Future Stories

AlphaFold accelerates artificial intelligence powered drug discovery: efficient discovery of a novel CDK20 small molecule inhibitor”) has applied AlphaFold to an end-to-end AI-powered drug discovery platform (Pharma.AI) that includes a biocomputational engine (PandaOmics) and a generative chemistry platform (Chemistry42), to identify a new drug for a novel target for the treatment of the most common ... Read more

Brent Spiner as Data... or is it Lore? Photo: Trae Patton/Paramount+ Tensions are high this week aboard the Titan , which is to be expected as Star Trek: Picard begins hurtling toward its series finale. But there’s a lot that has to happen before we get there, including finding and hopefully rescuing Riker —and figuring out what the changelings intend to do with Picard’s original body. This week, Jack’s self-searching gets even weirder, Data’s Jekyll and Hyde thing puts everyone in peril, and a dark secret from the Dominion War rises up to haunt the present. Let’s dig into season three’s seventh episode, “Dominion”! From the temporary safety of a floating scrapyard, the Titan makes contact with Tuvok. He assures Seven of Nine that he has no idea where Riker is—in fact, he has no record of Riker even being in Starfleet custody. She’s intent on warning him that the changeling infiltration of Starfleet is of grave importance, particularly as Frontier Day approaches. As they spe...

Sanctuary AI has about $100 million in funding and has deployed its humanoid bot to commercial stores to perform over 120 retail tasks. Sanctuary AI has some superior capabilities like handling mailing labels and ziploc bags. If I were Tesla, I would buy SanctuaryAI now. If not then Amazon will. Amazon has about one million ... Read more

The CEO of Runway.com, Siqi Chen, has tweeted that OpenAI should release GPT5 and it should be at artificial general intelligence level. Runway.com has Series C funding and has total funding of about $96 million. Siqi has had an impressive technology executive and machine learning startup career. Runway is an applied AI research company that ... Read more

Mondo’s booth at SDCC last year. Photo: Germain Lussier/io9 Days after several core members behind the success of Mondo were fired by Funko , Funko’s CEO released a statement explaining what comes next. And it’s not great. “The Mondo posters business will continue, period,” CEO Brian Mariotti said in a statement released via social media . “We feel that making extremely limited runs of posters, most of which are 150 pieces or under, limits access to fans unfairly. Many of these posters are bought with the sole purpose of flipping them at a much higher cost to fans that really want them. The posters are created by some of the most amazing artists working today. Our goal is to make larger edition size runs (limited but not ultra-limited) that allow more fans to participate in this world-class expression of pop culture art. We also believe that broadening the pop-culture scope to include TV properties, sports, anime and music will have an amazing appetite from Mondo fans and pop-cul...

Who else is joining the Flash in The Flash? Image: Warner Bros. When The Flash finally hits theaters in June , it’s bringing a whole lot of the DC universe with it. In the first trailer alone , it was confirmed that both Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck’s Batmen would be in it, as well as Sasha Calle’s Supergirl ands the return of Michael Shannon’s Zod. But do the cameos end there ? No, they don’t according to one of the stars. Speaking on the Smartless podcast (via THR ), Ben Affleck revealed another major DC character will be appearing in the film . And while you can probably guess based on other recent movies , we’ll keep the reveal below this spoiler warning. On the podcast Affleck, who is promoting his excellent new movie Air , said the following, full well knowing he should not be. “I don’t want to give spoilers but it was a scene where I get caught—I get saved—by Wonder Woman during a conflagration with some bad guys,” Affleck said. “She saves me… with the Lasso of Truth...

Image: DC Comics Clayface leers.Yesterday’s news included speculation that Mike Flanagan—you know, the one who did Midnight Mass ? The Haunting of Hill House ? Haunting of Bly Manor ? Upcoming director of The Fall of the House of Usher ? That Mike Flanagan—had pitched a movie about Bat-villain Clayface to James Gunn. The famed horror director didn’t deny it... and nobody else has either. Hey spoilers, what other Batman villain deserves their own spinoff? Deadpool 3 Deadline reports both Karan Soni and Leslie Uggams will respectively reprise their roles as Dopinder and Blind Al in Deadpool 3 . Hope Deadline also has word Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender are attached to star in Hope , a “largely Korean-language” survival thriller from The Wailing director, Na Hong-Jin. The film is said to follow “the residents of Hopo Port, where a mysterious discovery is made on the outskirts of the remote harbor town. Before long, the residents find themselves in a desperate figh...

Image: Disney It’s not every day you get to exclusively debut a brand new line of merchandise from a new Star Wars show —but today, the Force is with us. io9 is very excited to share products from Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, which debuts on Disney+ and Disney Jr. May 4. The show follows a group of Jedi younglings in the High Republic era (making it one of the first High Republic projects that isn’t a book ) as they traverse the galaxy on adventures, some of which are led by Master Yoda himself. Other characters include Kai Brightstar, Lys Solay, and, most importantly, Nubs. Nubs is a beyond adorable new creature, in addition to being a powerful up-and-coming Jedi. You’ll see lots and lots of him, and his fellow younglings, in the following images, which reveal brand-new products from Lego, Mattel, Hasbro, and shopDisney. Lego’s Tenoo Jedi Temple Image: Disney This set will debut June 1. Lego’s Tenoo Jedi Temple Image: Disney Out of the box. Mattel’s Star Wars: ...

Not this guy, but someone he encounters in the episode. Image: Lucasfilm In Star Wars , when you see a creature that reminds you of a specific character, it might not actually be that character. Grogu, for example, is not Yoda , despite what some people originally thought. The Kowakian monkey-lizards hanging around on The Mandalorian  aren’t  Salacious Crumb . Not every astromech droid is R2-D2. So, on this week’s episode of The Mandalorian , when a certain familiar-looking character from Star Wars animation arrived, your first instinct may have been to assume that it wasn’t who you thought it was. But it was, 100 percent, and here’s what we know about them. The moment happens early in Chapter 21 of The Mandalorian, “The Pirate.” We’re at the Adelphi base where all manner of New Republic pilots are hanging out. We see three Star Wars directors among them (Dave Filoni, Deborah Chow, Rick Famuyiwa), and then there’s that big purple guy. As Carson Teva listens t...

Charlie Day and Chris Pratt talk with io9 about The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Image: io9/Universal (Other) Chris Pratt is no stranger to massive fan franchises. He’s been a sitcom star, Marvel superhero , Jurassic Park employee, and even a Lego figure . And yet even with all that behind him, he thinks the role of Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the one that holds the most responsibility. “I loved Jurassic Park as a kid,” Pratt told io9 on video chat last week. “I was 13 years old when it came out. It was a big part of my childhood . I might have seen the movie five or six times through the course of growing up. Well, five or six times is, you know, a few hours. I played this game for hundreds of hours. Probably maybe 1,000 hours of my childhood. And so the sound of hitting a coin, catching a flower, hearing the score, every little detail of the movie, it was like I was hypnotized by it as a child. So to see it now, nothing really compares to it in terms of my relations...