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Is Anyone Tougher Than Farty Man?

Apple’s App Store only provided a vague description, a mysterious screenshot, and a 99 cent price tag for an app called Are You Tougher Than Farty Man. Naturally this meant that I had to try it. [iTunes—Thanks, Zinger314!]

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Watch Conan O’Brien Drive A Car Filled With High-Grade Explosives Off A Cliff

This video contains high-grade explosives, illegal fireworks, gallons of gasoline, pounds of unpopped popcorn, a chamber orchestra, and a knocked out stunt double. I’d say Conan O’Brien has successfully proven he’s a complete badass while promoting his new show.

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Jon Favreau’s spooky encounter in the middle of the desert

Iron Man director Jon Favreau stars in The Big Empty, in which he gets hired to make a delivery — and winds up out in the middle of the desert, where 27 people in blue tracksuits have a strange mission. Warning: Video is quite spoilery. 2003’s The Big Empty is mostly a sort of kooky…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Terrorists and mobsters fight to control the afterlife on Caprica

In last night’s episode of Caprica, “Retribution,” we are witness to the violent rise to power of two outlaw groups: The STO, now headed by Clarice, and the Tauron mafia Ha’la’tha, now working with Daniel. And it was mostly terrific. Spoilers! Caprica, like certain episodes of Star Trek: TNG, is probably doomed to be a…

Television Annalee Newitz

Mission Accomplished Chile: All 33 Miners Have Been Rescued

You’re looking at the happy face of Luis Urzua, the last of the 33 Chilean miners to be rescued. As he stepped out of the rescue capsule he was greeted with a sign proclaiming “Mission Accomplished Chile” and applause. [CNN] https://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-coffin-that-will-save-the-miners-5662423

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Meet the Kenyan Man Who Built an Airplane From Scratch

Gabriel Nderitu is not an aerospace engineer He’s an IT professional and self-proclaimed innovator, who built his own airplane from scratch. If the plane flies, he’ll be the first in his country to successfully build one. Nderitu will put the two-seater to the test sometime next week, and he’s clearly got some last-minute fixes to…

Tech News Brian Barrett

Alec Baldwin Smacks Down AOL As Only Alec Baldwin Can

“Eighth degree, black belt idiots.” “Dumbest bastards in the world.” That’s not Jack Donaghy talking about pinko liberals. That’s Alec Baldwin talking about AOL homepage writers. But what’s got him so heated? Apparently it’s a bit of selective misinterpretation that sent Baldwin on the warpath. As he writes over at The Huffington Post: Today, on…

Tech News Brian Barrett

Get Ready to Be Groped Much Harder by Airport Security

The full body scans at airports—the ones that reveal your naughty bits in great detail—are fortunately optional, given prior abuse. But after Oct. 31, if you opt out, it looks like you’ll be more thoroughly “screened” than ever. https://gizmodo.com/airport-naked-body-scanners-get-privacy-upgrade-to-an-5633306 While turning down the full body scan has always resulted in a patdown, there’s a newer…

Privacy & Security Matt Buchanan

Please Don’t Ever Photograph These Seven Things Again

Most of us post stupid pictures of ourselves on the Internet constantly, but it’s time to stop being annoying attention whores. The first step? Never photographing these seven things again. Republished with permission from Matthew Inman aka “The Oatmeal,” a former web designer turned comic artist. You can see more of his work on The…

Books & Comics Matthew Inman

Stargate gives us cute new aliens, same dark hallways

This week, Stargate Universe introduced us to a new collection of crazy, yet kinda cute, alien life forms. Then we spent a lot of time wandering the dark hallway of a spaceship, again. The good and the bad, recapped below. Spoilers ahead! To be fair, I enjoyed this episode of SGU. I quite like the…

io9 Meredith Woerner

The villain of Spider-Man reboot revealed?

