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Let the io9 Halloween Costume Show Begin!

Welcome to the second annual installment of io9’s Halloween costume show – featuring you in your weirdest, awesomest, kickassest, hottest, monsteriest duds ever. Put your pictures in our Flickr pool and every week we’ll post some of the best. The image you see here is from Miss Fawn (with additional effects by Jim Brey), who…

Microscope dSLR Lens Captures Both the Beautiful and the Terrifying

I thought this photo was of pollen. It’s not. Really, those are the protrusions on a starfish at 66x magnification, captured on a dSLR. Nikon Rumors reviewed the Nikon-compatible Fabre Photo EX DSLR Stereoscopic Microscope, a $1,600 lens that pwns macro photography pretty hard. https://gizmodo.com/nikons-fabre-photo-ex-dslr-stereoscopic-microscope-blow-5146675 Here’s a video they captured of a millipede. So gross,…

By 2013, Your Virtual Avatar Will Need a Suit and a Haircut

Analyst firm Gartner predicts that by 2013, 70% of companies will have issued their employees guidelines on how virtual avatars involved in company business should act and dress. The question is: do avatars observe wacky Hawaiian shirt day? [via Slashdot]

Toshiba’s Stylish Next-Gen Smartphones Could Arrive This Year

Back in April, some pretty interesting renders of Toshiba’s upcoming mobile product line leaked out, and now seemingly near production-ready versions of the slick-looking WinMo 6.5 devices are on show at CEATEC (Japan’s version of CES). Take a look: https://gizmodo.com/leaked-toshiba-k01-k02-and-l01-ultraportables-love-fol-5211338 The K01 (shown above) is a QWERTY slider with a 4.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, and is…

Seabiscuit Director Turns Venom Into A Lovable Rogue

Seabiscuit director and Spider-Man 4 scribe Gary Ross is going to direct the Venom screenplay. But here’s the twist: Venom will now be portrayed as an anti-hero… with heart. If Venom is going to be, as the trades describe it, “transformed into an anti-hero who becomes a defender of the innocent,” then this will most…

Nvidia’s Nforce Chipset Is Dead in the Water

I used an Nvidia Nforce-based motherboard in the first computer I ever built, so I’m a little sad to see that Nvidia’s freezing all development on their Nforce chipset because of licensing issues with Intel, primarily over whether or not Nvidia’s license covers chipsets for Nehalem-based processors. Nvidia’s not developing new chipsets for AMD’s processors,…

How to Build Your Very Own Badass Windows Home Server

Jason lurves Windows Home Server—it does automated backups over your network, streams movies, music and photos and is a general-purpose fileshare. If you don’t wanna hand HP $400, Maximum PC’s got a build-to-stream guide to rolling your own. https://gizmodo.com/hp-lx195-budget-windows-home-server-review-5270439 And, even if you’d rather buy a pre-made box—built-in Time Machine support for Macs is a…

Crazy-Sexy Doctor Who Set Pics, A Psychedelic Doctor Parnassus Trailer, And Your First Darth Sidious Clip!

Almost too much spoilery goodness: Doctor Who says goodbye to an old friend in can’t-miss set pics. There’s a new Doctor Parnassus trailer. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin joins Chuck! Lesbionic Heroes clips! Plus Gentlemen Broncos, Lost, Smallville, Fringe and FlashForward. Doctor Who: Where to start? Today’s set reports are almost too much to contain in…

Fujitsu F-Circle Rotary Smartphone Comes from Past’s Future

Fujitsu says that their F-Circle concept phone—designed by Yuji Ito and shown at CEATEC in Japan—has a “timeless appearance.” Liars. I know your cellphone comes straight from the 60s, and apparently it can detect land mines. [Pink Tentacle]

Video: Toshiba’s Latest Fuel Cell Prototype Gadgets Charge in Seconds

At Japan’s CEATEC show, Toshiba and KDDI are demonstrating a modified Toshiba T002 phone that’s powered by a direct-methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and Li-Ion battery. More advanced than previous prototypes, it runs for 320 hours on a squirt of methanol. DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction of methanol, water, and air—the only by-products are a…

WSJ: Dell Making an Android Phone for AT&T

We heard rumors this week that Dell’s Mini 3i Android phone could come to the U.S, and now the Wall Street Journal says it’s AT&T who asked Dell to tweak the phone—and the result may arrive next year. https://gizmodo.com/dell-bringing-mini-3i-android-smartphone-to-us-5375824 The WSJ says sources “briefed on the plans” say the phone will be similar to the…

Sylar’s Return And Claire’s Lesbian Kissage

Vampire Penis Puppet Torture – In Space!

If you want a horror movie that scares you, go see Paranormal Activity. But if you want to see hot, half-vampire babes in space fighting penis muppets, then you’re going to have to watch Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe. Aired originally on SyFy Channel as Bloodsuckers, this is one of those awesome movies where…

These Piano Stairs Will Motivate Even The Laziest of You

I’m a stair-taker because elevators and escalators give me nightmares, but for all those lazy folks who don’t have fear motivating them to take the steps, there are these piano stairs. How could you not want musical accompaniment like that? OK, so maybe you don’t want to hear a playful tune as you skip up…

Little Known Fact: Astronomer Carl Sagan Was A Stoner

We keep our noses clean here at Gizmodo, so we’re finding ourselves a bit surprised that someone as upstanding as Carl Sagan, astronomer extraordinaire, was a stoner. It does kinda explain the obsessions with all things shiny and starry though. https://gizmodo.com/i-get-by-with-a-little-help-from-a-vaporizer-and-pancak-5368152 In 1969, under the name of Mr. X, Sagan contributed to a book called…

I’m Gonna Wear This Mini Dress For A Full Body 3D Experience

Look, I get that this mini dress is a Halloween costume, but I can’t help but want to wear it right now and look like a walkin’, talkin’ pair of 3D glasses. [Etsy via Fashionably Geek via Boing Boing]

How to Watch the Moon Bombing In Real Time

If you have nothing to do on Friday, October 9, at 7:31AM Eastern/4:31AM Pacific, reserve that spot for some serious space fireworks. At that time you can see how NASA bombs the Moon from orbit using this huge thing: Click to enlarge That’s a Centaur, the upper stage of the Atlas 5 rocket that took…

Kingston MobileLite G2 Card Reader Protects Your Cards Like They’re Delicate Flowers

Kingston’s followup to its MobileLite, the MobileLite G2, brings a new, dual-slider design that aims to protect your SD/HC and microSD/HC cards from harm. It’s the most caring card reader on the market. https://gizmodo.com/kingston-mobilelite-9-in-1-card-reader-is-small-conven-258399 The MobileLite G2 features a dual-slider design: On one side lies the USB plug, and on the other, the card readers.…

Iomega’s StorCenter ix2-200 NAS Has Bluetooth, Time Machine, Chubby Exterior

Iomega’s on to something with the StorCenter ix2-200: built-in torrent and Time Machine support, Bluetooth-based uploads from phones, remote access, and lotsa spiffy features wrapped up in an earth-friendly green gadget. Together with the $270 price point, that’s appealing all-around. It looks kinda chubby and short, but the StorCenter ix2-200’s full of features to appeal…

Nuclear Batteries Solve The Shrinking Gadget Conundrum

It sucks that batteries are nearly bigger than the gadgets they’re powering, but thanks to University of Missouri researchers and some tiny nuclear batteries, that’ll one day be an issue of the past. Yeah, you read right. Tiny. Nuclear. Batteries. The real secret behind the size of the batteries is the use of new liquid…