Future Stories

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $46 million in funding to eight companies developing commercial fusion power plants. The companies funded by the DOE were: Commonwealth Fusion Systems (Cambridge, MA) Commonwealth Fusion is working on Tokomaks with higher power magnets. Focused Energy Inc. (Austin, TX) Focused Energy is using laser fusion. Princeton Stellarators Inc. ... Read more

An artistic rendering of the Die-Force. Image: Legend of Zelda | Shutterstock/Cadmium_Red Last night, Critical Role played a Legend of Zelda -inspired tabletop roleplaying game, and we might never get to see it, play it, or hear about it ever again. This could change but... who knows. The point is that there is a Nintendo-approved Zelda -inspired TTRPG out there, totally playable, and nobody is handing it out or even telling us how we might be able to see it, eventually. io9 reached out to Critical Role and Nintendo for a comment. The only thing we heard back was that this is Nintendo’s call. We await the company’s response with bated breath. So here’s what we know. Critical Role and Nintendo Treehouse collaborated to create this custom Legend of Zelda TTRPG that is based on the events and lore in Tears of the Kingdom . Nintendo actually sponsored the stream, which makes this a semi-official Legend of Zelda TTRPG. It uses both a D20, turn-based combat mechanic system which ...

There was a conference discussion on moon and Mars space development. JAXA described making a 300 kg unmanned rover for the South Pole of the moon. JAXA will then make an 11 ton manned rover for the Artemis project. NASA Talked about Artemis and DARPA talked about DRACO leap ahead nuclear propulsion SpaceX senior director ... Read more

Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. After a postdoc in Toronto he joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1988, and AT&T Labs in 1996 as Head of Image Processing Research. He joined NYU ... Read more

Language models are increasingly being deployed for general problem solving across a wide range of tasks, but are still confined to token-level, left-to-right decision-making processes during inference. This means they can fall short in tasks that require exploration, strategic lookahead, or where initial decisions play a pivotal role. Deepmind researchers introduce a new framework for ... Read more

Image: Absolute Tabletop There’s a lot of great new releases coming out of big studios, including an absolutely massive Magic: The Gathering set in collaboration with Lord of the Rings , but I’m really excited for the indie games that are starting to get delivered as Zine Quest rewards . Here are more indie releases for you to check out! New Releases: City of Winter, Curios, Outliers, Flux Form Fables Image: Heart of the Deernicorn “In City of Winter , you will create members of a family and journey together through the strange world. You’ll play family members fleeing across the Riverlands scroll to the City of Winter —a magical metropolis. Elegant rules, evocative prompts, and inspiring images help guide your unique story. Family members will age and die, traditions will be passed from one generation to the next, and you will encounter new traditions that change your family over time. City of Winter captures the refugee and immigrant experience in a fantastical and magical...

Screenshot: DC Studios Warner Bros. and DC Studios’ The Flash has faced a long journey to get to the screen, with various filmmakers attached at various times to take on the Flashpoint- inspired story. A constant throughout, however, has been star Ezra Miller, who remained part of the project despite some very public legal troubles . The film’s June 16 release is now on the horizon; the finished product includes reshoots that Miller participated in after seeking help at the behest of Warner Bros. Back in August of last year, Miller was given options in order to continue working on the film—and apparently the actor kept to their agreements so diligently, Flash director Andy Muschietti is confident that if he were to return for a sequel, so would its star. “I don’t think there’s anyone that can play that character as well as they did. The other depictions of the character are great, but this particular vision of the character, they just excelled in doing it,” the filmmaker told th...

Time to travel into the Further, one more time. Image: Sony He did it with Saw , he did it with The Conjuring , and now producer James Wan is expanding Insidious too. Even though the franchise’s fifth film, Insidious: The Red Door , is hitting theaters this summer, the next installment of the Insidious series is already gearing up. It’s called Thread: An Insidious Tale and it’ll star Mandy Moore and Kumail Nanjiani. Jeremy Slater, a producer and writer of Marvel’s Moon Knight and The Exorcist TV show , wrote the script and will direct according to Deadline . The film will follow a married couple (Moore and Nanjiani) who try to travel back in time to save their daughter. But, since it’s an Insidious movie, it sounds like the Further—the spooky dimension the other films in the series have explored—may have other plans. In 2010, Wan co-created Insidious with frequent partner Leigh Whannell. It followed a family whose son goes into a coma, which opened a door to an alternate...