Rhys Ifans will be playing Curt Connors, the scientist who becomes the Lizard, in the new Spider-Man movie reboot, according to The Wrap. Not clear if the Lizard is the only villain in the movie, but the unnamed source does say that Venom won’t be in the film at all. Here’s hoping there’s only one…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Steve Jobs’ Student Foe Wins Trip to Microsoft Launch

Chelsea Kate Isaacs, that student who won brief internet notoriety for pissing off Steve Jobs via email, only to receive a B on her paper, now has journalistic vengeance. Sorta! Microsoft scooped her up to cover a press conference. http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student Isaacs won a Microsoft contest to join eight other students and fly to New York…

Tech News Sam Biddle

Hungary’s river of death, as seen from space

Here’s an aerial view of Hungary’s toxic spill, which threatens to become an international environmental disaster, from NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. Click through for a close-up that shows the devastation more clearly. https://gizmodo.com/hungarian-toxic-sludge-kills-4-injures-at-least-120-5656352 Says NASA: The alumina plant appears along the right edge of both images, and incorporates both bright blue and brick red…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

All These Paratroopers and Nowhere For Them to Land (Except the Forest)

Dear Little Rock Air Force Base, Next time you make a spectacle of dropping one or two hundred of us out of planes, make sure we have somewhere to land other than THE WOODS. Sincerely yours, The Paratroopers [YouTube]

Tech News Kyle VanHemert

Welcome to the Culture, the Galactic Civilization That Iain M. Banks Built

Want to get into Iain M. Banks’ great Culture series? Here’s a handy primer that will introduce you to the Culture, the pan-galactic civilization whose members and ex-members are the subjects of so many Banks novels, including Surface Detail. You don’t need to read the every Culture novel to appreciate the glory of a single…

io9 Annalee Newitz

For the first time, Hubble finds the wreckage of an explosive asteroid collision

When astronomers discovered a mysterious X-shaped object in space last January, they initially thought it was a comet. Further investigation by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed it to be the aftermath of two asteroids smashing into each other. The discovery of object P/2010 A2 marks the first time astronomers have seen the remains of an…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

This Silly Cellphone Contraption Will Probably End Up In the Skymall Catalog

Earos is a cushion that seats between your ear and your phone. It “maintains a comfortable separation between the ear and the phone unit, which can emit an uncomfortable amount of heat after prolonged use,” says the designer. There’s more: • In cooler climates, earos shields the ear from wind and cold, extending the phone’s…

Gadgets Jesus Diaz

A gorgeous, homemade time machine running on open source hardware

Art student Dan Henriksson built this gorgeous representation of a time machine using arduino circuit boards and a CNC milling machine. This is geek DiY ingenuity mixed with science fiction art.

io9 Annalee Newitz

Technology Advances, But People Sitting Around the Tube Never Does

Today, we’re busy worrying about whose 3DTV is the largest, but the actual watching part of TV hasn’t changed much over the past half a century or so. LIFE serves up a historical gallery of staring at the glowing screen. https://gizmodo.com/time-for-a-bigger-apartment-lgs-72-beast-is-largest-l-5662810 The gallery spans a variety of scenes, capturing TV’s ability to pull a hell…

Television Sam Biddle

10 classic SF books that were originally considered failures

Some of science fiction/fantasy’s classic books failed to win over readers at first. And the publishers of some of SF’s most beloved works were convinced they had a disaster on their hands. Here are 10 masterpieces that were deemed failures. Little, Big by John Crowley Writer’s Almanac summed it up best: “[John Crowley’s] most famous…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs

Is Anyone Tougher Than Farty Man?

Watch Conan O’Brien Drive A Car Filled With High-Grade Explosives Off A Cliff

Jon Favreau’s spooky encounter in the middle of the desert

Terrorists and mobsters fight to control the afterlife on Caprica

Mission Accomplished Chile: All 33 Miners Have Been Rescued

Meet the Kenyan Man Who Built an Airplane From Scratch

Alec Baldwin Smacks Down AOL As Only Alec Baldwin Can

Get Ready to Be Groped Much Harder by Airport Security

Please Don’t Ever Photograph These Seven Things Again

Stargate gives us cute new aliens, same dark hallways

The villain of Spider-Man reboot revealed?

Steve Jobs’ Student Foe Wins Trip to Microsoft Launch

Hungary’s river of death, as seen from space

All These Paratroopers and Nowhere For Them to Land (Except the Forest)

Welcome to the Culture, the Galactic Civilization That Iain M. Banks Built

For the first time, Hubble finds the wreckage of an explosive asteroid collision

This Silly Cellphone Contraption Will Probably End Up In the Skymall Catalog

A gorgeous, homemade time machine running on open source hardware

Technology Advances, But People Sitting Around the Tube Never Does

10 classic SF books that were originally considered failures

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