Annalee Newitz

Two Science Fiction Novels You Must Read to Deal with Election Season

The US presidential debates are eroding our souls, and the partisan mudslinging has only just begun. That’s why it’s time to escape into the world of the future, or alternate history, to see how truly twisted politics can get. Two new novels will take you there. Austin Grossman, author of the melancholy gamer novel YOU,…

Have You Ever Thrown Away Your Phone in a Fit of Frustration?

I’ve seen it happen a million times in movies. Fed up with work/love/undead sorcerers, our main character hurls his/her phone into a river/volcano/garbage bin. But do people really do this in real life? Have you? The one time I threw a piece of tech in a fit of madness, it wasn’t a phone and I…

Google’s Latest Hire Has a Creepy Plan to Track Your Mental Health

Google’s parent company Alphabet has just hired Thomas Insel, the former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, who has some pretty weird ideas about what his new job will entail. Insel told a crowd at Chicago Ideas Week that he still isn’t sure what Alphabet wants him to do. But then he explained…

New Study Suggests Alzheimer’s Is Associated with Brain Fungus

Every year, more people over the age of 65 are suffering from dementia. Researchers are still searching for a cause, but a new study offers a fascinating possibility: some cases of Alzheimer’s may be linked to a simple brain fungus. The study appeared this week in Nature Scientific Reports, and is already making headlines and…

Captive Octopuses Get Bored Unless You Give Them Puzzles

Over at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Steinhart Aquarium biologists say that it’s not enough to keep octopuses fed and healthy. The highly-intelligent cephalopods get unhappy if they don’t have things to do with their minds. As you can see in this insanely cute video from the aquarium, there are many…

New, Ultrafast Swimming Drones Are Tiny Ocean Explorers

The future of drones isn’t in the skies. It’s in the ocean. That’s what the OpenROV team proved in 2012 with their wildly successful remote-controlled ocean-going drone (complete with underwater camera). And now they’re back with the Trident, a sleeker, faster model–which I took for a test swim last week at San Francisco’s Aquarium of…

I Can’t Believe This Software Engineer Job Is Real

Call me naive, but I was filled with consternation and glee when I saw this job ad plastered on a fence around a construction site on the MIT campus. Is this actually a thing that is happening? The author of the ad, J. Holden Gibbons, seems legit. He’s a military vet, and claims on LinkedIn…

In the Boston area tomorrow night (10/8) from 5-7 PM? Come to MIT see io9 founder Annalee Newitz in conversation with Charles C. Mann, author of the amazing book 1491. Moderated by history author Thomas Levenson, the discussion will focus on how studying the past can help us plan for the future. [MIT Communications Forum]…

Fairphone 2: A Smartphone Made With Entirely Open Hardware

Are you sick of having smartphones that can’t be repaired? You wind up creating e-waste instead of just fixing the darn thing up and using it for another year, and that’s just annoying. Enter the Fairphone 2, which is made with open hardware and is designed to be completely fixable. The Fairphone won’t necessarily give…

Can Crowdfunding Save This Town from White Supremacy?

White supremacist poster boy Craig Cobb, founder of a whites-only religion called Creativity Movement, is trying to create a neighborhood for white supremacists in the tiny town of Antler, North Dakota. To stop him, the city had to spend so much money it went bankrupt. Earlier this year, Cobb tried to take over Antler and…

The Best Little Porno Movie on the Internet [Very NSFW]

The other night, my friend Fivestar said, “Hey, I’m going to be directing a Star Trek gang bang movie, you want to visit the set?” Just in case you are wondering, the answer to that question should always be yes. Warning: This article is very NSFW. Seriously. There are genitals. You have been warned. Fivestar…

ZenWatch 2 Review: A Cheap Way to Get Started With Smartwatches

Asus’ ZenWatch 2 looks good, and at $130 it might be worth it for the the few delightful tricks it can do. But it’s also unmistakably an entry-level smartwatch and remains hobbled by Android Wear’s basic limitations. The ZenWatch comes in two sizes, and I made the mistake of getting the larger one. There’s the…

Popular German Dating Site LOVOO May Use Fembots to Lure Men into Paying for Membership

After the Ashley Madison fembot scandal, this scenario sounds familiar. Internal documents leaked by whistleblowers at dating site LOVOO, which boasts 36 million users across Europe, reveal the company used bots called “promoter bitches” to flirt with men and get them to spend Euros on the site. German tech site c’t has been investigating leaked…

Pixel C Hands-On: This Machine Gives Good Handfeel But Has Some Issues

I have long been a fan of Google’s Pixel line of Chromebooks, but today at the Google Nexus event I saw the Pixel C and finally fell in love. But unfortunately, this machine isn’t as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. Let’s start with the good things. At 10.2 inches, the…

Watch Google’s Marshmallow-Filled Nexus Event, Live Right Here 

Today, Google will unveil its latest Nexus phones — a Nexus 5X, made by LG; and a Nexus 6P, made by Huawei. Both will be stuffed with Android Marshmallow goodness, which isn’t just for developers anymore. And finally, we may get to ogle the next generation of Chromecast streamers too. Gizmodo will be there, eating…

With This Self-Healing Rubber, Your Flat Tire Can Fix Itself

Researchers in Germany recently discovered a way to manufacture rubber that can “heal” after being cut or pierced. In this incredible video, you can see the rubber growing back together. The implications are far-ranging, and not just for flat tires. This material could mean that rubberized seals on industrial machines would heal, too, potentially creating…

Minority Report Shows Us a World Where the “Smart City” Is Real

The new FOX series Minority Report debuted on Monday, and it promises to be a crazy future tech playground — though whether the plots can sustain the amazing worldbuilding remains to be seen. Set 20 years after the events in the movie Minority Report, the series maintains many of the original touches that came straight…

Scorpion Returns to Bring Us More of the Worst Tech Plot Devices on the Planet

Your fragile mind can’t have forgotten the terrifying technothriller series known Scorpion. Because it features the worst hacking scenes ever broadcast in any medium. It’s also a mystery. Why does anyone care about its “genius” hero Walter, whose main skill is identifying public wifi networks? How will the team ever survive the virus they caught…

The Closing of the Hungarian Border, As Seen by Drones

This drone video captures what’s happening right now on the border between Hungary and Croatia. All you can see for kilometers on the road are busses and checkpoints. It’s yet another instant mega-fence for Central Europe, where countries are pouring resources into preventing Syrian refugees from crossing over borders as they flee to the west.…

The Most Popular Paid App in the App Store Is Gone

Marco Arment, internet pundit and creator of Instapaper, has decided to stop selling his wildly-popular ad blocker, Peace, for iOS 9. His reason? It “just doesn’t feel good.” But there’s more to it than that. Like many other entrepreneurs, Arment released his ad blocker on Wednesday, when the release of iOS 9 meant Apple mobile…