Miles Morales will be spotting more Spider-people in the third film. Image: Sony In 2018, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Vers e blew our collective minds by telling a story about six Spider-people teaming up to save the multiverse. It went on to universal success and acclaim. This week its sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse , will up that ante and feature more even main characters, as well as dozens and dozens of supporting Spider-people. Our count from a previous trailer was over 20 that were easily discernable, plus many more that weren’t . That’s a lot of Spider-people. And yet, according to the film’s writers and producers, that’s not it. More are coming. “Believe it or not, you thought you’d seen every Spider-person you can imagine, but not every Spider-person we could imagine,” co-writer and producer Phil Lord said in an interview with Collider this week. “We saved several,” Chris Miller, another co-writer and producer added. Why did they save them? Well because S...

Singapore, Singapore, May 30th, 2023, Chainwire MetaZone announced today the completion of its US$3 million seed round co-led by metaverse industry leaders, Sfermion and CMT Digital, to expand their tokenized app platform pioneering the META, (Metaverse Enabled Tokenized Application). Top web3 funds Tess Ventures, IOSG Ventures,IVC (Infinity Ventures Crypto), Polygon Studios, MHC Digital, and LucidBlue ... Read more

Image: Macmillan | Tor Nightfire Chuck Tingle is known for his cheeky erotic comedies which he first started publishing in 2014. For his first full-length, traditionally published novel, Tingle has turned to a different set of inspirations. Horror movies , sleepaway summer camp stories, and queer survival are all a part of Camp Damascus. And now, io9 is excited to announce that the audiobook for Camp Damascus is going to be narrated by none other than Mara Wilson. Camp Damascus follows a young woman named Rose “as she starts to figure out what she wants to do with her life after graduation. Up in the remote city of Neverton, Montana, there’s not much to do. The most powerful institution is the religious group, Kingdom of the Pine, and Neverton is really known for one thing; the conversion camp run by the church, Camp Damascus.” I won’t get into the story just yet—stay tuned for our full review of the novel soon—but there is something about Tingle’s heartfelt, nuanced takes o...

Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, May 30th, 2023, Chainwire A decentralized token that will shape gaming as we know it today is going live on Ethereum blockchain on May 31st with the support of key Web3 leaders. The QWAN, a gaming token enabling a decentralized economy for all gamers globally, is launching with the support of ... Read more

Image: Paramount Is another Witcher spinoff on the way? Terry Matalas won’t stop talking about his plans for a potential Star Trek: Legacy spinoff. Could another familiar Clone Wars face return for Ahsoka ? Plus, what’s coming on the final season of Nancy Drew . Spoilers, away! Terminator 7 During a recent appearance at the Dell Tech World conference, James Cameron stated he’s writing a new Terminator movie, but reportedly “wants to see” how recent innovations in A.I. “shake out” before finishing. Barbie According to Rolling Stone , Greta Gerwig’s Barbie will feature music from Ava Max, Charli XCX, Dominic Fike, Fifty Fifty, Gayle, Haim, Ice Spice, Kali, Karol G, Khalid, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, PinkPantheress, Ryan Gosling, Tame Impala and The Kid Laroi. Asteroid City Rotten Tomatoes has posters of Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks’ characters in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City . Teenage Mutant Turtles: Mutant Madness We also have a new poster for Teen...

Image: Heat Boys, Hot Toys, and Lego Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the coolest new toys around. This week, TMNT ’s Michelangelo goes Gundam Heavyarms, Rise of the Beasts ’s Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal get slick new Transformers toys, and Hasbro is turning Twister into... an AR game? Check it out! Image: Lego Lego DC Batmobile Batman vs. The Joker Chase and Batwing: Batman vs. The Joker Lego has already given us fantastically detailed versions of both the 1989 Tim Burton-era Batmobile and Batwing , but at $250 and $200, respectively, they’re both pricey options for even avid Lego collectors. Arriving in August are two smaller-scale versions of both vehicles that both include lots of fun details without breaking the bank. The 438-piece, $48 Batmobile (available for pre-order now) features a cockpit large enough for a Batman minifigure to occupy (or the included Joker minifig), an opening trunk, a flaming exhaust, and a lever that raises a pair...

