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Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express

The pioneering German electronic outfit Kraftwerk is playing an eight show retrospective at MoMA in April. EIGHT! Sadly tickets sold out in like three seconds flat and I did not get any. Instead, I will sit and listen to their entire discography in sad solitude. Kraftwerk’s shadow looms over everything from synth pop to techno…

YouPorn Gets Caught With Its Pants Down—Users’ Email and Passwords Compromised

It looks like the Internet sex site YouPorn just took one in the eye. A years-old coding error has exposed the emails and passwords of over a million of its smut-loving chat users. The YP site itself wasn’t hacked but rather its associated sex-chat site—which is run by an outside company—somehow left bales of unencrypted…

Picture of the Day: Feb. 22, 2012

Shanghai, 2112 Future architecture, from a Concept Art Forums “Environment of the Week” Challenge | By Benjamin Schupp Want to read today’s io9 stories a different way? Check out our blog view. Or visit Observation Deck, our general discussion forum.

Xtro: Quite Possibly the Weirdest Thing to Come Out of Alien‘s Success

The release and subsequent success of Alien (1979) seemingly opened the door to mind-altering tales of horrific space invaders. These films rejected the notions of friendly aliens that directors such as Spielberg had put in place with films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — and it seemed apparent that audiences were…

How to Quickly Open Saved Email Drafts in iOS

Here’s a tip for you iPhone users: if you want to quickly open your last email draft in iOS, just hold down the compose email button for a few seconds. Your last email draft will open up right away. Nice. For those who need things spelled out: Save an email as draft Hold down on…

OnLive Desktop Plus Hands On: They Put Windows on My iPad

How impressive is the Desktop Plus version of OnLive’s iPad software? For $4.99 a month it basically lets you run full Windows on your iPad, and at blazing speeds to boot. This is the cloud done right. Mostly. OnLive is a cloud-based gaming company, and what it has done is to take the same technology…

Scientists determine the best way to win at Rugby

What does it take to be a world champion at a sport? Some might say that it’s years of dedication and training, but according to a new scientific paper, sheer physical mass might have a lot to do with it — especially in the bruise-laden sport of Rugby. For those of you who don’t follow…

Stabilized Blimp Cam Provides Smooth Footage Of Everything But Hurricanes

Renting a tall crane to get a high-angle shot could soon be an expense filmmakers can avoid with this Balloon Camera designed to lift a remote control stabilized camera gimbal up to 985 feet in the air. Developed by the NHK, Japan’s equivalent of PBS or the BBC, the miniature blimp is actually best suited…

NASA discovers enough carbon mega-molecules to fill 10,000 Mount Everests

They might be microscopic, but as far as molecules go, buckyballs are absolutely gigantic. These soccer ball shaped molecules are made of 60 carbon molecules each, and new data from the Spitzer Telescope suggest they are everywhere in the universe. Buckyballs, a shortened form of the more technical but no less awesome name Buckminsterfullerene, are…

First Photos of China’s 298-Million-Year-Old Buried Forest

These are the first photos of some of the countless treasures found in the extraordinary 298-million-year-old forest discovered under coal mine in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China. https://gizmodo.com/extraordinary-298-million-year-old-forest-discovered-un-5886774 The beautiful images show “the exceptional preservation of the fossil plants of the peat-forming swamp forest.” The research team has found entire plants and trees, allowing them to…

Fox News accuses The Lorax and Arrietty of brainwashing your children

Fox News’ Lou Dobbs is taking aim at The Lorax and The Secret World of Arrietty for brainwashing our kids with their anti-industrialism agenda, and for foisting Obama’s rhetoric about “sharing” onto children. Because sharing is evil. We would be shocked, except that digging through pop culture’s leftovers in search of indoctrination paranoia is not…

BuzzFeed’s Fake Twitter Campaign Wins Birthday Lobster Feast for Drug Felon

Did you hear about Robert Mills today? He’s a sad, overly-bearded man who capitalizes with desperation and demands free food from the internet. Viral meme uranium ejaculator BuzzFeed seized upon poor “Robster,” kicking off a social media campaign for the guy. Turns out, he’s a criminal! Robert Mills, who claimed he is “too poor” to…

How Much Does It Cost to Climb Mount Everest? More Than a Porsche

Alan Arnette has an excellent post on Outside detailing the costs of reaching Earth’s highest summit, Mount Everest. I’ve never thought about it before but it totally makes sense that there are a lot of things that go on to make that climb, right? And all those things cost a lot of money! Like $83,000…

Buzz Contacts for iPhone: A Faster and Smarter Contacts App That’s Better Than Apple’s

I was always confused at why Apple bothered making a contacts ‘app’ since it was nothing more than a shortcut for what was already inside the contacts tab in phone app. There was no imagination to it! Buzz Contacts is a contacts app that’s actually useful: it’s faster, better and looks reaaaally good. What does…

What does science fiction tell us about the future of reproductive rights?

If everything from technology to politics will be different in the future, then so will human reproduction. That’s why so much science fiction deals with the question of how humans make babies — or don’t make them — in alternate worlds that are often quite close to our own. It’s also why reproduction is a…

Buzz Contacts App Gallery

Is Google Plotting a FiOS TV Service?

When Google flips the switch on its forthcoming Fiber service later this year, a WSJ report indicates Kansas City residents might have the option to use Google as their cable tv provider as well. Just weeks after Google began laying fiber-optic cables for Google Fiber in Kansas City, the WSJ has uncovered a FCC filing…

Read the first chapter of The Massive, Brian Wood’s new environmental apocalypse comic!

We’ve been psyched for DMZ author Brian Wood’s next big end-of-the-world project The Massive for a spell now. And even though The Massive ongoing series kicks off in June, Dark Horse Comics has allowed io9 to republish the entire first chapter of Wood and Kristian Donaldson’s story from January’s issue of Dark Horse Presents #8.…

This Is How Condoms Are Made and Tested

Condoms exist in that uncomfortable category of things we accept as part of everyday life, but don’t spend too much thinking—much less talking—about. That’s silly. To help break the ice, here’s a stimulating look at how Trojan condoms are made, because you really shouldn’t put anything on your (or your partner’s) junk without knowing where…

Faster than light neutrinos may have just been disproven

This could be it, folks. Last September, physicists watching neutrinos travel from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland to Italy’s Gran Sasso laboratory announced that they had detected the subatomic particles making the trip 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light dictates is possible. Now, rumors are flying that faster than light neutrinos may not…