Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round up of the latest and coolest toy news on the internet. This week, Hasbro goes ‘90s with a trio of animated X-Men icons, MAFEX swings between the worlds of DC Comics and the Terminator, and Hot Toys returns to The Mandalorian for a few more Nite Owls....

The Federal Bureau of Investigation spent two years considering whether it should procure a clandestine commercial spyware tool that could reportedly hack any phone within the United States, according to an investigation by New York Times Magazine .
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If you’re also someone who’s waited in line for hours to get a COVID test—or faced similar frustrations trying to buy them at your local drugstore—then you’re in luck. A group of scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara say they’ve developed a new kind of COVID-testing system...

An apartment building with ties to the occult. A person obsessed with a mystery they uncover in found footage . The blurring of media and reality. Surveillance and paranoia. The possibility of other dimensions! Netflix’s spooky series Archive 81 combines all of these elements, and it does it so...

Oil prices are rebounding as global economic activity picks back up. But the boom could likely be a mirage as governments finally get their act together on climate change—and it could lead to financial ruin if Big Oil ends up chasing it.

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Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week suggests that two recently resurfaced drugs are now contributing to the ongoing overdose crisis in the U.S. Among both reported overdose deaths and drug busts, officials are seeing an increase of the drugs para-fluorofentanyl...

In 2017, io9 wrote about a short film titled Brian and Charles, dubbing it “ beautifully shot and equal parts poignant and wryly hilarious .” So we were thrilled to see that director Jim Archer made a feature film based on his short It just made its debut at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival , and is...

In a major victory for open internet activists, a federal court has once again shot down the telecom industry’s challenge to a California state net neutrality law.
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As noted philosopher and Poison frontman Bret Michaels once said back in 1988, “ Every rose has its thorn .” Alas, it’s a truth that even applies to roses that bloom as beautifully as the Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise. We’ve known for a while that the third movie, Vol. 3 , would be the...

Big businesses are throwing a tantrum in New York over a new pay transparency law requiring all employers with more than four employees to post minimum and maximum salary ranges for posted positions. Those rules are significant and would apply to the majority of New York’s 8.5 million residents ....