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BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 Test Notes: Worth the Wait?

This isn’t the review of the BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 software. That comes tomorrow. Rather, these are just some early impressions and comparisons to the 1.0 software running through my head as I get acclimated with the thing. These opinions that may or may not change with time and familiarity. https://kotaku.com/blackberry-playbook-review-5791814 But for now, let’s get…

Volunteers Needed to Eat Martian Space Food (in Hawaii!)

If the thought of calling volcanic rubble in Hawaii home for four months doesn’t appeal to you, just wait, it gets better: you’ll be eating nothing but “flour, sugar, beans, rice, olive oil, dehydrated meat and cheese.” Mars needs taste-testers! The University of Hawaii and Cornell are seeking test subjects for a study that will…

Listen to two full albums of Daft Punk songs, remixed as Nintendo soundtracks

We’ve heard the Tron Legacy soundtrack transmogrified into floppy disc farts. Now witness France and/or robotdom’s premier deejaying duo turned into the digital drone of Commodore 64s and wheezing MS-DOS games. https://gizmodo.com/daft-punks-tron-theme-a-la-five-floppy-disc-drives-5873306 The folks at chiptune remix site Da Chip released their first batch of retrotech songs in 2009 and have just compiled a new…

Artist Growth: Become a Real Musician and Make Some Damn Money

Selling out! The biggest fear of any musician. And maybe it sucks for purists and for people who don’t like money or something but for the rest of us? Getting paid to do what you love to do is the dream. Artist Growth is an app that helps real musicians organize themselves. Like a responsible…

Snow Art: Much Cooler Than Crop Circles

Crop circles are so 1990s. Nowadays, my favorite mysterious, creative phenomenon is snow art. Did aliens make it? Does it indicate some old druid structure hidden beneath the snow? Or is it just down to some insanely creative artist? Err, yeah, you guessed it: it’s the last one. In fact, these abstract images in the…

Artist Growth App Gallery

Robot dinosaurs are the future of paleontology

Since dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, there’s only so much we can really know about how these creatures moved and lived. But as two scientists explain to us, building robot dinosaurs could unlock the secrets hidden in fossils. This almost unspeakably awesome idea comes out of Drexel University. Paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Lacovara and…

How do you think John Carter should have been marketed?

Everybody’s still nervous that Andrew Stanton’s John Carter will fail at the box office — and the latest article on the subject goes deeper into the politics inside the Mouse House, and the ways that they’ve messed around with Carter and his leather thong. https://gizmodo.com/could-john-carter-be-the-years-first-big-flop-5874991 The Daily Beast has an article that quotes from a…

I Want This Imperial AT-AT Volkswagen Van

I really wish this Imperial AT-AT Volkswagen Van were real. Because then I would be able to stomp on all those hipster Ewoks who live around me. Especially that guy who smells like Chewbacca and is always sitting at the coffee place without ordering anything. [Jack Schofield via Twitter via Nerd Approved via Geekologie]

The Scientist Who Discovered Hepatitis C Says He’s Now Discovered the Vaccine

In a poetic turn of virology, the scientist who discovered hepatitis C in 1989 has now also discovered a vaccine that will hopefully treat and prevent the disease. Not only is it poetic, it’s an accomplishment that many thought was impossible. Because hepatitis C is more virulent than HIV, no one was confident a vaccine…

Real Scientifical Gangstas Build Their Own Atomic Clocks

Seriously? You care enough about temporal accuracy buy an atomic clock but you don’t know how to build one? We won’t tell.Thankfully DIY Physics has a great tutorial on how to build your own with parts from eBay. The core of the makeshift atomic clock is an Efratom Model M-100 Rubidium Frequency Standard oscillator originally…

How My Little Pony‘s Lauren Faust will make you love Batgirl and Supergirl all over again

Lauren Faust has blown our minds with her work on Powerpuff Girls and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And now she’s tackling the DC Universe with a new series of shorts, called Super Best Friends Forever, in which Batgirl, Supergirl and Wondergirl hang out and fight supervillains. We were lucky enough to talk one-on-one…

Apple Patent Would Make It Even Harder to Get Your iPhone Replaced

A newly discovered Apple patent application describes a system that would make it easier for Apple Store employees to diagnose water damage in your phone so that they can deny you a replacement. AppleInsider spotted “Mechanisms for Detecting Exposure to Water in an Electronic Device”. The patent describes a circuit-based system for detecting water damage…

Community comes back next month!

Thank you Starburns — Community is coming back on NBC on March 15th! According to show creator Dan Harmon’s twitter account “What you call 8:00, we call home. Community returns to Thursday nights on March 15th.” New Community and an Inspector Spacetime web series? Wonderful news! https://gizmodo.com/theres-going-to-be-an-inspector-spacetime-web-series-5886382

The io9 Book Club is in session! Let’s talk about Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. In February, we read Erin Morgenstern’s novel The Night Circus. Jump into comments to get started talking about it! For those unfamiliar with the io9 book club, here’s how it works: You read the book. We create a special book club post on io9 when…

No, Idiots, Anonymous Isn’t Going to Destroy the Power Grid

The Wall Street Journal and NSA are bleary-eyed with terror over the newest cyber bogeyman: Anonymous is going to cause a blackout! Except they can’t, and they won’t; they’re saying so themselves. So why the misinformation? https://gizmodo.com/nsa-anonymous-could-cause-power-outages-through-cybera-5886805 According to the WSJ, “The director of the National Security Agency has warned that the hacking group Anonymous…

This Painless Little Device Disappeared My Acne

After including no!no! Skin in my Gizmodo gift guide for obsessive groomers last year, the fine folks at no! no! sent me a test unit of their zit zapper. Even though the device is “FDA cleared,” I was skeptical it would work on my face (yes I stil break out at my age, why god…

A wistful science fiction music video about computer love

If you like electro-emo tunes ala The Postal Service, and you know that one day you’ll marry a robot, then this is the love song for you. Here we present the debut of the video for “Limited,” by Jascha. It was directed by io9 pal John Pavlus, best known for doing great videos about scientific…

New images of Charlize Theron’s soul-sucking Evil Queen ushers back the era of Black Fantasy

A batch of Snow White And The Huntsman images have come out, and each one gives us a stronger and stronger vibe of the dark fantasy movies we grew up on. Could this be the first of many? Or do family friendly TV series like Once Upon A Time have to die before we can…

Taser’s New Camera Turns Every Cop Into Robocop

Taser rolled out a new line of body-wearable cameras for law enforcement today, the Axon Flex line, designed to be worn on sunglasses and record then upload video to the cloud from the officer’s point of view. They’re delightfully frightening! The 3.2-inch cameras store two four to six hours of footage at a time (which…