Image: Kate Green / Stringer (Getty Images) Deborah Chow, the director of the Disney+ show, Obi-Wan Kenobi , went on the Crew Call podcast to chat about the challenges that came alongside working on the limited series . She had just finished Mandalorian and Kenobi had gone through “numerous iterations” and passed through multiple hands before landing in her lap. She says that while Kenobi was originally pitched as a standalone film, even by the time it got to her, as a limited series, it was always conceived as “one big story.” So it made sense that they would tap one director to lead all six episodes of the show. “This was a character journey for Obi-Wan,” Chow says. They focused a lot of attention on Revenge of the Sith , making sure that they got the nuanced characterization for Obi-Wan in the aftermath of Order 66 . Chow also revealed that they were submitting the finale episode for Emmy consideration. “The heart of the show is always going to be the scene between Hayden a...

Bitcoin and DeFi (decentralized finance) are two significant concepts in the cryptocurrency industry that have become increasingly popular over the last few years. While Bitcoin has become increasingly popular as the first and largest cryptocurrency, DeFi aims to create new financial solutions built on decentralized blockchain networks. Combining these two concepts led to the emergence ... Read more

Virtus Solis is a funded startup working to develop space based solar power. They would leverage the low cost launch of the SpaceX Starship and modular satellites to enable power to be beamed from space at lower cost than coal or natural gas power. Twenty five thousand 1-kilowatt solar power modules would be launched in ... Read more

Screenshot: Warner Bros. After an eagle-eyed Twitter user (@ kojironanjo ) realized that the Barbie trailer was ripe for meme-ification, Twitter fandom did what fandom does best, and immediately took the joke to the extreme. Reaching all corners of the world, fandoms immediately drew their favorite pairings using the Barbie mugshot screenshots as inspiration. With Margot Robbie’s concerned Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s cheesing Ken, the absurdity was truly just too good. The key is having one character look slightly terrified and utterly baffled and possibly regretting every choice that has ever led to them getting their mugshot taken and the second character has to be a complete and total himbo, just an absolute dummy, smoothbrain as fuck, no thoughts, just vibes. The results, if the fanart is anything to go by, is perfect. Take a look at some of my favorites. Korra and Asami, Avatar: The Legend of Korra Kira and Jadzia, Star Trek Morticia and Gomez, The Addams Family Jame...

Image: Melville House Giving us gothic vibes in early 1900s Boston, Relentless Melt follows Artie Quick, a crossdressing young woman who disguises herself as a man in order to further her education, and her friend Theodore, an up-and-coming high society magician , as they investigate claims of abductions on the Boston Common. As Artie works to keep her double life disguised, Theodore must explore the darker side of his upper-crust upbringing. Described as H.P. Lovecraft meets Agatha Christie, Relentless Melt is a supernatural crime thriller with a terrifying secret at the heart of an American institution. Bushnell weaves together a story of gender identity, adventure, and the things that go bump in the dark. It will release on June 6. The excerpt starts below the cover for Jeremy P. Bushnell’s Relentless Melt . Image: Melville House So this is where the string of clues has led: the plaza in front of City Hall. Theodore glances at Artie, and in that glance she can read an...

Tokyo, Japan, May 29th, 2023, Chainwire Bitcoin.com’s ecosystem token, VERSE, has been listed on Kucoin, a top-tier cryptocurrency exchange platform known for being the home of crypto gems. Trading is open now, with the initial pair being VERSE/USDT. A milestone moment for Bitcoin.com, this first exchange listing for VERSE is significant because it amplifies the ... Read more

Image: Warner Bros. You can now add the upcoming Blade Runner 2099 TV show to the list of shows impacted by the Writers Strike. According to the BBC , the P rime Video series was set to start shooting at Belfast Harbour Studios in Northern Ireland. The ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America also affects writers whose shows or films are filming outside of the US, such as 2099. And even though it hasn’t even been a full month since the strike started, the sci-fi series may not end up starting up production again until spring 2024. Speaking to the outlet, Northern Ireland Screen (the country’s national screen agency) said it was “extremely disappointed” by production being halted. Its CEO Richard Williams added that the company “hope a fair deal is reached soon so crew can get back to work.” In the meantime, NI Screen plans to find something else to take up 2099's production schedule, while being mindful that “many freelance crew and supply chain companies were rely...

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been citing evidence that the United Nations world population projection group has been massively wrong on global population projections and on the population of China and India. This is hugely important because population projections are the foundation upon which economic ... Read more