a Disappointing Way to End a Saga

SEC, DOJ Bust Alleged Insider Trading Scheme by IT Admin That Made Over $7 Million

Study: Massive Blowout at Gas Well in 2018 Spewed 5 Times as Much Methane as ExxonMobil Estimated

Unroll.me Settles With FTC for Rifling Through Its Users’ Email Inboxes to Find Receipts

A Space Scavenger Makes a Very Strange Discovery in Sci-Fi Short Eden

Legendary Cats, a Barkham Horror, and More in Tabletop Gaming News

This Is How You Paint Jeff Bezos

Investors Want to Exhume Body of Crypto-CEO Who Had the Password to Millions In Bitcoin

Disastrous NLRB Ruling Adds Another Hurdle for Tech Worker Organizing

Rian Johnson Thinks Catering Foremost to Fanservice Is a Potential Mistake (and He’s Right)

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